Monthly Archives: August 2012

This page started out primarily as a one stop source for oil & gas news of interest to Alaska.  That continues to be a focus, with the curated news feeds down the lower right side of this page doing the bulk of that work.   Over the past year, however, the commentaries on the left hand side of the page, and the shorter “Observations & Updates” headlined on the upper right, and printed in full here, increasingly have focused also on fiscal issues.

The reason is that, in Alaska, oil and fiscal policy are inextricably intertwined, given Alaska’s reliance on oil revenues to run the state.  A recent video from the website Understanding Alaska’s Budget does an excellent job of explaining.  As the video explains at the beginning, “Alaska is at a crossroads.”  We write hopefully to help shed some light on the factors that go into deciding which path to follow from here.

Which state Senator said yesterday about this year’s state budget, “we have actually done a very good job managing Alaska’s spending. … We got it right.”  Senator French?  Senator Wielechowski?  Nope, guess again.

The answer is Senator Lesil McGuire during yesterday’s Alaska Live with Bernadette.  Why is that conclusion wrong?  Read almost any commentary on this page in the last three months.  For starters, read the commentary that follows this.

[The entire interview with Senator McGuire is available here.  The portion dealing with the budget begins at minute 48:05.  A transcript of the relevant portions follows.  In reading the following, it is important to understand that the Capital Budget is managed by the Senate Finance Committee, of which Senator McGuire is a member; the Operating Budget is managed by the House.  Bernadette is asking about the Capital Budget.]

Bernadette:  Let me ask you, with the budget.  Would you agree, I mean there were comments that came out, obviously from Representative Bill Stoltze Continue reading →

Toward the end of the Special Session earlier this year, the director of the state’s Office of Management & Budget (“OMB”), Karen Rehfeld, was asked to testify before the House Resources and Energy Committees about the impact on the budget of the Governor’s proposed oil tax bill introduced at the beginning of the Special Session.

One of the slides from her presentation is the most important in this year’s election.  The slide shows four lines.

The first – in red – is OMB’s forecast of revenues under the status quo, before the potential implementation of “HB 3001,” the Governor’s proposed oil tax bill.

The second, in blue, is the level of state spending from the General Fund as projected in OMB’s FY 2013 10-year plan.

The third, in green, is OMB’s forecast of revenues in the event the Legislature passed HB 3001.

The fourth, at the bottom in black, shows the projected deficits each year in the event the Legislature had passed HB 3001. Continue reading →