The federal leader of the Denali Commission said April 18 she is trying to save long-planned Alaska infrastructure projects now threatened by the Trump administration — and the life of the independent federal commission itself.
Julie Kitka, who served for three decades as president of the Alaska Federation of Natives before taking on the new role in October as federal co-chair of the Denali Commission, discussed those challenges in Nome at a conference organized by that city’s government.
“I have to tell you that dealing with the new federal administration, I had a mindset of, ‘This is an administration unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetime,’ so that’s proved out,” she said.
“Urgency is the new normal, and that’s proved out,” Kitka said at the City of Nome Investment Summit.
The Denali Commission was founded in 1998 and modeled after the Appalachian Regional Commission, which was established in 1965. The Denali Commission coordinates rural Alaska infrastructure and economic development planning among multiple agencies, and it disburses grants for various projects, such as water and sewer systems, telecommunications and health care facilities.
It gets funding from the federal government, through congressional appropriations and other sources, and it is empowered to receive funding from non-governmental sources as well.
But it is jeopardized by the Trump administration’s campaign to dramatically shrink the federal government.
Kitka said she met on April 17 with representatives of the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, the ad-hoc team led by billionaire Elon Musk that has directed mass firings and deep budget cuts across federal agencies and programs.
Now Kitka said she has three DOGE people assigned to shadow her and the Denali Commission, putting her and her colleagues in the position of defending its existence.
If the Trump administration tries to eliminate the Denali Commission, it would not be the first time. There were similar attempts in the first Trump administration, but Congress preserved the commission then.
Kitka said one way that she and others are trying to prove the commission’s value is through what she called a “strategic pivot” to emphasize dual use of funded infrastructure projects. Thus, an expanded airport runway or an improved harbor, communication system or health care facility can benefit not only the local and regional community but also the nation’s military forces, which are paying more attention to the Arctic and its role in national defense.
An example of a project that the commission is trying to save with that dual-use pivot is a project to establish climate-resilient telecommunications on the North Slope. The project, led by the Iñupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, a tribal government, in partnership with the telecommunications company Quintillion, was working its way through a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant program.
Though the North Slope project and many others were already in the design and planning phase, the Trump administration in earlier this month terminated the grant program, called Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC.
Among the BRIC-funded work in Alaska now in jeopardy is a project in Skagway to remove a steep rock overhang from a cliff above the city’s port to lessen the risks of landslides. The city was awarded a $19.9 million BRIC grant in February, but the Trump administration’s cancellation of BRIC projects is retroactive to 2020.
Past BRIC grants in Alaska also include $1.465 million awarded in 2022 to the Native Village of Kwigillingok, a tribal government in a Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta village coping with accelerating erosion, increased flooding and permafrost thaw. It was one of several grants made to tribal governments or Native villages around the nation.
The Alaska Beacon is an independent, donor-funded news organization. Alaskabeacon.com.
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