The Alaska Permanent Fund is protected by the state constitution, so how can the legislature use it to fund government operations?
The answer is that the principal is protected (that’s the money that comes from oil or deposits by the Legislature), but investment income from the fund can be spent pretty easily.
These two parts of the fund (principal and income) are treated very differently:
(Jeremy Hsieh, Andrew Kitchenman, Rashah McChesney and Aidan Ling contributed to this video.)
