Sorted by date Results 126 - 150 of 195
Alaska oil production and prices are below last year’s estimates, and the state could run out of money before the end of the fiscal year in June, members of the Senate Finance Committee were told Feb. 21. “It’s a bit of a nail-biter,” said Neil Steininger, director of the Office of Management and Budget. While the prospect may sound alarming, it’s not as bad as it sounds, said Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman, co-chair of the Finance Committee. “There’s nothing to worry about,” Stedman said. The state’s fiscal year doesn’t end until June 30, and legisl...
Alaska state lawmakers have begun examining a plan to set regulations and fees for companies that collect carbon dioxide and inject it deep underground. The governor has touted the potential for the state to make hundreds of millions of dollars over the years by leasing state lands to hold carbon deep underground and out of the atmosphere where it is blamed for worsening climate change. Members of the House Resources Committee held their first hearing on the proposal from Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Feb. 10. A leading member of the House’s m...
For the first time in 31 years, Alaska’s sitting U.S. representative addressed a joint session of the Alaska Legislature. Speaking in the state Capitol last Friday, Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola praised the bipartisan coalitions that control the state House and Senate, saying she’s frequently asked about “the Alaska model” of bipartisanship. “It’s strange,” she said, “to hear something we take for granted here at home is so foreign in the rest of the country. But it’s also inspiring because it gives me faith that for all the challenges Alaska...
More than 90,000 pounds of canned Alaska pink salmon purchased and donated by the state of Alaska is being distributed as wartime relief in Ukraine. The cans were donated to the nonprofit World Central Kitchen and arrived in Ukraine this month after months of shipping and customs delays. The food is the state’s biggest contribution to Ukraine’s defense against a Russian invasion that started a year ago. Other than appropriating money last year to buy the canned salmon, the war has remained a back-burner issue in the state Capitol. No Ukr...
The Biden administration will ban new logging roads and limit development on Tongass National Forest lands, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Jan. 25. The decision, which repeals a 2020 U.S. Department of Agriculture action under the Trump administration, continues a quarter-century of action and counter-action over development in the region, which contains the world’s largest temperate coastal rainforest and is home to more than 72,000 people. “As our nation’s largest national forest and the largest intact temperate rainf...
In his annual address to the Alaska Legislature, Gov. Mike Dunleavy identified successes from his first four-year term in office and called for action on a list of administration priorities, including more funding for a “statehood defense” program that has launched a series of lawsuits against the federal government. Speaking Jan. 23 at the Capitol in Juneau, the governor also said he would work with state legislators to make Alaska “the most pro-life state in the entire country.” Doing so, he said, would require affordable housing, improve...
The Alaska Supreme Court has upheld the disputed residency eligibility of Anchorage Rep. Jennie Armstrong to serve in the Legislature. In a decision issued Jan. 13, four days before the Legislature convened, three of the court’s justices voted 2-1 to uphold a lower-court decision in Armstrong’s favor on the residency question. The justices did not provide an immediate explanation for their decision; one will be published in the coming months. The Supreme Court decision was the result of a lawsuit filed by Liz Vazquez, who lost to Armstrong by...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has appointed Jude Pate of Sitka to the Alaska Supreme Court, making him the first justice to come directly from someplace other than Juneau, Anchorage or Fairbanks since 1960. Before Pate, the last justice who met those standards was Walter Hodge, who came from Nome and served on the court in 1959 and 1960. Dunleavy announced the appointment by email Jan. 20. Pate was appointed to fill a vacancy created this month by the retirement of Justice Daniel Winfree, who is reaching the constitutionally mandated retirement age of...
Alaska’s backlog of untested sexual assault examination kits has all but disappeared after a five-year, multimillion-dollar effort, according to a report presented to the Alaska Legislature. The kits, also known as “rape kits,” are used to collect physical evidence after a sexual assault. Figures published by the Alaska Department of Public Safety and dated Nov. 1 show only 75 untested kits, all at the state crime lab. In 2017, a statewide survey found almost 3,500 untested kits across the state, many held by local police departments. That...
As Americans watched the U.S. House struggle to elect a leader, Alaskans may soon see a similar situation develop in the state House of Representatives. “These proceedings back east, it’s a stark reminder to a lot of us that we could be going through the same thing,” said Independent Rep. Bryce Edgmon, of Dillingham. With just a week before the Legislature convenes in Juneau, the state House has yet to organize, with both the House’s existing mostly Democratic-led coalition majority and the Republican caucus short of the required 21-vote...
Alaska’s population rose in 2022 according to new estimates released Jan. 5 by the Alaska Department of Labor, marking a second consecutive year of increases after four years of declines. The new Alaska population estimate, 736,556, is the highest since 2018, but the state continues to see more people moving out than moving in, and 2022 marked the 10th consecutive year of negative net migration, said state demographer David Howell. The state gained about 450 people despite that migration loss because the number of births was greater than the n...
An Anchorage Superior Court Judge has ruled that Wasilla Republican Rep. David Eastman’s membership in the Oath Keepers does not violate the Alaska Constitution’s disloyalty clause because of First Amendment protections for free speech. The decision, which may be appealed, means Eastman may continue serving in the Alaska Legislature. Eastman was re-elected in November. In a 49-page order issued Dec. 23, Judge Jack McKenna said the Oath Keepers — labeled an antigovernment militia by the federal government — “are an organization that has, thro...
A House-Senate committee of the Alaska Legislature has approved spending $6.6 million to renovate a downtown Juneau office building into 33 apartments for legislators and staff. During a Dec. 19 vote on the proposal, lawmakers said the state-owned building will help alleviate a chronic shortage of housing in the capital city during the legislative session. “One of the biggest challenges we have is housing,” said Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman. “I think this is the right move,” he said. The cost of construction is also being subsidized by a Juneau-base...
Alaska’s state-owned development bank is continuing its efforts to open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. Directors of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority voted unanimously last month to spend $6.2 million on a second year of legal fees, lease payments and pre-development work related to drilling in the coastal plain. A director speaking in favor of the proposal said he believes the land was promised to the state at statehood, and “we should have access to this land and be abl...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy introduced a first-draft $7.3 billion state budget last week, meeting a legally required deadline but acknowledging that the spending plan is likely to change significantly as the administration negotiates with lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session. “This budget that we’re submitting, as always, is a talking point with the Legislature,” Dunleavy said. “It also reflects values, what our revenue picture looks like, and where we’re headed.” The biggest single expense in the entire proposed state budget is $2.5 billio...
Ballots from six rural Alaska villages were not fully counted in Alaska’s November elections, the Division of Elections said. A division official said the U.S. Postal Service failed to deliver them to the state election headquarters before the election was certified on Nov. 30. “You’ll need to contact the USPS to find out why there were some that never arrived — as we were told from poll workers, everything had been mailed,” Tiffany Montemayor, the division’s public relations manager, said by email on Dec. 2. As a result, 259 voters in S...
Alaska’s two U.S. senators joined 10 other Republicans on Nov. 29 in voting to advance legal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages. The Respect for Marriage Act, which passed the Senate in a 61-36 vote, now goes to the House, which passed a different version of the bill earlier this year. The votes of both senators were expected; each senator had voted in favor of a procedural motion to advance the bill toward final passage two weeks ago. In a prepared statement, Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, said she was proud to vot...
On Nov. 28, the cryptocurrency bank BlockFi filed for bankruptcy, the announcement coming less than three weeks after the financial implosion of FTX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The collapse of free-wheeling and unregulated cryptocurrencies is having an impact on investors who were at the bleeding edge of finance, but the impact on the $76.7 billion Alaska Permanent Fund has been muted, according to public records and statements from officials at the corporation that governs the fund. “For a while, we were getting a l...
A woman accused of voting illegally in both Alaska and Florida during the 2020 elections will face charges in a Florida court on Dec. 8, according to online court records. When Cheryl-Ann Leslie is arraigned on felony counts of casting more than one ballot, she will become just the second person charged with voter fraud related to Alaska’s 2020 election. Despite claims by some Alaskans that fraudulent voting changed the state’s election results two years ago, no evidence of fraud on that scale has been uncovered by investigators. After the 202...
All three incumbents likely clinched victory in Alaska’s statewide elections when the Alaska Division of Elections updated vote count results on Friday with thousands of additional absentee, questioned and early ballots from this fall’s general election. Final unofficial results will not be available until 4 p.m. Wednesday, when the division implements the state’s new ranked-choice sorting system, but voting trends have made the results clear in most races. With 264,994 votes counted, incumbent Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy had 50.3% of the v...
Fairbanks Democratic Sen. Scott Kawasaki does not live in his mother’s basement. She doesn’t even have one. And yet, in the final days of his closely fought re-election race against Republican Jim Matherly, Kawasaki had to defend himself and answer questions from constituents who read satirical ads sent through the mail by a group called Alaska Policy Partners Inc., which lists Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor among its founding directors. Alaskans’ mailboxes were flooded with mailers as campaigns typically send their sharpest attack ads imm...
Republicans almost certainly will win a majority of the 60 seats in the Alaska Legislature after the Nov. 8 election results are certified later this month. But whether they will control the state House and Senate will come down to which Republicans win. This year, as has been the case for much of the past decade, the party’s candidates are split. There are many differences, but they tend to fall into two groups: One group eschew compromise as they pursue conservative positions on social issues and seek a Permanent Fund dividend larger than any...
Results will be slow, even in races that don’t use ranked-choice voting, Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer and Gail Fenumiai, head of the Alaska Division of Elections, said at a press conference last week. Through Sunday, just two days before the election, more than 64,000 Alaskans had already cast early or absentee votes, according to figures published by the Division of Elections. Many of those votes, plus others that come in before Election Day on Nov. 8, won’t be counted until after polls close. Meyer said Alaskans should be prepared. “I know that...
The state sued the federal government one week before Election Day, seeking ownership of part of Alaska’s most-visited tourist destination. Filed Nov. 1 at U.S. District Court in Anchorage, the case asks a federal judge to award ownership of the land beneath Mendenhall Lake and Mendenhall River to the state. Located in Juneau’s residential Mendenhall Valley, the lake rests at the base of the Mendenhall Glacier, within the Tongass National Forest, and is seen by more than 700,000 tourists annually, more than Denali National Park and Pre...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has requested a federal disaster declaration and U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola has requested $250 million in relief funding after the failure of this year’s Bering Sea snow crab and Bristol Bay red king crab fisheries. Last week, Peltola asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the chair of the House Appropriations Committee to include relief funding for crab fishermen and the crabbing industry in Congress’ year-end appropriation bill. Disaster relief funding could be available if Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo declares a f...