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The Alaska Legislature is preparing to examine two new tax proposals after a state revenue forecast showed significant long-term budget deficits even with a sharply reduced Permanent Fund dividend. One proposal, introduced Friday by Anchorage Democrat Sen. Bill Wielechowski, would cut a popular oil production tax credit and expand the applicability of the state’s corporate income tax to privately owned oil and gas producers. The second proposal, filed Monday by Nikiski Republican Rep. Ben Carpenter, would impose a 2% state sales tax. The s...
Dozens of Alaskans testified in the state Capitol on March 20, urging lawmakers to advance a new anti-discrimination measure that would protect Alaskans from being denied housing or access to public accommodations because of their sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. House Bill 99, from Anchorage Rep. Jennifer Armstrong, is being considered by the House Labor and Commerce Committee, which heard two hours of public testimony, almost entirely in support of the idea. Members of the committee have received more than 1,000 emails — m...
A crowded field of proposals to address the annual debate over the amount of the Permanent Fund dividend became even more so on Friday as the Senate Finance Committee proposed a new formula for setting the payment. In the first 60 days of the 2023 legislative session, lawmakers have introduced six different proposals to set a new dividend formula in either state law or the constitution. Four other bills or resolutions would substantially affect the amount of money available for dividends without specifically setting a new formula. Legislators...
Following criticism from Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor, the nationwide pharmacy chain Walgreens will not seek to sell the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone in Alaska, the company said earlier this month. Though abortion is legal in Alaska, Taylor was one of 20 Republican attorneys general who wrote the nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain and urged it to not sell mifepristone by mail. The attorneys general said they disagree with a Biden administration analysis approving the sale and distribution of the drug through the mail and by c...
Alaska Airlines will paint over "Salmon Thirty Salmon," the custom Boeing 737 that looks like a 129-foot-long Alaska king salmon, the company confirmed Feb. 27. Tim Thompson, director of public relations and community marketing for the airline, confirmed that the plane will be painted over after a final ceremonial flight on April 17 - which is scheduled to stop in Wrangell. That will be Flight 65, the daily Southeast Alaska "milk run" that travels from Seattle to Anchorage with stops in...
The Alaska Volcano Observatory is planning to install a series of seismic instruments on Mount Edgecumbe near Sitka after preliminary measurements showed magma moving deep below the Mount Fuji-shaped volcano. The movement doesn't mean an eruption will happen soon - or even at all - from Southeast Alaska's most prominent volcano, but it's significant enough that the observatory has raised the volcano's threat level. "Internally, how we think about Edgecumbe has changed. It definitely has moved...
Alaska’s 401(k)-style retirement system for new employees is providing significantly smaller benefits than the pension-style retirement system discontinued for new hires in 2006, according to an analysis from the state Division of Retirement and Benefits. The analysis, presented Feb. 23 to the Senate Finance Committee, comes as legislators are considering whether to revive a pension system for new employees as a way to encourage hiring. Almost one in six state government jobs were vacant in December, according to the governor’s Office of Man...
In her annual address to the Alaska Legislature, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski urged state lawmakers to avoid spending too much time on the amount of this year’s Permanent Fund dividend and to focus on problems causing people to move out of the state. For a decade, the number of people moving out of the state has exceeded the number of people moving into Alaska. Only the addition of new births has caused the state’s population to plateau, rather than continue to fall. “They’re counting on us to have a vision and to push that vision, whether for res...
On May 1, the Alaska Court System will remove the marijuana possession convictions of about 750 Alaskans from Courtview, the state’s online database of court cases. The Alaska Supreme Court announced the move in an order signed Jan. 31 by the court’s five justices. The action, first reported Feb. 19 by the Alaska Landmine website, follows years of similar, unsuccessful, legislative efforts to join a nationwide trend. “I’m glad that the Supreme Court has ordered this,” said Fairbanks Sen. Scott Kawasaki. The records will still be available for i...
A multimillion-dollar share of the Alaska grocery store chain Three Bears is one of the latest additions to the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp.’s $200 million in-state investment program — a small slice of the $76 billion state savings account. The program, ordered by the board in 2018, has almost finished making its investments. The corporation’s board of trustees received an update on the program at a quarterly meeting this month. In addition to Three Bears, the new in-state investments include millions spent on a company that operates aviat...
Alaska oil production and prices are below last year’s estimates, and the state could run out of money before the end of the fiscal year in June, members of the Senate Finance Committee were told Feb. 21. “It’s a bit of a nail-biter,” said Neil Steininger, director of the Office of Management and Budget. While the prospect may sound alarming, it’s not as bad as it sounds, said Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman, co-chair of the Finance Committee. “There’s nothing to worry about,” Stedman said. The state’s fiscal year doesn’t end until June 30, and legisl...
Alaska state lawmakers have begun examining a plan to set regulations and fees for companies that collect carbon dioxide and inject it deep underground. The governor has touted the potential for the state to make hundreds of millions of dollars over the years by leasing state lands to hold carbon deep underground and out of the atmosphere where it is blamed for worsening climate change. Members of the House Resources Committee held their first hearing on the proposal from Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Feb. 10. A leading member of the House’s m...
For the first time in 31 years, Alaska’s sitting U.S. representative addressed a joint session of the Alaska Legislature. Speaking in the state Capitol last Friday, Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola praised the bipartisan coalitions that control the state House and Senate, saying she’s frequently asked about “the Alaska model” of bipartisanship. “It’s strange,” she said, “to hear something we take for granted here at home is so foreign in the rest of the country. But it’s also inspiring because it gives me faith that for all the challenges Alaska...
More than 90,000 pounds of canned Alaska pink salmon purchased and donated by the state of Alaska is being distributed as wartime relief in Ukraine. The cans were donated to the nonprofit World Central Kitchen and arrived in Ukraine this month after months of shipping and customs delays. The food is the state’s biggest contribution to Ukraine’s defense against a Russian invasion that started a year ago. Other than appropriating money last year to buy the canned salmon, the war has remained a back-burner issue in the state Capitol. No Ukr...
The Biden administration will ban new logging roads and limit development on Tongass National Forest lands, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Jan. 25. The decision, which repeals a 2020 U.S. Department of Agriculture action under the Trump administration, continues a quarter-century of action and counter-action over development in the region, which contains the world’s largest temperate coastal rainforest and is home to more than 72,000 people. “As our nation’s largest national forest and the largest intact temperate rainf...
In his annual address to the Alaska Legislature, Gov. Mike Dunleavy identified successes from his first four-year term in office and called for action on a list of administration priorities, including more funding for a “statehood defense” program that has launched a series of lawsuits against the federal government. Speaking Jan. 23 at the Capitol in Juneau, the governor also said he would work with state legislators to make Alaska “the most pro-life state in the entire country.” Doing so, he said, would require affordable housing, improve...
The Alaska Supreme Court has upheld the disputed residency eligibility of Anchorage Rep. Jennie Armstrong to serve in the Legislature. In a decision issued Jan. 13, four days before the Legislature convened, three of the court’s justices voted 2-1 to uphold a lower-court decision in Armstrong’s favor on the residency question. The justices did not provide an immediate explanation for their decision; one will be published in the coming months. The Supreme Court decision was the result of a lawsuit filed by Liz Vazquez, who lost to Armstrong by...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has appointed Jude Pate of Sitka to the Alaska Supreme Court, making him the first justice to come directly from someplace other than Juneau, Anchorage or Fairbanks since 1960. Before Pate, the last justice who met those standards was Walter Hodge, who came from Nome and served on the court in 1959 and 1960. Dunleavy announced the appointment by email Jan. 20. Pate was appointed to fill a vacancy created this month by the retirement of Justice Daniel Winfree, who is reaching the constitutionally mandated retirement age of...
Alaska’s backlog of untested sexual assault examination kits has all but disappeared after a five-year, multimillion-dollar effort, according to a report presented to the Alaska Legislature. The kits, also known as “rape kits,” are used to collect physical evidence after a sexual assault. Figures published by the Alaska Department of Public Safety and dated Nov. 1 show only 75 untested kits, all at the state crime lab. In 2017, a statewide survey found almost 3,500 untested kits across the state, many held by local police departments. That...
As Americans watched the U.S. House struggle to elect a leader, Alaskans may soon see a similar situation develop in the state House of Representatives. “These proceedings back east, it’s a stark reminder to a lot of us that we could be going through the same thing,” said Independent Rep. Bryce Edgmon, of Dillingham. With just a week before the Legislature convenes in Juneau, the state House has yet to organize, with both the House’s existing mostly Democratic-led coalition majority and the Republican caucus short of the required 21-vote...
Alaska’s population rose in 2022 according to new estimates released Jan. 5 by the Alaska Department of Labor, marking a second consecutive year of increases after four years of declines. The new Alaska population estimate, 736,556, is the highest since 2018, but the state continues to see more people moving out than moving in, and 2022 marked the 10th consecutive year of negative net migration, said state demographer David Howell. The state gained about 450 people despite that migration loss because the number of births was greater than the n...
An Anchorage Superior Court Judge has ruled that Wasilla Republican Rep. David Eastman’s membership in the Oath Keepers does not violate the Alaska Constitution’s disloyalty clause because of First Amendment protections for free speech. The decision, which may be appealed, means Eastman may continue serving in the Alaska Legislature. Eastman was re-elected in November. In a 49-page order issued Dec. 23, Judge Jack McKenna said the Oath Keepers — labeled an antigovernment militia by the federal government — “are an organization that has, thro...
A House-Senate committee of the Alaska Legislature has approved spending $6.6 million to renovate a downtown Juneau office building into 33 apartments for legislators and staff. During a Dec. 19 vote on the proposal, lawmakers said the state-owned building will help alleviate a chronic shortage of housing in the capital city during the legislative session. “One of the biggest challenges we have is housing,” said Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman. “I think this is the right move,” he said. The cost of construction is also being subsidized by a Juneau-base...
Alaska’s state-owned development bank is continuing its efforts to open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. Directors of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority voted unanimously last month to spend $6.2 million on a second year of legal fees, lease payments and pre-development work related to drilling in the coastal plain. A director speaking in favor of the proposal said he believes the land was promised to the state at statehood, and “we should have access to this land and be abl...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy introduced a first-draft $7.3 billion state budget last week, meeting a legally required deadline but acknowledging that the spending plan is likely to change significantly as the administration negotiates with lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session. “This budget that we’re submitting, as always, is a talking point with the Legislature,” Dunleavy said. “It also reflects values, what our revenue picture looks like, and where we’re headed.” The biggest single expense in the entire proposed state budget is $2.5 billio...