(These opinions are, for sake of clarity, my own, and do not reflect those of any employer or organization with which I associate.)
I don't typically care to delve into the sphere of politics here -- indeed, I'm a silly, frivolous sort of person -- but something's been eating at me.
For what feels like the fiftieth time in my thirty-eight years, the Alaska state budget is in freefall. Once again we're told that it's a mess we need to cut our way out of, that only by reducing state services to their barest minimum, can we hope to weather the storm. Problem is, I can't recall a year that we *haven't* been hearing that.
In my early twenties, like many young Alaskans seeking a place culturally removed from home while still being a nonstop flight away, I decided to move to Seattle, Washington. There was certainly a lot to learn there, being as generally naive as I was, but the single biggest cultural shock was one of government. Sure, it has its legal battles, shouting matches, and irritating characters, But by and large, government in Washington is (or was, at the time) uncontroversial. Expectation and reality were curiously aligned; leadership governs, services are provided, and the wheel keeps turning.
If you’re not from Alaska, you might wonder why this was such a shock. Alaskan government is, for lack of a better description, generally out of its mind. This is a state so awash in oil company influence that it has actively warped the perceptions of its public (via the Permanent Fund and corporate propaganda) and its political class (via campaign contributions and outright bribes). When the price of oil is high, the good times roll; the operating budget expands, vanity projects are taken on, occasionally the surplus is just handed out to residents without a second thought. When the price of oil drops, crisis; legislators and governors break out the knives and do their best to slash and burn the budget back into shape. Throughout it all, the services provided by government remain understaffed, underfunded, and on the brink of collapse.
(For what it’s worth, Washington is also going through a budget crisis -- because they have to balance their budget four years in advance. Culturally removed, indeed.)
“What about other revenue?” you, a rational human being not so steeped in Alaskan nonsense, might ask. To which I’m forced to reply: What other revenue? Doing a little napkin math on the Governor’s Proposed FY2026 budget, oil money, whether direct (taxes) or indirect (Permanent Fund), makes up over half of the state budget. Over a third (38.87%) is provided by the Feds. The rest (8.6%) comes from all other state revenue. With so much of the budget reliant on petrochemical extraction, and so much influence wielded by the extractors, dysfunction is inevitable.
There’s a couple perverse twists at play here. One is that the Permanent Fund, the heavy weight tying our destiny to fossil fuel extraction, was established because its creators (chiefly, Governor Jay Hammond) envisioned a day that oil wouldn’t be a resource produced by the state.
“I wanted to transform oil wells pumping oil for a finite period into money wells pumping money for infinity,” wrote Hammond in an unfinished 2005 manuscript. “It was apparent that unless we did so, politicians would spend every windfall to satisfy insatiable short-term needs and demands, only to find themselves in a world-of-hurt when oil wealth declined.”
In practice, of course, we are now in that world-of-hurt, and I don’t believe a gas line is going to save us from it.
The other twist is the fact that Alaska has way, way more resources than just petroleum. Off the top of my head, our state provides gold, silver, copper, timber, and a plethora of seafood to domestic and global markets alike. The official line is that these industries bring vital jobs to Alaskans, but in practice, they often operate more like a giveaway; an Outside corporation can come set up shop, hire non-resident specialists and temporary visa workers, extract as much of a resource as they like, and leave -- with only a pittance going to the state, not to speak of local governments and people. (No shade to the specialists and visa workers, plenty of shade to the corporations.)
In the years following the Permanent Fund’s establishment, it’s been proposed that those resources pay into the Fund as well, though the political will evaporated once the oil started flowing. The Alaska State Constitution (article 7 section 2) specifies that “the legislature shall provide for the utilization, development, and conservation of all natural resources belonging to the State, including land and waters, for the maximum benefit of its people.” Personally, I don’t feel like we’re getting the maximum benefit from most of that stuff.
There’s a reason this topic has become especially uncomfortable to me of late. You may recall that over a third of the state budget comes from the US government. DC has sent some exceptionally clear signals recently. One sets exploitation of Alaska’s resources as a Federal priority (tellingly, for Americans before state residents, specifying citizens at the same time the government questions the citizenship status of Indigenous people). Another shows a willingness to ignore or terminate previous federal priorities the current executive doesn’t like, whether it’s keeping schools open or mail service reliable or planes from colliding. (Y’know, stuff that makes it possible to live comfortably up here.)
The cherry on top of this shit sundae is the executive order renaming Denali back to McKinley, an act that (given its local unpopularity) delivers a stark message from the executive branch to Alaskans: “We do not care one fucking iota about you.”
Taken together, it’s not hard to see a near future wherein schools are shuttered, the University is annihilated, and state services are gutted, all in service of escalating resource extraction, draining Alaska’s wealth and delivering it to DC on a silver platter. An endgame of turning a state back into a colony, with permanent consequences for both the land and the people who live upon it. Were I still living in Seattle, this possibility would cause me no small amount of worry. Today, recently married and once again an Alaska resident, it chills me to my core.
It seems, then, we have a limited window to secure our resources and budget in tandem -- to ensure that Alaska’s exports confer the constitutionally mandated “maximum benefit” for its people, while reducing the liability that is our Federal dependency. To their credit, our legislature (House and Senate alike!) is mostly made up of people with an interest in governing, rather than stripping the copper wire from the walls. But the odds of making those resources work for us before they’re simply removed nevertheless feel slim at best.
Hell, maybe the window is already closed; I’m not a scholar of these things, just a lone Alaskan with a UA journalism degree and a somewhat longer-than-average memory. All I can do is hope that our state -- politicians and people alike -- try to keep Alaska as the Last Frontier, rather than just another frontier trampled and forgotten in the pursuit of profit for folks Outside.
