Every state has mechanisms for collecting, allocating, and redistributing public money. In Alaska, the State’s Grants Summary Dashboard offers a partial view of that process, showing how funds move from government agencies to nonprofits, quasi-public entities, contractors, and other grant-funded recipients.
The dashboard reveals more than grants; it reveals a governing structure. Public funds flow through agencies, programs, boards, commissions, legislative priorities, federal pass-throughs, and favored policy channels, creating a public-private funding network dependent on continued government support.
In population terms, Alaska’s 2025 grant system is equivalent to California operating a $145 billion grant network, Texas operating a $117 billion network, or Florida operating an $87 billion network.
In Alaska, that dependence has become political. Recurring public funds align nongovernmental organizations with the agencies, officials, and policy structures that sustain them, while their methods may perpetuate the problems they claim to solve. In turn, they reinforce the existing order by supporting the policies, narratives, and institutional priorities that keep the money flowing.
The result may not always be direct fraud, waste, or abuse, but it can become institutionalized self-protection: a closed loop where government funds outside actors, those actors validate government priorities, and their networks later shape elections, policy debates, donor activity, testimony, endorsements, or ballot campaigns that protect the same officials and programs that fund them. Over time, public dollars can sustain the very organizations that help preserve the governing class distributing those dollars.
In Alaska, this matters because the state is unusually dependent on public revenue, federal transfers, resource income, and administrative discretion. When grants fund social services, advocacy networks, consultants, education, housing, public health, tribal partnerships, nonprofits, or community development, the public should expect clear answers: who received the money, what was delivered, who benefited, what outcomes were achieved, and whether the spending produced measurable public value.
A serious review of Alaska’s grant system should therefore ask several basic questions:
— Who received the money?
–What agency awarded it?
— Was the grant state-funded, federally funded, or a federal pass-through?
— Was the award competitive or discretionary?
— What statutory authority supported it?
— What measurable public purpose did it serve?
— What outcomes were promised?
— Were those outcomes independently verified?
— Did the recipient engage in lobbying, advocacy, ballot activity, litigation, or political messaging?
— Did the grant strengthen public services, or did it strengthen a permanent political funding network?
The issue is not whether every grant is improper. The issue is that the current grant environment is increasingly revealing high levels of impropriety, self-serving objectives, weak oversight, political favoritism, and institutional behavior that appears designed less to solve public problems than to preserve funding streams, protect favored networks, and expand bureaucratic influence.
Has Alaska allowed public money to create a self-protecting ecosystem of funded intermediaries whose continued existence depends more on political alignment than measurable results? Do these political alignments perpetuate the same governing class, bureaucratic structures, and failed service-delivery models that continue to consume public resources without producing proportional public benefit?
True fiscal discipline requires examining the hidden architecture that converts public money into institutional power.
Transparency must mean more than showing where the money went. In 2025, Alaska’s $2.72 billion in grants represented a substantial share of state fiscal activity; 17.4% of all state revenue, 22.3% of the FY2025 operating budget, and 43.2% of projected unrestricted general fund revenue. A dashboard may disclose recipients, but accountability requires proving public value.
Should Alaska require grant-by-grant review of purpose, performance, duplication, overhead, political activity, and measurable outcomes so public funds serve citizens and not a permanent intermediary class dependent on the existing power structure?
In a healthy republic, public money should serve authorized public purposes, not manufacture consent, reward alignment, or shield agencies from reform. Alaska’s grant data is only the starting point; citizens deserve a full accounting of whether those funds produced measurable results or merely sustained the machinery of political control.
That accounting should begin with one principle: public money belongs to the people. Alaska, from 2019 through 2025, averaged over $2.60 billion in grants for a total of $18.2 billion. Every grant dollar must be traceable from appropriation to award, expenditure, and measurable result. If a grant cannot be tied to a lawful purpose, defined service, measurable outcome, and transparent public benefit, citizens have the right to question why it exists.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
Alaska should treat its grant system as a matter of fiscal sovereignty. The state cannot justify reduced Permanent Fund Dividends, higher local taxes, rising fees, or declining services while billions move through fragmented grant networks with limited accountability. True fiscal discipline requires examining the hidden architecture that converts public money into institutional power.
This review should cover every major grant-like funding stream: state grants, federal pass-throughs, legislative grants, sole-source awards, recurring nonprofit funding, public corporation transfers, university-administered grants, tribal and municipal subgrants, and contracts that operate like grants. It should also identify duplicate funding, excessive administrative overhead, overlapping purposes, and whether publicly funded organizations use their taxpayer-supported capacity to influence policy in ways that protect their own funding.
A proper reform agenda would not abolish legitimate grants; it would separate public service from political dependency. Essential functions should be protected. But grants that sustain advocacy networks, duplicate services, produce vague results, expand administration, or recycle public money into political influence should face immediate review, reduction, or termination.
The standard should be straightforward: if a grant serves the public, it should withstand public scrutiny. If it cannot withstand scrutiny, it should not be funded.
The views expressed here are those of the author.
21 Comments
Yes Alaska Needs Doge at all Levels of Government , FNSB School District calls out for more money at a time that it had 11 Million dollars in an unused account .We still have NO IDEA how it Happened and How The Bourgh Assembly Missed it ?
I would like to see a FULL AUDIT On ALL State and Local Govts. We The People are not Made of Money and if that happened in your House Hold account you would want to get to the Bottom of it.
Bring it on!! Clean out the departments, budget of the Crime Boss Dunleavy and the out of control legislature! Get it Done!!!
Completely agree! Watching our PFD’s dwindle as NGO’s step up to the troth, hogging down all they shove down into their guts; is sickening. These NGO’s have “friends” (politicians) that feel your money is better spent for the “greater good” (theft). When we demand full PFD’s, we’re told were selfish. No. Selfish is NGO’s burning through millions of our money as a feel-good action that does nothing, or something insidiously evil. It would interesting to know where it’s going. Audit everything! We’d like to see some “transparency” democrats keep talking about. Does anyone have fake women story hour at the local libraries on their bingo cards?
I agree, the state and the legislators need to be doge.
Do not stop with State and Legislators, include Anchorage Assembly and the Mayor. Where did the sale $ from MEA go, now they need a sales tax! {Stink Fish}…
What Alaska needs is a mass >You’re Fired!< of the state's current legislators by voters! Especially in the Senate. Even the House still couldn't pass a full $3,800 PFD for 2026, even with a Middle East war that caused oil prices to soar over $100 per barrel! The Senate didn't seem to have any problem using all Alaskans' PFD to boost the House budget's contribution to the Alaska PERS system for public employees by an additional 41%! They're good at taking care of their own, but not their constituents.
I’m sure there’s fraud to be found. You don’t dole out $2,720,000,000 to hundreds of NGO’s and everyone’s on the up and up. How can the state possibly audit/monitor how and where these un-elected organizations stash the slop they take from the State treasury?
I started pushing a D.O.G.E. audit when I announced my candidacy for governor. Day 1 I will contact the D.O.G.E. team to do a full audit of the STATE OF ALASKA corp and release the raw results to the Alaskan people. I have been stating this on X since January.
I’m all in if we guarantee one thing! If doge finds illegalities, they’re sure as hell better be jail cells filling up! I’ve had my fill of lawbreakers flipping me off!
This sounds similar to what Bronson/Church propose with Zero-Based Budgeting: https://www.davebronson.com/policies#government-reform
Not only would Bronson’s plan cut waste, but it would give legislators a reason to sit up straight and begin paying attention to their constituents, rather than the cash flow spigots.
Bronson didn’t even know how to work with a leftist majority to get His work and plans done; as well as he had error in character judgement in who should be on his team. I seriously doubt he could work with a greater body of legislators even more contentious and cantankerous than an anchorage assembly.
Is it possible to work with a Leftist majority? Let alone one that is in bed with the ADN and hell bent on vetoing every thing you do? Is it possible for a conservative Governor to work together with the RINOS and Leftists in the legislature without selling himself out? I guess time may tell…
DOGE the Bush.
Those that “know”, know there is massive fraud in Native health care, education, and services.
I wonder what ever happened to all the SNAP benefit fraud during the Covid hoax? The State was handing food stamps out without qualifying recipients. Then when the Fed’s investigated malfeasance, there was a “computer glitch” and all the records were lost. Are we still being fined daily by the Fed’s? No one is saying.
First order of business is choose new Republican leaders to staff the AkGOP and new district presidents.
The wishlist can’t happen when the ALGOP remains splintered, fractured, disorganized, ununified
Your fired!
With all this 18 billion in funding why is the Alaska PFD always getting cut. If the people that is handing out the money and taking the PFD. Then they need to be fired and get the hell out of are state. All you are doing is hurting every Alaskan that need this PFD. The PFD was and is set up the the people in Alaska.
I’ve read this article several times. Far more truth here than most AK legislators can handle. There are a lot of good articles on here, but this is definitely the most important one I have seen on any of the AK news sites for a long time.
Start with State agency budgetary process and work up from there. It’s a shell game as any State employee can tell you. Good luck getting anything fixed. My “representation” to Juneau just ignored me or hangs up when I call. Worthless. They don’t want to know. They just want to use us and our property as ATM’s.
All talk, it ain’t going to ever happen. The feeding at the public trough of Alaskan’s money by special interests/non-profits will continue until voters change the script and bring in new representation. Once elected, it appears that selective amnesia seems to be the order of the day as far as campaign promises with some legislators. I agree with statements on the shell game of money and agency budgetary process. Every March/April it was a rush to spend money from that year’s budget so as not to be seen as not needing an increase in money for next year’s budget or flat funded. (Former Dept. Env. Conserv. employee).
There is money for a full statutory dividend, just not the will to grant it by the legislators who would believe that they know better how to spend your meney then you do Alaska Permanent Fund Value: $86,384,100,000 (86 BILLION with a “B”!!!) A third-party review’s report found that the Alaska Permanent Fund delivered the highest five-year and ten-year returns among the surveyed funds. For the period ending June 30, 2025, Alaska returned 10.2% over five years, compared to the peer median of 9.2%, and 8.3% over ten years, compared to the peer median of 7.3% (gross of fees).
Agreee it needs doing over half legistaters and senators in juneau need to be gone startibg with eggmen