From Brad Keithley’s column:
The budget for FY 2014 — the first with the new Senate Majority — provided for$7.3 billion in spending (admitted lower than the previous year yet still the second highest in Alaska’s history), but against projected revenues which are now estimated to total only $5.3 billion, resulting in a deficit of roughly $2 billion, or more than double the level incurred by the previous “spendthrift” legislature that some current legislators ran against. And this year, unless something dramatic happens in the last, few remaining days of the session, the current legislature is likely to pass a FY 2015 budget providing for somewhere in the range of $6.5 billion in spending, against a current revenue forecast of $4.5 billion, again resulting in a deficit of roughly another $2 billion, and that’s assuming oil prices stay at or near $105/barrel, something the market currently is betting against.
Read more here.
Thank you again Mr. Keithley. You must by now understand that Parnell could care less about deficit spending as long as our savings last just a few more years. Parnell, his sycophants and supporters in the legislature, won’t be here when the collapse comes- and they know that. They have found the perfect formula for power which is to demonize the opposition, refuse to even discuss taxes or reduction of the PFD, proclaim tht “God-given conservative family values” guide them, promise a solution to all problems right after the next election, then flaunt the constitution and procedural rules to compensate for their inability to function in an open forum of debate. .
. Past and current Alaskan elected officials chose to directly spend the revenues from the sale of our non-renewable resources instead of saving that revenue and then spending the earnings from those revenues. Now oil production is in decline and a subtle desperation is settling over Juneau. So what do they do? They promise another round of revenue from natural gas. A whole generation of Alaskans now has learned to empower these “leaders” because they serve as a source of personal revenue.
Mr. Keithley you will someday be remembered as Alaska’s Cassandra who warned of impending doom yet was ignored.
Alaskans must choose to believe whether we have a revenue problem or a spending problem. If we choose the latter then we should dramatically cut spending right now so that reserves last a long time. If we instead have a spending problem then we need to be wary of all the consultants and peddlers that come with plans use our money to solve the problem.