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The governor has proposed a state budget for next year that does not repeat this year’s education funding increase and pays out a $3,838 Permanent Fund dividend — and runs up a $1.5 billion deficit. The cost of the dividend, estimated at more than $2.5 billion, consumes 40% of total available state general fund revenues. Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s spending plan, unveiled Dec. 12, would wipe out more than half of the state’s budget reserve account. The broad aspects of the Republican governor’s spending plan are similar to those that encounter...
A sea lion estimated to weigh more than a ton had been terrorizing people and pets in Petersburg’s South Harbor. It was killed on Dec. 7, but not by law enforcement. Instead, authorities collaborated with Brandon Ware, who is Tlingit and grew up hunting marine mammals. He plans to use the hide and whiskers for traditional regalia. Harbormaster Glorianne Wollen said the sea lion had been snapping at people and pets, stalking them as they walked the docks. She said people felt hunted. Wollen said that when there’s an aggressive sea lion han...
Landslides, heavy snowfall, flooding and wildfires aren’t uncommon in Alaska. But as the oceans and atmosphere grow warmer, such extreme events and disasters are becoming more frequent across the state, a new report says. The Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks International Arctic Research Center this month released the report, “Alaska’s Changing Environment 2.0.” The report contains contributions from dozens of scientists and Indigenous experts and dives into long-term climate trends, focusin...
Alaska’s oil revenues are expected to decline over the next few years, creating a substantial budget deficit that will have to be filled by withdrawals from the state’s savings, according to a semiannual forecast released by the state Department of Revenue on Dec. 12. Or spending cuts or taxes could be used to cover the deficit, though neither option was presented in the department’s forecast. The new forecast is more pessimistic about the state’s oil-revenue prospects over the next few years than was the department’s previous forecast in March...
Alaska Airlines said Dec. 10 it will start new service to Tokyo and Seoul next year as part of a plan to boost international flights over the next several years, using the Airbus wide-body aircraft it obtained in its purchase of Hawaiian Airlines. The airline said it will begin flying between Seattle and Tokyo’s Narita International Airport in May and will add service between Seattle and Seoul in October. Alaska said it plans to fly from Seattle to at least a dozen international destinations by 2030, including Europe, using large jets owned by...
President Joe Biden created the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in Pennsylvania on Dec. 9 to underscore the oppression Indigenous people faced there and across the broader Native American boarding school system, as well as the lasting impacts of the abuse that occurred at these schools. The proclamation came as Biden — who hosted his fourth and final White House Tribal Nations Summit on Dec. 9 — announced several efforts his administration is taking to support tribal communities. The administration continues to ack...
A small Canadian First Nation and an Indigenous group in Alaska each have challenged a British Columbia permit decision for a massive mining project across the border from southern Southeast Alaska. The challenges, filed earlier this month in British Columbia’s Supreme Court, call for legal reviews of the provincial government’s decision earlier this year to let a Canadian company hang on, indefinitely, to a key environmental permit. Seabridge Gold, a Toronto-based company, has been pushing for years to advance what it describes as the lar...
A day after judges blocked the merger, the grocery chain Albertsons on Dec. 11 backed out of its $25 billion merger with Kroger and sued its bigger rival for failing to push hard enough for federal regulatory approval of the deal. Albertsons is the parent company of Safeway in Alaska; Kroger is the parent company of Fred Meyer in Alaska. Albertsons’ decision to sue came the day after two judges halted the merger in separate court cases. U.S. District Court Judge Adrienne Nelson issued a preliminary injunction blocking the merger Dec. 10 a...
Butter clams, important to many Alaskans’ diets, are notorious for being sources of the toxin that causes sometimes-deadly paralytic shellfish poisoning. Now a new study is providing information that might help people harvest the clams more safely and monitor the toxin levels more effectively. The study, led by University of Alaska Southeast researchers, found that the meat in larger butter clams have higher concentrations of the algal toxin that causes PSP, than does the meat in smaller clams. “If you take 5 grams of tissue about one...
The five men lost in the sinking of a commercial fishing boat west of Hoonah early Dec. 1 had just delivered a load in Juneau and were making a last run before the fishing season ended. The Sitka-based Wind Walker was transiting out to North Pacific fishing grounds when the boat capsized about 25 miles southwest of Juneau, according to several fishing industry representatives. The National Weather Service had forecast gale-force winds in the area, as well as freezing spray and snow. The Coast Guard said the boat issued a VHF radio mayday call...
The average hourly wage in Alaska was $33.60 in 2023, putting the state in 11th place among all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Alaska Department of Labor. The median hourly wage — which is calculated in a way that reduces the influence of the highest and lowest numbers — was $26.99. Alaska has been among the top states for wages since the oil pipeline boom almost 50 years ago, and was No. 1 as recently as 2013, but has been falling and was eighth in 2022. Wage and job statistics were detailed in a pair of articles by...
Nobody was injured in a small landslide in Ketchikan that dropped from a Hillside Road property on Dec. 1, unearthing approximately 4,000 square feet of a family’s backyard and sweeping about 200 feet down a steep, forested slope into Carlanna Creek. The landslide did not cause any structural damage to the family’s home or outbuildings, but yanked a kayak, a canoe and some fishing buoys from their yard to the creek below. Portions of unstable land on the family’s Hillside Road property continued to fall Dec. 2 and 3, although the house appea...
Mexico’s Senate has voted to charge cruise ship passengers $42 per person for port calls, drawing sharp criticism from the tourism industry. Mexican business chambers say the immigration charge — from which cruise passengers used to be exempt — may hurt the country’s half-billion-dollar-per-year cruise industry. The measure approved Dec. 3 has already been passed in the lower house and will go into effect in 2025. The changes were part of a bill that also increases airport immigration charges and entry fees for nature reserves. Mexico...
The shrinking size of Alaska salmon, a decades-long trend linked in part to warming conditions in the ocean, is hampering the ability of chinook in Alaska’s two biggest rivers to produce new generations needed to maintain healthy populations, a new study shows. The University of Alaska Fairbanks-led study shows how the body conditions of chinook salmon, combined with extreme heat and cold in the ocean and freshwater environments, have converged in the Yukon and Kuskokwim river systems to depress what is termed “productivity” — the success...
Hilcorp is set to host a new project that will test the idea of using plentiful natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope oil fields to generate electricity for data centers — the digital infrastructure that keeps the internet running and is essential to the emerging artificial intelligence economy. Privately owned Hilcorp, one of Alaska’s biggest oil producers, is working with a Texas-based firm to place a small, pilot data center at its Endicott field, inside a shipping container on a gravel pad, according to a permit application filed recen...
Alaska’s minimum wage workers will get a tiny bump in pay starting on Jan. 1 before a larger increase becomes effective six months later. The state’s minimum wage will increase by 18 cents to $11.91 an hour at the start of the new year, the result of a ballot measure passed 10 years ago, the Alaska Department of Labor said on Nov. 21. The bigger increase will be on July 1, when the minimum wage is set to rise to $13 an hour, the result of a ballot measure approved by voters in November. The minimum wage is set to increase again in 2026 to $14 a...
Seven out of 10 Alaska adults are overweight or obese, and large percentages of adults in the state have chronic conditions like high blood pressure and high cholesterol that are linked to the leading causes of death, according to a report by the state Department of Health. The 2024 Alaska Chronic Disease Facts summary, published by the department’s Division of Public Health, also showed that 33% of high school students were overweight or obese. Large percentages of adults and teenagers are sedentary, according to the report. Among adults, 2...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy said he isn’t planning to take a job with President-elect Donald Trump’s administration at the start of his second presidential term in January. Dunleavy, in the middle of his second term as governor, was mentioned by political observers and in media reports in the days after the Nov. 5 election as a candidate to lead the Department of Interior. When Trump selected North Dakota’s governor for the job, Dunleavy was listed by some as a possible Cabinet member for the departments of energy or education. But the governor, durin...
"The only thing that exists is that edge and the wood that it's moving through," Haines luthier Rob Goldberg said as he worked with a chisel, carving the braces that will hold a guitar's sound boards together. "You can't be thinking about what you're going to have for dinner or thinking about your girlfriend or thinking about anything else." He speaks from decades of experience, building world-class custom instruments at his Mud Bay workshop, several miles south of downtown Haines. That attentio...
Alaska is losing its residents to Texas, Oregon, Washington state and Florida. That’s according to 2023 American Community Survey results, an annual demographics survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. From 2022 to 2023, Alaska lost more residents than it gained, continuing a trend that has existed since 2012. Though Alaska has long led the nation in annual population turnover — typically, about 45,000 people moved both into and out of the state annually, said Alaska Department of Labor demographer Eric Sandberg — “what has changed is that...
The U.S. Coast Guard on Monday morning suspended the search for survivors from a Sitka-based commercial fishing boat that capsized early Sunday morning with five people aboard. The Coast Guard said the search for the 52-foot seiner Wind Walker continued for nearly 24 hours and covered more than 108 square nautical miles. The boat’s crew issued a mayday call at 12:07 a.m. Sunday “reporting they were overturning,” the Coast Guard said. Watchstanders in Juneau received no additional response, but the boat’s emergency beacon signal broadca...
A giant female chinook salmon flips on her side in the shallow water and wriggles wildly, using her tail to carve out a nest in the riverbed as her body glistens in the sunlight. In another late-October moment, males butt into each other as they jockey for a good position to fertilize eggs. These are scenes tribes have dreamed of seeing for decades as they fought to bring down four hydroelectric dams blocking passage for struggling salmon along more than 400 miles of the Klamath River and its tributaries along the Oregon-California border. Now,...
State officials and industry leaders trying to rescue the ailing Alaska seafood industry are facing daunting challenges, recently released numbers show. The industry lost $1.8 billion last year, the result of low prices, closed harvests and other problems, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Direct employment of harvesters last year fell by 8% to the lowest level since 2001, when counts of harvesting jobs began, the Alaska Department of Labor said. The monthly...
Alaska seafood processors hired fewer people in 2023 but paid them more and relied more on nonresidents to fill the jobs, a state analysis shows. The employment trends are what would be expected in an industry struggling to find workers, said Dan Robinson, the state economist who wrote the analysis for the Alaska Department of Labor’s monthly magazine. “I do think the reason for that is just they’ve had to work harder to get workers and to pay workers more to come there,” said Robinson, the department’s research chief and author of the artic...
A final ballot count on Nov. 20 cemented the narrow lead for supporters of Alaska’s ranked-choice voting and open primary system, who defeated a ballot measure that would have done away with the state’s 4-year-old voting process. After 6,074 additional ballots were counted, bringing the total to 340,110 ballots in the decision, the repeal initiative, Ballot Measure 2, was on track to narrowly fail in a 49.9% to 50.1% split. Its losing deficit after the Nov. 20 final count was 664 votes. Supporters of the ballot measure argued that the open pri...