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The Alaska Marine Highway System has been hoping since last August to bring back the Columbia to service this year after an almost three-year absence, but with the start of the summer schedule only weeks away the state has not announced a decision on the ship. The Columbia's summer return is contingent on hiring enough crew to replace staff that were laid off, retired, quit or moved to other ships since the state's largest ferry was pulled out of service in the fall of 2019. "We're pouring a...
A big part of a well-functioning democracy is running for office or, if you don’t want your name on the ballot, backing a candidate, taking a position on a ballot issue, and writing checks for the campaigns you support. Writing those checks to elect your favored candidates and contributing to campaigns to win, or defeat, ballot propositions that do, or do not, serve your interests and align with your beliefs is everyone’s constitutional right. Freedom of expression includes the freedom to spend your money to promote your own self-interests and...
The House Finance Committee has rejected the governor's proposal to rely almost entirely on federal funds to operate the Alaska Marine Highway System next year, with the Senate Finance Committee moving in the same direction. The committees differ on the amounts but both want to see more state money in the budget for the ferries, using some federal infrastructure money to replace state dollars but not nearly as much as the governor. Total appropriations for the ferry operating budget next year...
Maybe Alaskans were tired of hearing the all-too-familiar refrains: Good candidates don’t run for public office anymore; it’s too expensive; ill-mannered social media posts go after their families and disrupt their lives; voters are too easily swayed by misleading attack ads; and no one wants to hear the truth about solving the country’s problems. So why bother running for office. Clearly, 51 candidates to fill the seat of the late Don Young, Alaska’s congressman for the past half-century, decided to ignore all the reasons not to run. Or maybe...
This year’s switch to ranked-choice voting in Alaska is something new, maybe even surprisingly new for those who missed or forgot about the 2020 statewide ballot initiative that put forth the change. But new, while exciting for some people, can be scary and disconcerting and disruptive for others. This coming from a 70-year-old who is stuck so deep in his own comfort zone that I wear the same button-down cotton shirts (never white), same two-tone saddle shoes, use the same hair shampoo and same original flavor Crest toothpaste. Hey, nothing w...
No, this column is not directed at oil producers. They are not the guilty party in this tale of cost escalation. Nor is this column about the many businesses around the world stressed by energy prices that have shot up faster and higher than fireworks on the Fourth of July. As crude oil has jumped, surged and spiked from just over $65 a barrel on Dec. 1 to painfully over $100 a barrel this month, consumers have been paying more at the pump — whether the corner gas station for a dozen or more gallons to fill up a car or pickup, a couple h...
A state Department of Transportation official told legislators that the ferry system is "burning out our crew" with lots of overtime amid staff shortages, and that the problem jeopardizes tentative plans to bring back the Columbia to service in Southeast for the first time since fall 2019. The Alaska Marine Highway System as of March 16 was down 125 employees from the minimum needed to staff its full online summer schedule plus the addition of the Columbia, according to a department...
Many Alaskans will be hurting under $5-a-gallon gasoline, and rural residents who pay even higher prices will hurt even more. The state treasury, meanwhile, is flush with higher oil production tax and royalty checks, depositing tens of millions of dollars more each month than expected at the start of the year. Oil at $100-plus a barrel is guilty on both counts — making people poorer and making the Alaska checkbook richer. To use one to help the other, many Alaska lawmakers seem to be nervously coalescing around the idea of using much of the a...
The state has started negotiations to sell the Malaspina to a company owned by a business that operates a new multimillion-dollar cruise ship terminal at Ward Cove in Ketchikan. M/V Malaspina LLC and the Alaska Department of Transportation “have agreed to negotiate in good faith on the sale of the 59-year-old vessel,” the state announced Monday. “MVM’s letter of interest outlines a plan to use the Malaspina to showcase Alaska’s maritime history and support a Ketchikan-based tourism business,” the state said. “Among other uses, they propose...
The state of Alaska, Congress and the president, individual companies and people do not all have the same capabilities and authority to show their disgust and dismay at Russia’s unprovoked, murderous attack on Ukraine, a sovereign nation at war with no one until Russian President Vladimir Putin decided he had to prove that he is the toughest, meanest kid on the planet. But everyone needs to do something. The world has suffered far too many deaths, ruined countries, poverty and famine due to wars over the centuries to sit by and watch more of t...
State ferry system and Transportation Department officials plan to gather this week in Ketchikan to consider options for fulfilling the advertised summer schedule amid a continuing shortage of onboard crew. The department failed to meet its self-imposed timeline of hiring enough workers by March 1 to ensure that the Columbia on May 1 would return to service for the first time since fall 2019. The Alaska Marine Highway System had said it needed to hire at least 166 new employees to staff up its fleet — a gap of about one-quarter of its total aut...
First a trade war, then a battle against an infectious virus and now a real war are all affecting Alaska seafood exports. Shipments to China fell from as high as 30% of Alaska’s total seafood export value in the 2010s to 20% in 2020. “The U.S.-China trade war has displaced $500 million of Alaska seafood,” Jeremy Woodrow, executive director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, told legislators last week. And though people bought more seafood to prepare at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, sales to restaurants and food services fell by 70...
It’s not often you hear political debates that invoke religion and booze but have nothing to do with temperance, the social ills of alcohol or strict adherence to church teachings. In Alaska, those points are being offered in the context of the state budget and oil prices — both of which are similar to alcohol and religion in the 49th state. They can be intoxicating, debatable and divisive. High oil prices of recent months — and even higher in recent days after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine — have made Alaska rich again, for now....
The Alaska Department of Transportation is asking anyone interested in taking ownership of the nearly 60-year-old Malaspina to speak up by March 7. The state has been spending about $75,000 a month to keep the unused ferry moored and insured at Ward Cove in Ketchikan for more than two years. The ship has not carried passengers or vehicles since late 2019, and requires tens of millions of dollars of repairs, steel replacement work and new engines to go back into service, according to the...
State Transportation Department officials recently told legislators the ferry system needed to quickly hire at least 166 new crew in order to meet minimum staffing levels for this summer’s schedule starting in May. “Staffing goals for the summer season will not be met at current recruitment rates,” the department reported in its presentation to the House Transportation Committee on Feb. 15. Insufficient staffing could result in scaling back ferry service plans. About 350 new hires would be even better, covering vacancies due to sick leave...
A 45-page bill to restructure the Alaska Marine Highway System as a state-owned corporation, run by an appointed board of directors, similar to the Alaska Railroad, is going to take longer than one legislative session to review, amend and adopt — if even then. “This is going to take a big lift,” said Robert Venables, executive director of the Southeast Conference, an economic and community development nonprofit for the region that supports the concept of a ferry corporation. “This is aspirational,” he said Feb. 23, a day after the Senate Tr...
Almost three years after pulling pollution monitors - called Ocean Rangers - from large cruise ships, Gov. Mike Dunleavy has proposed legislation to replace the onboard state personnel with regular inspections by shoreside staff while ships are in port and underway. The Ocean Rangers program was written into state law when voters approved a citizen's initiative in 2006 to step up oversight of the cruise ship industry. However, start-of-season and random inspections during the summer "are a more...
Alaska's state housing agency has distributed more than $243 million in financial aid the past year to help renters hurt economically by the pandemic and will soon embark on a $50 million federally funded program to help homeowners, too. The aid can go toward eligible homeowners' monthly mortgage payments, and may also be applied to current and past-due property taxes, insurance premiums and utility bills, the Alaska Housing Finance Corp. announced Friday. Preregistration for Alaska Housing...
Unless the Alaska Marine Highway System can recruit enough workers by March 1 to restaff the unused Columbia, officials said the largest vessel in the fleet would remain tied to the dock for a third summer in a row. "Management is doing everything we can" to recruit and staff up, Katherine Keith, the ferry system's newly hired change management director, told legislators last week. As of the first week of January, the state ferry system was short more than 350 workers - about half of the...
If at first you don’t succeed, it’s not always better that you try, try again. But try, try again is what we do well in Alaska. Well, not so successfully, but we are consistent in trying the patience of common sense and fiscal restraint. For Alaskans, that could apply to the long-proposed, longingly dreamy North Slope natural gas pipeline project — a $39 billion quest in search of customers, partners, investors and lenders. Other than that, it has all the free political support it needs. The state has poured about $1.5 billion into vario...
The state is working through a couple of challenges in its plan to distribute tens of millions of dollars of federal relief funds to municipalities and businesses. Applications for grants to local governments far exceeded the available funds, while grant applications from eligible tourism-related businesses and others fell far short. The Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development is looking for answers to both questions: How to decide which cities and boroughs will receive how much of the limited money to replace their lost tax...
Though they say the level of funding for the state ferry system in Gov. Mike Dunleavy's budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 is adequate, coastal legislators don't like that the governor wants to use one-time federal money to pay the bills, eliminating almost 95% of state funding. Their fear is that when the federal dollars from last year's $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending plan run out, so too will adequate ferry service. "Those federal dollars were meant to augment state money, no...
WRANGELL– In a break from past practice, the Alaska Department of Revenue this year will provide monthly updates to legislators whenever projected oil prices — and state revenues — move up or down more than 10%. Several legislators worry that could confuse budget deliberations this session. Revenue staff has updated the state’s twice-yearly oil-price forecasts internally but not released the numbers to the public, the department’s chief economist Dan Stickel told the Senate Finance Committee on Jan. 20. “We’ve decided to go ahead and star...
WRANGELL – The Alaska Department of Transportation is contracting with Allen Marine to run one of its vessels “as needed” between Ketchikan, Wrangell and Petersburg this winter, though no runs are scheduled and any operations likely would depend on whether the state ferry Matanuska finally comes out of winter overhaul as now expected on Jan. 31. Delays caused by extensive repair work to the 58-year-old ferry forced the Alaska Marine Highway System to cancel several sailings between the three communities in December and January. The Matanu...
With the Matanuska out of service longer than expected for more repair work, and the state uncertain whether it can bring an idled ferry out of a cost-saving lay-up, the Alaska Marine Highway System is seeking bids from private vessel operators to possibly provide additional winter runs to several Southeast communities, including Wrangell. The state issued the hurried bid notice on Dec. 31, with proposals due by 2 p.m. Friday. The state also is advertising for a contractor to help it recruit and hire for the ferry system, which is short on...
