How Article IX, Section 16 Protects Alaskans’ PFD
By Edward Martin, Jr. and Natalie Spaulding
There is a temptation in public life to treat the Constitution as a ceiling to press against, bend around, or quietly ignore when it becomes inconvenient rather than a compass that guides Alaskan policy. Moral values, such as those written in Romans 12, challenge us to sober judgment, honest accounting, and a renewal of the mind that prioritizes truth and integrity over expediency. Alaska’s treatment of the Permanent Fund Dividend fails to live up to those standards.
Article IX, Section 16 of the Alaska Constitution contains one of the clearest fiscal directives written into our governing document. The statue begins: “Except for appropriations for Alaska permanent fund dividends…” —expressly exempting Permanent Fund Dividend appropriations from the constitutional spending limit. Those words were chosen deliberately. They were not decorative, accidental, or symbolic. They reflected a conviction that the people’s dividend is not part of government spending and must never be crowded out by the growth of government itself.
The exemption in Article IX, Section 16 establishes a safeguard, a moral and structural line in the sand. The framers understood what experience teaches: if citizens’ dividends are forced to compete with government programs under a single cap, government will always win. Hence, the Constitution restrained government first and protected the dividend outright.
However, the structure only works if the State is willing to be honest about what counts, what does not, and why. Today, the State lacks that transparency. Alaska’s budget process no longer allows citizens to see clearly whether the constitutional exemption for the Permanent Fund Dividend is being honored or quietly inverted. There is no transparent, verifiable accounting that shows what appropriations count toward the Article IX, Section 16 limit, what is excluded, and whether reductions to the dividend are driven by unavoidable necessity or by policy preference.
The result is confusion at best and misdirection at worst.
Government spending expands without a clear, publicly certified demonstration that the constitutional limit has been maintained, while the dividend— expressly exempt from that limit— is treated as discretionary. Citizens are told there is “not enough money,” even though the exemption designed to protect their share goes unexamined. This reverses the constitutional order and dulls the public conscience.
If PFD appropriations do not count against the spending limit, and if government appropriations are constitutionally restrained, then the failure to fund the full statutory dividend demands an explanation. The Legislature cannot simultaneously claim fidelity to the spending limit and deny responsibility for fully funding the dividend that the Constitution anticipated and protected. One of those positions must yield to truth.
Transparency would force this reckoning. A simple, mandatory public certification of Article IX, Section 16 compliance would show whether government spending has in fact reached the constitutional limit, whether dividend reductions are being used to mask overspending elsewhere, and whether the exemption is being respected or exploited. Once those facts are visible, the debate changes. The question is no longer whether Alaska can afford a full dividend, but why it chooses not to fund one.
Public trust does not erode all at once; it dissolves when citizens see constitutional language treated as optional, statutory obligations reduced without a forthright explanation, and no clear accounting of limits that are supposed to restrain power. The Permanent Fund Dividend survives not only because it is written in statute, but because Alaskans believe the rules governing it are real. Opacity erodes that belief.
Restoring order does not require new theories or partisan maneuvers. It requires a return to constitutional humility. It demands clear exemption of dividend appropriations from the government spending limit, honest accounting of government expenditures, and the moral clarity to admit when policy choices overstep constitutional structure.
The Permanent Fund Dividend exemption acts as a litmus test for the integrity of the Alaska Legislature. If the State will not honor the explicit fiscal exemption in Article IX, Section 16, then the spending limit itself becomes performative rather than real. This is no longer a partisan argument. It is a question of constitutional fidelity and civic integrity.
Alaskans deserve forthright answers. The Constitution has provided the rule. Do we have the will to live by it and insist on protecting its integrity?