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A federal rule that prevented states from removing people from Medicaid rolls during the pandemic ended last week and some may lose health coverage if they no longer meet low-income guidelines, an official at SEARHC offices in Sitka said. However, those who do lose Medicaid will have a special enrollment period to get health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, said Susan Briles, patient health benefits manager at SEARHC. The federal program subsidizes insurance premiums based on an individual’s income. Before the 2020 pandemic r...
The governor last Friday signed an emergency funding bill to help resolve the crisis-level backlog of food stamp applications from needy Alaskans. The Legislature had approved the measure days earlier. The budget bill includes $3.1 million for overtime pay and to hire about 30 new employees to help with the applications backlog at the Division of Public Assistance, which processes food stamps and other benefits including Medicaid. Deb Etheridge, the division’s director, told lawmakers that the end of the backlog that has affected at least 8...
A state senator wants to direct a larger share of filing fees paid to the court system toward a nonprofit legal aid organization that helps several thousand Alaskans a year with their domestic violence, family law, housing, elder advocacy and other cases. The 56-year-old Alaska Legal Services Corp. “is part of our social safety net,” helping the most vulnerable community members, particularly survivors of domestic violence, said Anchorage Sen. Forrest Dunbar, sponsor of the legislation. Senate Bill 104 would amend state law to direct up to 25%...
The Alaska House of Representatives could vote this week or next on a bill that would block a 67% pay raise for state legislators and a 20% raise for the governor and top members of the executive branch. Passage of the bill is anticipated — multiple members of the House Republican-led majority coalition and Democratic-led minority have already expressed their support of the idea — but leading members of the Senate said the idea is dead on arrival when it crosses the building and arrives in their chamber. Under state law, the raises will go ahe...
Cutting taxes for businesses while also imposing a 2% sales tax on Alaskans got side-by-side consideration last week as part of one legislator’s concept of a fiscal plan. Legislators have been discussing various forms of a long-term fiscal plan for years as the state has faced budget deficits much of the past three decades. A state sales tax and large corporate tax cut were proposed by Rep. Ben Carpenter, a Nikiski Republican who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. He emphasized at a committee hearing on March 29 that while a state s...
More than 100 Alaskans spoke out against a “parental rights” bill proposed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, in a wave of opposition to the legislation that many said would harm already vulnerable transgender youths. Of the 119 Alaskans who spoke during the nearly five-hour hearing held last Thursday evening by the House Education Committee, 103 opposed the bill and only 16 were in favor of it. Apayauq Reitan, the first openly transgender woman to run the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, was one of many gender nonconforming individuals who said the bill wou...
ANCHORAGE — A judge has dismissed a sex abuse case against former acting Alaska Attorney General Clyde “Ed” Sniffen, citing the statute of limitations that were in place when the alleged abuse happened more than 30 years ago. The case, thrown out on Friday, involved allegations that Sniffen, now 58, sexually abused a then-17-year-old student in 1991 when he was 27 and was the alleged victim’s coach of her high school’s mock trial competition team in Anchorage. Sniffen had pleaded not guilty. Alaska does not currently have a statute of limita...
Bans on commercial fishing in U.S. and international Arctic waters have been lauded as admirable preemptive actions that protect vulnerable resources before they are damaged by exploitation. But now the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is preparing for a time when the 14-year-old moratorium on commercial fishing in federal Arctic waters is lifted. The department is seeking $1 million in state general funds and $2 million in federal funds to work on research to better understand those Arctic waters in the event that commercial fisheries are co...
JUNEAU (AP) — Two Southeast Alaska men face charges in the beating death of a man who was attacked because of a social media post, according to an investigator’s affidavit. Moses S. Blanchard, 22, and Blaise A. Dilts, 21, of Klawock, face charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter and burglary in the death of 80-year-old Lincoln Peratrovich, according to state court records. The two men made their first appearance in court in Klawock on March 22. The investigation is being conducted by the Alaska Bureau of Investigation, which falls und...
The Alaska House advanced a targeted spending bill March 22, intended to address the state’s unprecedented backlog of unanswered applications for food stamp benefits and a shortage of public defenders in criminal cases. The budget bill is being fast-tracked through the Legislature so that the money can be made available quickly. It contains provisions to draw from the $2.3 billion Constitutional Budget Reserve — the state’s main savings account — to spend a maximum of $115 million for unanticipated spending needs for the fiscal year that en...
The Alaska Legislature is preparing to examine two new tax proposals after a state revenue forecast showed significant long-term budget deficits even with a sharply reduced Permanent Fund dividend. One proposal, introduced Friday by Anchorage Democrat Sen. Bill Wielechowski, would cut a popular oil production tax credit and expand the applicability of the state’s corporate income tax to privately owned oil and gas producers. The second proposal, filed Monday by Nikiski Republican Rep. Ben Carpenter, would impose a 2% state sales tax. The s...
JUNEAU — Falling oil prices are projected to slice $925 million from state revenues this year and next, bolstering the argument of legislators who support a smaller Permanent Fund dividend this fall and the years beyond. More immediately, lower oil prices have torn big holes in the state budget. The Department of Revenue on March 21 released new estimates showing a deficit of about $220 million in the fiscal year that ends June 30. Legislators have agreed to use savings to fill this year’s deficit by spending from the state’s Const...
Alaska legislators will get a 67% pay raise next January — from $50,000 to $84,000 a year — and the governor and state department heads will receive a 20% boost effective July 1. The wage hikes come after Gov. Mike Dunleavy replaced an independent salary commission that was unable to agree on a pay hike for lawmakers, with the new members convening on short notice to recommend the raises. An entirely new five-member commission met March 15 and added the legislators’ pay increase to an earlier recommendation that the governor, lieutenant governo...
Some state lawmakers have signaled their opposition to the nomination of the leader of a conservative advocacy organization to serve on the University of Alaska Board of Regents. Bethany Marcum is executive director of the Alaska Policy Forum, which advocates for limiting government and reducing state spending, including on education. Gov. Mike Dunleavy nominated Marcum for the board earlier this year. Her appointment is subject to confirmation by the entire Legislature, which will vote on the governor’s nominations in April or May. The H...
Dozens of Alaskans testified in the state Capitol on March 20, urging lawmakers to advance a new anti-discrimination measure that would protect Alaskans from being denied housing or access to public accommodations because of their sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. House Bill 99, from Anchorage Rep. Jennifer Armstrong, is being considered by the House Labor and Commerce Committee, which heard two hours of public testimony, almost entirely in support of the idea. Members of the committee have received more than 1,000 emails — m...
Levi Foster of Anchorage said it’s taken him decades to recover from the “emotional abuse and manipulation” he experienced while he was subjected to conversion therapy, the largely discredited practice that attempts to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation. He said that experience is what led him, and other survivors and advocates, to speak in front of the state House Health and Social Services committee on March 16 in support of a bill sponsored by Juneau Rep. Sara Hannan that would ban licensed physicians, psychia...
A crowded field of proposals to address the annual debate over the amount of the Permanent Fund dividend became even more so on Friday as the Senate Finance Committee proposed a new formula for setting the payment. In the first 60 days of the 2023 legislative session, lawmakers have introduced six different proposals to set a new dividend formula in either state law or the constitution. Four other bills or resolutions would substantially affect the amount of money available for dividends without specifically setting a new formula. Legislators...
The Senate Education Committee on March 13 advanced a bill to increase state funding for public schools, clearing the bill’s first legislative hurdle. The bill to increase the base student allocation, the per-student formula used to calculate school funding, heads next to the Senate Finance Committee. The Senate bipartisan majority has named increasing public school funding as one of their top goals for the legislative session, and the measure has support from a broad coalition of education advocacy groups who are warning that districts will b...
The Alaska Marine Highway System is short more than 100 new crew to safely and dependably put the Kennicott to sea. Without enough onboard workers, the state ferry system will start the summer schedule in six weeks with its second-largest operable ship tied up for lack of crew. Though management has said they could put the Kennicott into service if they can hire enough new employees, filling all the vacancies would represent more than a 20% gain in current ferry system crew numbers, setting a very high hurdle to untie the ship this summer. The...
In an unannounced move, the State Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution March 14 that urges the Alaska Department of Education to limit the participation of transgender girls in girls school sports. The resolution, which is non-binding, encourages the department to adopt a policy that would ban transgender girls from competing alongside girls who are cisgender — meaning their gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth — in school sports. The resolution asks the department to create two sports divisions: one exc...
The first legislative hearing on Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s proposal to restrict discussion of sex and gender in schools included testimony from only two invited public guests, both supportive of the measure. The bill, which Senate leaders say is unlikely to pass that chamber, got enthusiastic backing from those invited to testify during the House Education Committee meeting March 13. Aside from two top state Department of Education officials who provided details of the bill, testimony was limited to two retired teachers supportive of conservative c...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — The Biden administration’s approval last week of the biggest oil drilling project in Alaska in decades promises to widen a rift among Alaska Natives, with some saying that oil money can’t counter the damages caused by climate change and others defending the project as economically vital. Two lawsuits filed almost immediately by environmentalists and one Alaska Native group are likely to exacerbate tensions that have built up over years of debate about ConocoPhillips’ Willow project. Many communities on Alaska’s North Slope cel...
Conservation groups have asked a federal judge for a preliminary decision to stop construction work this winter at the Willow oil field on Alaska’s North Slope, days after the Biden administration approved the $8 billion project. ConocoPhillips had begun building an ice road but agreed to delay activity associated with gravel mining and road building — putting dozens of jobs on hold — while the court considers the request, according to paperwork filed in the case. The Biden administration early last week approved the controversial proje...
Alaska Natives continued to have the world’s highest rates of colorectal cancer as of 2018, and case rates failed to decline significantly for the two decades leading up to that year, according to a newly published study. The study, by experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, compared colorectal cancer rates among Alaska Natives with those of other populations in Alaska, the Lower 48 and other parts of the world. The 2018 colorectal cancer rate for Alaska Natives was 61.9 per 10...
While education advocates continue to push for increased state funding to Alaska public schools, Gov. Mike Dunleavy last week opted to introduce proposals that would limit sexual education in schools and impose new requirements on gender-nonconforming students. The governor at his March 7 news conference did not propose any increase in the state’s per-student funding formula for school districts, essentially unchanged in six years, though he did ask legislative approval of retention bonuses for teachers. Most legislators have said an i...