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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...
Officials from the state Division of Public Assistance said its staff has worked through the backlog of applications for food stamps that stressed Alaska families for more than a year. But that success came at the cost of what officials are calling a “new” backlog. Division Director Deb Etheridge took over leadership in the midst of the backlog and said getting through the old backlog is a success. “We’ve got to celebrate those wins and the staff feel really good about it,” Etheridge said. The division got through the backlog two months fa...
After a period when COVID-19 restrictions halted the spread of other respiratory diseases, Alaska had a big increase in influenza cases last fall and winter, state data shows. The overall influenza case load during the 2022-23 season was much higher than in prior years, reports a new bulletin issued by the epidemiology section of the Alaska Division of Public Health. Most notably, cases spiked much earlier in the season, in November and December, before dropping. There were five influenza deaths over the season, all among adults, according to...
More than half of Alaskans born within the state have moved away, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. A state’s ability to retain Alaska-born residents is an indicator of its economic health and attractiveness, and the state ranked near the bottom of the analysis conducted by University of North Florida professor Madeline Zavodny and two experts at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Using data from the Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey, they found Alaska ret...
A pair of Juneau teachers needed good news after they lost nearly all their possessions when their house collapsed last month into the Mendenhall River swollen by a glacial-outburst flood and their cat went missing. Elizabeth Wilkins was holding onto hope that if any animal would survive the house falling into the river on Aug. 5, it would be Leo, the couple's resilient big-eyed, black-and-white cat who shows no fear of bears. "I knew that he's pretty smart, and so I felt pretty confident that h...
More than half-a-million cruise ship tourists will have visited Sitka this summer — a record number — and slightly more are expected next year, Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal owner Chris McGraw told an audience at the online chamber of commerce meeting Sept. 6. He said it looks like the end-of-summer number will total 271 cruise ship stops in Sitka, which includes vessels that pull into his terminal and others that anchor offshore and lighter their passengers to city facilities. He estimates the year’s traffic will total 514,000 passengers at hi...
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...
A year after an effort that failed to attract any bidders, the state is again looking to hire a shipyard to build a replacement for the ferry Tustumena. Design work is still not complete, however. The new ferry, which will mostly serve Gulf of Alaska communities, is expected to cost almost $325 million, with the federal government picking up much of the cost. It would give Alaska its first new mainline ferry in decades. In a meeting with the Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board on Aug. 25,...
A Washington state resident was sentenced last week to two years in federal prison for selling fake Alaska Native artwork in Ketchikan. Cristobal “Cris” Magno Rodrigo, 59, pleaded guilty in April to one federal count of conspiracy and another count of misrepresentation of Indian-produced goods and products. Alaska U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Burgess sentenced Rodrigo on Aug. 28 to serve two years in federal prison, the longest a defendant has received for any Indian Arts and Crafts Act violation in the U.S., according to the Indian Art...
The Southeast king salmon troll fishery opened Friday, Sept. 1, for the third time this summer, though relatively few fish remain in this year’s allocation, the Department of Fish and Game announced. With only about 3,200 kings remaining in the season quota, Fish and Game said the 10-day opening will be a rare “limited harvest fishery,” with each permit holder allowed to take only nine chinook. As a limited fishery, it comes with a few additional rules as well. Fish kept for personal use will count toward the commercial harvest limit, and k...
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...
On a visit to Alaska last month, the leader of the national community service agency AmeriCorps said the group plans to increase its investment in the state. AmeriCorps received an additional billion dollars for its nationwide budget as part of the American Rescue Plan in 2021. Last year, more than 400 people worked or volunteered with AmeriCorps in Alaska. The federal program spent more than $4.3 million in the state by funding community-led initiatives in schools, youth centers, health clinics and shelters. AmeriCorps CEO Michael Smith said...
Ketchikan’s police chief returned to the job last month after a felony assault charge against him stemming from an off-duty altercation at a restaurant was dismissed by a Ketchikan Superior Court judge in mid-August. Jeffrey Walls, 47, was indicted in December on six criminal charges including assault. He spent more than eight months on paid administrative leave as the case proceeded, and as city officials conducted an internal review. Walls remains charged with five misdemeanors for assault and reckless endangerment. The altercation took p...
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...
President Joe Biden will visit Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage on Sept. 11. Biden will participate in a ceremony at the base with members of the military, first responders and families, commemorating those who died in the 2001 terrorist attacks. He is scheduled to travel to India from Sept. 7-10 to attend a summit with other world leaders, followed by a stop in Vietnam, and will stop in Anchorage on his way back to Washington, D.C. Biden landed in Anchorage in May for a brief refueling stop en route to the G-7 Summit in Japan but...
Housing is a big concern for communities across Southeast Alaska, from Ketchikan to Skagway and every town in between. In Petersburg, the results of a community survey indicate that more than 300 housing units may need to be built or renovated over the next decade. The borough assembly set up the housing task force to research and address the problem. The survey results were reviewed at a task force meeting on Aug. 17, where Assembly Member Dave Kensinger said: “I think we need to figure out a way to start building more housing. It’s pre...
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...
Federal money for arts, culture and educational programs will fund the creation of two dugout canoes in Southeast Alaska. Goldbelt Heritage Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Goldbelt, the Native corporation for Juneau, will teach Alaska Native youth how to carve canoes with nearly a quarter-million dollars in grant funding from the National Park Service. The goal is to teach Tlingit culture while applying the principles of science, technology, engineering and math education to canoe making. The National Park Service awarded the grant of...
Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom has rejected a proposed legislative term-limits ballot measure, citing a Department of Law legal analysis that found the measure was likely unconstitutional. “The precedent set by the Alaska Supreme Court establishes that legislative term limits violate the Alaska Constitution,” she wrote in an Aug. 23 letter directed to the sponsors of the measure. As written, the proposed ballot measure would have limited state legislators to no more than 12 consecutive years in office and no more than 20 years in total. “I’m unhappy...
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has again rejected a request to list Southeast Alaska’s Alexander Archipelago wolves as endangered or threatened. The wolves, found in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, range among the region’s large, old trees and are a subspecies of gray wolves. Putting the wolves on the endangered species list, either as endangered or threatened, likely would have resulted in new restrictions on development, logging and construction in the region. The state of Alaska opposed the idea, which was put forward by thr...
The number of Alaskans covered by Medicaid has dropped by more than 14,000 since April, after federal protections for the health care benefits ended with expiration of the COVID-19 emergency declaration. The number losing their benefits may increase as the state continues the process of determining who still meets eligibility requirements — the reviews were halted during the national emergency declaration. And while many Alaskans are losing their coverage or waiting to hear if they will, the state’s Health Department continues working to cle...
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...