Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 1769
The Alaska Department of Revenue forecast on March 12 that the state will see a bigger budget deficit in the next fiscal year due to lower oil prices. Oil prices have dropped about $10 a barrel since early January as the market reacts to risks of U.S.-instigated trade wars, a weakened global economy and new oil supplies exceeding demand. Oil taxes and royalties are the second-largest source of general fund revenue for the state budget, behind only Permanent Fund earnings. The Alaska Legislature is facing a combined $650 million shortfall over...
Vigor Alaska, the private operator of the state-owned Ketchikan Shipyard, has been notified that the state will not extend the shipyard operating agreement with the company when the current contract expires in November. Citing less-than-full utilization of the shipyard and increasing unfunded maintenance at the facility under Vigor's management, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), which owns the facility, said in a Feb. 28 letter that it would give the company until...
Increased state investment in marketing would help the battered Alaska seafood industry seize an opportunity to improve sales within the United States, the head of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute told state lawmakers. Jeremy Woodrow, ASMI’s executive director, attempted to make his organization’s case to the state Senate Finance Committee for $10 million in state funding. The money could be put to work to promote Alaska seafood at a time when there is no competition in the domestic market from Russian seafood, which was banned from the...
A proposed 20-year plan seeking to restore the ailing Alaska Marine Highway System to a more reliable and sustainable operation calls for a major increase in funding for operations and building several new ships. The six new ferries and shoreside improvements could cost $3 billion. The draft plan also envisions an ambitious increase in service to smaller communities, including Wrangell, while shrinking the total fleet from nine ships to eight. The draft plan published Feb. 28 seeks about $3 billion in vessel and infrastructure spending, plus...
British Columbia Premier David Eby said on March 6 that he intends to introduce legislation that would place tolls on commercial trucks traveling from the Lower 48 states to Alaska through his province. Speaking at the Legislative Assembly building in Victoria, Eby said the move is one of several that he is taking in response to President Donald Trump’s erratic Canadian tariff plans. “I’m here to share that we will be introducing a new law in the coming days to respond to this historic challenge: unprecedented legislation. It will inclu...
Legislative leaders on Feb. 27 wrote to Alaska’s congressional delegation, urging them to block deep cuts to federal programs that they say would “endanger the economic prosperity and social well-being of Alaskans.” “It is our duty to inform you that the legislature cannot fix the financial havoc that is being wreaked on Alaskans by the federal government,” said Kodiak Republican Senate President Gary Stevens and House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent, in a strongly worded two-page letter. Stevens and Edgmon warned about the...
All seven members of the powerful state Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 24 proposed rewriting the payment formula in state law for the annual Permanent Fund dividend, renewing the Senate’s effort to replace an obsolete, 43-year-old law that hasn’t been followed since 2015. If signed into law, Senate Bill 109 would split the annual earnings transfer from the Alaska Permanent Fund to the state treasury: 75% of that transfer would be reserved for state services, and 25% would be used for dividends. This year, the PFD would be about $1,420 per...
Measures to raise new state revenue were introduced in the Alaska Senate on Feb. 26, including one that would substantially increase taxes on oil companies. Legislators are facing a widening deficit this year and a worsening fiscal outlook due to declining oil revenue. The Republican-led Congress is also expected to make deep cuts to programs such as Medicaid, adding to Alaska legislators’ concerns that costs will be shifted to the state. The nonpartisan Legislative Finance Division has projected that the state faces a $536 million deficit o...
As many as 100,000 Alaskans could lose health insurance if budget cuts supported by President Donald Trump and Republicans who control the U.S. House are enacted, according to Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital CEO Joe Wanner and other state health officials. The Trump administration and House Republicans are backing a spending plan that cuts Medicaid by up to $880 billion during the next decade. Wanner, during a meeting of Bartlett’s board of directors on Feb. 19, said the cut would affect 72,000 Alaskans who have been added since Med...
President Donald Trump’s recent threats to start a trade war with Canada and to turn it into the 51st U.S. state have not landed well with the populace of the sovereign nation to Alaska’s east. Canadian sports fans have hurled boos at the U.S. anthem at recent hockey and basketball games. Leaders of border towns like Windsor, Ontario, long-integrated with Detroit, have protested by pulling funds for cross-border bus service and event sponsorships. But in the far north, the historically tight bond between Alaskans and Yukoners has remained int...
The University of Alaska Board of Regents has voted to comply with recent executive orders by President Donald Trump, including removing the words “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion,” “DEI” and “affirmative action” from university websites, publications, job titles and office names. “We don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying that everyone at the university, faculty, staff, students, has equal opportunity, and is free from discrimination,” said Board Chair Ralph Seekins in a phone interview Feb. 26 explaining the action. The regents vot...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has introduced a bill that would partially reverse Alaska’s 35-year-old ban on fish farms. If it makes it into law, the bill would not allow salmon farming but would allow farming of “any bony fish belonging to the osteichthyes class.” That includes species like tilapia, catfish or carp — the world’s most widely farmed fish. The chair of the House Fisheries Committee, Kodiak Rep. Louise Stutes, disagrees with the governor’s proposal. “Alaska’s commercial fishing industry, our coastal communities and fishing families across...
Ahead of the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Alaska Republican U.S. Rep. Nick Begich III declined to say that he supports aid for the embattled eastern European nation, drawing a significant contrast between himself and the other two members of Alaska’s congressional delegation. After President Donald Trump incorrectly stated that Ukraine started the war, Alaska Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan pushed back on the president’s comments and said Russia started the war. Begich did not issue a similar rebut...
The scope of mass firings at U.S. Forest Service offices around Southeast Alaska is becoming clearer as former and current employees confirm the numbers. The agency’s public information offices have not provided any details of the dismissals. Nearly all U.S. Forest Service employees at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center in Juneau have been fired in the large-scale, ongoing purge of the federal government workforce undertaken by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, according to officials and former employees. In Petersburg,...
A federal workers union expects a total of at least 1,378 federal employees in Alaska with probationary status to be fired by the Trump administration. David Owens, a national representative with the American Federation of Government Employees, said the union did not have current numbers of those already fired as of Thursday, Feb. 20, but expects the Trump administration to fire all probationary employees. Out of the 1,378 employees, 331 are veterans, he said. He cited an Office of Personnel Management database in giving the following...
Warren Hill spent more than two decades working at the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, which spans 4 million acres of coastline, forests, lakes and glaciers in Southeast Alaska. Last summer, he was promoted to serve as maintenance supervisor, in addition to his roles as carpenter and mechanic. But because Hill was starting a new role, he was on probationary status when President Donald Trump ’s administration began firing thousands of federal workers who had less civil service protection. “I’m furious,” he said. “I am just a few years...
In a telephonic town hall Feb. 19, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the recent mass firing of probationary federal employees violated the law and lacked “respect and dignity” toward the workers who lost their jobs, which in Alaska include more than 100 employees of the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service and other agencies. In a call that drew more than 1,000 Alaskans, Murkowski also said that President Donald Trump’s efforts to withhold federal funding that had already been approved by Congress “cannot be allowed to stand.” “If we in...
In a series of hearings last week, members of the Alaska Legislature heard emotional testimony about the need for more education funding. As lawmakers consider the idea, it’s becoming increasingly clear within the Capitol that more funding for public schools will come at the expense of the Permanent Fund dividend. “The state of Alaska is probably facing its largest fiscal problem … in 30 years,” said Bethel Sen. Lyman Hoffman, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, on Feb. 11. Hoffman has been a legislator since 1987. Under the governo...
Dozens of Alaska students, parents and school board members from across the state visited the Legislature on Feb. 10, painting a picture of crowded classrooms, teacher shortages, agonizing school closures, loss of learning opportunities and uncertainty about the future. "We have cut and cut and cut, year after year after year, due to stagnant funding from the state," said Bobby Burgess, a school board member from Fairbanks. "We have trimmed the fat. We have cut into the flesh, and we are...
Almost one-quarter of the jobs in the state ferry system are unfilled, and the vacancy rate is highest among the positions that require the most training, Alaska Marine Highway System Director Craig Tornga told state lawmakers last week. Among wheelhouse positions, the vacancy rate is above 30%, he said at a House committee hearing on Feb. 11. The ferry system has been short crew for the past few years, limiting the number of vessels it can put into service and further eroding its passenger revenues. To operate the cross-gulf route between...
Passenger and vehicle traffic aboard the Alaska Marine Highway System moved slightly higher in 2024 from 2023, but still is less than half its peak from the early 1990s. The state ferries carried just over 185,000 passengers and about 65,000 vehicles last year on its routes stretching from Southeast to Prince William Sound and into several Gulf of Alaska coastal communities. That’s down from more than 400,000 passengers and 110,000 vehicles 1990-1992. And it’s down from more than 325,000 passengers as recently as the early 2010s. Marine Dir...
Mass layoffs in the federal workforce ordered by President Donald Trump began to hit Alaska employees last week, with workers losing jobs at multiple agencies across the state. The scale of the Alaska layoffs wasn’t fully clear, but by Friday, Feb. 14, included around 30 Alaska employees at the U.S. Forest Service and 30 with the National Park Service, according to employees and union representatives. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said late Friday that “dozens of Alaskans — potentially over 100 in total” had lost their jobs, criticizing what sh...
Southeast Alaska residents are used to choppy waters, so while they may be getting seasick over the waves of uncertainty in federal programs and funding stirred up by Donald Trump’s return to the White House, smoother sailing is on the horizon, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski told a conference of regional business and community leaders Feb. 11. A mix of uncertainty, optimism and concern about the Trump administration’s impacts on the region was expressed by other federal, state and industry officials participating in the opening day of Southeast Con...
In a 5-2 vote, the Alaska Board of Fisheries rejected a proposal to cut by 25% the allowable egg harvest for Southeast salmon hatcheries. The proposal, submitted by former board member and North Pole resident Virgil Umphenour, sought to “reduce the permitted egg take of pink and chum salmon of each applicable Southeast hatchery … by 25%.” The board voted Feb. 8, the next-to-last day of its 13-day meeting in Ketchikan. Similar proposals to significantly cut the egg harvest at Southeast hatcheries have come before the board at least four previ...
Vaccinations successfully guarded children from pertussis, a respiratory disease also known as whooping cough, during last year’s spike in cases of the disease in Alaska, a new state report says. Unvaccinated children were more than 13 times as likely as vaccinated children to get the disease during the outbreak, according to a bulletin released by the Alaska Division of Public Health’s epidemiology section. There were more confirmed cases of pertussis in Alaska last year — over 500 — than in all the years from 2016 to 2023 combined, accordi...