Finding Alaska’s Future: The FY 2018 Sustainable Budget (updated with video)

On Friday we rolled out Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets FY 2018 sustainable budget number in presentations in Fairbanks before the Interior Alaska Republicans, and in the MatSu Valley before the Alaska Republican Assembly.  The slide deck is above, as is a video of the presentation Friday evening before the Alaska Republican Assembly. (Note:  the video has been added subsequent to the publication of the original post.)

The roll out comes earlier than in past years, as a way of putting an updated, FY 2018 sustainable budget number in front of the Administration and legislators in advance of the election and subsequent organization.

The number is based on oil price projections made by the federal, and non-partisan Energy Information Administration in July of this year as part of its Annual Energy Outlook 2016.   While the state also publishes oil price projections, the latest one, published in the Department of Revenue’s Spring 2016 Revenue Sources Book, is significantly out of line with the EIA and other recent forecasts, came in the middle of a debate over whether Alaska needed so-called “new revenues” in which the Administration was pushing a tax and PFD cut narrative based in substantial part on a low oil price future, and thus, quite frankly, is of significantly questionable credibility and value.

Going forward, we at least will use — and will urge others to use — oil price projections published by reputable, non-partisan sources rather than those published by an Administration (whether Republican, Democrat or Independent) pushing a political agenda based on one view or another of oil prices.

The long term sustainable budget number for FY 2018 is $4.02 billion.  The material assumptions that go into the calculation are included on the slide deck.