Financial Assistance
provided by:

9. Programs

Programs

Trying to understand how the state spends its money can be confusing. One way is to look at the budget that the governor submits to the legislature each year. The budget includes descriptions of the activities of each department in great detail. For each department, information is broken down by major categories (known as BRUs or budget request units) that usually correspond to divisions within the department. Each BRU is further broken into components. The components represent specific activities.

By looking at these components, we can see where the money is going. Unfortunately, there are about 600 components in the operating budget, so most people would not be interested in that level of detail.

In this section we present information about some of the largest and most important programs of state government. For more detail, there is a wealth of information describing what the state spends its money on in the Governor's budget at www.gov.state.ak.us/omb/.

Programs described in this section:

• The Department of Administration
• The School Foundation Program
• Welfare

Fiscal Policy Papers