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The Aug. 20 primary election for the state House district that covers Wrangell is a preview of the Nov. 5 general election. All three primary election candidates to succeed Rep. Dan Ortiz in representing Ketchikan, Metlakatla and Wrangell in the House will advance to the November round under Alaska’s voting system that sends up to the top four primary finishers to the general election. Competing for the seat are Jeremy Bynum, a Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly member and Ketchikan Public Utilities electric manager; Grant EchoHawk, also a m...
Financial documents published July 31 by the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. show the fund lacks enough spendable money to immediately pay for items in the state’s annual budget, a sign that the state’s top source of general-purpose revenue is on course for a future crisis. This year, lawmakers and Gov. Mike Dunleavy approved a $1 billion transfer from the spendable portion of the Permanent Fund to the constitutionally protected principal, to help the principal keep pace with inflation. As of July 1, there was only $571.7 million available for tha... Full story
The Alaska Legislature has approved the state budget with a Permanent Fund dividend and bonus of about $1,655 per recipient. The exact figure this fall will depend on the number of approved applicants. The Legislature finished work and adjourned May 15. As has been the case the past several years, the amount of the annual payment was debated at length. Last year, senators wrote the budget so that if oil prices exceeded what the state needed to pay its bills, some of that extra revenue would be reserved for an “energy relief” payment att... Full story
The Alaska Legislature has approved creating a task force to make policy recommendations to help the beleaguered commercial fishing industry. The Senate unanimously approved the resolution on Sunday, May 12, to establish the task force. There was only one no vote in the House, from Wasilla Rep. David Eastman. The task force is modeled off another legislative task force created more than 20 years ago to help the salmon industry. At the time, salmon fishermen were struggling with the pain of low prices and competition with farmed salmon....
The Alaska Senate is moving toward a final vote on its draft state spending plan for the coming fiscal year, with senators expected this week to approve a budget that includes enough money to pay a 2024 Permanent Fund dividend estimated at $1,580. The Senate’s draft operating budget is different from one passed last month by the House which included a $2,270 proposed PFD. Senate action will trigger the creation of a conference committee charged with writing a compromise budget deal to fund state services after July 1, the start of the fiscal y... Full story
On beautiful Wrangell Island, where my family has deep roots spanning generations, hard work is not just a way of life, it’s ingrained in our very existence. As a caregiver in this tight-knit community, I’ve always embraced the notion that our work is critical to the well-being of our elders and those in need of extra support. It’s a labor of love, despite its backbreaking nature, because it brings a profound sense of satisfaction to know that I’m making a difference in the lives of my neighbors, friends and family. But lately, the work of...
The Alaska House has sent to the Senate a state operating budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1 with an almost $2,300 Permanent Fund dividend that would be the single largest expenditure in the spending plan. The budget also includes $175 million in additional one-time school funding, raising the total state contribution to school district operating expenses to just over half of what House members voted to spend on this fall’s dividend. The boost in state aid for the 2024-2025 school year, if approved by the Senate and signed into l...
The state ferry system carried 181,000 passengers in 2023, still short of the pre-COVID numbers in 2019 and down substantially from almost 340,000 in 2012 and more than 420,000 in 1992. Overall vehicle traffic also is down, from more than 115,000 in 2012 to 63,000 last year. Much of the decline corresponds to a reduction in the number of vessels in operation, according to statistics presented to a state Senate budget subcommittee on March 19. The fleet provided almost 400 “operating weeks” in 2012, with each week a ship is at sea counting as an...
Alaska lawmakers fell one vote short Monday in an attempt to override the governor’s veto of a comprehensive school funding bill, which included a permanent increase in the state funding formula for K-12 education and which could have provided an additional $440,000 for the Wrangell school district. The additional funds would have covered about two-thirds of the deficit in the Wrangell district’s draft budget, reducing the amount of money it will need to pull out of reserves for the 2024-2025 school year. The vote in a joint session of the Hous...
A new state revenue forecast based on modestly higher oil prices gives the Alaska Legislature some additional breathing room as lawmakers craft a new state budget. The forecast, released March 13 by the Alaska Department of Revenue, updates a fall estimate and predicts that the state will collect $140 million more in revenue than previously expected during the 12 months that begin July 1. That represents about a 2% gain in state revenues. That will help legislators as they write a budget bill that must be passed and become law before July 1,... Full story
Leading Alaska legislators said there is little appetite for spending from savings to pay a super-sized Permanent Fund dividend this year, likely killing a proposal from Gov. Mike Dunleavy. In December, the governor proposed spending almost $2.3 billion on a dividend of roughly $3,500 per recipient this fall under an unused formula in state law. That would result in a $1 billion deficit in the state budget and require spending from the state’s Constitutional Budget Reserve, but as a draft spending plan takes shape in the House, top members of b... Full story
Russian fish flooding global markets and other economic forces beyond the state’s border have created dire conditions for Alaska’s seafood industry. Now key state legislators are seeking to establish a task force to come up with responses to the low prices, lost market share, lost jobs and lost income being suffered by fishers, fishing companies and fishing communities. The measure, Senate Concurrent Resolution 10, was introduced on March 1 and is sponsored by the Senate Finance Committee. “Alaska’s seafood industry is in a tailspin from fa... Full story
It was a perplexing week in the Legislature. While the Senate Finance Committee was reviewing honest numbers about real budget needs hitting up against the limit of available state revenues, the House was debating whether the exalted Permanent Fund dividend belongs in the Alaska Constitution, putting the PFD above all else in life. The Senate committee last week was doing the math, realizing the state would not have enough money for a fat dividend this year, no matter what the governor and too many legislators may pledge, promise and promote....
State senators heard last week that based on current revenue forecasts, legislators will struggle to balance the budget with several big-spending items still to be considered. The nonpartisan Legislative Finance Division explained that items currently pending, like benefits for low-income seniors, funding needed to start upgrading the Railbelt’s electrical grid and a large increase in state money for public education, were not included in the governor’s proposed budget. Other spending, such as Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s insistence on $55 milli...
With a deep reduction in oil revenues expected, Alaska is on track for an almost $1 billion budget hole in the coming year that will have to be filled with money from savings, according to a spending plan presented Dec. 14 by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The governor described his budget for the year beginning next July 1 as “status quo” in most categories. “There’s no cuts in this budget,” he said during a news conference in Juneau. There are a few targeted areas with increases, however, including more staff to help process a backlog of food stamp ben... Full story
Gov. Mike Dunleavy said education is among his top priorities in the coming fiscal year but did not include an increase to the state’s per-student funding formula, known as the base student allocation, in his proposed budget. The budget includes about $1.11 billion to fund the formula that distributes money to school districts statewide, down almost 3% from this year due to declining enrollment. Dunleavy has proposed spending almost twice as much on next year’s Permanent Fund dividend. Lawmakers this past spring approved a one-time appropriatio...
The Alaska Permanent Fund isn’t running out of money, but it may be running out of money that can be spent. After years of earning less than it needed to beat inflation and the demands of the state treasury, the Permanent Fund’s spendable reserves may be exhausted within four years. Alaska relies on an annual transfer from the Permanent Fund for more than half of its general-purpose revenue, used to pay for state services and dividends. If the spendable account runs dry, it would trigger an instant statewide crisis. With that scenario in min... Full story
With high oil prices driving up state revenues, Southeast legislators say to expect a larger capital budget next year for public works projects, more money for deferred maintenance and another attempt to boost state funding for public schools. That’s assuming oil prices stay elevated as the state works its way through the fiscal year that will end on June 30 and remain high in the forecast for the next year. Lawmakers will return to work at the Capitol on Jan. 16. With oil prices last week 30% higher than assumed in this year’s spending pla...
The state wants to send the Matanuska, the oldest vessel in the Alaska Marine Highway System fleet, into a shipyard for the equivalent of a full-body scan. Management wants to find out just how much of the ship’s steel has rusted, and how far the rust has eaten into the thickness of the metal. The 60-year-old Matanuska has been tied up at the dock in Ketchikan since last November, waiting for the state to decide whether to repair the vessel and restore it to working order, or give up on the ship. “We know we have bad steel,” Craig Torng...
The Alaska Marine Highway System, which five months ago embarked on improving its hiring process to address chronic crew shortages, is unable to say how many new employees it has hired since then. The push started after a consultant’s report in January determined the state had hired just four out of 250 job applicants over the prior 12 months. The crew shortage forced the state to pull the Kennicott, the second-largest operable ship in the fleet, off this summer’s schedule and keep it tied up at the dock in Ketchikan. Asked how many new emp...
Southeast legislators said they were disappointed that Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed half of the one-time increase in state money for K-12 public schools, but will try again next year to address education funding needs. “We heard from school districts around the state that needed the money,” Ketchikan Rep. Dan Ortiz said June 21. The $175 million increase that legislators appropriated for the 2023-2024 school year was a compromise between House and Senate members, Democrats, Republicans and independents, he explained. The money, which Dunleavy cut...
I congratulate the Permanent Fund trustees for adopting Resolution 23-01 at their April 12 meeting to limit additional investment in the in-state investment program in which Barings and McKinley Capital Management have each been given $100 million to place in Alaska investments. The decision appears to have been made in part because of the dismal rate of return received from the in-state investments by the two managers. The decision was also made to see whether the poor performance improves over time. I fully support the trustees’ decisions not...
I just wanted to give a big shout-out for all the recent awards the Sentinel staff received at the annual Alaska Press Club contest. I won’t try to name them all. Wrangell should be very proud of Larry Persily and the entire crew at the newspaper. I am now living in Anchorage since the sawmill shut down, but I still get the Sentinel every week. Larry is one of the most sought after advisers up here regarding oil, gas and Alaska’s budget. We Alaskans can’t afford to lose his voice, or Sen. Bert Stedman’s either. The Wrangell Sentinel receive...
As public employees rallied in front of the Alaska Capitol last week, demanding reinstatement of a pension system the Legislature abolished 18 years ago, leading members of the state Senate said their request was unlikely to be fulfilled this year. Members of the 17-member bipartisan Senate majority said at the start of this year’s legislative session that a bill intended to improve recruitment and retention of state employees was a priority. But with only a week left in the regular legislative session, Senate President Gary Stevens said a p... Full story
Almost two weeks after Gov. Mike Dunleavy told lawmakers he would propose a new sales tax, legislators have yet to see the governor’s bill — and are still far from reaching agreement on the state’s fiscal future. Lawmakers broadly agree on the need for new revenue sources amid declining oil taxes. But any proposal from the governor, along with other revenue measures considered by lawmakers this year, are unlikely to pass with only two weeks until the constitutional deadline marking the end of the regular legislative session, key lawma...
