Sorted by date Results 258 - 282 of 1769
For the second time in two years, the Alaska Legislature has passed a bill requiring a phase-out of firefighting foams with contaminants called “forever chemicals.” The chemicals, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances that are commonly known as PFAS, have become notorious for their persistence and widespread presence in the environment. Known for their resistance to flames and degradation, PFAS chemicals — which number in the thousands — have been used since the 1950s in a wide variety of products, from consumer goods like clothing and cookware t...
Alaska lawmakers have overwhelmingly voted to support a federal proposal that would investigate and document the forced assimilation of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children in government-funded boarding schools. The legislative resolution acknowledges the trauma Indian boarding schools inflicted on Indigenous communities in Alaska and across the country, said the bill’s sponsor, Bethel Rep. CJ McCormick. There were more than 100 government-funded, church-run Alaska Native boarding schools in Alaska from the late 1800s t...
Alaska bar patrons will see new signs warning about the link between alcohol and cancer, and women at elevated risk for breast cancer will no longer have to pay extra money for more detailed examinations that go beyond routine mammograms, if bills passed by the Legislature are signed by the governor. Both measures were proposed initially in stand-alone legislation but wound up combined with related bills that passed late in the session and now await the governor’s decision. The proposal for signs warning about the alcohol-cancer link was o...
Lawmakers have sent to the governor legislation that would increase insurance coverage for birth control. A large bipartisan majority of the Senate approved the measure on May 9. Alaskans may access up to 12 months of contraceptives at a time and without a co-pay from pharmacies in the state if Gov. Mike Dunleavy signs the bill into law. The House approved Senate amendments to the bill on May 10. House Bill 17 requires health insurance companies to cover contraceptives without a co-payment and to retroactively cover existing prescriptions when...
State lawmakers have added protections to address the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people in Alaska, a move celebrated by activists who have devoted years to a campaign for equity. Senate Bill 151 passed with a combined 57-1 vote earlier this month. Under the new law, the state must employ two full-time, dedicated investigators to pursue cold cases and must include cultural training in police officer training. It also establishes a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Review Commission and requires that state public safety...
The Alaska Legislature passed a couple of bills aimed at improving health care services. The measures are now headed to Gov. Mike Dunleavy for his consideration. House Bill 228 would set up a state task force to recommend regulations for use of psychedelic medicines that the federal government is expected to approve soon. The first of those medicines expected to be approved, called MDMA, is considered useful for treating post-traumatic stress disorder. Approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is anticipated within months. Anchorage Sen...
The Alaska Legislature has approved the state budget with a Permanent Fund dividend and bonus of about $1,655 per recipient. The exact figure this fall will depend on the number of approved applicants. The Legislature finished work and adjourned May 15. As has been the case the past several years, the amount of the annual payment was debated at length. Last year, senators wrote the budget so that if oil prices exceeded what the state needed to pay its bills, some of that extra revenue would be reserved for an “energy relief” payment att...
The 33rd Alaska Legislature came to a shuddering but active end early Thursday morning, May 16, as lawmakers passed the state’s annual budget and several high-profile bills. While legislators met their short-term goals, they didn’t hit some lawmakers’ big targets, including a long-term plan to bring state finances into order, significant changes to the state education system or a revival of a pension program for public employees. While the budget includes a one-time increase in K-12 school funding, legislators didn’t permanently raise the per...
A U.S. Coast Guard marine casualty investigation into the capsizing of a charter fishing boat and the death of all five aboard on May 28, 2023, near Sitka has determined that the Awakin likely capsized after its well deck flooded in rough seas. The investigators cited the skipper’s decision to steer close to Low Island as a precipitating factor in the sinking. They also took note that the boat had no life raft or automatic emergency beacon. The first alert about the emergency was a call to the Coast Guard from the Kingfisher Lodge reporting o...
Families who use Alaska’s homeschool program will soon have clarity on how they may spend their annual allotments of state money. Lawmakers directed the Alaska Board of Education to write temporary regulations for the state’s correspondence school program that comply with the state’s constitution. The law, passed on the last day of the legislative session May 15, also requires that the education department begin monitoring allotment spending for the first time in a decade. House and Senate members approved the bill unanimously. The move comes...
Alaska Airlines has launched a $60 million plan to improve its terminals and other facilities around the state over the next few years. The airline is also expanding its cargo capacity to serve Alaska, company officials said May 16. The projects include upgrades and potential expansions at some of the 13 terminals owned by the airline, in some cases for the first time in decades, Marilyn Romano, the airline’s vice president of the Alaska region, said. “We’ll be taking a hard look at each one,” she said. “The details have not been finalized...
Matanuska-Susitna Borough residents will have access to free or low-cost weapons training under a new borough grant program targeted at compensating for limited local law enforcement. Officials estimate that the $75,000 grant could pay for private firearms safety training for up to 300 residents over the next year. The grant was approved in a 5-2 vote by the borough assembly this month as part of the larger approval process for the borough’s $455 million budget for 2025. The program is designed to give residents the skills to respond to t...
More Alaskans will be able to access food stamps following lawmakers’ vote to raise the income limit to qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The change comes after more than a year of extreme delays in food stamp distribution across the state that left thousands of vulnerable Alaskans without aid for months at a time, driving many into debt and inundating food pantries with food insecure families. State workers caught up on the backlog in March. Alaska will join 42 other states in using an approach called “broad-based cat...
The Alaska Legislature has passed a bill that combines underground storage of carbon dioxide, new regulation of underground storage of natural gas, state financing for new Cook Inlet natural gas development and an expansion of the state’s geothermal energy program. The measure, House Bill 50, sets up a regulatory and commercial framework for Alaska to stash carbon gases that would otherwise stream into the atmosphere, where they reinforce the greenhouse layer that is heating the planet. The bill started as one in a pair introduced last year b...
The 649-foot Seabourn Odyssey dropped anchor just off Klawock on May 6, marking a new era of cruise ship tourism on Prince of Wales Island. About 3,700 people could visit Klawock and Craig this summer by way of three different cruise ships making a total of six stops. The Seabourn Cruise Lines ship was the first to ever visit the Port of Klawock and brought about 300 passengers to Prince of Wales near the end of a 43-day, one-way voyage from Hong Kong to Vancouver, British Columbia, that included stops in Korea and Japan, as well as Alaska...
The Ketchikan Gateway Borough is working to recover a $625,125 electronic payment that was sent to a fake vendor account on May 3, according to Borough Manager Ruben Duran. The case is under investigation by the FBI, and a claim has been filed with the borough’s insurer, Duran said. The borough has made arrangements to pay the real vendor with a check via certified mail. Duran provided an update to the borough assembly on May 6, followed by an interview with the Ketchikan Daily News on May 8. The borough had intended to pay the contractor on th...
Lawmakers have added four Alaska Native languages to the state’s official language tally and renamed the council that advocates for their survival and revitalization. Members of the Senate approved their version of House Bill 26 with a unanimous vote on May 6. State representatives concurred with the changes on May 10, which means it goes to Gov. Mike Dunleavy next. The House passed the original bill, sponsored by Juneau Rep. Andi Story, last year with a 37-1 vote. Wasilla Republican Rep. David Eastman was the lone no vote. In addition to a...
A plan to grant special law enforcement powers to Chickaloon tribal police officers has been put on indefinite hold because state public safety officials feared it could lead to altercations between tribal officers and nontribal members, officials said May 6. The pilot plan, which was to be in place by mid-June, would have allowed Chickaloon police officers to enforce certain state laws and arrest members of the general public in a roughly 68-square-mile area near Sutton, northeast of Anchorage. It was designed to augment state trooper...
The Alaska Legislature has approved creating a task force to make policy recommendations to help the beleaguered commercial fishing industry. The Senate unanimously approved the resolution on Sunday, May 12, to establish the task force. There was only one no vote in the House, from Wasilla Rep. David Eastman. The task force is modeled off another legislative task force created more than 20 years ago to help the salmon industry. At the time, salmon fishermen were struggling with the pain of low prices and competition with farmed salmon....
With Alaska’s drug overdose deaths surging, state leaders on May 6 kicked off a new campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of the drug that caused most of them: fentanyl. The new campaign, called “One Pill Can Kill,” is national and spearheaded by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal agencies. But it has special meaning in Alaska, which last year had a record-high total of overdose deaths. Preliminary numbers show that 342 Alaskans died from overdoses in 2023, a 40% increase over 2022 totals, according to the state...
The Alaska Legislature voted May 7 to remove Bob Griffin from the state school board amid bipartisan unhappiness over his perceived political actions as a board member. The vote came amid the Legislature’s annual vote on gubernatorial nominees. Legislators approved 78 of the 81 people subject to legislative confirmation during a joint session of the state House and Senate. They rejected Griffin for a second term on the board. Legislators also rejected Anchorage radio host Mike Porcaro as a new appointee to the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commiss...
Before an advanced Tlingít language class, Raven Svenson and her classmate discussed how to conjugate the verb "boil" in the context of cooking. The University of Alaska Southeast class in Juneau was headed into finals last week and students were preparing for dialogues that will test their conversational skills. Professor X̱'unei Lance Twitchell walked in and suggested the specific verb for cooking meat by boiling. He answered a few questions in English, then switched to Tlingít as he st...
State laws allowing correspondence students to use public funds at private and religious schools will remain in place through the end of June, but not after, an Anchorage Superior Court judge ordered May 2. Judge Adolf Zeman last month struck down two statutes governing Alaska’s correspondence programs, finding that they violated a state constitutional prohibition on spending public funds at private institutions. The decision affect hundreds or thousands of correspondence students across the state, depending on how the Legislature and Gov. Mike...
A neighborhood of historic Sitka houses on Katlian and Kaagwaantaan streets, the Sitka Tlingit Clan Houses, has been selected by the National Trust for Historic Preservation for inclusion in the 2024 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. The neighborhood was established by the Tlingit in the 1820s to trade with Russians living inside the adjacent stockaded New Archangel settlement. Russian administrators recognized their settlement was dependent on trade with the Tlingit village for survival. Scores of clan houses lined the w...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — It was a frigid winter morning when authorities found a Native American man dead on a remote gravel road in western New Mexico. He was lying on his side, with only one sock on, his clothes were gone and his shoes tossed in the snow. There were trails of blood on both sides of his body and it appeared he had been struck in the head. Investigators retraced the man’s steps, gathering security camera footage that showed him walking near a convenience store miles away in Gallup, an economic hub in an otherwise rural area bor...