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Troy Sauve, a Fairbanks resident, submitted his applications for food and heating assistance to the Alaska Division of Public Assistance on Oct. 24. His eligibility hearing was held more than four months later. Sauve, who works seasonally as a cook at a resort, relies on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to make ends meet. He is one of hundreds of Alaskans who have been waiting longer than three months for food assistance amid an ongoing backlog in the state office charged with processing aid applications. Sauve spent...
Vacation rental: Historic six-bedroom, 10-bathroom mansion with eight fireplaces and ballroom. Vacant much of the year. Conveniently located in the heart of downtown Juneau, within easy walking distance of the Alaska State Capitol and other attractions. A bill introduced on March 17 by Fairbanks Rep. Will Stapp would turn the Alaska Governor’s House into a short-term rental. House Bill 139 would allow rentals at the three-story, 14,400-square-foot residence “when the legislature is not in session and the governor has not reserved the mansion in...
The Alaska Department of Revenue forecast on March 12 that the state will see a bigger budget deficit in the next fiscal year due to lower oil prices. Oil prices have dropped about $10 a barrel since early January as the market reacts to risks of U.S.-instigated trade wars, a weakened global economy and new oil supplies exceeding demand. Oil taxes and royalties are the second-largest source of general fund revenue for the state budget, behind only Permanent Fund earnings. The Alaska Legislature is facing a combined $650 million shortfall over...
Increased state investment in marketing would help the battered Alaska seafood industry seize an opportunity to improve sales within the United States, the head of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute told state lawmakers. Jeremy Woodrow, ASMI’s executive director, attempted to make his organization’s case to the state Senate Finance Committee for $10 million in state funding. The money could be put to work to promote Alaska seafood at a time when there is no competition in the domestic market from Russian seafood, which was banned from the...
A proposed 20-year plan seeking to restore the ailing Alaska Marine Highway System to a more reliable and sustainable operation calls for a major increase in funding for operations and building several new ships. The six new ferries and shoreside improvements could cost $3 billion. The draft plan also envisions an ambitious increase in service to smaller communities, including Wrangell, while shrinking the total fleet from nine ships to eight. The draft plan published Feb. 28 seeks about $3 billion in vessel and infrastructure spending, plus...
British Columbia Premier David Eby said on March 6 that he intends to introduce legislation that would place tolls on commercial trucks traveling from the Lower 48 states to Alaska through his province. Speaking at the Legislative Assembly building in Victoria, Eby said the move is one of several that he is taking in response to President Donald Trump’s erratic Canadian tariff plans. “I’m here to share that we will be introducing a new law in the coming days to respond to this historic challenge: unprecedented legislation. It will inclu...
All seven members of the powerful state Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 24 proposed rewriting the payment formula in state law for the annual Permanent Fund dividend, renewing the Senate’s effort to replace an obsolete, 43-year-old law that hasn’t been followed since 2015. If signed into law, Senate Bill 109 would split the annual earnings transfer from the Alaska Permanent Fund to the state treasury: 75% of that transfer would be reserved for state services, and 25% would be used for dividends. This year, the PFD would be about $1,420 per...
Measures to raise new state revenue were introduced in the Alaska Senate on Feb. 26, including one that would substantially increase taxes on oil companies. Legislators are facing a widening deficit this year and a worsening fiscal outlook due to declining oil revenue. The Republican-led Congress is also expected to make deep cuts to programs such as Medicaid, adding to Alaska legislators’ concerns that costs will be shifted to the state. The nonpartisan Legislative Finance Division has projected that the state faces a $536 million deficit o...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has introduced a bill that would partially reverse Alaska’s 35-year-old ban on fish farms. If it makes it into law, the bill would not allow salmon farming but would allow farming of “any bony fish belonging to the osteichthyes class.” That includes species like tilapia, catfish or carp — the world’s most widely farmed fish. The chair of the House Fisheries Committee, Kodiak Rep. Louise Stutes, disagrees with the governor’s proposal. “Alaska’s commercial fishing industry, our coastal communities and fishing families across...
In a series of hearings last week, members of the Alaska Legislature heard emotional testimony about the need for more education funding. As lawmakers consider the idea, it’s becoming increasingly clear within the Capitol that more funding for public schools will come at the expense of the Permanent Fund dividend. “The state of Alaska is probably facing its largest fiscal problem … in 30 years,” said Bethel Sen. Lyman Hoffman, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, on Feb. 11. Hoffman has been a legislator since 1987. Under the governo...
Almost one-quarter of the jobs in the state ferry system are unfilled, and the vacancy rate is highest among the positions that require the most training, Alaska Marine Highway System Director Craig Tornga told state lawmakers last week. Among wheelhouse positions, the vacancy rate is above 30%, he said at a House committee hearing on Feb. 11. The ferry system has been short crew for the past few years, limiting the number of vessels it can put into service and further eroding its passenger revenues. To operate the cross-gulf route between...
Passenger and vehicle traffic aboard the Alaska Marine Highway System moved slightly higher in 2024 from 2023, but still is less than half its peak from the early 1990s. The state ferries carried just over 185,000 passengers and about 65,000 vehicles last year on its routes stretching from Southeast to Prince William Sound and into several Gulf of Alaska coastal communities. That’s down from more than 400,000 passengers and 110,000 vehicles 1990-1992. And it’s down from more than 325,000 passengers as recently as the early 2010s. Marine Dir...
Mass layoffs in the federal workforce ordered by President Donald Trump began to hit Alaska employees last week, with workers losing jobs at multiple agencies across the state. The scale of the Alaska layoffs wasn’t fully clear, but by Friday, Feb. 14, included around 30 Alaska employees at the U.S. Forest Service and 30 with the National Park Service, according to employees and union representatives. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said late Friday that “dozens of Alaskans — potentially over 100 in total” had lost their jobs, criticizing what sh...
The state is bringing in less money than it is spending and is on pace to finish the current fiscal year with a deficit of $171 million, according to figures presented Feb. 4. Lacey Sanders, Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s top budget official, told the Senate Finance Committee that spending from the Constitutional Budget Reserve Fund likely will be needed to close the gap before the Legislature’s scheduled adjournment in May. That would require support from three-quarters of the House and three-quarters of the Senate — usually a politically fraught negot...
The Alaska Senate rejected giving themselves and other state leaders automatic pay raises linked to inflation with the unanimous passage of a bill Friday, Feb. 7, declining a commission’s recommendation to implement such raises. Senate Bill 87 rejects recommendations made Jan. 29 by the three-member State Officers Compensation Commission that would adjust salaries every two years for the Legislature, Gov. Mike Dunleavy and top officials at state agencies to match the Consumer Price Index — up or down — after the 2026 state election. The recom...
In the early days of President Donald Trump's second term, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski has openly challenged or rebuked him at least three times - stunning for a congressional Republican who has faced his wrath before and yet remains unbowed by pressure to embrace his agenda. Murkowski is a moderate with a history of bucking her party and Trump when she has felt it was the right thing to do. She was the first GOP senator to publicly break ranks with Trump on his nomination of Pete Hegseth as...
No matter what any crowd-pleasing elected official says, Alaska cannot afford a long-deserved increase in state funding for schools and a large Permanent Fund dividend. There just isn’t enough money in the state checkbook to do both this year — not unless Alaskans want to start paying an income tax or a state sales tax, which are both even less popular than a middle seat in the last row of a six-hour flight. More than 90% of the spendable dollars in the state budget comes from two sources: An annual draw on Permanent Fund investment ear...
In a series of hearings last week in the Alaska Capitol, advocates from across the state presented hours of impassioned and often emotional testimony in favor of a bill to sharply increase state funding for public schools. The state funding formula has increased just 2% over the past decade, but a pair of cold-blooded financial hearings by legislative committees showed that the education request may have to compete with the Permanent Fund dividend and aid for aging state buildings in the next budget. In December, Gov. Mike Dunleavy offered a st...
A wide-ranging education package with provisions that include allowing students to attend any public school in the state was introduced Friday, Jan. 31, by Gov. Mike Dunleavy at the State Capitol. The legislation also revives numerous policy goals by the Republican governor such as more state money for homeschooling and state authorization of new charter schools instead of leaving that decision up to school districts. The governor’s package contains no increase to the state's per-pupil funding number for school districts, the Base Student A...
Facing a deficit of $111 million, the Anchorage School District released its draft budget on Jan. 31 calling for massive cuts to programs and positions. The cuts represent about 20% of the district’s spending plan for the 2025-2026 school year. In a letter to Anchorage parents, Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt said the deficit is “driven by more than a decade of flat state funding and rising costs due to inflation.” The budget proposal came on the heels of Gov. Mike Dunleavy rejecting a plan by Alaska lawmakers to significantly increase state...
A state commission is recommending automatic inflation-driven pay raises for Alaska’s governor, lieutenant governor, members of the state Legislature and top officials at state agencies. The recommendation, approved by the three members of the State Officers Compensation Commission on Jan. 29, will become effective after the 2026 state election unless the Legislature and Gov. Mike Dunleavy approve a measure within 60 days rejecting the pay hikes. “If we’re really going to have a system where anybody can run (for office) and be able finan...
A member of the Alaska House majority on Jan. 24 introduced legislation that would increase the state’s public school funding by more than 35%, marking the beginning of what will likely be a lengthy debate over lawmakers’ top priority for the session. The bill would add roughly $464 million to the state’s annual education spending, which currently hovers around $1.2 billion per year to Alaska’s schools. The measure was introduced by Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, a Sitka independent who co-chairs the House Education Committee, and who worked as a publ...
I remember as a kid accompanying my mom to the elementary school a few blocks from our house. No, not because the principal had called her into the office to talk about my behavior. That came later, in high school and college. Such as in college, when the dorm manager called my dad at work to tattle on me. He called my dad collect. For people too young to know, that’s when the person making the call instructed the operator to bill the person getting the call, “collecting” the toll. That was back when you paid for long-distance calls by the expe...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy is proposing legislation that would shorten the window for early voting in statewide elections and make other changes to the way elections are conducted. The bill would require all mail ballots to be received by the Division of Elections by Election Day, changing statutes that have existed for decades. Currently, ballots must be postmarked by Election Day but can be received up to 10 days later for most voters, and 15 days after Election Day for overseas voters. The bill faced immediate criticism from an advocate for voting...
North America's tallest peak is a focal point of Jeff King's life. The four-time winner of the 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race operates his kennel and mushing tourism business just 8 miles from Denali National Park and Preserve's entrance, and the 20,310-foot mountain looms large as he trains his dogs on nearby trails. King and many others who live in the mountain's shadow say most Alaskans will never stop calling the peak Denali, its Alaska Native name, despite President Donald Trump's...