Sorted by date Results 501 - 525 of 660
A group seeking Gov. Mike Dunleavy's ouster has yet to gather enough signatures to force a recall election, nearly two years after getting started and with just over a year before the 2022 primary election. Recall Dunleavy Chair Meda DeWitt said the organization was slowed by the pandemic last year but still continues to gather signatures. She said its leaders are expected to meet soon, though she declined to say when. The last update on the recall group's website is dated April 26 and showed 57,897 signatures collected. DeWitt said the group...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - The leaders of Alaska’s Republican Party on Saturday endorsed a Trump-backed conservative challenger to incumbent U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who has been one of the GOP’s most outspoken critics of the former president. The Alaska Republican State Central Committee endorsed Kelly Tshibaka in the 2022 race for the U.S. Senate seat held by Murkowski. The committee approved Tshibaka’s endorsement in a 58-17 vote during a meeting in Fairbanks. Tshibaka, who ran the Alaska Department of Administration for Gov. Mike Dunleavy, annou...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy used his veto power to thwart a legislative effort to boost the state ferry system budget. The governor cut almost $8.5 million from an overall appropriation of $190.7 million intended to cover the next 18 months of Alaska Marine Highway System operations. The veto scales back the budget closer to last year’s level on a 12-month basis and frustrates legislative attempts to restore some of the service cuts under the governor’s administration. This is the third budget Dunleavy has signed since he took office in December 201...
Legislators are scheduled to return to Juneau next month and will try again to settle on an amount for this fall's Permanent Fund dividend after the governor vetoed the $525 PFD appropriated by lawmakers. The Legislature's budget writers had negotiated an $1,100 dividend, but the amount was tied to other items in the budget, and proponents of a bigger PFD objected to the amount and to the linking maneuver, denying their votes for sections of the spending bill that would have pulled additional...
The governor’s office got it wrong when it referred to $400,000 in state funding for the Alaska Legal Services Corp. as a subsidy. Guess they had to come up with a catchy explanation of why Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed the long-standing state help for the program which provides legal assistance for low-income Alaskans. Calling it a “subsidy” sounds like an attempt to diminish its value, tossing it into the tainted pork barrel of boondoggles that fiscal conservatives say must end. They are right about that. Subsidies with little or no benef...
Legislative efforts to restore an Office of Children’s Services caseworker in Wrangell and fund a commercial fisheries staffer in town survived the governor’s budget vetoes. Wrangell lost its Department of Fish and Game position last year due to the governor’s budget cuts, and has been without a children’s services caseworker for several years. The borough and school district both had spoken in support of restoring the caseworker job in town, with the borough offering to provide free rent and help with the salary to entice state funding. Though...
The Alaska House avoided a government shutdown when it voted Monday for the state budget to take effect with the start of the new fiscal year today, though the political battles over state spending and the Permanent Fund dividend are far from over. Gov. Mike Dunleavy was expected to announce any budget vetoes on Wednesday, with Wrangell waiting to learn if he will reduce or eliminate two spending items specific to the community: Restoring the state’s commercial fisheries staffer in town, which Dunleavy eliminated a year ago, and restoring an Of...
JUNEAU (AP) - The state of Alaska is trying to dispose of a 58-year-old, unused ferry, and even has offered to give it free to the government of the Philippines. Gov. Mike Dunleavy offered to give away the Malaspina in a letter last month to the Philippines consul general in San Francisco, public radio network CoastAlaska reported. “This vessel is surplus to our fleet, is in need of some repairs, but does have some service life left,” according to Dunleavy’s letter dated May 20 and obtained by the Alaska Public Media network in a routine publi...
A budget debate has brought the state to within a week of the start of the new fiscal year and the risk that state agencies could close on July 1 if the governor and legislators cannot settle the dispute. The battle between the governor and lawmakers is whether the budget adopted by the House and Senate last week is valid and can go into effect on July 1. Several legislative leaders generally say yes, it probably is OK, but the governor says no, he cannot sign the budget bill as approved. Gov. Mike Dunleavy has taken a two-option approach to...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy will have multiple big decisions to make when the state budget lands on his desk and he decides which appropriations he likes and which he will veto. Alaska's governors have the power to pick and choose, line by line, which spending items they don't support, and can either totally eliminate them or simply cross out the number and write in a smaller amount. We ask that the governor this year not use his veto pen, pencil, Sharpie or highlighter on two budget items that are impor...
Making good on previous threats, former President Donald Trump has endorsed Kelly Tshibaka, a former official in the Gov. Mike Dunleavy administration, in her challenge against Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. “Lisa Murkowski is bad for Alaska,”Trump said in a statement last Friday. “Murkowski has got to go!” The Republican senator, whose term expires next year, has not announced her reelection decision. Murkowski angered Trump when she voted for the Senate to convict him of inciting the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Tshibak...
Wrangell should know by June 30 — maybe sooner — if Gov. Mike Dunleavy will veto funding to restore two state jobs in the community that were headed toward approval by lawmakers in the final days of the legislative session. The governor has 20 days, not counting Sundays, after legislators adjourn their session to sign or veto budget bills. But because the 20-day clock would extend past the start of the fiscal year on July 1, Dunleavy needs to decide on the budget by June 30 to avoid any potential shutdown of public services. Legislators thi...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy must have learned how to manage state finances from the same people who guard the world’s biggest secret recipes: Col. Sanders’ fried chicken, Coca-Cola, Big Mac’s special sauce, Twinkies and Dr. Pepper. Keeping secrets from customers is smart marketing hype. Keeping secrets from the public is irresponsible. And, in the governor’s case, it’s dishonest. Dunleavy, who served on the Matanuska-Susitna Borough school board and later spent five years in the state Legislature, should know his arithmetic — if he had paid attention i...
Alaskans who are engaged in or interested in mariculture are invited to become founding members in a new group that will advance the growing industry across the state. The newly formed Alaska Mariculture Alliance is a private, nonprofit successor to a five-year task force formed in 2016 by Gov. Bill Walker and reauthorized in 2018 by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The task force will sunset on June 30. “One of the priority recommendations was to create a long-term entity that would coordinate and support development of a robust and sustainable m...
JUNEAU (AP) - The federal government has announced plans to “repeal or replace” a decision by the Trump administration that intended to lift restrictions on logging and road building in Southeast Alaska. Conservationists cheered the announcement as a positive step, while Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy criticized it and vowed to use “every tool available to push back.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s plans were announced on a federal regulatory site with little detail last Friday. They were described as consistent with a January executive...
JUNEAU (AP) - A proposed 500-mile hiking trail from Southcentral Alaska to Fairbanks aimed at drawing more adventurers to the state has garnered support from the governor, tourism officials and others, and it could get a funding boost to help begin stitching it together. The state budget, under debate this month in a special legislative session, includes $13.2 million toward beginning to build the Alaska Long Trail, similar in concept to grand treks such as the Pacific Crest Trail or Appalachian Trail, the Anchorage Daily News reported. Funds...
Much like the rest of the country, several businesses in Wrangell said hiring has become a greater struggle than in the past. “I haven’t had a full staff in a year and a half,” said Josh Young, with J&W’s. “I hired my first new employee in over a year four days ago.” J&W’s is looking for at least two more people to staff its kitchen, Young said, but he would prefer more. Normally there’s an influx of applications around May, kids looking for summer jobs. That hasn’t happened this year. The odd thing, he said, is while the restaurant is only ope...
Yeah, I know, it's 14 months from Alaska's 2022 primary election for governor, legislative seats and two of the state's three members of Congress. And who wants to spend the summer of 2021 fretting over potential 2022 candidates. Sadly, it seems many people still haven't gotten over last year's elections. But 2022 will be different in Alaska - a lot different. Voters last year approved the biggest change in Alaska elections since statehood gave us the right to elect our own governor instead of t...
Setting the amount of this year's Permanent Fund dividend - and deciding on how to pay the cost - continues to hold up agreement on a state spending plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The Legislature has been in special session since May 20. The joint House-Senate conference committee that was appointed to settle budget differences has met only a few times, briefly reviewing non-controversial items, with a meeting expected sometime Wednesday. Most legislators have left Juneau to...
The state has paid a cash settlement to a second former employee who alleged her firing early in the administration of Gov. Mike Dunleavy was political, not based on merit or job performance. A former assistant public advocate for the state will receive $75,000 as part of a settlement in a case she brought against Dunleavy, a former chief of staff and the state that alleged wrongful firing. Kelly Parker agreed to drop her lawsuit as part of the agreement, signed last month, the Anchorage Daily News reported last Thursday. The agreement says...
JUNEAU (AP) - A bill that protects the graves of Unangax people in Southeast Alaska awaits a signature from Gov. Mike Dunleavy after both chambers of the Alaska Legislature approved the measure. The Unangax cemetery holds more than 30 graves of people who died at Funter Bay during World War II. They were relocated to two internment camps there from the Aleutian Islands by U.S. forces after the Japanese military invaded. They spent much of the war at the remote spot on the western side of Admiralty Island, about 20 miles west of Juneau, and, mor...
Alaska legislators are in the second week of a special session to finish work on the state budget for the fiscal year that starts in just five weeks, while also deciding the amount of this year's Permanent Fund dividend. Lawmakers have held few committee meetings and many have left Juneau, as private discussions involving House and Senate leaders, their colleagues and the governor's office generally dominate such negotiations. The Legislature adjourned its regular session after 121 days on May...
Just a couple weeks ago, Ketchikan reported 20 new COVID-19 cases in a single day and had more than 100 active cases in the borough. A week ago, the community still had more than 80 active cases and four people in the hospital. About 20% of all the cases reported in Ketchikan since the pandemic infected and inflicted its misery on the world more than a year ago have occurred in just the past few weeks. Many of the recent cases are people who did not choose to get vaccinated. Almost 40% of...
Not a single legislator voted against the bill to reconfigure the public advisory board for the Alaska Marine Highway System, taking away from governors the power to appoint half the members. The Senate president and House speaker would each appoint two of the nine board members, with the governor naming the other five to the panel that would advise the Department of Transportation on operations and long-term planning for the ferry system. The final decision on the change in state law rests with the governor, who will have until next month to...
While the Alaska Legislature continues to work in special session this week on the state budget and deciding the amount of this year’s Permanent Fund dividend, lawmakers managed to pass 34 bills before the regular session ended last week — among the lowest number since statehood. Gov. Mike Dunleavy will have at least until sometime next month to decide whether to sign or veto the bills, depending on when the Legislature sends the documents to the governor’s office. Among the bills approved by lawmakers: A measure sponsored by Juneau Rep. Sara...