I left Alaska in 2023 after about ten years split between the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Department of Health and Social Services, and the Department of Revenue. I have since worked the legislative sessions in both Washington State and in Idaho, and it’s been interesting seeing the different ways states approach their legislative processes.

The Landmine reached out and suggested that I write down some of my observations from my apparent endeavor to budget my way across the nation, so I hope my fellow budget nerds find this to be an interesting read. 

Finance Committees

Idaho utilizes a Joint Appropriations and Finance Committee (JFAC) consisting of 20 members (10 each from the House and Senate). A Joint committee presents an opportunity for both bodies to come to consensus and get on the same page to produce a bill that can pass both floors. This saves time as there isn’t an additional stop in each body where things can go awry. The bill goes directly from the joint committee to the floor of each body. Interestingly enough, the JAFC committee room has an armed state trooper guarding the doors at all times. So, no funny business allowed apparently. 

In both Idaho and Washington, the finance committees are only allowed to talk about fiscal issues and not discuss policy. And if bills only contain minor spending in tens of thousands or less, they bypass the finance committee entirely. I can think of several Alaskan bills naming bridges or facilities that didn’t warrant a half hour of discussion over a $500 fiscal note for signage replacement. Policy bills do not go to the finance committee unless they contain new spending. In Alaska, it seems as though every single bill is routed through the finance committees, many with minimal or no fiscal impact. It’s become the everything committee and it really slows down the process. 

A more streamlined finance committee process seems to mean that more gets done. In 2025, Washington state passed 422 pieces of legislation while Idaho passed 341; at the same time Alaska passed just 33. 

Finance Sub Committees

Unlike Alaska, neither Idaho nor Washington utilizes budget subcommittees – the budget setting is done solely by the full finance/appropriation committees. It’s my observation that these subcommittees drive Alaska to obsess over details at a far more granular level. While it can be informational, especially for newer legislators and staff, Alaska’s subcommittees spend a great deal of time arguing over minor funding decisions in the thousands while multi-million dollar structural problems loom in the background.

When I was compiling former Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s last budget, we were told not to bother the budget director with anything below $10 million, and not to bother the Governor with any decision less than $100 million. If an agency needed a few more positions to deal with a backlog, we would just add the positions without any approval or discussion.

It may be relevant to note that Washington has increased taxes in 12 of the last 13 years, though Idaho has been consistently reducing taxes while also not utilizing any type of budget subcommittee process. It is my observation that a lot can go wrong in a small budget subcommittee, leading to a visit to the dreaded “Bert locker.” It all just takes time and cycles away from the core issues the state should be dealing with.

Alaska’s detail-obsession seems to also extends to many parts of government. OMB and the governor’s chief of staff often require any hiring or travel to be signed off on. I could not imagine Washington’s chief of staff monitoring 120,000 employees with that level scrutiny. It may reduce spending slightly in the short run, but in the end, it typically just makes every government function take longer – creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of a slow and wasteful bureaucracy. 

Legislative Staff

I always thought it was a shame that good staffers in Alaska would be left scrambling for a job when their boss lost an election. Washington solves for this problem by having all legislative staff work for the caucuses. This way each staffer specializes (i.e. the Democrats and Republicans each have a Healthcare expert etc.) and they can build institutional knowledge that doesn’t disappear with each election cycle.

There’s also a higher bar for working as a staffer. Most have a master’s degree in their policy area or a law degree and they won’t hire someone without experience who just happened to help out on a successful campaign.  

Appropriation Bills

The number and form of appropriation bills passed each session varies greatly as well. In Alaska, the governor typically introduces three bills (Operating, Mental Health, and Capital) and in many years, these bills are combined into one mega bill that has famously been referred to as the “turducken” in Juneau. This poses a challenge for legislators who may not wish to vote for a whole budget because it contains line-items (or a PFD figure) they don’t like. 

Last session, Idaho passed 83 appropriation bills. I mentioned this fact to Senator Bill Wielechowski (D – Anchorage) when I saw him in Anchorage in October and his reaction was, “Wow, some years we can barely pass one!”

Each agency is given a “maintenance” budget, akin to Alaska’s adjusted base, which contains the prior year’s appropriations plus any cost-of-living adjustments or healthcare rate changes. These bills typically pass with ease early in session and ensure that minimal funding is available for every agency should a stalemate arise – or in other words – the risk of government shutdown that Alaska has faced in recent budget cycles is virtually nonexistent here.

Subsequent bills are then passed to fund budget increases (or reductions) and occasionally a third bill may be added for an agency if it is needed as a negotiation tool. Each budget is only a few pages long and is easily digestible in a single sitting. This process also presents an opportunity to vote on budgets in discrete pieces. Legislators can vote to increase funding to one agency while holding the line on another. This system does not compel legislators to vote on upwards of $12 billion in one sitting. It is easier on the viewing public as well that doesn’t have to sort through 300 amendments to a single bill. Though, I bet if Alaska adopted Idaho’s system the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) bill might still go a bit off the rails.

Washington also is required to pass three appropriation bills (Operating, Transportation and Capital). These are separated since the latter contain bonds which require a higher vote threshold and therefore negotiation with the Republican minority. Interestingly enough, Alaska is in the minority of states in not using annual bonding to provide matching funds for their transportation and capital projects. This could be an opportunity to “smooth” the capital budget that has seen years of multi-billions dollar general fund investment but also years with less than $150 million available for capital projects. This seemingly creates a great deal of uncertainty in the construction industry who appear to live in a series of feast or famine cycles in Alaska. 

The Confinement Clause

Another interesting difference is that Washington, unlike Alaska, can write substantive law in the appropriation bills. For instance, the public-school section can exceed 150 pages and contains every numerical factor in the school formula statute which can be tweaked on the fly. Washington’s budget bills can stretch over thousands of pages. Contrast this with Alaska’s K-12 section that occupies just two pages of the budget bill. Commonly, the budget bill contains changes to the allowable purposes for dedicated funds and adjustments to formula programs. Due to the length of these bills, a close relationship is maintained with the code revisor’s office since mistakes are common with the volume of review to be completed in advance of the budget submission. 

Session Length

Washington is on a biennial budget and passes two-years’ worth of appropriation bills in the long years (105 days) and only makes supplemental appropriations in the short years (60 days). The shortened session in even years ensures that a limited number of major policy changes are enacted, and since policy changes usually come with funding requirements, they are reserved for long-session years.

Idaho has no official session length and there is no penalty for missing their self-imposed target end date, but most sessions last between 75 and 90 days. The exception was the 2021 session which was the longest in state history at 311 days. Since Idaho legislators only make $19,913, less than a quarter of the $84,000 Alaska salary, they were really earning the paycheck that year. But, hey, at least they’re not New Hampshire. Their legislators are only paid $100 per year – a figure set in their constitution in the 1800s. 

Procedural Votes

Idaho and Washington both have strong majority and minority whip positions who ensure the votes are available before a bill is voted on in a floor session. It is far less frequent (but admittedly still does happen) that legislators are surprised on the outcome of a bill. In Washington, the outcome of floor debate is so well planned out that they allow a voice vote on amendments where all legislators will yell “yea” or “nay” and the presiding officer will determine by noise level if the amendment passed or failed.

It is well understood that even if you vote against a bill’s passage you, as a legislator, are expected to pass the ancillary clauses like the effective date. It seems like every couple of year’s Alaska faces a constitutional crisis brought on by a failed procedural vote. 

I’ve also heard certain Alaskan legislators opine that Alaska is the only state that has a binding caucus, requiring that every member of the caucus vote in the affirmative on the budget. I think it’s really just that most states don’t need a binding caucus since the rules of procedure and decorum are so well ingrained in each legislator by the whip leadership. 

Rainy Day Savings rule

Washington must take 1% of revenue off the top every year to replenish their budget stabilization account. Likewise, Idaho statutes mandate that any revenue increase above 4% from year-to-year be deposited into reserves, acting both has a savings rule and as a revenue limit. 

Alaska’s primary method of filling their Constitutional Budget Reserve (CBR) is through tax and royalty settlements. When state auditors determine that an underpayment has occurred, the commissioner of Revenue has the authority to negotiate with the taxpayer to reach a final payment amount. The amount recovered from the taxpayer, which is often less than what is officially owed, is deposited into the CBR.

This leads to a great deal of uncertainty in savings balances since each commissioner approaches settlement decisions differently.

According to reports from the Department of Revenue, the Walker administration was averaging about 70% recovery on unpaid taxes. Under Governor Mike Dunleavy’s (R – Alaska) first Revenue Commissioner Bruce Tangeman, 50% recovery. During my time at the Department of Revenue under former Revenue Commissioner Revenue Lucinda Mahoney (who was conflicted out of oil tax settlements because her husband is a tax attorney), nearly 70% recovery.

During former Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum’s time (I left shortly after was appointed), the Department of Revenue stopped producing reports on what proportion was being recovered. However, we do know that tax settlement deposits to the CBR are down 99%. I’ll let that statistic speak for itself.  

Veto

At the end of each legislative session, of course, comes the governor’s veto process. Alaska’s governor has one of the strongest of veto powers in the nation, being able to reduce any numeric figure in any appropriation bill. Washington’s governor cannot reduce line items, however, he can veto entire sections of bills whether they are appropriations or regular bills. If the governor doesn’t like a section of a bill, he can just eliminate it. I’ve only witnessed it done once and it was to redline reporting requirements but to keep the underlying program intact. 

Lobbying

In Idaho as well as Washington, lobbing seems to be a lot more specialized. Lobbyists typically pick an area of expertise such as education or tribal affairs and only recruit clients that fit within their specialization. It’s generally unheard of to see a lobbyist have oil clients along with fisheries clients along with local governments and so on. Perhaps this is to prevent the inherent conflicts of interest where a lobbyist might be arguing both sides of the same issue, which I’ve seen happen a few times in Alaska.

It’s also rare to see individual lobbyists who are billing seven figures or more in any given year. It begs to reason that with Washington’s Legislature of 147 members and with Idaho’s Legislature of 105 members, there are a lot more people to chat with as opposed to Alaska’s, admittedly much smaller bodies (40 House, 20 Senate). In both Washington and Idaho, the major corporations such as Microsoft seem to all have large teams of in-house lobbyists solely focused on that company best interest. 

The Ethics Act

While not specific to the legislative or budget process, it’s interesting to see how seriously other states take the executive ethics act. In Washington, the State Executive Ethics Board is a force to be reckoned with. They have an entire staff as well as high-tech gear such as forensic computers, and they are proactively monitoring contracts for conflicts of interest and other issues that might arise.

Alaska’s ethics office is a single employee within the Department of Law who is more reactionary than anything else. In Washington, the Executive Ethics Board will fine you six figures at the drop of a hat, and they are notorious for using their forensic computers to find other more minor infractions to increase the fine such as excessive personal use of your computer or time and attendance fraud. It may be an interesting (or gross) point of fact that there are apparently an alarming number of bureaucrats in Olympia watching pornography on their work computers. Go figure. 

Since Alaska isn’t big into taxes, maybe there’s a revenue generation idea in there somewhere. At Revenue, we would frequently receive the weirdest gifts that we’d have to report and be told if we could keep it or have to return it. At one point I received a gold coin celebrating the long and illustrious friendship between Alaska’s Department of Revenue and the Consulate General of Kazakhstan (don’t ask).

I bet if you started fining policymakers who fail to report their gifts from lobbyists and taxpayers you’d collect a tidy sum.

Overspending appropriations

In Washington, it is a crime that carries jail time to overspend a legislative appropriation. Although no one is ever really prosecuted for overspending, it creates a sense of urgency that drives supplemental appropriations to pass early in session. There is no ratification process like there is in Alaska where the overspending is simply forgiven in a paragraph burled deep in the language section of the budget bill without much discussion. 

Confidentiality of Information

I’ve noticed a lot of information that is a matter of public record in other states is actually held strictly confidential in Alaska. While every state is covered by HIPAA and FERPA and other federal confidentiality laws, Alaska tends to go a step further. I’ll give two examples. 

When it comes to tax settlements, Alaska keeps all information about settlements confidential and actually makes it a criminal offense to reveal the particulars within a tax return. Most states give taxpayers some level of confidentiality. However, if you are arguing for tax relief, you have to go in front of a public nonpartisan board during a public meeting and open up your books so that the public can make their own determination as to whether the tax relief is reasonable or a represents a sweetheart deal. 

Budget requests are also held strictly confidential in Alaska and not subject to a public records request until the governor releases his budget publicly. In Washington, every budget request from an agency, no matter how ridiculous, is posted in a public portal. Idaho doesn’t post this information publicly, but if a reporter or member of the public requests the records, they will release them. 

I can think of some downright embarrassing budget requests in my time working for Alaska’s OMB. The Department of Education and Early Development once asked us for half a million dollars so that they could purchase Jimmy Buffett’s airplane, a Grumman Goose that flew Alaska many years ago. They apparently thought it would look cool in front of their Juneau headquarters. Though these days I don’t have a ton of room to talk. I just approved a budget transfer to bring in a bunch of emotional support puppies for finals week here at the college. Now that’s what I call the people’s work.

Brian Fechter obtained a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Pittsburg and a master’s degree in finance from St. Joseph’s University. He moved to Alaska in 2012. He worked various roles in the state culminating in serving as the deputy commissioner for the Department of Revenue from 2021-2023. He moved to Washington in 2023 where he served as a budget advisor to former Governor Jay Inslee. In 2025, he moved to Idaho where he currently serves as the executive director for Budget and Financial Planning for the College of Western Idaho.