Former Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly Member Grant EchoHawk is running for the second time to serve in the Alaska Legislature as the House District 1 representative.

The district includes Metlakatla, Saxman, Ketchikan, Coffman Cove, Whale Pass, Wrangell and Hyder. EchoHawk is running a nonpartisan campaign against Republican incumbent Rep. Jeremy Bynum.

Born in Fairbanks and raised in Metlakatla, EchoHawk is a private consultant who assists with project management and employee development.

Prior to running for the Legislature, he was involved with a variety of Ketchikan organizations, including the Ketchikan Tribal Business Corp. board, public radio station KRBD board, Ketchikan Wellness Coalition, and Ketchikan Area Arts and Humanities Council.

EchoHawk served on the borough assembly from 2021 through 2024.

He ran for the House seat in 2024 against Bynum and Agnes Moran, and came in third, with less than half the votes of Bynum.

EchoHawk told the Daily News in an Oct. 22 interview that he thinks the biggest problem in Southeast Alaska “is the short-funding of our school system,” because it “creates a ripple effect” which “causes us to lose young families as they move out of the state to get stability for their students, which then impacts our workforce.”

By fixing “that one thing,” EchoHawk said, “multiple other things throughout the state” will be solved.

The solution, he said, “is actually quite simple,” and begins with permanently increasing the base student allocation — a per-student dollar amount the state uses to calculate its portion of education funding — and tying the formula to inflation.

“We waste way too much time and energy in every community, in every legislature, trying to get additional funding every single year,” EchoHawk said. “It’s inefficient, and our local and state legislators need to be doing other things.”

Another aspect, EchoHawk said, is to forward fund education so school districts can build budgets without guessing how much they will receive from the state each year.

He also noted that “we need to properly compensate our public employees” with a defined-benefit retirement plan, that pays out retirement benefits based on the years of service. Alaska stopped enrolling public employees in the traditional defined-benefits retirement plan in 2006 to save money.

When asked about the Alaska Marine Highway System, he said improving the “very critical piece of infrastructure” comes down to funding. “You cannot have a robust and comprehensive economic strategy without transportation, and ... the ferry service allows us to move goods and products between our communities, in addition to transporting individuals,” noting that a reliable ferry system can also keep student activity travel costs low for districts.

He said, if elected, it will be important to “convey to the rest of the state” that the ferry does not need to “generate revenue” because “we don’t ask our other roads, our other highways, … our bridges to generate revenue.”

“We need robust services to our existing communities, we need connection to the mainland,” EchoHawk said. “Those are the types of advocacy that I’m going to be doing.”

EchoHawk said anything the government does requires revenue.

He noted that, if he had served in the state Legislature this past session, he would have supported some revenue-generating legislation such as a failed bill that could have brought in an additional $25 million to $65 million a year by collecting corporate income taxes from companies doing online business in Alaska.

Currently, corporations lacking a physical operation or employees in the state do not pay income taxes. The law would have extended the tax to Outside companies that sell to and make a profit from Alaskans.

He also noted he is interested in amending state law to apply corporate income taxes to privately held companies the same as publicly held corporations.

EchoHawk said he would be interested in talking about other potential tax revenue proposals, such as a state income tax, “only after I know that these out-of-state corporations are paying their fair share.”

Should the state see windfall revenue from continued high oil prices, he said it’s important “to capture those funds” and “get them into our community as quickly as we can.”

Specifically, he said this could include funding schools, giving public employees defined retirement benefits and addressing deferred school maintenance projects, as well as other infrastructure projects such as the ferries and addressing critical energy needs. 

“I’m less interested in saving the money, if we have a windfall, because we have so many things that we need to get accomplished,” EchoHawk explained. “The longer we wait, means that the cost of goods down the road — as we’ve seen inflation continue to tick up — those things will just become more expensive down the way, and it becomes less likely that we’re going to get them done.”

Ultimately, he said his goal is to advocate for the needs of Southeast communities and other rural Alaska communities, so they can be met and that “there’s not too much focus on Anchorage or Mat-Su Valley.”

In general, EchoHawk said he thinks it’s “critical” that the representative for House District 1 caucus with the majority coalition in the chamber, as well as be in alignment with other Southeast legislators “on a unified front.”