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Alaska faces a long list of serious, long-term problems. The population is aging and not moving in fast enough to replace retirees, many employers don't have enough workers to fully staff their operations, and the state's Public finances are as stable as oil prices – which is to say, they are not.
State funding for K-12 education has been frozen for the past decade. We maintain dilapidated public buildings as much as teenagers clean their rooms. And we're running a contest to see which community is missing the most: affordable housing or child care. No matter who wins the title, the Alaskans will lose.
Thankfully, we have a Permanent Fund whose revenues provide the largest single source of general purpose revenue for state-funded public services.
But the Permanent Fund also contains Permanent Fund dividends, which have been the source of the greatest political conflict since Adam and Eve began debating whether apple harvesting should be regulated.
I'm beginning to think that dividends are Alaska's equivalent of political comfort food. We know it's not healthy to keep eating excessive amounts, but we can't help ourselves.
It's like the cooks in the House Finance Committee last week. The $2,272 PFD in the proposed budget revealed by Kitchen leadership is sufficiently unsound that it would overspend state revenue while ignoring multiple statewide and local community needs included in the budget. Become.
But then some pastry chefs on the committee tried to amend the budget to increase the dividend to about $3,500, which would require overdrawing the Permanent Fund or hitting bottom in another financial hole. We came dangerously close to having to deplete the state budget's shock absorber account.
An effort to provide $3,500 dividends for Gov. Mike Dunleavy's favorite dessert ultimately failed. But the spending plan still needs to be voted on in the House, at which point an amendment to reinstate the dessert trays would be introduced.
And while the fight over this fall's dividend amount will continue until Congress adjourns in mid-May, there are several proposals in the House that could forever change the fund and Alaska's fiscal future, and they are not in sound shape.
One proposal would ask voters to enshrine the dividend in the state constitution, but that would be the last thing political virus could get into. Let's talk about ransomware attacks.
Another bill in the House would remove PFDs from the Congressional spending process and make them automatic payments every year, similar to setting up an automatic payment on a credit card whether you can afford it or not. Masu.
Another House bill that does two bad ideas at once would direct the Permanent Fund to funnel billions of dollars of real money into the mirage. It would direct the fund to acquire a 25% stake in the proposed Alaska North Slope gas pipeline project. I think we should be happy that we don't have a 50% stake.
The latest indigestible idea introduced in the House would allow Alaskans to receive $5,000 a year for three years if they were willing to permanently forgo their annual dividends. It's like a retirement plan: take your money and walk away. This is not the right message at a time when there is already a shortage of workers and families.
Fortunately, most lawmakers aren't interested in these failed recipes.
Larry Persily is a longtime Alaskan journalist who takes time off for federal, state, and local public policy work in Alaska and Washington, DC. She lives in Anchorage and is the publisher of the weekly Wrangell Sentinel.
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