The Weekly Top 3 (2.24.2025)

Senate Finance proposes the single largest permanent individual tax increase in Alaska's history, the source of the state's fiscal imbalance, and you can see the state's next big spending wave coming

Welcome to The Weekly Top 3 — our look at the top 3 things on our mind here at Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets — for the week of February 24, 2025.

The Weekly Top 3 is a regular weekly segment on The Michael Dukes Show. The Show broadcasts on Facebook and YouTubeLive as well as via streaming audio from the Show’s website weekdays from 6–8am. I join Michael weekly in the first hour of Tuesday’s show, from 6:10–7am, for a discussion between the two of us about our three issues.

This week, our top 3 issues are these: 1) we discuss the Senate Finance Committee’s proposed SB109, which, if enacted, would be the largest permanent individual tax increase in Alaska’s history (2:09); 2) we explain why the source of the state’s fiscal problem isn’t either too much spending or too little revenue, it’s that we are using the wrong revenue structure (19:59); and 3) we explain why, if you look, you can see the forces behind the state’s next big spending wave starting to form (41:53).

The segment is at the YouTube clip above. For those who prefer the audio version, it is available on our Spotify and Soundcloud pages. And for those interested, a rough draft of the transcript of each show from July 23, 2024 forward, is available through our Buzzsprout page.

Go to the Show’s Soundcloud page here for this and other complete podcasts of The Michael Dukes Show.