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Financial documents published July 31 by the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. show the fund lacks enough spendable money to immediately pay for items in the state’s annual budget, a sign that the state’s top source of general-purpose revenue is on course for a future crisis. This year, lawmakers and Gov. Mike Dunleavy approved a $1 billion transfer from the spendable portion of the Permanent Fund to the constitutionally protected principal, to help the principal keep pace with inflation. As of July 1, there was only $571.7 million available for tha...
The National Indian Gaming Commission has approved plans for a casino-style tribal gaming hall proposed by the Native Village of Eklutna for a site near Anchorage. The decision, published this month by the commission, follows an Interior Department decision in February that reinterpreted the legal status of Alaska Native trust land, reversing decades of precedent. The gaming hall, which is expected to hold rows of electronic gambling machines, is similar to the Southeast Winds Casino in Metlakatla but would be a first in the state’s p...
All of the seven attorneys who have applied for appointment to fill the latest vacancy on Alaska’s Supreme Court are women. After the governor selects the next justice, the court will be majority-women for the first time in state history. After one of the seven is seated on the court, three of the five members will be women. The seven applicants were announced last month by the Alaska Judicial Council, which screens and nominates applicants for judicial positions. The governor then fills a judicial vacancy from the nominees provided by the coun...
The Alaska Legislature recently increased state funding for domestic violence and sexual assault efforts, but a leading advocate says the effort doesn’t go far enough to meet the need. One of the main federal funding sources for Alaska’ domestic violence and sexual assault prevention efforts and programs has dropped over the years, creating a hole in service providers’ budgets as state funding has remained the same for seven years. Lawmakers plugged part of the that hole with a $3.7 million budget boost this year for the Alaska Council on Domes...
The Biden administration has rejected a nominee for a key Alaska fisheries management post who could have tipped decisions toward the interests of tribes and conservation groups and away from the priorities of the large-boat, Seattle-based trawl industry. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo skipped over the top choice of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, conservation advocate Becca Robbins Gisclair, and instead reappointed the last-ranked nominee on a slate of four candidates that Inslee offered: Anne Vanderhoeven, a trawl industry employee who...
NEW YORK — Tucked within the expansive Native American halls of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City is a diminutive wooden doll that holds a sacred place among the tribes whose territories once included Manhattan. For more than six months now, the ceremonial Ohtas, or Doll Being, has been hidden from view after the museum and others nationally took dramatic steps to board up or paper over exhibits in response to new federal rules requiring institutions to return sacred or culturally significant items to tribes — or at lea...
More than $600,000 was returned to the Ketchikan Gateway Borough on July 25 after the borough’s bank, Wells Fargo, successfully retrieved an electronic fund transfer that the borough made to a fraudulent account a couple of months ago. Charlanne Thomas, the borough’s finance director said the borough was notified by Wells Fargo in May that it unknowingly sent money to a fraudulent checking account at Citibank after attempting to pay for the Dudley Field turf project. The contractor’s email account had been hacked by scammers who reque...
Alaska’s highest-ranking Democratic officeholder said July 23 she has not decided whether to back the party’s likely candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris. Rep. Mary Peltola broke with other state Democrats, who quickly gave their support and their party convention delegates’ votes to Harris just hours after President Joe Biden announced that he was ending his campaign for re-election. Peltola, in an online news conference, said she is still weighing her decision about whether to vote for Harris and is “keeping an open mind.” “We still have...
Alaska’s U.S. House race will be one of the hardest-fought campaigns in the country, according to a national group dedicated to getting Republicans elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s for that reason the National Republican Congressional Committee launched its first television ads in the general election cycle in Alaska before any other state, according to a news release. The television ad labels incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola a “devout Biden enabler” who would “betray Alaskans to back Biden.” It includes Peltola say...
Alaska voters are set to have an opportunity in the November election to affirm or repeal the state’s use of ranked-choice voting, Division of Elections officials confirmed on July 24. The news comes after Superior Court Judge Christina Rankin on July 19 disqualified some of the petition signatures collected by the repeal effort because the gathering process was not carried out in accordance with state law. The judge found instances in which the signature-gathering process was improper and disqualified those petition booklets. She ordered s...
A cyanide spill at a major gold mine in the Yukon Territory — high in the Yukon River watershed — has sparked widespread concern in Canada. But Alaska salmon advocates say the mishap isn’t just a problem for Yukoners: The spill happened upstream of a tributary of the Yukon River. The Yukon is Alaska’s biggest transboundary waterway, and residents along its shores who have depended on salmon for generations are already suffering amid crashes of fish runs. Officials on both sides of the border say it’s too early to know the full impact of the sp...
The top two officers of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. board of trustees were replaced at the beginning of the board’s quarterly meeting on July 24 in a contentious vote, with displaced Vice Chair Ellie Rubenstein announcing her resignation hours later. The moves came after months of controversy involving allegations of improper financial actions by Rubenstein, sparking further accusations of politically motivated behavior among some board members. Ethan Schutt was ousted as board chair and Rubenstein replaced as vice chair in a 4-2 vote at t...
Alaska firefighting departments will have to stop using fire-suppression foams containing contaminants known as “forever chemicals,” under a law that went into effect July 24. Legislators passed the new law nearly unanimously this spring. It went into effect without Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s signature, an option that governors can choose when they don’t want to veto a bill but also don’t want their name on it. The new law targets per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS. They have qualities making them resistant to fire, water and oil....
When the only preschool teacher left Harold Kaveolook School in Kaktovik, a village of around 250 people on the northern coast of Alaska, Chelsea Brower was in charge. It was January and she had been the preschool aide for about a year and a half. “Being with the kids and trying to be their teacher is what really made me realize I want to be their teacher — and it also made me realize I need to become certified to be their teacher,” she said. The only problem was that universities that offered the requisite courses were hundreds of miles away,...
When Kay Brown was director of the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas in the 1980s, her job was to make sure the state got the maximum benefit from its abundant fossil fuel. At the time, North Slope activity was on the rise and Alaska was on its way to supplying 25% of the nation’s domestically produced oil. Now the producing oil fields are mature, Alaska production is down to less than a quarter of its late-1980s peak and climate change impacts have become dramatic in the state and elsewhere in the far north. And Brown, who went on to become a s...
Fishery managers overseeing Alaska’s faltering salmon runs should be able to rely on a more comprehensive and holistic approach to science that considers all habitat, from the middle of the ocean to freshwater spawning streams far inland, according to a task force report on salmon research needs. The report was issued this month by the Alaska Salmon Research Task Force, a group established through a 2022 act of Congress to identify knowledge gaps and research needs. The task force comprises close to 20 members and includes scientists, f...
Living amid craggy peaks and remnant glaciers, Southeast Alaska mountain goats survive in variable conditions, often dealing with heavy snowfall and extreme cold. But a new study published and written by an Alaska wildlife ecologist shows that many goats die in avalanches. Kevin White, who worked with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game before continuing his studies at the University of Alaska Southeast and University of Victoria, British Columbia, has concluded over a 17-year project, using data from 421 collared goats, that between 23%...
Tens of millions of dollars raised by a landmark climate law in Washington state will go to Native American tribes that are at risk from climate change and rising sea levels to help them move to higher ground, install solar panels, buy electric vehicles and restore wetlands, Gov. Jay Inslee announced July 16. The money — $52 million — comes from the 2021 Climate Commitment Act, which auctions off allowances for heavily polluting companies in the state to emit carbon, with the revenue invested in education, transportation and other programs. Con...
Two environmental groups have filed a new legal challenge to the Biden administration’s approval of a proposed multibillion-dollar project that would send Alaska North Slope natural gas to overseas markets. In a petition filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club argued that federal agencies failed to properly consider harms that the massive gas project would cause to Endangered Species Act-listed animals living in the affected marine areas: polar bears, Cook Inlet beluga whales and...
The Alaska Division of Public Health is hoping to expand wastewater-monitoring programs that have proved useful in detecting outbreaks of COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases, a recent report said. Testing at Anchorage’s John M. Asplund Wastewater Treatment Facility, the municipality’s main wastewater plant, was able to provide notice of a spike in COVID-19 cases in January 2023, several days ahead of patients’ cases that were confirmed by health laboratories, said a bulletin recently issued by the division’s epidemiology section. The inf...
Photographer Matt McDonald had lived on Puget Sound for years but had never seen a whale, so he was elated when he spotted a giant marine mammal just off Seattle’s waterfront one evening. The excitement was short-lived. As McDonald tracked the whale in his camera’s viewfinder, a Washington state ferry that dwarfed the animal came into the frame. The next morning, he saw on the news that the humpback whale had died in the collision he witnessed. “I still remember the moment when they crossed paths and my heart just started sinking like, ‘Oh m...
Alaska U.S. District Court Judge Joshua Kindred resigned after a federal judicial council determined he had “sexualized relationship” with a clerk, lied about it to a senior judge and investigators, and maintained a hostile workplace for law clerks. Kindred resigned effective July 8, after the judicial council for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals requested his resignation in a May 23 order. Kindred was nominated by President Donald Trump in November 2019 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in February 2020. The order followed the work of a s...
The federal government has awarded more than $5 million in grants to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute to help the state agency find new ways and new places to sell fish. Of the federal money, over $4 million is from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Regional Agriculture Promotion Program, known as RAPP. That money will be used in specific areas of the state to help improve international markets, said Greg Smith, an ASMI spokesperson. “The timing of the RAPP funds is well-aligned with the Alaska seafood industry’s needs to combat numer...
A federal judge on July 8 sentenced two members of a Washington state family for selling more than $1 million of Filipino-made products which were marketed as authentic “Alaska Native produced artwork.” The scheme involved two Ketchikan shops for about five years, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska. The family members were ordered to pay restitution, complete home confinement and community service, and write apology letters for violating the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act (IACA). Glenda Tiglao Rodrigo, 46, w...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy on July 11 signed into law a bill originally aimed at curbing the meteoric rise in opioid overdoses in the state, but which turned into comprehensive crime legislation that Alaska lawmakers approved in the final hours of the legislative session. Lawmakers built the wide-ranging law around Dunleavy’s proposal to increase penalties for fentanyl and methamphetamine dealers. The law also directs the state to look into why minority groups are overrepresented in the prison system, creates the crime of assault in front of a child, t...
