Alaska Legislators are saddled with a large, expensive government with declining oil revenues and are trying to spend themselves out of their financial hole. This strategy has worked in the past but won’t this time. The fiscal prolificacy that was possible in the heady days of our oil abundance is over. It is time to make tough financial decisions and live within our means. That means funding what is truly important and cutting things we cannot afford.

You almost have to feel sorry for the liberals running our legislature right now. They conducted a political coup to seize power, and now they have run headlong into the reality of our state’s fiscal situation.

Politicians profit by handing out grants and hiring more government employees with someone else’s money, but the Juneau leftists are in a bind. They got elected by making big spending promises to special interest groups, mainly the teachers’ union, but now they can’t deliver what they promised unless they screw the voters.

Based on the news from Juneau, our legislators would have you believe the most important issue in this year’s legislative session is how to fund public school education, but that is a red herring. It is just the opening salvo in the actual battle, which is about how big a state government Alaska needs – and how we fund it.

A version of DOGE at the state level is not a crazy idea. Eleven states have already adopted the DOGE model and are looking for ways to make radical cuts to the cost of state government

Leftist state legislators are planning a massive increase in school spending. In the House, Rep. Rebecca Himschoot of Sitka introduced HB 69, which would drastically increase the Base Student Allotment used to calculate education funding in Alaska, from $5,960/student this year to $6,960 next year and then an additional $404 in each of the next two years. By the time she gets done, the final BSA number would be $7,768/student – a 43% increase in education spending.

After reaching that lofty spending goal, Himschoot wants the BSA automatically indexed so it increases with inflation. She would have you believe this is being done to benefit the children, but this spending bill is a massive giveaway to the teachers’ union. It should be no surprise that Himschoot herself is a retired elementary school teacher.

Senator Cathy Giessel has a plan to pay for HB 69. Giessel, a one-time Republican senator who is now a member of the lunatic fringe, decided to go one step further than Ms. Himschoot. Giessel has stated that to pay for public schools, Alaskans should plan to give up their annual Permanent Fund Dividend entirely, and then expect to pay an income tax on top of it.

Rep. Himschoot’s and Sen. Giessel’s ideas are exactly backward. Instead of always looking for ways to increase school spending, they should first examine possible cuts. Only after all fraud and waste are eliminated should we consider increasing educational funding.

To give just one example of waste in public education, we need to look no further than the Fairbanks North Star School District. Last December, they stated that they had five more schools than needed due to declining student enrollment, and they were considering closing them. In January, they announced that three schools would be shut down. While this is a good start, what about the other two schools that are unnecessary?

Instead of finding every possible way to save money, the Fairbanks school district would rather have the legislature steal your annual PFD check to pay to heat and staff unneeded buildings. That is just one example of waste in our educational system; you can bet there are more.

Since the Legislature and local school administrations are too powerless to make meaningful cost-cutting decisions, our state needs an impartial, independent organization like Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to help. DOGE has found massive fraud and waste in federal programs that were once considered well-run and necessary. You can bet our state government has a similar percentage of wasteful spending.

A version of DOGE at the state level is not a crazy idea. Eleven states have already adopted the DOGE model and are looking for ways to make radical cuts to the cost of state government. These are all states with Republican governors and legislatures. Real Republicans, I mean, not the neo-socialist kind we have here in Alaska.

If our legislature believes the solution to our fiscal challenges is stealing the remainder of our PFD checks, and then hitting Alaskans with an income tax, they are not reading the room very well. Any legislator who votes for this legislation will face the wrath of the voters in the election next year. If our governor signs a crazy budget plan like this, it will end his chances at any future statewide or national office.

Alaska needs legislators brave enough to cut spending first rather than finding new ways to pillage our state treasury. Of course, that would take courage, and courage is a tough commodity to find in Juneau these days.

The views expressed here are those of Greg Sarber. Read more Sarber posts at his Seward’s Folly substack.

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