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Gov. Mike Dunleavy ramped up his threats to school districts on May 8 by declaring he will use his line-item power to reduce per-student funding in next year’s budget unless the Legislature passes his education policy priorities. The Republican governor issued his ultimatum during a Zoom call with school district superintendents. It comes after the Legislature passed House Bill 57 a week earlier, increasing the per-pupil base student allocation by more than 11%. The increase, if it survives, would generate more than $400,000 in additional s... Full story
Alaska’s largest tribal government marked its return after two years to the biggest statewide Alaska Native organization on May 6, with the tribal president declaring “unity is our greatest strength” during uncertain political times. The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska participated in an Alaska Federation of Natives board meeting, which occurred about two months after Interior Alaska’s major tribal consortium — the Tanana Chiefs Conference — also voted to rejoin AFN after a two-year absence. “Two years ago, th...
The Legislature appears to have reached a deal on an education bill. The Senate passed the measure with a $700 increase in per-student funding, almost a 12% boost, on a 19-1 vote at midday Monday, April 28. The House was expected to take up the bill on Wednesday. House approval would send the bill to Gov. Mike Dunleavy for his approval or veto, though the wide margin of legislative approval indicates lawmakers could have enough votes to override a veto. House Bill 57 started three months ago as a measure to place limits on student cellphone...
The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska’s 90th annual tribal assembly voted on April 18 to give Southeast Alaska communities more representation by reducing the number allocated for larger cities such as Anchorage and Seattle. The change in representation on the tribal assembly was approved after an emotional five-hour debate at the gathering in Juneau. The change, part of Tlingit and Haida’s first constitutional convention at its assembly since 2018, makes significant shifts to a tribal delegation where Juneau and...
At least one refugee family in Juneau has received notice from the Trump administration ordering them to leave the country immediately or face prosecution, while at least four international students at the University of Alaska Anchorage had their visas revoked, officials said April 14. Both actions mirror nationwide targeting of foreigners who were residing legally in the United States but are now being subjected to detention, arrest and deportation for reasons including expressing views the Trump administration finds disagreeable and alleged...
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the Trump administration needs to realize federal employees are operating programs that "truly are saving lives," and there needs to be support for agencies "that Americans are relying on for livelihoods and for safety." "Weather forecasters save lives in our state," Murkowski said during her annual speech to a joint session of the Alaska Legislature on March 18. "Public servants are not our enemies." Murkowski is one of the few congressional Republicans openly...
A 2023 presidential executive order expanding sovereignty rights for the nation’s 574 federally recognized tribes was revoked March 14 by President Donald Trump, putting major tribal projects and policies in Alaska and elsewhere in question. Executive Order 14112, signed by President Joe Biden during the White House Tribal Nations Summit in early December 2023, sought to give Native Americans more access to federal funding and spending autonomy. The order was cited by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in recognizing expanded tribal i...
Vacation rental: Historic six-bedroom, 10-bathroom mansion with eight fireplaces and ballroom. Vacant much of the year. Conveniently located in the heart of downtown Juneau, within easy walking distance of the Alaska State Capitol and other attractions. A bill introduced on March 17 by Fairbanks Rep. Will Stapp would turn the Alaska Governor’s House into a short-term rental. House Bill 139 would allow rentals at the three-story, 14,400-square-foot residence “when the legislature is not in session and the governor has not reserved the mansion in...
A proposed 20-year plan seeking to restore the ailing Alaska Marine Highway System to a more reliable and sustainable operation calls for a major increase in funding for operations and building several new ships. The six new ferries and shoreside improvements could cost $3 billion. The draft plan also envisions an ambitious increase in service to smaller communities, including Wrangell, while shrinking the total fleet from nine ships to eight. The draft plan published Feb. 28 seeks about $3 billion in vessel and infrastructure spending, plus...
As many as 100,000 Alaskans could lose health insurance if budget cuts supported by President Donald Trump and Republicans who control the U.S. House are enacted, according to Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital CEO Joe Wanner and other state health officials. The Trump administration and House Republicans are backing a spending plan that cuts Medicaid by up to $880 billion during the next decade. Wanner, during a meeting of Bartlett’s board of directors on Feb. 19, said the cut would affect 72,000 Alaskans who have been added since Med...
Southeast Alaska residents are used to choppy waters, so while they may be getting seasick over the waves of uncertainty in federal programs and funding stirred up by Donald Trump’s return to the White House, smoother sailing is on the horizon, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski told a conference of regional business and community leaders Feb. 11. A mix of uncertainty, optimism and concern about the Trump administration’s impacts on the region was expressed by other federal, state and industry officials participating in the opening day of Southeast Con...
The Alaska Senate rejected giving themselves and other state leaders automatic pay raises linked to inflation with the unanimous passage of a bill Friday, Feb. 7, declining a commission’s recommendation to implement such raises. Senate Bill 87 rejects recommendations made Jan. 29 by the three-member State Officers Compensation Commission that would adjust salaries every two years for the Legislature, Gov. Mike Dunleavy and top officials at state agencies to match the Consumer Price Index — up or down — after the 2026 state election. The recom...
A wide-ranging education package with provisions that include allowing students to attend any public school in the state was introduced Friday, Jan. 31, by Gov. Mike Dunleavy at the State Capitol. The legislation also revives numerous policy goals by the Republican governor such as more state money for homeschooling and state authorization of new charter schools instead of leaving that decision up to school districts. The governor’s package contains no increase to the state's per-pupil funding number for school districts, the Base Student A...
The U.S. Forest Service’s “Sustainability and Climate” web page is gone, as are the news sections for the homepages of Alaska’s national forests and the Tongass National Forest. Likewise for a vast amount of federal government weather, disaster assistance, fisheries, health, education and other reports. In some instances they can still be accessed through submenus or via virtual backdoors such as the exact URL for a specific report. In others, the information has simply halted — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity a...
The two U.S. Border Patrol officers newly stationed in Juneau will work with law enforcement throughout Southeast on high-priority illegal activities — largely involving drugs — not conducting workplace raids and setting up deportation camps, said Ross Wilkin, patrol agent in charge of the Border Patrol’s sector office, which is responsible for operations in Washington, Oregon and Alaska. “We don’t want people to be concerned that there’s a restaurant that’s going to get raided or something like that,” he said. “This is not the goal of this...
An ongoing failure by the state to process food stamps and other public assistance applications in a timely manner will now be subject to federal court scrutiny: The state will have to file monthly reports as a result of two lawsuits stemming from the backlog. A preliminary injunction issued Dec. 31 by a federal judge in a food assistance lawsuit filed by 10 Alaskans was followed by a settlement agreement in a class-action lawsuit on Jan. 6 imposing nearly identical reporting requirements for cash assistance to elderly and disabled residents....
President-elect Donald Trump has said he will "bring back the name of Mount McKinley" to the Alaska mountain known as Denali, the tallest in the United States. The mountain, referred to as Denali by Alaska Natives for centuries, was officially named Mount McKinley from 1917 until 2015, after former President William McKinley who was assassinated in 1901. The name was changed to Denali in 2015 during President Barack Obama's second term, with Trump vowing during his 2016 presidential campaign to...
The governor has proposed a state budget for next year that does not repeat this year’s education funding increase and pays out a $3,838 Permanent Fund dividend — and runs up a $1.5 billion deficit. The cost of the dividend, estimated at more than $2.5 billion, consumes 40% of total available state general fund revenues. Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s spending plan, unveiled Dec. 12, would wipe out more than half of the state’s budget reserve account. The broad aspects of the Republican governor’s spending plan are similar to those that encounter...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy said he isn’t planning to take a job with President-elect Donald Trump’s administration at the start of his second presidential term in January. Dunleavy, in the middle of his second term as governor, was mentioned by political observers and in media reports in the days after the Nov. 5 election as a candidate to lead the Department of Interior. When Trump selected North Dakota’s governor for the job, Dunleavy was listed by some as a possible Cabinet member for the departments of energy or education. But the governor, durin...
Juneau got a record number of cruise ship passengers for a second straight year, with 1,677,935 arriving during the 2024 season that ended Oct. 24 compared to 1,638,902 last year, according to the Docks and Harbors Department. Ships this year were at 104% capacity — meaning some cabins had more than two people staying in them, such as a child with parents — compared to 101% capacity last year, according to Docks and Harbors. Every month of this year’s season between April and October was at or above 100% capacity, compared to last year when...
Juneau voters have rejected the Ship-Free Saturday proposition, with 3,751 votes in favor of the initiative and 5,788 against as of Oct. 4, with several hundred more ballots still to count. The Oct. 1 ballot proposition, the first of its kind in Alaska, attracted international media coverage. It would have banned cruise ships with accommodations for 250 or more passengers on Saturdays and also banned them on the Fourth of July. Opponents of the measure, led by the cruise industry and tourism businesses, waged an expensive campaign, with...
Participants in a transboundary mining conference in Juneau last week said recent natural and industrial disasters show why their heightened concerns are justified. “I think that people are realizing that more and more this is an emergency situation,” Wrangell’s Esther Aaltséen Reese, president of the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission, said in an interview Aug. 28. “We can’t just keep coming to these meetings and saying the same thing.” The third annual Transboundary Mining Conference began two days after a major landsl...
A commercial icebreaker being purchased by the U.S. Coast Guard will be officially homeported in Juneau, the culmination of a years-long effort to acquire and homeport such a vessel in Alaska waters, officials announced Aug. 14. The Aiviq, a 360-foot-long U.S.-registered vessel launched in 2012 for offshore oil field work — which has been eyed by Alaska’s congressional delegation for many years since it was pulled out of Arctic waters — is expected to “reach initial operational capability in two years,” according to a press release issued by...
The top two officers of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. board of trustees were replaced at the beginning of the board’s quarterly meeting on July 24 in a contentious vote, with displaced Vice Chair Ellie Rubenstein announcing her resignation hours later. The moves came after months of controversy involving allegations of improper financial actions by Rubenstein, sparking further accusations of politically motivated behavior among some board members. Ethan Schutt was ousted as board chair and Rubenstein replaced as vice chair in a 4-2 vote at t...
Ben Mallott, the son of former Alaska Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, will become the new president of the Alaska Federation of Natives on Oct. 1, the organization announced June 28. The younger Mallott, who is stepping into a role his late father previously served at AFN, will succeed Julie Kitka who is stepping down after 34 years as president. Mallott, 40, has served 11 years as an officer with the largest statewide Native organization. AFN represents about 140,000 Alaskans and more than 300 Native corporations and federally recognized tribes. He is...