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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...
The Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs hosted a ceremony Tuesday in the Petersburg High School gym to welcome home and remember Vietnam veterans. The event marked Vietnam Veterans Day which falls on March 29 and was originally scheduled for 2020 but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Forrest E. Powell III with the DMVA opened the ceremony and introduced Chamber of Commerce President Jim Floyd who welcomed attendees. Floyd spoke on the history of Petersburg and of the...
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...
Salmon returning home to Alaska hatcheries again accounted for nearly one-third of the 2021 statewide catch for commercial fishermen at 64 million fish. It was the 8th largest hatchery home-coming since 1977 and at a payout of $142 million, the salmon produced 25% of the overall value at the Alaska docks. An additional 220-thousand salmon that got their start in a hatchery also were caught in Alaska sport, personal use and subsistence fisheries. Nearly 70 million adult hatchery salmon returned...
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...
More than a month has passed since Sen. Mike Shower claimed that he and other Alaska legislators were so busy they didn’t have time to deal with campaign finance legislation this year. He was not telling the truth. It was just something Shower said to conceal the effort to allow unlimited campaign donations in Alaska, which is what Gov. Mike Dunleavy and others in the Republican Party want. Shower is the chairman of the state affairs committee in the Senate, a committee that is responsible for dealing with this topic. He hasn’t done any...
March means more fishing boats are out on the water with the start of the Pacific halibut and sablefish (black cod) fisheries this past Sunday, followed by Alaska’s first big herring fishery at Sitka Sound. For halibut, the coastwide catch from waters ranging from the West Coast states to British Columbia to the far reaches of the Bering Sea was increased by 5.7% this year to 41.22 million pounds. Alaska always gets the lion’s share of the commercial halibut harvest, which for 2022 is 21.51 million pounds, a nearly 10% increase. Exp...
During the February 21 Petersburg Borough Assembly meeting, Assembly Member Dave Kensinger gave a report on his attendance at the 2022 Southeast Conference Mid-Session Summit which included an update on the U.S. Coast Guard's interest in Petersburg, federal funding in Alaska, and other important matters to the assembly. The future of the Coast Guard's presence in Petersburg has been in question since it was announced that only three of the four coastal buoy tenders, the class of ships that the...
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...
During Tuesday's meeting, the Petersburg Borough Assembly voted unanimously, 7-0, in support of Ordinance #2022-03 in its first reading which would increase harbor moorage fees by approximately 5%. The proposed fee increase was first presented to the Harbor and Ports Advisory Board during a meeting on February 1 where Harbormaster Glo Wollen said the increase was necessary to keep up with inflation and that fees have not increased since 2018. During that meeting, the harbor board approved a...
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...
Since he officially began his reelection campaign last August, Gov. Mike Dunleavy has spent nothing on personnel for his campaign. He’s paid for food, processing fees for fundraising, office supplies, postage and travel, but nothing on any campaign staff from August until the end of January. One way he has managed this is by using state resources for campaign purposes. For instance, his campaign spokesman, Andrew Jensen, is a state communications employee in Dunleavy’s office. Jensen’s state job is to sing the praises of Dunleavy and attac...
State ferry management said they are working to be more responsive to community and passenger concerns, including reconsidering the use of "dynamic pricing," where fares increase as ships fill up on popular sailings. No one likes dynamic pricing, Katherine Keith, the Transportation Department's change management director, told legislators last week. The pricing structure is similar to airlines, hotels and rental cars, where bookings on popular routes and travel days can cost significantly more,...
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...
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...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – The former head of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. claims her firing was “political retribution” by board members appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. Dunleavy, a Republican seeking reelection, denied any involvement in Angela Rodell’s removal last month, the Anchorage Daily News reported. The corporation’s board has provided no explanation for Rodell’s Dec. 9 dismissal. The vote was 5-1, with the lone dissenting vote cast by the only board member not appointed or reappointed by Dunleavy. Rodell was a commissione...
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...
The board that oversees Alaska's multibillion-dollar investment portfolio has fired Angela Rodell as chief executive officer of the Permanent Fund Corp. Legislative leaders and Finance Committee members are upset at the surprise decision and plan to hold hearings to ask questions. The fund this past fiscal year grew more than 25%, with record returns on its investments. The board on Dec. 9 voted 5-1 to remove Rodell. The five votes came from members last appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The...
JUNEAU (AP) — Gov. Mike Dunleavy said Monday he plans to propose as part of his upcoming budget that the state spend $5 million in federal dollars to support tourism marketing efforts amid the ongoing pandemic, and additional funds to prepare state parks for visitors next year. He said the hope is for a return to “robust” tourism activity after a difficult two years. Speaking in Anchorage, Dunleavy said people are “starting to learn to live with (the coronavirus) … understanding that it’s not going to go away, but there’s ways to protect onese...
The state of Alaska has spent decades trying to predict, forecast and even guesstimate the price of oil in an ongoing effort to help the governor and legislators draft an annual spending plan. If state officials truly could know the price of crude a month, a year, two years out, budget-building work would be much easier. Or at least more accurate. And while Alaska’s budget health, public services, education funding and road maintenance is much more dependent these years on Permanent Fund earnings than on oil revenues, any periods of high oil p...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A U.S. District judge has rejected a challenge by Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration to a special subsistence hunt authorized for a southeast Alaska tribe by a federal board last year. The Organized Village of Kake last year requested an emergency hunt, citing food security concerns amid the pandemic, according to court documents. A limited season of up to 60 days was granted by the Federal Subsistence Board, and the harvest was distributed to 135 households in the village, documents state. The Alaska Department of Fis...
A hearing on seafood bycatch didn’t satisfy a bipartisan group of Alaska legislators at a meeting of the House Fisheries Committee on Nov. 15. The bycatch issue came up again this summer when all Yukon River salmon fisheries were canceled due to so few returning Chinook and chums. Along with ocean and climate impacts, villagers questioned the takes by huge trawlers that catch and process fish at sea. A presentation of the committee hearing by Glenn Merrill, regional administrator at NOAA Fisheries/Alaska, showed that in the 2019 Bering Sea p...
