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A proposed overhaul of Alaska’s public employees retirement system would provide a new pension plan for state and municipal workers, intended by supporters to address the ongoing inability to recruit and retain enough employees. Half of the 20-member state Senate have signed onto the bill, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, an Anchorage Republican. The measure was outlined in a news conference March 1 by members of the bipartisan coalition that controls the Senate. Coalition members said the 2006 legislation that moved Alaska f...
Alaska’s 401(k)-style retirement system for new employees is providing significantly smaller benefits than the pension-style retirement system discontinued for new hires in 2006, according to an analysis from the state Division of Retirement and Benefits. The analysis, presented Feb. 23 to the Senate Finance Committee, comes as legislators are considering whether to revive a pension system for new employees as a way to encourage hiring. Almost one in six state government jobs were vacant in December, according to the governor’s Office of Man...
Bills under consideration in the Legislature to cap state spending are not addressing the main challenges Alaska is facing, said Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman, co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee. “We don’t have a spending-side problem; we have a revenue-side problem,” said Stedman, who also represents Wrangell and the rest of Southeast except for Juneau, Haines, Skagway and Gustavus. He is in his 20th year in the Legislature. The senator pointed out that the latest spending-cap proposal advanced by an Anchorage Republican would exclude the P...
The state is shutting down most summer king salmon sportfishing around Cook Inlet amid continued declines in the strong, hard-running fish that not that long ago filled freezers and fueled tourism in the state’s most populated region. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game last Thursday announced an unprecedented array of restrictions and closures on sport and personal-use fishing from the Kenai Peninsula to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, a sweeping series of emergency regulations that illustrates the severity of king salmon population c...