“Misfortune does not always come to injure.” - Latin maxim Alaska is suffering from too much state government. This sub $80 oil price scare can correct this chronic issue in the same manner that a chest X-ray scare can get a middle-aged family member to stop smoking. The good years of high oil prices have only grown our state bureaucracies into red tape leviathans and have transformed Juneau into a giant ATM dispensary for all layers of local government and non-profits to flock to. First, we need to reduce the capital budget to near zero. This is the easy part. Secondly, we need to end automatic formula driven increases in our state operating budget. Thirdly, we need to have a serious public debate on how to bring the state budget back into balance. Our current FY 2015 $3B+ deficit would take a single state legislator who voted for it over 54,000 years to pay it off with their state salary. Below is just one example on how much money we spend on automatic formula driven increases in our myriad of state bureaucracies. This graph illustrates the annual growth rate in our Department of Natural Resources (DNR) budget (in thousands of dollars).
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 01:59:21 +0000
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