Columns 2015

Kicking the can down the road

So if I understand the situation correctly, Alaska is deep in a financial hole due to the drastic decline in oil prices. We are therefore dependent on the moral strength and integrity of our legislators to do the right thing and balance the state budget no matter the political cost. I’ll pause here for a moment to give you time to laugh hysterically. Call me a pessimist, but I’m going to bet that legislators will find a way to make a few cosmetics cuts and then kick the rest of the pain down the road. After all, this is Alaska. We live with our fingers crossed that the price of oil will go up or we’ll tap a new, equally rich, resource that will continue to allow us to live rich without any pain.

I’ve lived here for over forty years and I still find the Alaskan mentality a challenge to understand. We seem to want government to pay for everything without contributing much of anything to the pot of money needed for those payments. We want government off our backs except that we want government on our backs at PFD time. We want our boom and bust economy to constantly find a new boom so that the bust never lasts long enough to be really painful. We don’t want to pay an income tax. We don’t want to pay a sales tax. And we squeal like stuck pigs if anyone even hints at using the Permanent Fund in any way that cuts into our dividends. We think of ourselves as a state of independent people, rugged individuals who challenge the great wilderness without fear and live off the land. But that land better have a mailbox on it for our PFD check.

Our stalwart legislators will try to figure out a way to manipulate the situation so that they can boast of being fiscally responsible while kicking the bill down the road to the next legislature, or the one after that depending on when our savings run out. Meanwhile we make our reservations for Juneau to explain why no cuts can happen to programs that affect us. The cuts clearly have to come from someone else’s pet pot of money. Nowhere in this mix will there be anyone suggesting new revenue streams that might affect the ordinary Alaskan because that’s political suicide.

So what’s the answer? How do we solve this budget deficit without cutting your favorite program or asking Alaskans to bear some of the costs? Well, we could start printing our own money. That seemed to work for Bit Coins. We could burn incense to the god of resources to find us a new one quickly that is easily accessible and can be marketed at a high price. We could try to actually diversify our economy based on the gazillion studies that show any state dependent on one source of revenue is inevitably going to face a crash at some point.  Or we can do what I’m guessing the legislature will eventually have done when all the dust has settled – created a lot of sound and fury that will signify absolutely nothing.

Alaskans need to grow up, stop whining and accept that they either have to start contributing at least a little to the state coffers or stop going to Juneau to defend every program currently being funded as absolutely critical to Alaska’s future. Because seriously, if we aren’t willing to help pay for it with our money as opposed to oil taxes, then how really important is it to us?

For years now Alaskans have been told that the party is ending, the revenue stream is slowing down to less than a trickle and we need to look at different ways of funding state government. And for the same number of years Alaskans have pretended that there is a Santa Claus and if they wait just a little longer, he’ll be down the chimney with a bagful of money. And who knows? Everything is cyclical and there is every chance that oil prices will go back up. If the legislature is lucky, that will happen before they run out of savings to tap. If they’re not, then Alaskans are really going to have to start seriously thinking about where the money comes from, where it’s going and how much they are willing to kick in to keep those programs funded.

Let the hangover begin.