Alaska’s senior U.S. senator, Lisa Murkowski, knows from experience how difficult it is for the state to adopt a long-term fiscal plan, rather than simply hoping for federal dollars and high oil prices to pay the bills.

“Alaska will need a legitimate fiscal plan as the federal budget inevitably tightens,” she told state House and Senate members gathered in a joint session to hear her annual address on March 31.

Congressional Republican-led federal budget cuts are shifting more costs to the states, including Alaska, for food assistance benefits known as SNAP, disaster response and prevention and other services.

Higher oil prices, caused by the war on Iran and Iran’s attacks on Middle East oil and gas facilities, have provided the state with additional revenues this year, but those revenues will fade away when oil returns to lower prices.

“The (oil-price) windfall will only go so far and last so long,” Murkowski told legislators. “We can’t count on anyone or anything to bail us out of our fiscal woes. Only a long-term plan will truly end the cycle of a boom and bust.”

In a later interview with reporters, Murkowski recalled her four years in the Alaska Legislature, before becoming a U.S. senator in December 2002. She was part of the bipartisan Fiscal Policy Caucus, which she joined as a freshman in 1999.

The state had been drawing as much as $1 billion a year out of reserves to balance the budget as low oil prices cut deeply into state revenue. The House-led group of Democrats and Republicans was determined to put together a fiscal plan to help pay for public services for years into the future.

Though the group debated multiple revenue bills and pieces of a fiscal plan 1999 through 2002, and succeeded in winning House approval in 2002 of a state income tax and higher taxes on alcohol, the Senate adopted only the alcohol tax increase.

Higher oil prices and more spending from reserves over the years have covered the budget, but the reserves have declined and oil prices are never guaranteed.

Murkowski acknowledged to reporters in an interview session after her address to the Legislature that she was unable to solve the state’s long-term fiscal problem when she was a member of the House.

“We know what the contours of a fiscal plan need to be,” she said. “But political will to make it happen — still waiting 20 years later.”

Legislators and governors have continued talking for the past 20 years about the need for a fiscal plan to provide stable revenues and managed spending but have not been able to assemble the political will or the votes to pass legislation.

The senator told lawmakers she didn’t want to be “lecture-y,” but followed with advice anyway.

“And one of those areas — I’m just going to offer it up here — is matching funds,” she said. Many federal programs, particularly money for highway improvements, require a state match.

This summer’s road construction work in Alaska could be at risk if the Legislature and governor cannot settle their differences over how to pay the state match on federal highway dollars in time for contractors to mobilize for the short construction season.

“When the delegation secures a federal allocation, we really need you to come through with your share in a timely manner,” she said. “We need you to meet the match.”

She also called out the governor for his decision to use federal aid to replace state dollars in the Alaska Marine Highway System operating budget.

The senator succeeded in getting nearly $1 billion in the bipartisan infrastructure law during President Joe Biden’s term that could come to Alaska for new ferries and other one-time spending to pay for improvements.

However, much of that federal aid went to cover the ferry system’s annual operating expenses.

That federal funding is a “lifeline, it’s not an entitlement,” Murkowski said.

“It’s not a good strategy to rely on a temporary, competitive federal grant program to cover 45% of our state’s operating costs, all of which used to be paid for by the state,” she said. “That’s the case that we’re facing right now.”

It’s not all the state’s problem, the senator, now in her 25th year in Congress, acknowledged. “The federal government is often beset by chaos these days.”

“We’re looking at the situation with the Department of Homeland Security being shut down now for 46 days,” she said. “We have seen workers —whether they be TSA, FEMA, some in our Coast Guard — working without paychecks. … But the problem that we’re dealing with here is shutdowns are becoming far too routine and too many policymakers are just becoming numb to their impacts.”