FAIRBANKS — The governor, set to propose a budget next month, says the state should help create construction jobs to spur employment. Many state leaders have said Alaska must also set new policies to strengthen its long-term economic forecast.

Those views could meet in the coming springtime budget debate in Juneau. Whether they’ll get in each other’s way remains to be seen.

Gov. Sean Parnell has previewed his budget by announcing a plan to spend $100 million on roads, airports, buildings and other ends to start catching up on neglected maintenance. He’s also called for allocating hundreds of millions in state savings and spending the interest and earnings on a new university scholarship program.

Those plans, come as some in Alaska caution that the state faces tough times ahead — and possibly serious budget problems — without an overhaul of energy taxes.

Parnell’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year, which starts next summer, will emerge within weeks.

Former Gov. Sarah Palin, amid a bleak national economic scene one year ago, pitched a tight budget. The plan’s final construction — “capital” — component wound up needing only $168 million from the state’s general fund.

Alaska has, since then, largely avoided the woes seen in other many states, where a national downturn has caused cuts in spending education and social programs.

Signs from Parnell suggest his budget, while “fiscally responsible,” could be larger than Palin’s last year. Parnell said Wednesday his spending plan will focus on core responsibilities such as transportation, public safety and education. More broadly, he said, it also will focus on strengthening the state’s economy through public projects, including work on the Dalton Highway.

“For me, it’s about jobs and families,” Parnell said by phone. “I’m definitely taking the long view.”

That view — of the economic benefit of state construction spending — could encounter hurdles in the Legislature, where some say the state must start looking at preventing future budget crises. Oil production has fallen steadily for two decades in Alaska. The state relies on revenue from that production for almost nine-tenths of state government spending, leaving many wondering if declining oil production could one day leave Alaska in a major pinch.

Rep. Mike Hawker, a co-chairman of the House Finance Committee, said relatively high oil prices have diverted attention from the real threat posed by declining oil production on the North Slope. He said state leaders should hold a lid on spending and instead focus on rewriting energy taxes to encourage more oil development and, through that, strengthen the state’s economic future.

“The governor has to find a whole lot of new jobs patching up public buildings to make up for all the high paying jobs that government policies are causing to be lost in our oil patch and other dependent industries,” Hawker wrote of Parnell’s deferred maintenance plan in an e-mail to the Daily News-Miner.

Sen. Joe Thomas, a Finance Committee member in the Senate, said the Legislature can — and should — focus both on meeting short- and medium-term budget needs and on long-term fiscal issues without one effort interfering with the other. State lawmakers should look to answer how, for example, to spark production of tough-to-develop heavy oil reserves, Thomas said Wednesday. But he doesn’t suspect lawmakers would use debate about an annual budget as leverage to advance that research, he said.

“It’s a long-term discussion,” Thomas said of resource development policies.

Contact staff writer Christopher Eshleman at 459-7582.