Exploring Alaska’s Budget: Part 5 – FY20 Budget Issues

We’ve looked at Alaska’s budget for the past month. In part 1, we learned some terminology. Then, in part 2, we explored what we buy with all that money. In parts 3 and 4, we analyzed where the budget growth occurred during the high oil price years, and how we got the budget back under[…]

Exploring Alaska’s Budget: Part 4 – What Did We Cut?

Now that we’ve explored how the budget increased when oil prices were high, let’s take a look at what got cut when oil prices crashed. Budget Cuts The time period of interest for this article is from the highest budget year (2013) to the most recent budget (2019). In this first graph, we are only[…]

Exploring Alaska’s Budget: Part 3 – Tracking Down Our Budget Growth

The story I hear most often is that when oil prices topped $100 a barrel, the Legislature went on a shopping spree. That sounds like a plausible story, but let’s check the data just to be sure. Budget Growth Here is a plot of the budget over time, according to Legislative Finance. These numbers represent[…]

Exploring Alaska’s Budget: Part 2 – A look at FY19

Now that we have established some terminology, let’s take a closer look at the FY19 budget. In this post, I’ll be breaking down the budget that was passed in May 2018, for fiscal year 2019 (which began in July 2018). Disclaimer If you want the source data to do your own research, I found it[…]