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Alaska’s industrial development agency has sued the Biden administration in an attempt to revive its Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil and gas leases. The lawsuit filed Oct. 18 by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority alleges that the Department of the Interior violated federal laws and its own regulations when it canceled the leases last month. Interior’s actions were politically motivated and illegally deprived AIDEA and the state of the economic benefits that would come from drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain, an area...
The city of Whale Pass in Southeast Alaska doesn’t have much: a few dozen residents, a road, a school and a few lodges, among other businesses. But what it does have is a lot of trees. The town, nestled in a cove on the north end of Prince of Wales Island, about 40 air miles southwest of Wrangell, has been the site of logging camps since the 1960s. Like the rest of Southeast, it’s within the Tongass National Forest, the United States’ largest national forest. Now, Whale Pass residents are fighting a pending state timber sale in their town,...
With high oil prices driving up state revenues, Southeast legislators say to expect a larger capital budget next year for public works projects, more money for deferred maintenance and another attempt to boost state funding for public schools. That’s assuming oil prices stay elevated as the state works its way through the fiscal year that will end on June 30 and remain high in the forecast for the next year. Lawmakers will return to work at the Capitol on Jan. 16. With oil prices last week 30% higher than assumed in this year’s spending pla...
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...
The community already does a good job of pitching in, helping out and coming up with money for school sports activities. But rather than just doing it one sport, one event at a time, there is a proposal to reestablish a booster club for all school sports. It’s been about 20 years since a booster club coordinated fundraising for youth athletics in Wrangell, and there are a lot of reasons why this is a good time to restart the effort. State funding for education in Alaska is inadequate, made even worse when Gov. Mike Dunleavy this year vetoed h...
The Biden administration on Sept. 6 announced it is canceling the last remaining oil and gas leases in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Those seven leases, all held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and sold in a controversial auction held in the final days of former President Donald Trump’s administration, have been in limbo ever since President Joe Biden was sworn into office. On his first day, Biden issued an order requiring a hold on Arctic refuge development to allow for further scrutiny o...
The school district has submitted its application for a spot on the Alaska Department of Education’s list of schools in need of major repair and rebuilding grants. The department reviews and lists projects from across Alaska in order of priority, and then each year the Legislature and governor decide how much state money to commit — which has been only enough in recent years to cover less than 10% of the projects. The district is hoping for $6.5 million from the state to go along with $3.5 million from a bond issue approved by Wrangell vot...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has vetoed a bill that aimed to minimize the use of harmful refrigerant chemicals that exacerbate climate change and also reduce the risk of spills of a different chemical that can pollute drinking water. The legislation would have banned most firefighting departments from using a type of firefighting foam that has contaminated drinking water in dozens of places across Alaska and many more in the Lower 48. The bill, originally introduced by Anchorage Rep. Stanley Wright would have allowed newly constructed buildings in...
A board appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy has decided in favor of a new state regulation that would ban transgender girls from participation in high school girls sports. The decision by the state board of education on Thursday, Aug. 31, came less than six months after the board passed a resolution indicating its members were interested in such a policy. All seven Dunleavy-appointed board members voted in favor of the new policy, which says that only girls whose sex assigned at birth is female will be able to participate in girls sports. The only...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy spoke publicly Thursday, Aug. 31, for the first time about his decision to endorse Republican former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race. In a Fox Business interview, Dunleavy said Trump has been “the best president for this state in its short history,” citing Trump’s actions in issuing oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and removing roadbuilding restrictions for logging in the Tongass National Forest. Dunleavy’s endorsement of Trump was first reported by Politico on Aug. 22, but he di...
Staffing problems at the payroll division are causing many of Alaska’s 14,000 state employees to be paid late or for the wrong amounts and have caused the state to temporarily stop using one of its main tools for hiring and retaining workers. In an August letter to the commissioners in charge of state departments, Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s chief of staff told them that the problems “are primarily due to excessively high vacancy rates at payroll (over 40%).” Thirty-one of 67 budgeted positions are vacant, said officials at the Department of Adminis...
Employers everywhere are finding it hard to recruit and retain employees. But it sure seems that the state of Alaska, under the disengaged leadership of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, is sinking to new lows of high vacancies. The empty desks and undone work are degrading public services and hurting Alaskans. The administration’s reactions have been to express concern, provide excuses, talk about doing better and, in some offices, shuffle around available personnel to plug the biggest holes. And the governor proclaimed May 10 as State Employee A...
The Alaska Marine Highway System Operations Board — an advisory panel created last year — wants the Dunleavy administration and the state Legislature to grant emergency powers for hiring personnel to the ferry system’s marine director. The system has suffered chronic shortages of workers for more than two years, forcing cuts in service to coastal communities. Despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants’ reports, hiring bonuses and paying a private firm to recruit new employees, the system remains far short of its hiring...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has appointed a Republican advertising consultant and talk show host to a highly paid state government job overseeing commercial fishing permits. Dunleavy this month appointed Mike Porcaro of Anchorage as one of two commissioners overseeing the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission, or CFEC — a Juneau-based agency with some 20 employees. The commission issues annual commercial fishing permits, grants and denies permit transfers in the event of illnesses and deaths and publishes fisheries reports and statistics. Porcaro is a D...
According to a new state report, nearly 200 Alaska Native or American Indian people went missing between the beginning of April and the end of June in Alaska. Two dozen of them have not been found. Violence against American Indian and Alaska Native people far exceeds the national average and Alaska has one of the highest rates of missing and murdered Indigenous people in the United States. The problem especially affects women and girls. In Alaska, calls for justice preceded Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s formation of a Missing and Murdered Indigenous P...
Though not all children had enrolled before the scheduled start of school on Thursday, Aug. 24, due to migrant status or other reasons, district staff reported an increase of two students over their enrollment estimates from last November, which will help with a very small increase in state funding. A couple more students could add maybe $20,000 or so in state money to the overall $5 million school district operating budget. The budget for the 2023-2024 school year is based on 263 students, however, after the updated enrollment estimate, that n...
The Head Start program operated in 10 Southeast communities by the Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska wants to reduce its authorized enrollment by 80 children as the nonprofit adjusts to a tightening budget situation and staffing shortages. The program serves Wrangell, though the tribal nonprofit said there would be no reduction in classroom slots in the community. Tlingit & Haida is approved to serve 262 children across Southeast but has asked federal officials for permission to reduce the number to 182, according to...
It's hard to miss: Groups of people whizzing down the streets of Wrangell on what looks like a cross between a bicycle and an old-school moped, sometimes down the middle of the street or dangerously close to pedestrians on the sidewalks. Increased use of electric bicycles, or e-bikes for short, has some questioning how the law applies to the machines, specifically where they can and can't be ridden. Wrangell municipal code states, "No person shall ride a bicycle upon a sidewalk within the...
The state has paid $350,000 to settle a four-year-old lawsuit that found Gov. Mike Dunleavy and his former chief of staff personally liable for illegally firing a state attorney. The settlement with Elizabeth Bakalar, of Juneau, ends a series of state and federal lawsuits triggered when Dunleavy and then-chief of staff Tuckerman Babcock asked state employees to submit resignation letters during the transition from the administration of Gov. Bill Walker in December 2018. In 2021, a federal judge concluded that the process was “an u...
Elders and adults with disabilities will have more opportunities to get care at home or in a home-like setting under a bill that became state law when Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed it on July 29. The measure, Senate Bill 57, serves two broad categories of Alaskans who might otherwise have to move into assisted-care facilities: disabled adults, including youth who have aged out of the foster system, and elders. For disabled adults, the bill authorizes a system of adult host homes serving one or two people, a category into which foster parents’ h...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has vetoed a bill defining electric-assisted bicycles the same as regular bicycles — which passed the Legislature by a combined vote of 57-2 — because “it creates unnecessary bureaucracy by regulating recreational activity,” according to a spokesperson. House Bill 8, sponsored by Rep. Ashley Carrick, a first-term Fairbanks Democrat, sought to revise state code to allow most e-bikes to ride anywhere a regular bike is allowed such as roads, bike lanes and multi-use trails. The bill also said owners of e-bikes generat...
Only a third of Alaska children meet the state’s goals to be ready for kindergarten. But the state’s share of funding for Head Start, a mostly federally funded child care and health program that promotes school readiness specifically for low-income families, is less than it was a decade ago. This year, the Legislature appropriated a $5 million increase so that Head Start programs could match federal contributions, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed most of it, slashing the increase to $1.5 million. “Gov. Dunleavy’s veto of much of the Legisla...
Last year, I wanted to visit a few small towns in Alaska, traveling aboard the state ferries. I liked it very much and even though catching a ferry at 4 a.m. was inconvenient, I loved traveling with the locals. I met so many wonderful people, including a few who just helped prevent me from being a homeless tourist. I made the decision to return to Alaska this summer without using a plane. This was quite an adventure to plan considering I live on the New Jersey shore. The summer ferry schedule was very late this year, and I could not make...
Alaska saw a drop in the number of food stamp recipients over the past year far larger than any other state as processing delays caused low-income households to miss out on their benefits. While more than half of states actually had an increase in SNAP beneficiaries, among those that saw a decline none came anywhere close to the 69% drop in participation Alaska experienced through this spring. Behind Alaska, Maryland saw a 21% decrease, Arkansas saw a 19% decrease and New Jersey saw a 14% decrease between March 2022 and March 2023. Those...
