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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...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Alaska’s human rights commission has reversed an earlier policy and now is only investigating LGBTQ discrimination complaints related to workplace discrimination and not for other categories like housing and financing. The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica reported the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights deleted language from its website promising equal protections for transgender and gay Alaskans against most categories of discrimination. It also began refusing to investigate complaints. The commission is only accepting...
The Biden administration on Monday approved an $8 billion oil development on Alaska’s North Slope. ConocoPhillips’ Willow prospect in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska is expected to be one of the largest oil fields developed in the state in decades and could produce oil for 30 years. The administration’s decision is not likely to end the debate, however, with litigation expected from environmental groups. Depending on litigation, first oil could flow before the end of the decade. Peak production, estimated at 180,000 barrels of oil a day...
Haines police have connected a suspect to a Senior Center break-in after locating stolen tightly folded, pyramid-shaped $2 bills that had decorated a windowsill and were later spent at the local pot shop. "They busted out the window, ransacked the office and took all the donation money, plus the money that was in my drawer," said Senior Center manager Cari O'Daniel. She said the burglar stole between $300 to $400, personal checks, and 21 of the $2 bills folded into pyramid shapes that decorated...
“Plastic is a wonderful product because it lasts. It’s also a really horrible product because it lasts,” Haines Friends of Recycling board chair Melissa Aronson said, standing in the operation’s warehouse. In a shipping container outside, more than seven tons of plastic waits to be sent to Seattle for recycling. The nonprofit has been stockpiling plastic since October 2021, as the market for selling recycled plastic is practically nonexistent, Aronson said. Haines usually sends one load of plastic to Seattle each year. Juneau’s municipal...
Newly appointed Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher said last Thursday that she was considering severing ties with a nonprofit that helps maintain voter rolls nationwide, after several Republican-led states announced earlier this month their intention to pull out of the effort. Beecher told state lawmakers she was evaluating Alaska’s membership in the organization during a presentation to the Senate State Affairs Committee. She cited the cost of the program as a reason for leaving despite the benefits it provides. Her c...
Crystal Kaakeeyáa Rose Demientieff Worl is a Tlingit, Athabascan and Filipino artist and co-owner of Trickster Company in Juneau. And a postage stamp designer, too. On March 24, she will attend the Art of the Skateboard U.S. Postal Service stamp release in Phoenix, at the Desert West Skatepark. Worl's stamp is featured with three other skateboard stamps selected for the honor. "It's so cool to be in this collective of artists. I didn't know about the artists before and then we've been talking to...
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Environmental groups and a Native American tribe have accused the operator of a Maine hydroelectric dam of not fulfilling its obligation to protect the country’s last remaining Atlantic salmon river run. The last wild Atlantic salmon live in a group of rivers in Maine and have been listed under the Endangered Species Act since 2000. The Penobscot River, a 109-mile-long river in the eastern part of the state is one of the most important habitats for the fish. The Penobscot is also the site of the Milford Dam, which is o...
Following criticism from Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor, the nationwide pharmacy chain Walgreens will not seek to sell the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone in Alaska, the company said earlier this month. Though abortion is legal in Alaska, Taylor was one of 20 Republican attorneys general who wrote the nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain and urged it to not sell mifepristone by mail. The attorneys general said they disagree with a Biden administration analysis approving the sale and distribution of the drug through the mail and by c...
Alaska's rugged and frigid Interior, where it can get as cold as minus 50 Fahrenheit, is not the place you'd expect to find an electric school bus. But here is Bus No. 50, quietly traversing about 40 miles of snowy and icy roads each day in Tok, shuttling students to school not far from the Canadian border. It works OK on the daily route. But cold temperatures rob electric vehicle batteries of traveling range, so No. 50 can't go on longer field trips, or to Anchorage or Fairbanks. It's a...
A state House committee last week held its first hearing on a bill intended to settle the Legislature’s biggest annual political battle: The amount of the Permanent Fund dividend. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Dan Ortiz, who represents Ketchikan, Wrangell and Metlakatla, would amend state law so that 75% of the annual draw on Permanent Fund earnings goes toward paying for schools and other public services, with 25% designated for the PFD. “Tonight, we’re going to open a can of worms,” Chairman Ben Carpenter, of Nikiski, said at the March 1 meeti...
A scammer stole nearly $270,000 from the Juneau School District this fall — and it’s unlikely the district will recover the money. In a memo shared with the City and Borough of Juneau Finance Committee at its March 1 meeting, Finance Director Jeff Rogers provided details of the fraud and information shared with him in early December by the school district. A person posing as a vendor for the district asked staff for a change to the company’s direct-deposit information using a spoofed email address made to look as though it belonged to the v...
Alaska Airlines will paint over "Salmon Thirty Salmon," the custom Boeing 737 that looks like a 129-foot-long Alaska king salmon, the company confirmed Feb. 27. Tim Thompson, director of public relations and community marketing for the airline, confirmed that the plane will be painted over after a final ceremonial flight on April 17 - which is scheduled to stop in Wrangell. That will be Flight 65, the daily Southeast Alaska "milk run" that travels from Seattle to Anchorage with stops in...