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Alaska is expected to gain 5,400 jobs in 2024, an increase of 1.7% over the past year and enough to nudge total state employment above 2019 levels for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, according to the newly published annual forecast from the Alaska Department of Labor. The job outlook was published in the January issue of the department’s monthly research magazine, Alaska Economic Trends. The “major catalyst” for job growth, the forecast said, will be big projects: federally funded infrastructure projects and minin...
Transgender girls in Alaska are now banned from competing on girls school sports teams. The new rule took effect in November. The board of the Alaska School Activities Association — which regulates school sports in the state — voted 5-3 in October to adopt the rule affecting transgender girls. The rule was required by the state Board of Education, which voted in August to require that the association create a sports division limited to students who are assigned female at birth. That excludes transgender girls. More than half of U.S. states hav...
Just like many other Alaska communities, the service provider in Ketchikan is dropping cable TV and moving to streaming. The Ketchikan Public Utilities Telecommunications Division has announced it will stop offering cable television services in September 2024. The city-owned utility said the changing landscape of how people view their video entertainment was a big factor in the decision, with streaming services largely taking over while cable TV subscriptions have declined. The decision not only was made in response to the drop in cable TV...
Alaska’s campaign ethics commission found that opponents of ranked-choice voting violated the state’s campaign ethics laws for months by funneling most of their funding through a tax-exempt church and inaccurately reporting their funding to the state. In a decision released Jan. 3, the Alaska Public Offices Commission issued more than $94,000 in fines against groups working to repeal Alaska’s voting system. Former Alaska Attorney General Kevin Clarkson, who represents the opponents of ranked-choice voting fined by the commission, said they...
What if prized rare earth elements could be extracted from seaweed, avoiding the need to dig into the ground for the materials used in technology and renewable-energy equipment? That question will be addressed by a new project to examine whether those elements can be found in seaweed growing in the waters of Southeast Alaska. The University of Alaska Fairbanks-led project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of a broader push to find and produce for domestic rare earth elements. It is one of three department-funded “algal m...
Water is warming up at the Klawock River Hatchery on Prince of Wales Island, a Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association facility that fertilizes and incubates 5 million coho eggs each year using Klawock River water. Hatchery manager Troy Liske said water flowing by the hatchery in 2023 was warmer by an average of 3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit than in years past. Warmer water temperatures are speeding up the salmon development process and changing the dynamics of hatchery work, which could pose future challenges, Liske said. SSRAA has...
The Alaska Police Standards Council has voted down a regulation change that would have allowed the state to hire corrections officers as young as 18 years old — the current minimum age is 21. The Department of Corrections floated the proposal as a tool to combat its staff shortage, insufficient applicant pool and high vacancy rate. In September, the department reported more than 100 open positions for prison officers and a 30% decrease in applications compared to the previous year. Most members of the council wanted to accept the new r...
Russian-caught pollock, cod, salmon and crab that is processed in China will no longer be legally allowed in U.S. markets, under an executive order issued Dec. 22 by President Joe Biden. The action seeks to close a loophole that the Russian seafood industry was able to use to skirt import sanctions put in place in 2022 in response to the invasion of Ukraine. The ban is now extended to any seafood caught in Russian waters or by Russian-flagged vessels, regardless whether the seafood has been “incorporated or substantially transformed into o...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The U.S. government is entering a new era of collaboration with Native American and Alaska Native leaders in managing public lands and other resources, with top federal officials saying that incorporating more Indigenous knowledge into decision-making can help spur conservation and combat climate change. Federal emergency managers on Dec. 7 also announced updates to recovery policies to aid tribal communities in the repair or rebuilding of traditional homes or ceremonial buildings after a series of wildfires, floods and o...
The Alaska Division of Public Assistance processed more than 2,000 food stamp applications over eight days in mid-December as it works to clear a backlog that has kept thousands of Alaskans waiting for benefits. Earlier in December, food aid was delayed by more than a month for over 12,000 Alaskans. That number was down to about 10,000 before Christmas. Division Director Deb Etheridge said the week before Christmas that her employees are on track to clear the backlog in 90 days. Etheridge said after the Christmas holiday she will reevaluate...
Sitkans received a $300 credit on their December utility bills after the city assembly voted to share some of the higher-than-expected sales tax revenues with the public. The assembly voted to spend just over $1 million on the program, distributing the money to every residential utility account in town. Sitka saw a record number of cruise ship visitors last summer, swelling the sales tax coffers but also inconveniencing residents. In passing the appropriation in November, assembly members said they wanted citizens to receive some compensation...
With a deep reduction in oil revenues expected, Alaska is on track for an almost $1 billion budget hole in the coming year that will have to be filled with money from savings, according to a spending plan presented Dec. 14 by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The governor described his budget for the year beginning next July 1 as “status quo” in most categories. “There’s no cuts in this budget,” he said during a news conference in Juneau. There are a few targeted areas with increases, however, including more staff to help process a backlog of food stamp ben...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy said education is among his top priorities in the coming fiscal year but did not include an increase to the state’s per-student funding formula, known as the base student allocation, in his proposed budget. The budget includes about $1.11 billion to fund the formula that distributes money to school districts statewide, down almost 3% from this year due to declining enrollment. Dunleavy has proposed spending almost twice as much on next year’s Permanent Fund dividend. Lawmakers this past spring approved a one-time appropriatio...
Alaskans could pay significantly more next year for mailing packages to, from and within the state with two price increases planned by the U.S. Postal Service. In an effort to reduce its projected $160 billion loss over the next 10 years, the Postal Service announced it is planning a 5.7% average nationwide price hike in 2024 for some shipping options. Customers using USPS Ground Advantage for shipping within Alaska would see a 9.2% average increase. The price increases are set to take effect Jan. 21, but some Alaska mailing rates from Outside...
SEATTLE (AP) — The U.S. government said Dec. 14 it plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next decade to help recover depleted salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest, and that it will help figure out how to offset the loss of hydropower, transportation and other benefits provided by four controversial dams on the Snake River, should Congress ever agree to breach them. President Joe Biden’s administration stopped short of calling for the removal of the dams to save the fish, but Northwest tribes and conservationists who have long sou...
TACOMA, Wash. — The 13 largest U.S. tire manufacturers are facing a lawsuit from a pair of California commercial fishing organizations that could force the companies to stop using a chemical added to almost every tire because it kills migrating salmon. Also found in footwear, synthetic turf and playground equipment, the rubber preservative 6PPD has been used in tires for 60 years. As tires wear, tiny particles of rubber are left behind on roads and parking lots, breaking down into a byproduct, 6PPD-quinone, that is deadly to salmon, s...
The collapse of Western Alaska salmon runs has been among the most consequential climate change impacts in the rapidly warming Arctic over the past two years, according to an annual report assembled by a federal agency. The 2023 Arctic Report Card, released Dec. 12 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, includes a special chapter on Alaska salmon among its updates to sea ice, air temperature and permafrost conditions in a region of the world that is warming up to four times as fast as the global average. Western Alaska salmon...
A major source of funding for Alaska’s domestic violence response has decreased significantly the past five years, leaving a multimillion-dollar hole in the budget for services. That reduction, paired with the end of federal pandemic relief money and high rates of inflation, has domestic violence advocates scrambling to adequately fund the groups that keep one of the state’s most vulnerable populations safe. Alaska’s Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, the group that manages state and federal funding for domestic violence progr...
When Kara Carlson experienced sexual assault as a teenager, she said it was traumatic but not shocking: “I was the last of my friends to experience sexual violence,” she said. “We live in this world where you have to prepare women for surviving trauma.” She now runs the women’s emergency shelter in Fairbanks, the Interior Alaska Center for Non-Violent Living, where she has worked for nearly two decades. She has seen domestic and sexual violence affect generations of Alaskans. “I’ve been here long enough that I’ve seen moms come in, I’ve seen th...
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has sent a letter to Gov. Mike Dunleavy, urging him to include $23 million in his coming budget for the replacement of a state ferry. Dunleavy spokesperson Jessica Bowers declined to say whether the governor’s draft budget — due by Friday, Dec. 15 — would include the matching funds needed to secure a $92 million federal funding award that Murkowski announced last month. The Alaska Marine Highway system has already been promised $416 million in federal funds through the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act....
The Biden administration could jump into a high-profile lawsuit in which Metlakatla is fighting with Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration about tribal citizens’ fishing rights. The U.S. Department of Justice said in a filing Dec. 5 that it’s considering submitting a friend-of-the-court brief in the dispute between the state and the Metlakatla Indian Community, a tribal government. The three-year-old Metlakatla lawsuit, filed by the tribal government against the state, centers on the extent of fishing rights granted to the community’s members...
Alaska Trollers Association Board President Matt Donohoe said he’s disappointed by the state Board of Fisheries’ decision that he believes will cause continued harm to commercial trollers in Southeast. “I think residents of Alaska, sport and commercial fishermen, suffered a terrible blow by the Board of Fisheries who favored out-of-state residents over residents,” Donohoe said of the board’s Dec. 1 decision not to more tightly enforce the catch allocation for sport anglers. The growing charter boat industry was the focus of the proposed...
As Wrangell continues to deal with the landslide that killed six people, Alaskans face a long-term challenge: How to prevent tragedies in the future as mountainous regions of the state become more unstable. “These landslides affecting Alaskans are going to keep happening, and we need to get out in front of them,” said Gabriel Wolken, manager of the climate and cryosphere hazards program at the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys. The Nov. 20 landslide in Wrangell was the third deadly and rain-triggered landslide in Sou...
The Alaska Board of Fisheries voted 4-2 against requiring in-season management to more effectively hold the sport fishery chinook catch within its harvest limit. The board voted on Friday, Dec. 1, at its meeting in Homer, which was primarily devoted to Southcentral fisheries issues. The controversial proposal would have tightened in-season management of the Southeast chinook catch to better guard against resident and nonresident sport fishermen exceeding their share of the overall sport and commercial harvest. The proposal’s intent was to b...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced it expects Southeast Alaska commercial fishermen next year will harvest around 19 million pink salmon — close to an average number based on 63 years of commercial harvest data collected since Alaska became a state. The department’s forecast, released in November, predicts a pink salmon catch of between 12 million and 32 million fish. Pink salmon harvest varies greatly from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years, and the commercial catch in the 10 most recent even years has averaged 21 mil...