Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 84
Leading Alaska legislators said last week that there’s little appetite for spending from savings to pay a super-sized Permanent Fund dividend this year, likely killing a proposal from Gov. Mike Dunleavy. In December, the governor proposed spending almost $2.3 billion on a dividend of roughly $3,500 per recipient under a formula in state law. That would result in a $1 billion deficit and require spending from the state’s Constitutional Budget Reserve, but as a draft budget takes shape in the House, top members of both the House and Senate sai...
The Alaska Senate voted without dissent Monday to allow the Department of Natural Resources to stop publishing some public notices in local newspapers. Senators approved Senate Bill 68 by a 17-0 vote. It now advances to the House for consideration. Sens. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel; Bert Stedman, R-Sitka; and Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer, were excused absent. Before the final vote, newspaper publishers unsuccessfully asked legislators to reconsider their plans. Allowing the state to control its public notice process poses transparency risks, they...
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued an ultimatum to state legislators on Tuesday, saying he will veto a multipart education funding bill unless lawmakers pass separate legislation that contains his education priorities. Speaking from his office in Anchorage, the governor said lawmakers have two weeks to reconsider teacher bonuses and changes to the way charter schools are approved, two items that were voted down during the debates over Senate Bill 140, the education bill. If they don’t act, Dunleavy said he will veto SB 140, killing a permanent f... Full story
The leaders of the $76 billion Alaska Permanent Fund voted unanimously on Friday to adopt a strategic plan that calls for borrowing up to $4 billion in order to increase the amount of money available for investments. Friday’s vote has limited effect: The borrowing could take place only if the Alaska Legislature and Gov. Mike Dunleavy change state law to allow it. “It’ll start out as a legislative effort, then it would take a bill,” said Paulyn Swanson, communications director of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp., which manages the fund. The Ala... Full story
Sitka's Mount Edgecumbe volcano is wired. On Jan. 26, the Alaska Volcano Observatory announced the completion of a new instrument network intended to measure the activity of a volcano that could be awakening after a period of dormancy. The network includes four seismic stations and four sites that measure the way the ground is deforming as magma moves deep below the volcano. Since April 2022, the movement of that liquefied rock has caused hundreds of small earthquakes and raised concerns that... Full story
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a far-reaching administrative order on Monday that calls for public agencies to stop doing business with companies that support an economic boycott of Israel. The order makes Alaska the 38th state to take executive acts or pass legislation against boycotts intended to support Palestinians. Many of those actions are years old, but the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, a conflict that has killed more than 25,000 people since October, has intensified attention on a two-decade-old campaign that urges companies to boycott... Full story
In an unusual use of executive powers, Gov. Mike Dunleavy this month issued 12 executive orders abolishing state boards and granting new powers to the heads of state departments. The orders, which account for almost 10% of all executive orders issued since statehood and are equal to the number of all executive orders issued in the previous 20 years, will automatically take effect in March unless the Alaska Legislature specifically disapproves of them in a joint vote of the House and Senate. “We have never, in my experience, had 12 executive o... Full story
The Alaska Legislature’s big education funding bill will reach the floor of the Alaska House of Representatives by next week, a leading Republican lawmaker said Monday. “We’re going to get it out. It’s not going to sit anywhere,” said Rep. Craig Johnson, R-Anchorage and chair of the House Rules Committee. On Saturday, members of Johnson’s committee heard more than seven hours of public testimony, mostly in favor of a large increase in Alaska’s funding for public schools. The committee declined to fulfill that request before advancing Sen... Full story
Staff for Gov. Mike Dunleavy quashed the publication of a new Department of Labor and Workforce Development report examining the competitiveness of teacher pay in Alaska, an act that current and former staff say could damage the apolitical reputation of the division that publishes state economic data. “This is data that typically is available to the public, and it’s never good to suppress good, objective data,” said Neal Fried, who retired in July after almost 45 years as an economist with the department. The report, which had been the cover... Full story
The board in charge of Alaska’s retirement system for public employees has recommended the closure of its commonly used managed accounts program after an independent review found workers were being charged high fees and receiving lower-than-expected returns. Managed accounts cover more than 10,000 of the 122,000-plus accounts in Alaska’s state employee retirement system and were the default option when the state switched from a pension-style retirement system to its current 401(k)-like approach in 2006. Many of those employees are only now dis... Full story
The five-person board in charge of drawing Alaska’s legislative districts will pay $400,000 to settle financial claims brought by a group of East Anchorage plaintiffs who successfully challenged the boundaries of Eagle River’s state Senate district last year. In total, the state will have paid more than $600,000 to settle financial claims resulting from what the Alaska Supreme Court called “an unconstitutional political gerrymander.” Two smaller financial claims by other plaintiffs remain unresolved, but Friday’s decision by the redistric... Full story
This year's Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend will be $1,312. The Alaska Department of Revenue announced the figure last Thursday, two weeks before the annual cash payments will be delivered by direct deposit. PFD applications that were filed electronically, slated for direct deposit and have been deemed eligible will be paid out Oct. 5. The Department of Revenue will mail paper checks and begin direct deposits from paper applications later in the month. This year's PFD amount had been estimated... Full story
The state of Alaska, a coalition of business groups and a pair of electric-power organizations have opened a new round in the generation-long fight over environmental protections in Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. On Sept. 8, the state and two other groups of plaintiffs filed three separate federal lawsuits to challenge a Biden administration rule restricting new roads in parts of the forest, which is home to some of America’s last stands of old-growth trees. Each lawsuit asks U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason to ove...
More than half of Alaskans born within the state have moved away, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. A state’s ability to retain native-born residents is an indicator of its economic health and attractiveness, and Alaska ranked near the bottom of the analysis conducted by University of North Florida professor Madeline Zavodny and two experts at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Using data from the Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey, they found Alaska retained 48....
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has again rejected a request to list Southeast Alaska's Alexander Archipelago wolves as endangered or threatened. The wolves, found in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, range among the region's large, old trees and are a subspecies of gray wolves. Putting the wolves on the Endangered Species List, either as endangered or threatened, likely would have resulted in new restrictions on development, logging and construction in the region, and the state of... Full story
When U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg's flight from Juneau to Haines was rained out on Wednesday, he changed plans and did what Alaskans have done for decades: He boarded a ferry. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, traveled with Buttigieg and said the last-minute switch in travel plans "was a typical Alaska jump ball." It was an appropriate capstone to Buttigieg's three-day Alaska visit: a trip intended to emphasize the benefits of the Biden administration's infrastructure law,... Full story
Alaskans can now use larger and heavier recreational off-road vehicles on most state land without a specialty permit, a move intended to accommodate the growth of side-by-side off-road vehicles. In late July, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources issued new general permissions that allow vehicles up to 80 inches wide and up to 2,500 pounds on land managed by the DNR Division of Mining, Land and Water. Old restrictions, based on the size and weight of a 6×6 Argo, allowed vehicles of up to 1,500 pounds, DNR staff said in an explanation of... Full story
The spendable portion of the Alaska Permanent Fund is dwindling and could be exhausted entirely within three years, fund leaders were told during a regular quarterly meeting on Wednesday, July 12, in Anchorage. Deven Mitchell, CEO of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp., presented the results of limited modeling that estimates the fund’s performance over the next three years. Under the “low” scenario, the fund would be unable to pay for state services or dividends by summer 2026. The “mid” scenario calls for the spendable portion of the fund to b... Full story
Supporters of Alaska’s ranked choice voting system are again alleging that opponents of the system are violating state campaign law. On Monday, Alaskans for Better Elections filed a complaint against former Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka, a nonprofit that she operates, and Alaskans for Honest Elections, which is campaigning to repeal ranked choice voting in Alaska. The complaint alleges that Tshibaka and her nonprofit, Preserve Democracy, have been lobbying and campaigning without registering with the commission or s... Full story
Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed Alaska’s $6 billion state budget into law Monday after vetoing more than $200 million from the document approved in mid-May by the Alaska Legislature. The governor’s biggest single cut was half of a $175 million one-time funding boost for K-12 public schools. Lawmakers intended the addition to partially compensate for inflation-driven cost increases. Because school districts have already had to set their budgets for the coming year, Dunleavy’s veto leaves some of them facing additional budget cuts or the prosp...
On Tuesday afternoon, cellphones across the state beeped with emergency tones as the Alaska State Troopers attempted to find two-year-old Karma Brown, who briefly went missing in Fairbanks. Brown was found safe within 40 minutes, but not before Alaskans from Adak to Metlakatla were alerted via the national Wireless Emergency Alert system. “The Amber Alert was deliberately sent statewide due to family connections of the suspect to multiple areas of the state. In most instances, Amber Alerts are sent within 300 miles of the location of the a... Full story
Alaska legislators, Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom and the commissioners in charge of state agencies will see pay raises after the Legislature missed the final deadline for a bill needed to block the increases. Starting July 1, Alaska’s governor will be paid approximately $176,000 per year, the lieutenant governor about $140,000, and commissioners will receive about $168,000 per year. Legislators will be paid $84,000 per year, up from $50,400, starting next January. The increases are the result of a convoluted series of events t... Full story
Seniors and people with disabilities who need extra care would be able to get help at home under a bill passed by the Alaska Legislature. The state House voted 39-1 to approve Senate Bill 57 last Monday, following 17-0 approval by the Senate on April 24. “One of the hallmarks of a society is the way that we care for those who may have a disability or who are in need of extra care,” said Rep. Justin Ruffridge, R-Soldotna, and an advocate for the bill, which was introduced by Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration. If the final bill is appro... Full story
The Alaska Division of Elections improperly removed Al Gross, an independent candidate for U.S. House, from last year’s special election ballot, the Alaska Supreme Court said in a ruling published Friday. Gross withdrew from the race after finishing third among 48 candidates in the special primary election that was the first step in filling the House seat left vacant by the death of Congressman Don Young. Democrat Mary Peltola, who finished fourth behind Gross in the special primary, won both the special election in August and the regular g... Full story
Thousands of new mothers will receive extended Medicaid coverage under legislation proposed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy and passed by the Alaska Legislature on Wednesday. The Alaska House of Representatives voted 35-3 to approve Senate Bill 58, which now returns to the Senate for a procedural vote before being sent to Dunleavy’s desk for final approval. In a separate action, the House also approved a permanent extension to the state’s renewable energy grant fund. House lawmakers had previously approved a 10-year extension, and the Senate changed tha... Full story
