Monthly Archives: November 2014

In August 2006, staring into a potential fiscal abyss created by an unplanned shutdown of the entire Prudhoe Bay field due to leak issues,  then Governor Frank Murkowski immediately announced two steps designed to curb state spending and reduce the potential drain on state savings, while additional analysis was being done.

The first step was an immediate freeze on new state hires.  The second was to direct the Office of Management and Budget to review the then-current capital budget to prepare a list of capital projects that could be “phased” (i.e., deferred) until the potential fiscal problems created by the shutdown were “better defined.” Continue reading →

Last evening, at the first session of the Walker Mallott Transition Team, what some have called the “elephant in the room” — the state’s fiscal situation — took center stage.  To Governor-elect Walker’s credit the session was designed specifically to do that.  As he had told KTUU’s Austin Baird earlier in the day, Continue reading →

At the request of the (Anchorage Municipal) Budget Advisory Commission, yesterday (November 5) I made a presentation on Alaska Fiscal Policy.  When I was first asked to give the presentation the working title was “The need for implementing sustainable budgets.”  Due to dramatic changes since then in the oil markets, however, by the time I gave it yesterday the title was “Alaska Fiscal Policy:  Dealing with $90 $80 oil.” Continue reading →

Yesterday a friend asked me to sum up in a sentence my “closing statement” on this year’s state-level (Governor and  legislative) races.

The following — from a 2010 Wall Street Journal editorial looking back on the loss by the Republicans of the federal House of Representatives in 2006 — is what popped into my head: Continue reading →