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Dear Friends and Neighbors: Greetings from Juneau! The 2nd session of the 33rd Legislature started this week. It is thrilling to be back, and I hope everyone in House District 2 is enjoying a healthy and prosperous new year. During this year's second regular session of the 33rd legislature I will continue to serve on the Education, Community and Regional Affairs and Fisheries committees. Please watch for updates on the committee work in this columnas the session progresses. Fisheries: Trident -...
In a major hit to Southwest Alaska’s fishing industry, Peter Pan Seafood Co. will keep its huge plant in the village of King Cove shuttered this winter, meaning that the company won’t be processing millions of dollars worth of cod, whitefish and crab. “It’s one of the most difficult days of my life,” Rodger May, one of the company’s owners and a longtime player in the seafood industry, said in a brief interview Thursday. “It’s just a devastating time for the industry.” The closure is the latest sign of the widening turmoil in Alaska seafood ma...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska lawmakers opened a new legislative session Tuesday, with the House failing to support an attempt to override Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of $87 million in additional education funding last year. Under the state constitution, the Legislature has the first five days of the regular session for a veto override attempt. If a joint session were held to consider a veto override, three-fourths of lawmakers — or 45 members — would need to vote in favor of an override for it to be successful. House Minority Leader...
This fall’s energy relief payment, which would go out along with the annual Permanent Fund dividend, is looking smaller than expected several months ago. The “bonus” on the 2024 dividend would come from state revenues in excess of what is needed to cover the spending plan approved by lawmakers and the governor last spring. The Legislature included a provision in the state budget that said half of any surplus would go into savings and half into an energy relief payment to Alaskans. The latest projection for the fall payment is about $175, Alexe...
The Boeing jetliner that lost a door panel inflight over Oregon on Jan. 5 was not being used for flights to Hawaii after a warning light that could have indicated a pressurization problem lit up on three separate occasions over the past month, a federal official said Sunday, Jan. 7. Alaska Airlines decided to restrict the aircraft from long flights over water so the plane "could return very quickly to an airport" if the warning light reappeared, said Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Trans...
Almost 110,000 Alaskans applied for the fall 2024 Permanent Fund dividend in the first eight days after the application period opened on Jan. 1. Applications close in 11 weeks, on March 31. Last year’s dividend was $1,312. This year’s amount will be determined as part of annual state budget deliberations, which will begin next week when legislators reconvene in Juneau. The annual dividend is paid from the state general fund, which gets most of its money from investment earnings generated by the $78 billion Alaska Permanent Fund and from oil...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy said education is among his top priorities in the coming fiscal year. He proposed spending millions on education, but did not include an increase to per student funding, known as the base student allocation, in his proposed budget. His proposed budget puts $1,267,522,300 to the education department, a 9% decrease from last year, due to shrinking enrollment. “I want the public to understand that, as a former educator, I understand that schools cost money, education costs money, there’s no doubt about it,” Dunleavy said. “The... Full story
Alaskans could pay significantly more next year for mailing packages to, from and within the state with two price increases planned by the U.S. Postal Service. In an effort to reduce its projected $160 billion loss over the next 10 years, the Postal Service announced it is planning a 5.7% average nationwide price hike in 2024 for some shipping options. Customers using USPS Ground Advantage for shipping within Alaska would see a 9.2% average increase. The price increases are set to take effect Jan. 21, but some Alaska mailing rates from Outside...
Nikita Chase doesn’t have a Christmas tree yet this year. She said she is more worried about staving off an electricity shutoff notice than getting into the holiday spirit. Her food stamps, known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, were nearly two months late. “I am pretty much tapped out going into Christmas. That’s not a great place to be,” she said. She ran up debt on her credit card to pay for heat and electricity after she spent all her cash to feed her family. She paid significantly higher prices for piecemeal groceri... Full story
With the rusty Matanuska out of service pending repairs, the Kennicott scheduled for tie-up due to lack of crew and the Tazlina in the shipyard to add crew quarters, the state ferry system’s draft summer 2024 schedule is limited by the number of vessels in service and looks about the same as this past summer. The Columbia would make a weekly northbound stop in Petersburg on Sundays and a weekly southbound visit on Wednesdays on its run between Bellingham, Washington, and Southeast Alaska. The marine highway system released its draft schedule D...
The Wilderness Society conservation group has changed its position and now supports a bill that would create five new Alaska Native corporations in Southeast Alaska. It historically has opposed the creation of the new corporations. Federal legislation would create for-profit Native corporations for five communities left out of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. The settlement act transferred almost a billion dollars and title to 44 million acres to Native corporations to make profits and issue dividends to Native shareholders....
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced it expects Southeast Alaska commercial fishermen next year will harvest around 19 million pink salmon — close to an average number based on 63 years of commercial harvest data collected since Alaska became a state. The department’s forecast, released in November, predicts a pink salmon catch of between 12 million and 32 million fish. Pink salmon harvest varies greatly from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years, and the commercial catch in the 10 most recent even years has averaged 21 mil...
The Alaska Board of Fisheries voted 4-2 against requiring in-season management to more effectively hold the sport fishery Chinook catch within its harvest limit. The board voted on Friday, Dec. 1, at its meeting in Homer, which was primarily devoted to Southcentral fisheries issues. The controversial proposal would have tightened in-season management of the Southeast Chinook catch to better guard against resident and nonresident sport fishermen exceeding their share of the overall sport and commercial harvest. The proposal’s intent was to b...
A Haines man says a mix of ignorance and bad luck on a recent mountain goat hunt led to his killing of a brown bear in self-defense and potentially $1,500 worth of fines. On Sunday, Oct. 29, 33-year-old Ethan Julian of Haines was issued three citations by the Alaska Wildlife Troopers for failure to salvage all edible meat from a goat, failure to salvage the hide and skull of a brown bear and unlawful possession and transportation after he took two claws off the brown bear as a trophy. Each citation was paired with a $500 fine. All are...
The Haines Borough Assembly unanimously voted to end its contract with assessor Michael Dahle at the end of the year after nearly 600 residents signed a petition calling for his removal. The petition gained hundreds of signatures in less than a week after it was released to the public on Monday, Nov. 6. The resident-led call for action follows a summer of public backlash after some residents saw a dramatic rise in their property assessments and resulting tax bills. Borough officials have said the rise in property values is the result of a hot...
Now in its 15th year, the applied fisheries program at the University of Alaska Southeast draws students from across the state and across the country. Not just ocean states like Florida, but the Great Lakes state of Wisconsin, and even landlocked Wyoming and Kentucky this semester. “Our enrollment has been increasing,” said assistant professor Lauren Wild, who has taught in the program since 2020. Students attend online or, she said, if they live in an area without adequate and reliable high-speed internet service, the school will send the...
Alaska’s minimum wage will increase on Jan. 1, 2024 from $10.85 to $11.73 an hour, in accordance with a law put in place by a 2014 citizen initiative, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development announced. The law mandates regular increases in the minimum wage to match inflation rates as determined by the Consumer Price Index in Anchorage. Compared to the rest of the nation, the state’s minimum wage is “a little bit middling right now,” said Joelle Hall, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO. It appears on track to stay that way for at... Full story
For some, the holiday spirit doesn’t kick in until the evening of Dec. 24, when the stockings are already on the mantle. For others, Christmastime is a monthslong extravaganza that starts when the last trick-or-treaters say goodnight and ends sometime in late January, when the Christmas tree is a pile of needles on the floor. The right time of year to put up a tree is a deeply personal decision, but regardless of your holiday decoration timeline, the annual Spotify spike of “All I Want for Christmas is You” streams has already begun, and the f...
The company trying to build a huge copper and gold mine in the salmon-rich Bristol Bay will keep fighting for the project, despite a decision by the federal government to keep the proposed development site off-limits to large-scale metals mining. John Shively, chief executive officer of the Pebble Limited Partnership, made that vow in a presentation at the Alaska Miners Association annual convention in Anchorage. He said the Pebble mine had the potential to transform the economy and improve lives in the rural Bristol Bay region, just as he... Full story
After recent years of record or near-record runs and harvests, Bristol Bay sockeye salmon numbers are expected to return to more average levels next year, according to state biologists. The 2024 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run is expected to total 39 million fish, with a predicted range between about 25 million and 53 million fish, according to a preliminary forecast released Friday by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. That is 35% lower than the average over the past 10 years but 6% higher than the long-term average for Bristol Bay, the... 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 first thing to know about the mariculture industry in Alaska is how much money and effort are going into making it a major economic driver for years to come. The second thing is that, aside from oysters, it isn’t profitable — yet. That’s kind of the point. A collective $110 million in public investment for mariculture in Alaska is flowing into the state, a federal Build Back Better wager based on the core assets of the region, predictions about future demand — particularly for kelp — and the general need for more sustainable food sources....
It took a village to save a juvenile whale earlier this month, one that involved collaboration between people and agencies, and extended as far as a NOAA expert in Maui. That's the story of "SEAK-5490," a juvenile humpback whale who was successfully freed from crab fishing lines near Gustavus earlier this month. The effort included local residents who saw the humpback in distress and reported it, the owner of the fishing gear who provided information needed for the rescue, people on the Glacier...
During a virtual public open house last Tuesday evening, Alaska Marine Highway System Marine Director Craig Tornga gave a brief update on the status of the agency's capital improvements as well as its operating challenges. Operating challenges "Crewing is still a big struggle for us," Tornga said. The system operated six ferries all summer, though it had hoped it would be able to recruit enough crew to run the Kennicott as a seventh vessel. But "we have crews for about five and a half (ferries). There is a large shortage across the national...
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
