Sorted by date Results 76 - 100 of 626
State senators heard last week that based on current revenue forecasts, legislators will struggle to balance the budget with several big-spending items still to be considered. The nonpartisan Legislative Finance Division explained that items currently pending, like benefits for low-income seniors, funding needed to start upgrading the Railbelt’s electrical grid and a large increase in state money for public education, were not included in the governor’s proposed budget. Other spending, such as Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s insistence on $55 milli...
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 governor’s growing obsession with charter schools is frightening for the future of public education in Alaska. He talks as if charter schools are by far the best answer to the state’s low student test scores. He has told Alaskans he would not support an increase in state funding for public schools unless the Legislature also backs his proposal to bypass local school boards when parents want to start up a new charter school. At the same time, he resists providing adequate support for public school districts that have not seen any real inc...
A state Senate committee has advanced a measure that would block an executive order giving the governor total appointment authority over the entire Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board. State statute currently provides that House and Senate leaders appoint four members of the nine-member advisory panel. The executive order removing legislative power to appoint members to the board is one of a dozen issued by Gov. Mike Dunleavy in mid-January. The orders, dealing with various state boards, will take effect unless the House and Senate meet in...
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 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...
The head of the state corporation in charge of a long-dreamed Alaska North Slope natural gas pipeline is once again Alaska’s top-paid public executive. Frank Richards, president of the Alaska Gasline Development Corp., received $479,588 in compensation during 2023, according to the state’s annual executive compensation report, released in January. The state took over development of the proposed gas pipeline in 2016 when North Slope producers walked away from the venture, saying it was not economically viable. Richards was hired as pre...
Think of the state’s Constitutional Budget Reserve Fund as the rich uncle or rich aunt you can go to when you’re short of cash to pay bills and need a loan. But even that wealthy relative has a bottom to their pocket. Take too much out and that pocket could be empty when you really need it. It’s like that with Alaska’s budget reserve fund, the voter-approved, 34-year-old savings account that was created to hold excess oil and gas revenues for when the state needs readily available cash to balance the budget. The budget reserve provides an infi...
Supporters of education funding crowded a legislative committee room on Feb. 5, advocating for a permanent increase in the state funding formula for public schools. Though the advocates were unified in their message to a joint meeting of House and Senate education committees, Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Education Commissioner Deena Bishop don’t support a permanent increase to the school funding formula. Instead, they have proposed targeted investments in certain areas, such as charter schools. Education administrators from across the state attempted...
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...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy invited Mayor Patty Gilbert to attend his State of the State speech at the Capitol on Jan. 30, introducing her during his annual address to a joint session of the Alaska Legislature. His remarks follow: "This past fall, just before Thanksgiving, tough times came to Wrangell. On the evening of Nov. 20, a massive 450-foot-wide landslide engulfed homes, blocked the road and cut off power lines. "Despite the wind, the rain, the cold and the dark, the community sprang into action....
The U.S.-Mexico border is a humanitarian disaster, with U.S. Border Patrol agents taking custody of upwards of 200,000 people a month trying to cross a line in the sand, river, desert shrubs or razor wire in search of a better life. The numbers are staggering — for the burden it imposes on U.S. border cities, on federal agents, and on the immigrants caught up in the political war of a U.S. election year. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators worked hard to find solutions to tighten the border, only to watch as presidential candidate Donald T...
Alaska’s Department of Health risks losing federal funding for its food stamp program, warned a letter from the United States Department of Agriculture on Jan. 30. It said the department is out of compliance with federal standards for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) due to what the letter described as “inefficient and ineffective administration.” The Department of Health has struggled to manage a backlog of crisis proportions that began in 2022 and has left tens of thousands of Alaskans waiting months for critical food...
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...
The borough assembly has declared as “hazardous” and assigned a property value of zero to the two lots owned by victims of the deadly Nov. 20 landslide at 11-Mile Zimovia Highway, making the owners eligible to possibly receive state land as replacement for their unusable property. The owners or their estate could build on their new lots, hold them undeveloped or sell them and keep the proceeds, explained Hannah Uher-Koch, who runs the land grant program at the Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Mining, Land and Water. “There are no...
It seems the governor’s office must like country music. Can’t argue with that choice. The lyrics speak of American dreams and heartbreaks. What makes the songs so popular is that they tell stories, believable or not, such as the famous line: “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.” Sadly, that same line is essentially all the public is getting from the governor’s office to explain his decisions behind a dozen executive orders that will take effect unless rejected by the Legislature before mid-March. While some of the orders are not controver...
Unless the Legislature decides otherwise by mid-March, Gov. Mike Dunleavy will take over appointment of the entire nine-member Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board. State law reserves four of the seats for appointment by legislative leaders, but Dunleavy on the first day of the legislative session Jan. 16 introduced an executive order that changes the law so that the governor would control all of the appointments. The change will take effect 60 days after the order was issued — unless a majority of the 60 legislators vote in a joint 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...
Alaskans trying to quit their tobacco habits made some significant progress over the past year, according to the annual report released last week by the state’s Tobacco Prevention and Control Program. The program, which includes the Tobacco Quit Line, helped 1,753 Alaskans stop smoking or using smokeless tobacco or electronic cigarettes in the 12 months ending June 30, the report said. The program gave support to 21 community organizations around the state. The program also produced and distributed an anti-vaping toolkit to the state’s school d...
State lawmakers went back to work this week in Juneau, with two familiar topics likely to dominate the budget-writing work. “The real question is what are we going to do for the Permanent Fund dividend … and what are we going to do for education,” Rep. Dan Ortiz told the Wrangell borough assembly Jan. 9. “That’s what the argument is going to be about.” Ortiz, a retired schoolteacher in Ketchikan, also represents Wrangell and Metlakatla. He’s been in the state House since January 2015 and serves on the Finance Committee, which is in charge of...
The 2024 Alaska legislative session started Tuesday, Jan. 16. My main committee assignment will be to serve for the eighth year on the House Finance Committee, which is responsible for moving the operating and capital budgets to the full House for approval. The challenge we always face is allocating limited revenue to meet the nearly limitless funding requests, including the annual Permanent Fund dividend. We will begin our work this session with the spending plan submitted by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, which includes a deficit of $987 million and...
Alaska was one of 15 states to reject federal funding that would have provided direct grocery assistance this summer to thousands of families with children in the state who are facing increased food insecurity and rising food costs. The new federal program would have meant an extra $120 per child in direct funds this summer to families who qualify for free or reduced lunches — about half of all kids in Alaska. Officials with Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration cited a major food stamps backlog at the Alaska Division of Public Assistance as the...
Almost 110,000 Alaskans applied for the fall 2024 Permanent Fund dividend in the first eight days after the application period opened on Jan. 1. Applications close in 11 weeks, on March 31. Last year’s dividend was $1,312. This year’s amount will be determined as part of annual state budget deliberations, which will begin next week when legislators reconvene in Juneau. The annual dividend is paid from the state general fund, which gets most of its money from investment earnings generated by the $78 billion Alaska Permanent Fund and from oil...
In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the leader of Kake’s tribal government asked federal managers to open an emergency hunt, citing the community’s fears about having enough food. The request was approved by a federal management agency, the Federal Subsistence Board, and the 2020 harvest of moose and deer went ahead, supplying 135 households with meat. The opening of the hunt prompted a lawsuit from Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration — which is now, for a second time, appealing a defeat it suffered in federal court a...
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...
