Sorted by date Results 705 - 729 of 1731
No invasive green crabs have been found outside the area on Annette Island where they were discovered last summer, though experts are working against a potential population explosion in Southeast Alaska. Barb Lake, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Juneau, gave a presentation in Ketchikan last Friday about the invasive crab species that a team of scientists with the Metlakatla Indian Community first identified on Annette Island in July. It’s the only place that the crab has been captured in Alaska waters. Lake said t...
JUNEAU (AP) - An Alaska lawmaker with a history of incendiary remarks was censured by the state House on Feb. 22 after he said it has been argued that cases of fatal child abuse can be a "cost savings" because the child would not need related government services. The House voted 35-1 to censure Republican Rep. David Eastman of Wasilla, with only Eastman voting against the censure. The House action has no formal consequences other than putting a statement on the record. Eastman was censured in...
On May 1, the Alaska Court System will remove the marijuana possession convictions of about 750 Alaskans from Courtview, the state’s online database of court cases. The Alaska Supreme Court announced the move in an order signed Jan. 31 by the court’s five justices. The action, first reported Feb. 19 by the Alaska Landmine website, follows years of similar, unsuccessful, legislative efforts to join a nationwide trend. “I’m glad that the Supreme Court has ordered this,” said Fairbanks Sen. Scott Kawasaki. The records will still be available for i...
A multimillion-dollar share of the Alaska grocery store chain Three Bears is one of the latest additions to the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp.’s $200 million in-state investment program — a small slice of the $76 billion state savings account. The program, ordered by the board in 2018, has almost finished making its investments. The corporation’s board of trustees received an update on the program at a quarterly meeting this month. In addition to Three Bears, the new in-state investments include millions spent on a company that operates aviat...
It was a week of change for a 100-year-old Petersburg institution: The Trading Union was officially renamed Petersburg IGA on Feb. 20, as new owners Mike Ward, his daughter Caroline Bangs and her husband Travis Bangs took over the grocery store. “I got crew over from Wrangell, crew over from Haines, and we’re power-stocking this place,” Ward said last week. The family also owns Wrangell IGA and Ward is the majority owner of Howsers IGA in Haines. Ward, who is in his 44th year actively managing grocery stores, was born in Haines and as a young...
Alaska oil production and prices are below last year’s estimates, and the state could run out of money before the end of the fiscal year in June, members of the Senate Finance Committee were told Feb. 21. “It’s a bit of a nail-biter,” said Neil Steininger, director of the Office of Management and Budget. While the prospect may sound alarming, it’s not as bad as it sounds, said Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman, co-chair of the Finance Committee. “There’s nothing to worry about,” Stedman said. The state’s fiscal year doesn’t end until June 30, and legisl...
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Weeks after powerful storms dumped 32 trillion gallons of rain and snow on California, state officials and environmental groups in the drought-ravaged state are grappling with what to do with all of that water. State rules say when it rains and snows a lot in California, much of that water must go into the rivers to act as a conveyor belt to carry tens of thousands of endangered baby salmon into the Pacific Ocean. But last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom asked state regulators to temporarily change those rules. H...
The Organized Village of Kake is looking into using a U.S. Forest Service facility at Portage Bay, on the north end of Kupreanof Island, as a cultural healing and rehabilitation center. The goal of the program would be to reconnect people with their cultural identity, improve their mental health, and counsel those recovering from alcohol and substance abuse and other issues. The cultural healing center has been a dream of Joel Jackson, the village president, for years. “What I had in mind was getting people to teach them who they are, b...
Alaskans will no longer need college degrees for most state jobs, under an administrative order issued Feb. 14 by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The action is needed because of the labor shortage that affects Alaska and the nation, Dunleavy said in a statement. “Today people can gain knowledge, skills and abilities through on-the-job experience. If we’re going to address our labor shortage, we have to recognize the value that apprenticeships, on-the-job training, military training, trade schools and other experience provides applicants. If a person can...
Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom on Feb. 15 appointed a longtime state employee and Republican Party supporter to lead the Alaska Division of Elections. Carol Beecher, who led the state's child support enforcement division for the past nine years, will now administer Alaska's elections. Her first day was Feb. 15. Beecher grew up at a logging camp on Zarembo Island and graduated from Wrangell High School in 1980, according to the lieutenant governor's office. She succeeds Gail Fenumiai, the division's...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s amended budget unveiled Feb. 15 attempts to address crisis areas in state public services, with the additional spending driving the anticipated budget deficit past $400 million. The proposed budget for the next fiscal year is updated from his initial proposed budget announced in December. At that time, Dunleavy’s largely flat spending proposal for services had a $322 million deficit. The largest single expense in the governor’s proposed budget is $2.5 billion for a Permanent Fund dividend at roughly $3,900 per person this...
Alaska state lawmakers have begun examining a plan to set regulations and fees for companies that collect carbon dioxide and inject it deep underground. The governor has touted the potential for the state to make hundreds of millions of dollars over the years by leasing state lands to hold carbon deep underground and out of the atmosphere where it is blamed for worsening climate change. Members of the House Resources Committee held their first hearing on the proposal from Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Feb. 10. A leading member of the House’s m...
A group seeking to reverse Alaska’s 2020 election reform has begun gathering signatures to put the question before voters on the 2024 ballot. The ballot initiative is seeking to do away with open primaries and ranked-choice voting in general elections, returning to Alaska’s previous elections rules, which included closed partisan primaries and traditional pick-one general elections. Ranked-choice voting and open primaries were adopted in Alaska in 2020 through a ballot measure that passed narrowly, with just over 50% of voters in favor of the...
For the first time in 31 years, Alaska’s sitting U.S. representative addressed a joint session of the Alaska Legislature. Speaking in the state Capitol last Friday, Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola praised the bipartisan coalitions that control the state House and Senate, saying she’s frequently asked about “the Alaska model” of bipartisanship. “It’s strange,” she said, “to hear something we take for granted here at home is so foreign in the rest of the country. But it’s also inspiring because it gives me faith that for all the challenges Alaska...
Alaska’s U.S. senators and several Alaska Native leaders on Feb. 14 urged the federal government to approve a major oil project on the petroleum-rich North Slope, casting the project as economically critical for Indigenous communities in the region and important for the nation’s energy security. The Biden administration “damn well better not kill the project, period,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski told reporters on a video conference. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management earlier this month released an environmental review for ConocoPhillips Alaska...
Oil-dependent Alaska has long sought ways to fatten its coffers and move away from the fiscal whiplash of oil’s boom-and-bust cycles. The newest idea, promoted by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, would have the state capitalize on its oil and gas expertise to tap into a developing industry — carbon storage — as a way to generate new revenues without curtailing the industries that underpin Alaska’s economy. It’s also being pitched as a potential way for petroleum and mining companies to head off legal challenges over greenhouse gas impacts....
More than 90,000 pounds of canned Alaska pink salmon purchased and donated by the state of Alaska is being distributed as wartime relief in Ukraine. The cans were donated to the nonprofit World Central Kitchen and arrived in Ukraine this month after months of shipping and customs delays. The food is the state’s biggest contribution to Ukraine’s defense against a Russian invasion that started a year ago. Other than appropriating money last year to buy the canned salmon, the war has remained a back-burner issue in the state Capitol. No Ukr...
Alaska’s largest school district repeatedly and inappropriately secluded and restrained students with disabilities, the U.S. Department of Justice said last Thursday following an investigation into alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. According to an agreement reached between the Justice Department and Anchorage schools, the district will eliminate the use of seclusion at all schools and ensure that students are only restrained when there is imminent danger of “serious physical harm to the student to another per...
President Joe Biden’s calls in his State of the Union speech for strong criminal penalties in response to soaring deaths linked to the potent opioid fentanyl are being rebuked by harm-reduction advocates who say that approach could make the problem worse. The proposal has support among some health officials, however, including Alaska’s chief medical officer. Dr. Anne Zink, who also serves as president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said in a statement that she welcomes his efforts to prevent overdoses, make acc...
The IRS announced last Friday that most temporary relief checks issued by states in 2022 are not subject to federal income taxes, including the $662 energy-relief portion of last year’s $3,284 Alaska Permanent Fund dividend. Alaska legislators last year added the energy-relief money to the annual PFD of $2,622 in a move to help residents hit hard by high prices for gasoline, diesel and heating fuel. The IRS decision provides last-minute tax guidance as returns are starting to pour in. The agency said it will not challenge the taxability of paym...
A second bill has been introduced in the Legislature to significantly boost state funding for public schools. Rep. Dan Ortiz, whose district covers Ketchikan, Wrangell and Metlakatla, introduced a bill on Feb. 8 to increase the state’s per-pupil funding formula by 21%. The Senate Education Committee a week earlier introduced its own version with a 17% boost. Ortiz’s bill would add about $320 million to the state budget. The per-student funding formula has not budged in the past six years, squeezing school budgets, jeopardizing programs and staf...
Nearly 18 years ago, about 6,000 young Alaskans left high school and launched into adulthood. Where did they end up? Slightly half were still in Alaska as of 2021, but the percentage was much smaller for those who got college degrees outside of the state, according to an analysis by the Alaska Department of Labor. Results are published in the February issue of Alaska Economic Trends, the monthly magazine of the department’s research and analysis division. There is “nothing magical” about the class of 2005, said Dan Robinson, the depar...
The vast majority of Alaska high school students eligible for college scholarships that require them to study in-state are choosing to go Outside, according to a new report from the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education. The Alaska Performance Scholarship was first established in 2011 to encourage high school students to excel and stay in Alaska. Roughly $100 million in scholarships have been distributed since then to a little more than 29,000 students. The merit-based program has three tiers, the highest paying $4,755 per year to the...
WASHINGTON — Attorneys general representing nearly two dozen Republican states, including Alaska, are backing a lawsuit that would remove the abortion pill from throughout the United States after more than two decades, eliminating the option even in states where abortion access remains legal. The state of Missouri filed its own brief in the case Friday while Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed a brief on behalf of her state as well as Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, M...
One of the biggest sea stars in the world has been devastated by a malady likened to an underwater "zombie apocalypse" and could soon be granted Endangered Species Act protection. Sunflower sea stars, fast-swimming creatures that can have up to 24 arms and grow to three feet in diameter, have largely vanished from their habitat, which stretches from the western tip of Alaska's Aleutian Islands to the waters off Mexico's Baja California. The culprit is sea star wasting syndrome, a body-mangling...