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State senators issued warnings on May 7 as they approved a draft operating budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The Senate version of the spending bill, which includes an estimated $1,000 Permanent Fund dividend for eligible Alaskans and an increase for K-12 education, also cuts into state money for several services. The proposal would trim back proposed funding increases for early education programs, reduce funding for state prisons, eliminate the state’s office of citizenship assistance, mostly defund the state militia, reduce road maintenanc...
Both chambers of the Alaska Legislature have approved a resolution stating its support for Canadian independence and opposing “restrictive trade measures or tolls” that would affect commerce between Alaska and Canada. House Joint Resolution 11, which will be sent to President Donald Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and other top officials in both countries, rejects Trump’s call to make Canada the 51st state in the United States. “Alaska recognizes the importance of a strong and sovereign nation of Canada and firmly supports Canada’s r...
Four years after a federal appeals court eliminated Alaska’s limits on political campaign contributions, the Alaska House of Representatives has taken a step toward reimposing them. The House voted 22-18 on April 28 to approve House Bill 16, which mirrors the language of a ballot measure slated to go before voters in 2026. The bill moves next to the Senate, with the Legislature facing a May 21 adjournment deadline. Bills that don’t pass both chambers this session will still be alive for consideration next year. Alaskans are expected to approve...
Tessa Hulls was making sandwiches in the Alaska Capitol when she learned she had won a Pulitzer Prize. Her book, "Feeding Ghosts," is a nonfiction graphic novel that documents three generations of women in her family, starting with her grandmother, who was a journalist at the time of the Chinese Communist Revolution. It had already won three national awards by the time the Pulitzer announcement came on May 5, placing her among America's top writers. She won for the category of memoir or...
Amid a severe state budget deficit, the Alaska Senate Finance Committee is proposing the lowest Permanent Fund dividend in five years and — if adjusted for inflation — the lowest dividend ever. On May 1, the committee unveiled a new version of its proposed state operating budget with a $1,000 dividend, a $400 reduction from its first draft. That cut reduces the Senate’s budget draft by $265 million, likely balancing it once additional legislation is considered. The dividend figure is not final: The full Senate will vote on the commi...
For the third time in two years, the Alaska Legislature has approved a bill to increase long-term state funding for the state's K-12 public schools. On April 30, the state Senate voted 17-3 and the House voted 31-8 to approve House Bill 57, which would permanently increase the base student allocation, the core of the state's per-student funding formula, by $700 per student, almost 12%, at a cost to the state of $183 million for the 2025-2026 school year. The increase would send more than...
As Alaska lawmakers confront a major budget deficit, disagreements over how to solve the problem appear likely to lead to a lower Permanent Fund dividend this fall and cuts to services, including public schools. In public statements, members of the Alaska Senate’s majority caucus have said they oppose spending from savings to balance the budget and want to see new revenue bills instead. Meanwhile, members of the state House and Gov. Mike Dunleavy have said they oppose new revenue bills and would prefer to spend from savings. Those different p...
The Senate Finance Committee is considering a draft of Alaska’s state operating budget that would cut more than $200 million from a version adopted earlier this month by the state House. The committee unveiled the first draft of its operating budget proposal at an April 24 meeting in the Capitol in Juneau. The committee’s version of the budget would send less state money to school districts than the House had proposed, though it appears a compromise has been reached on that number — less than the House and school districts wanted but more than...
Legislation passed April 16 by the Alaska House of Representatives would require school districts to adopt policies that restrict the use of cellphones by students during school hours. House Bill 57, which advanced to the Senate after a 34-6 vote, does not require districts to ban students’ cellphones but does require them to regulate students’ use of phones during regular school hours, including during lunch and the time between classes. Wrangell’s middle school already bans cellphones on the premises during school hours. The high schoo...
Thirteen years ago, Palmer farmer Scott Robb set a world record with a 138-pound cabbage he brought to the Alaska State Fair. Not long afterward, Palmer’s local visitor center dedicated a statue to the cabbage and the other colossal world-record vegetables grown in the area. Now, at the urging of a leading visitor center volunteer, a state legislator from Palmer is proposing to enshrine Alaska’s giant cabbages in state law as the official state vegetable. If adopted by the House, Senate and Gov. Mike Dunleavy, House Bill 202 would declare tha...
Along with announcing his veto of an education funding bill on April 17, Gov. Mike Dunleavy introduced new legislation with less of an increase in the state’s per-student funding formula, along with additional funding and policy items to benefit charter schools and homeschool programs. At a news conference in the state Capitol, the governor said there were two reasons for his veto. “One of the reasons is that the (state) revenue situation has deteriorated a lot” in recent months, Dunleavy said. “And the second reason for the veto is there’s...
The Alaska House of Representatives on April 16 approved a $6.2 billion draft state operating budget, putting Alaska on track for a deficit of as much as several hundred million dollars in the fiscal year that begins July 1. If the House version of the operating budget is added to the capital budget passed a day earlier by the Senate — and counting a planned supplemental budget needed to fill holes in this fiscal year’s spending plan — total general-purpose spending this legislative session would come in near $6.6 billion. The Alaska Depar...
As Alaska legislators confront a major state budget deficit, the state Senate on April 15 voted unanimously to approve a “bare bones” $162 million capital budget to pay for construction and renovation projects across the state. The spending plan, which would take effect July 1, remains a draft subject to approval by the House. Gov. Mike Dunleavy could also veto individual items in the spending plan. The budget bill passed by the Senate is almost entirely limited to the minimum in state money needed to unlock more than $2.5 billion in fed...
The Alaska Legislature has voted to allow teenagers as young as 18 to serve alcohol in the state. The Alaska House of Representatives voted 32-8 on April 2 to pass Senate Bill 15, which lowers the minimum alcohol-serving age in restaurants, breweries, wineries, distilleries, resorts and similar businesses. The minimum age to serve alcohol at a bar or sell it at a package store remains 21. A separate provision of the bill requires alcohol-serving businesses to post a sign stating that alcohol causes cancer. The House’s vote follows a 19-0 v...
Alaska’s two U.S. senators split on a vote against President Donald Trump’s economic tariffs against Canada. The U.S. Senate voted 51-48 to approve a resolution April 2 that would end the presidentially declared emergency that allowed Trump to impose tariffs on Canada. The vote was largely symbolic because the resolution has almost no chance of passing the U.S. House, where the Speaker of the House has already taken action to prevent the proclaimed emergency from ending. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski joined Senate Democrats and thr...
In remarks to the Alaska Legislature on March 20, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan praised the work of President Donald Trump, saying the new president's pro-mining and pro-drilling views are "great for those of us in Alaska." Sullivan, who walked through a crowd of anti-Trump and pro-democracy protesters en route to the speech in the state House chambers, downplayed the chaos caused in Alaska by the Trump-empowered Department of Government Efficiency, which has orchestrated the firing of hundreds of...
British Columbia Premier David Eby said on March 6 that he intends to introduce legislation that would place tolls on commercial trucks traveling from the Lower 48 states to Alaska through his province. Speaking at the Legislative Assembly building in Victoria, Eby said the move is one of several that he is taking in response to President Donald Trump’s erratic Canadian tariff plans. “I’m here to share that we will be introducing a new law in the coming days to respond to this historic challenge: unprecedented legislation. It will inclu...
All seven members of the powerful state Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 24 proposed rewriting the payment formula in state law for the annual Permanent Fund dividend, renewing the Senate’s effort to replace an obsolete, 43-year-old law that hasn’t been followed since 2015. If signed into law, Senate Bill 109 would split the annual earnings transfer from the Alaska Permanent Fund to the state treasury: 75% of that transfer would be reserved for state services, and 25% would be used for dividends. This year, the PFD would be about $1,420 per...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has introduced a bill that would partially reverse Alaska’s 35-year-old ban on fish farms. If it makes it into law, the bill would not allow salmon farming but would allow farming of “any bony fish belonging to the osteichthyes class.” That includes species like tilapia, catfish or carp — the world’s most widely farmed fish. The chair of the House Fisheries Committee, Kodiak Rep. Louise Stutes, disagrees with the governor’s proposal. “Alaska’s commercial fishing industry, our coastal communities and fishing families across...
Ahead of the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Alaska Republican U.S. Rep. Nick Begich III declined to say that he supports aid for the embattled eastern European nation, drawing a significant contrast between himself and the other two members of Alaska’s congressional delegation. After President Donald Trump incorrectly stated that Ukraine started the war, Alaska Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan pushed back on the president’s comments and said Russia started the war. Begich did not issue a similar rebut...
In a series of hearings last week, members of the Alaska Legislature heard emotional testimony about the need for more education funding. As lawmakers consider the idea, it’s becoming increasingly clear within the Capitol that more funding for public schools will come at the expense of the Permanent Fund dividend. “The state of Alaska is probably facing its largest fiscal problem … in 30 years,” said Bethel Sen. Lyman Hoffman, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, on Feb. 11. Hoffman has been a legislator since 1987. Under the governo...
The state is bringing in less money than it is spending and is on pace to finish the current fiscal year with a deficit of $171 million, according to figures presented Feb. 4. Lacey Sanders, Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s top budget official, told the Senate Finance Committee that spending from the Constitutional Budget Reserve Fund likely will be needed to close the gap before the Legislature’s scheduled adjournment in May. That would require support from three-quarters of the House and three-quarters of the Senate — usually a politically fraught negot...
In a series of hearings last week in the Alaska Capitol, advocates from across the state presented hours of impassioned and often emotional testimony in favor of a bill to sharply increase state funding for public schools. The state funding formula has increased just 2% over the past decade, but a pair of cold-blooded financial hearings by legislative committees showed that the education request may have to compete with the Permanent Fund dividend and aid for aging state buildings in the next budget. In December, Gov. Mike Dunleavy offered a st...
State political campaign regulators have issued a second heavy penalty against the organizers of a failed campaign that sought to repeal Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system. On Jan. 27, the Alaska Public Offices Commission fined Alaskans for Honest Elections, Alaskans for Honest Government, the Ranked Choice Education Association and Anchorage resident Arthur Matthias a combined total of almost $157,000. The commission imposed the maximum allowable fines on the parties, stating that they have “proven themselves shockingly poor at com...
A state commission is recommending automatic inflation-driven pay raises for Alaska’s governor, lieutenant governor, members of the state Legislature and top officials at state agencies. The recommendation, approved by the three members of the State Officers Compensation Commission on Jan. 29, will become effective after the 2026 state election unless the Legislature and Gov. Mike Dunleavy approve a measure within 60 days rejecting the pay hikes. “If we’re really going to have a system where anybody can run (for office) and be able finan...