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A new state revenue forecast based on modestly higher oil prices gives the Alaska Legislature some additional breathing room as lawmakers craft a new state budget. The forecast, released March 13 by the Alaska Department of Revenue, updates a fall estimate and predicts that the state will collect $140 million more in revenue than previously expected during the 12 months that begin July 1. That represents about a 2% gain in state revenues. That will help legislators as they write a budget bill that must be passed and become law before July 1,...
Leading Alaska legislators said there is little appetite for spending from savings to pay a super-sized Permanent Fund dividend this year, likely killing a proposal from Gov. Mike Dunleavy. In December, the governor proposed spending almost $2.3 billion on a dividend of roughly $3,500 per recipient this fall under an unused formula in state law. That would result in a $1 billion deficit in the state budget and require spending from the state’s Constitutional Budget Reserve, but as a draft spending plan takes shape in the House, top members of b...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued an ultimatum to state legislators on Tuesday, saying he will veto a multipart education funding bill unless lawmakers pass separate legislation that contains his education priorities. Speaking from his office in Anchorage, the governor said lawmakers have two weeks to reconsider his proposals for the state to fund teacher bonuses and also set up a path through the state for new charter schools to bypass the local approval process, two items that were voted down during legislative debates over the education bill. If...
The leaders of the $77 billion Alaska Permanent Fund have voted unanimously to adopt a strategic plan that calls for borrowing up to $4 billion in order to increase the amount of money available for investments, looking to earn more on the investments than the fund would owe in interest on the debt. The Feb. 16 board of trustees’ vote, however, has limited effect: The borrowing could take place only if the Alaska Legislature and Gov. Mike Dunleavy change state law to allow it. The Alaska Permanent Fund is the No. 1 source of general-purpose sta...
The board in charge of the Alaska Permanent Fund is amping up its warnings about an impending state financial crisis. Without action by the Legislature, there’s a small but growing chance that within three years, the Permanent Fund — source of more than half of Alaska’s general-purpose state revenue — won’t be able to pay for services and the annual Permanent Fund dividend. “We are facing a potential crisis, and it warrants the consideration of a change, whatever that change may be,” said Deven Mitchell, executive director of the Alaska Perman...
The Alaska Senate has taken the first formal steps needed to reject some or all of the 12 executive orders Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued at the start of this year’s legislative session, including the order that would take away the Legislature’s authority to name four members of the state ferry system advisory board. Lawmakers in the Senate introduced 12 resolutions of disapproval on Feb. 12, and hours later the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee approved three of them. Those three resolutions would preserve the boards that govern massage the...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy told reporters on Feb. 7 that he’d like to answer Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s request for National Guard soldiers to support a state-run effort along the Mexico border, but he’s not sure the Alaska Legislature will approve the cost. “To send the Guard down will cost us about — according to Adjutant General Saxe — about a million dollars a month for 100 folks. We’ll test the waters with the Legislature to see if they’re willing to fund that, and I wouldn’t mind helping Texas with their issue on the border,” Dunleavy said. The...
A new proposal from Palmer Republican Sen. Shelley Hughes would require Alaska school districts to train a volunteer able to carry a concealed handgun on school grounds. Schools would be exempted only if no one agrees to accept the duty or if no one is able to do so. Hughes’ proposal, Senate Bill 173, received its first hearing in January in the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee. The K-12 School Shooting Database includes 346 shootings and near-shootings at schools or school buses in the United States in 2023. Hughes said many of A...
Sitka’s Mount Edgecumbe volcano is wired. On Jan. 26, the Alaska Volcano Observatory announced the completion of a new instrument network intended to measure the activity of a volcano that could be awakening after a period of dormancy. The network includes four seismic stations and four sites that measure the way the ground is deforming as magma moves deep below the volcano. Since April 2022, the movement of that liquefied rock has caused hundreds of small earthquakes and raised concerns that Sitka, 15 miles away, could soon be near an e...
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has joined 24 other Republican governors in support of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to ignore a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing federal agents to remove razor wire installed by Abbott’s administration along the U.S.-Mexico border. The statement was published hours before Dunleavy spoke to a joint meeting of the Alaska and Juneau chambers of commerce and called for more immigration to Alaska. He said the arrival of Ukrainian immigrants to Alaska has been a good thing. “I know there are some folks that belie...
A Republican legislator from Wasilla has proposed legalizing electronic gambling aboard Alaska Marine Highway System ships to raise money for the state-run ferries. But his proposal encountered rough seas during its first committee hearing as legislators questioned the financial gain and limited opportunity aboard vessels that don’t often travel in waters open to legal gambling. House Bill 197, from Rep. Jesse Sumner, would allow Vegas-style slot machines and other electronic gambling and is envisioned as raising money for the state in the s...
The Alaska Legislature failed on Jan. 18 to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of $87 million in one-time additional state funding for the 2024-2025 school year. The vote was 33-26 and did not fall along party or political caucus lines. Forty-five votes were needed to override. The failed override capped days of legislative maneuvering and months of unsuccessful lobbying by public-education advocates. Attention now switches to a bill that would permanently increase the state’s funding formula for public schools. Unable to agree last year on...
As the Alaska Legislature gets back to work in Juneau, the state population is on the minds of lawmakers. For the 11th consecutive year, more people moved out of Alaska than moved into it, according to new estimates published last week by the Alaska Department of Labor. Though new births over the past year counterbalanced the losses, the state’s population growth was a meager 0.04%, demographers estimate. The state’s new estimated population, 736,812, is below what it was in 2012. While the trend has been building for more than a decade, the...
Transgender girls in Alaska are now banned from competing on girls school sports teams. The new rule took effect in November. The board of the Alaska School Activities Association — which regulates school sports in the state — voted 5-3 in October to adopt the rule affecting transgender girls. The rule was required by the state Board of Education, which voted in August to require that the association create a sports division limited to students who are assigned female at birth. That excludes transgender girls. More than half of U.S. states hav...
A coalition of hemp growers and manufacturers has sued the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, claiming that new limits on intoxicating hemp products are unconstitutional. The lawsuit, by the Alaska Industrial Hemp Association and four businesses, was filed Nov. 2 in U.S. District Court in Anchorage. Attorney Christopher Hoke, representing the plaintiffs, said the rules mean that virtually every hemp-derived product made in the state and for sale in Alaska — drinks, gummies, cookies and more — will become illegal. “We’re just harming...
A federal judge in Anchorage has ruled that U.S. government officials did not overstep the law when they allowed an emergency hunt near Kake during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision, published Nov. 3 by Judge Sharon Gleason, is the latest chapter in a long-running dispute between the state and federal officials over who has the authority to regulate subsistence hunting and fishing on public lands in Alaska. Gleason is also overseeing a separate but unrelated lawsuit by the federal government against the state over...
Vic Fischer, the last living signer of the Alaska Constitution and active in progressive state politics for seven decades, died Oct. 22 at age 99. His death came after several years of declining health and an extended stay in hospice care. Born May 4, 1924, in Berlin, Germany, to an American father and Latvian mother, his family rotated between the Soviet Union and Germany, leaving the latter country for good after Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. As Josef Stalin’s purges took hold in the Soviet Union, Fischer’s father, journalist Louis Fischer...
The state has approved new regulations on inexpensive cannabis-like products derived from hemp, sometimes referred to as “diet weed.” The new changes mean intoxicating hemp-derived products will have to be regulated by the state’s marijuana control board, an act that will see them removed from vape shops and other unregulated stores across the state. Some nonintoxicating products will also be affected by the changes. So-called “full-spectrum” hemp products intended to help with epilepsy and pain include a variety of cannabinoids, including...
Staff for Gov. Mike Dunleavy quashed the publication of a new Department of Labor report examining the competitiveness of teacher pay in Alaska, an act that current and former staff say could damage the apolitical reputation of the division that publishes state economic data. “This is data that typically is available to the public, and it’s never good to suppress good, objective data,” said Neal Fried, who retired in July after almost 45 years as an economist with the department. The report, which had been the cover article in this month’s edit...
The Alaska Permanent Fund isn’t running out of money, but it may be running out of money that can be spent. After years of earning less than it needed to beat inflation and the demands of the state treasury, the Permanent Fund’s spendable reserves may be exhausted within four years. Alaska relies on an annual transfer from the Permanent Fund for more than half of its general-purpose revenue, used to pay for state services and dividends. If the spendable account runs dry, it would trigger an instant statewide crisis. With that scenario in min...
The Alaska Permanent Fund Corp.’s investment earnings were again less than withdrawals in the 12 months ending in June, according to preliminary data scheduled to be released at the corporation’s annual meeting this week in Anchorage. The corporation, which manages the $74.9 billion Alaska Permanent Fund, earned a 5.18% return, less than its goal of 7.97%. Since 2018, an annual transfer from the Permanent Fund to the state treasury has been Alaska’s largest source of general-purpose revenue, paying for dividends and public services acros...
The Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles is considering whether to eliminate the month and year registration renewal stickers that owners are required to put on state license plates. In a request for information published early in September, the division issued an open call for pros and cons of the idea. The agency, through a spokesperson, said it didn’t have much to share about the request at this point. “This is DMV exploring and trying to learn the landscape,” said Ken Truitt, a spokesperson for the Department of Administration, which manages t...
Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom has approved signature gathering for two ballot measures and disqualified a third from advancing to that next phase. The two measures — if they gather enough petition signatures for a spot on the ballot and then win voter approval — would impose new financial limits on political campaigns and grant an array of rights to workers, including mandatory sick leave, a higher minimum wage and the ability to opt out from employer-mandated political and religious instruction. The rejected measure would have barred the state fro...
The state of Alaska, a coalition of business groups and a pair of electric-power organizations have opened a new round in the generation-long fight over environmental protections in Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. On Sept. 8, the state and two other groups of plaintiffs filed three separate federal lawsuits to challenge a Biden administration rule restricting new roads in parts of the forest, which is home to some of America’s last stands of old-growth trees. Each lawsuit asks U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason to ove...
In an unusual offseason hearing, a committee of the Alaska Legislature considered a proposal on Friday, Sept. 15, that could lower the state tax on marijuana sold in the state. House Bill 119, considered by the House Labor and Commerce Committee, would shift the state’s marijuana tax system from a tax per ounce to a sales tax. The state’s marijuana industry says the change is desperately needed to help marijuana businesses compete with the state’s black market. “This is a very desperate situation that we’re in,” said Lacy Wilcox, legislative...