Category: Alaska News

An Alaska Legislature defined by its conflicts with Gov. Mike Dunleavy came to an end at 9:43 p.m. Wednesday night as legislators officially adjourned their second regular session.

Lawmakers will return to work Thursday as they open a special session focused on the planned trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline. As with other topics, the Legislature and the governor appear far apart on the issue. 

“I would say farewell, except I get to see you at 10 a.m.,” said Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, shortly before final adjournment.

Before adjourning, the 34th Alaska State Legislature passed a large, multi-part crime bill that raises the state’s age of consent and criminalizes the act of using AI to create child sexual abuse material. Lawmakers voted to ban foam food containers, named the giant cabbage the state vegetable, approved a fast lane through airport security and passed dozens of small bills that were priorities for local communities and individuals across Alaska.

Bills that fail to pass before adjournment die and must be reintroduced at the start of the next Legislature. Among this year’s casualties were a proposal to offer paid leave for new parents, a bill to stabilize public school budgets, a right-to-repair bill, and all of the proposed constitutional amendments.  

This fall is an election year and many incumbents are retiring, which means that when lawmakers return next year, the House and Senate will include many new faces. They also will work with a new governor: Because of term limits, Dunleavy may not run for re-election.

The Alaska Legislature is the only one in the United States controlled by multipartisan coalitions in both the House and Senate. 

“The Senate majority and the House majority have worked extremely well together. We’ve been on the same page through this entire two years,” said Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak.

In their two-year term, the 34th Legislature passed 111 bills, on par with the 33rd Legislature, which passed 101 bills, and the 32nd Legislature, which passed 112.

Of the 111 bills passed by the 34th Legislature, Dunleavy has vetoed 12, including one he vetoed less than three hours before lawmakers adjourned on Wednesday. 

Dunleavy is vetoing bills at a higher rate than any governor since statehood. Though other governors have issued more vetoes, Dunleavy’s represent a higher proportion of the number of bills passed through the Capitol.

At the start of the 34th Legislature, the House and Senate majority coalitions set education funding as their top priority. 

Last year, they voted to permanently increase the core of the state’s public school funding formula, putting themselves at odds with the governor and setting up a historic set of veto override votes with the help of some Republicans from the House and Senate minority caucuses.

This year, the majorities passed a significantly less ambitious package of education policy reforms but also approved $144 million in one-time bonus payments to public schools and millions more in funding for maintenance and construction projects across the state. Some of the bonus payments are contingent on oil prices remaining high through July 1. 

They were less successful with other stated priorities, including pension legislation. Alaska has been without a public pension program since 2006, and the 34th Legislature was the first since then to pass a bill creating a new pension plan.

Dunleavy vetoed that bill on Monday and lawmakers failed to override it on Tuesday.

The governor’s veto came after legislators failed to reach agreement with him on one of their other stated priorities, energy. 

Dunleavy has urged lawmakers to cut the state’s petroleum property tax in order to incentivize  the proposed trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline. Building the pipeline, the governor has said, is critical for lowering energy prices and improving the state’s economy.

Many legislators are skeptical of those claims.

This week, Dunleavy and House Majority Leader Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage, had negotiated a deal in which the governor would allow the pension bill to become law if legislators approved a gas pipeline bill that aligned with his vision. 

When the pipeline bill failed to materialize on Monday, the governor vetoed the pension bill.

The Senate Majority also prioritized elections reform and passed a bill on the topic earlier this year, but Dunleavy vetoed it. 

Legislators fell two votes short of an override because two Republican supporters flip-flopped and voted to sustain the governor’s choice. They had previously voted in favor of the bill.

“We passed the bills, and that’s all we can really get. It’s out of our hands at that point,” said Senate Majority Leader Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage.

The House Majority’s fourth priority was balancing the state’s budget, and while lawmakers successfully did so this year, the budget was balanced on the back of high oil prices caused by the Iran war, not because of a particular legislative action.

“In the beginning, we were worried about just keeping the (Permanent Fund dividend) alive and getting a balanced budget,” said Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, “and talking about how long our (Constitutional Budget Reserve) is going to last. Then, within a period of a couple of months, things totally changed, and the revenue forecast jumped up.”

When oil prices recede, legislators expect the state will again face major budget deficits.

“Next year will be a very, very difficult session,” Wielechowski said.

In the meantime, the state treasury is reaping wartime rewards, and lawmakers were able to balance the budget without spending from savings. 

They passed a multibillion-dollar state spending plan spread across four budget bills: $2.5 billion in construction and renovation projects, $13.9 billion for services, $450 million in retroactive budget changes, and a $1,000 Permanent Fund dividend bolstered by a $200 one-time energy relief bonus payment.

“Folks, this is what we accomplished, and we accomplished it on time and under budget,” said Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, as he presented the final version of the operating budget bill on the House floor.

Members of the Republican House minority criticized the adopted budget for not spending more wartime oil revenue on the dividend. 

“My primary objection to this budget is that in FY26, the state is absolutely swimming in money,” said Rep. Will Stapp, R-Fairbanks.

“We should have waterfalled that extra money into the Permanent Fund dividend,” he said.

Both the operating budget and the capital budget are subject to the governor’s line-item veto powers. The governor can eliminate or reduce individual items, but he cannot add or increase them.

Kopp gave the majority coalition a “B” for its performance. Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, thought the majority coalition there warranted an “A,” while Senate Minority Leader Mike Cronk, R-Tok, thought the Legislature overall merited a “B”. 

The last day of the session saw several lawmakers offer their goodbyes, including some who had not previously announced their retirement. 

“I am not planning on being back here for the 35th Alaska Legislature,” said Rep. Dan Saddler, R-Eagle River. Saddler has served for 12 nonconsecutive years in the House.

Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, is retiring after 14 years in the House and received multiple rounds of applause. Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, is leaving the House as well, but for a state Senate run rather than retirement.

Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, has not announced plans to leave the House, but he has been repeatedly named as a possible replacement for Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel. Hoffman is retiring as the longest-serving state legislator in Alaska history.

Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak and the oldest member of the Legislature, is also retiring. The Legislature’s youngest member is also leaving — Rep. David Nelson, R-Anchorage, is getting married this summer. 

After the final gavel fell, staff and legislators cheered and filed out of the chambers. 

Within an hour, Saddler was leading a group of them in songs that echoed up and down the Capitol’s stairwell.

Corinne Smith contributed reporting from Juneau.

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The Alaska Legislature has approved a state driver’s license data-sharing bill that would allow some travelers to speed through security at airports in Alaska.

On Wednesday, the Alaska Senate voted unanimously to approve Senate Bill 237, from Sen. Scott Kawasaki, D-Fairbanks. Because the House voted to pass the bill 40-0 on Tuesday, the Senate’s vote sends the bill to Gov. Mike Dunleavy for final approval or veto.

As originally drafted by Kawasaki, SB 237 would have only allowed the state Division of Motor Vehicles to share driver’s license information with “a nonprofit organization, governmental, or tribal entity.”

That would allow Alaskans to apply for a replacement Social Security card over the internet. Currently, someone who needs a replacement must visit an office in Juneau, Anchorage or Fairbanks in person. 

Alaska is the only state that does not allow residents to get a replacement card online.

In the House, Rep. Steve St. Clair, R-Wasilla, proposed an amendment that would allow the state to share driver’s license data with “an entity participating in the Transportation Security Administration’s Registered Traveler Programs.”

That includes CLEAR, a for-profit company that offers fast-lane service at airport security checkpoints across the country.

“There’s actually a contract between CLEAR and the (Anchorage) airport right now, they just can’t do anything or share data until we pass legislation saying that they can,” St. Clair said. 

House lawmakers approved that amendment unanimously.

At the urging of Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage, lawmakers also amended the bill with a section that will allow Alaskans to store digital copies of their driver’s licenses on their smartphones. 

If a police officer performs a traffic stop, that digital copy would be valid ID.

That amendment was originally a separate bill, House Bill 180, from the Office of the Governor. 

“For anyone who lives their life on their phone, this would be a wonderful convenience that the administration would like to offer,” Gray said.

That amendment passed the House by a 38-2 vote, and SB 237 proceeded toward a final vote in the Legislature without opposition.

Restaurants in Alaska will have to stop serving food in disposable polystyrene foam containers, under a bill passed by the Legislature and awaiting Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s signature.

The measure, House Bill 25, prohibits food establishments from using containers made of Styrofoam and similar plastic foam materials starting on Jan. 1. The bill applies to restaurants and to state agencies’ food operations, but it does not apply to containers sold in stores.

The prime sponsor, Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, said he was inspired to introduce the bill after attending meetings of the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators and learning how other states are trying to curb plastic pollution.

There are several reasons to ban containers made from Styrofoam and other polystyrene, Josephson said at a May 11 hearing of the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee. The materials are linked to cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma and other health problems, like endocrine disruption. They cannot be recycled. And they crumble into tiny pieces that spread into the environment, including Alaska’s marine environment, he said.

The bill’s ban would be “historic,” Josephson said. “It would send a strong message that Alaska, with its massive coastlines, greater than the rest of the country, intends to clean up,” he said at the hearing.

Sen. Scott Kawasaki, D-Fairbanks, summarized the environmental concerns when he spoke in favor of the bill on the Senate floor on Monday. “Styrofoam never breaks down. It always floats away. And it can float through air and water,” he said.

Some Alaska municipalities already have such bans, Josephson and Kawasaki said, naming Bethel, Cordova and Seward as examples.

The bill went through several refinements after it was first introduced before the start of the 2025 session.

Lawmakers made some changes to ease the transition to non-polystyrene materials. The final bill allows restaurants to continue using polystyrene containers that had been stockpiled prior to the effective date of Jan. 1, 2027. Another change grants municipalities the option of allowing the containers.

The local-option change was important to Sen. Rob Yundt, R-Wasilla, and helped him overcome his earlier reluctance to support the bill. He and his wife own a restaurant and the ban “very well might cost us a little bit of money,” Yundt said in floor comments on Monday, when the bill won final passage in the Senate. “But I can tell you it’s common sense. It’s long overdue.”

Environmental groups praised the bill. Among the risks of polystyrene pollution cited by those groups is the damage to fish and wildlife, which mistake tiny bits of plastic for food.

“Alaska is on the frontlines of the global plastics crisis, and lawmakers are stepping up with meaningful solutions,” Christy Leavitt, senior campaign director at Oceana, said in a statement released Wednesday. “We are grateful to Rep. Andy Josephson as the bill’s sponsor and the support from legislators across party lines. By passing HB 25, Alaska is taking an important step to reduce harmful plastic pollution, protect ocean wildlife, and safeguard the health of Alaska’s communities.”

Other organizations that were prominent supporters were Alaska Community Action on Toxics and the Alaska Environment and Research Policy Center; the latter group conducted a study that found microplastics such in all 39 Southcentral Alaska water bodies it tested.

A national trade organization representing manufacturers of polystyrene materials opposed the bill.

Lindsay Stovall, director of state and regulatory affairs for the American Chemistry Council, described her organization’s objections in written comments and in committee testimony. She said the bill would impose costs on consumers, businesses and state agencies.

“While we support efforts to reduce plastic waste, we believe the legislation would increase costs, create implementation challenges, and fail to achieve its intended environmental objectives,” she said in testimony to the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee on May 15.

An analysis commissioned by her organization found that the Alaska Department of Corrections, for example, would have to spend an extra $1.8 million to switch to paper alternatives or $2.6 million to switch to degradable options, Stovall said.

However, the analysis of the bill conducted by the state Department of Revenue found that it would impose no additional costs on any state agency.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, which would oversee the ban, “can integrate compliance into existing processes without the need for regulatory development or significant additional staff workload,” and would be able to use previously allocated resources, according to the Department of Revenue’s fiscal analysis.

The bill does not apply to food-service items purchased in stores for home use or to storage containers such as those used to ship fish. The bill also contains an exemption for disaster emergencies.

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Maybe it’s because of the winter we had, with its lingering cold and back-to-back storms, but I’ve been deep in spring cleaning this season. I’ve always hoarded papers — old handouts, notes and fliers — but I’m not organized enough to know what’s where, so it’s always a bit of a surprise where information shows up, and this year, I want to change that.

In March, around the time Gov. Mike Dunleavy introduced his bill asking the legislature to approve tax breaks for the proposed Alaska LNG pipeline, I uncovered a forgotten notebook from 2018. One page contains a statement from an Alaska Gas Development Corporation public meeting assuring attendees that long-term contracts with international buyers would be finalized by 2025. Another page, from another meeting later that year, outlines a timeline promising “first cargo” in late 2024. 

These contradictory notes motivated me to dig through my personal archives, the unlabeled folders in beer boxes and stacks of undated notebooks, for more records of public meetings about this speculative pipeline. Concerned about the impacts the project would have on my neighborhood, Alaska more generally, and the planet, I attended Federal Energy Regulatory Commission meetings and AGDC public relations presentations in the Denali Borough throughout the regulatory process, and I was curious about what I wrote down.

What I found is often frustrating. 

“That’s a good question, next time we’ll bring a geologist,” a FERC official said, in response to concerns about building a pipeline across the Denali Fault. 

“That’s a good point, we should start thinking about Western Alaska energy costs,” AGDC said to people who had been thinking about it for decades. 

Once, someone suggested a bike path could be built on top of the pipeline if its route paralleled the Parks Highway through the Denali Borough. But the bike path or the woman who proposed it were never mentioned again. 

At another meeting, someone who had just arrived in Alaska from a pipeline project in Papua New Guinea told us, in response to questions about safety, that “you can pour [LNG] in a glass, boil it, and drink the water,” as if the question was about drinkability of gas that no one was able to ascertain we’d have access to for utilities, let alone consumption. He said we could learn more on YouTube, which is how I learned about local conflicts and displacements surrounding the Papua New Guinea gasline. In the margins, I wrote a note: “YouTube. No wonder he needed a new job.” They tossed around dates and dollar amounts like confetti. I wrote them down, often accompanied by question marks. 

If this sounds disjointed, it’s because it has been.

Sometimes, presentations would focus on air quality in Asia, and frame Alaska gas, transported hundreds of miles before being shipped across the ocean, as the only viable solution to improving it. The next year, the emphasis would be on endangered polar bears, floating helplessly on diminishing sea ice, whose only hope was that Alaska could contribute methane rather than CO2 to the rapidly warming climate. But by 2022, all pretense of environmental concern had been abandoned, and the AGDC representative who visited Healy told us that investments in sustainability, or the Environmental, Social and Government framework “is killing everybody.” (“Where’s the bears lol” I wrote in my notes. But I think we all know it was never about the bears.)

But the image that has remained most consistent over the decade plus that I’ve been following this process is one I found on a printout of AK LNG-branded slides from 2015. It’s a 3×4 grid, each gray rectangle containing a dollar sign, and a yellow diagonal line representing a general upward trend. It’s accompanied by a second graph, again without numbers, whose bars get taller across an unmarked axis — showing supposed investment in local economies, though that investment was not promised, just vibes, and when asked for specifics, AK LNG representatives answered with vague statements about boroughs or regional corporations maybe stepping in.

According to this decade-old slide, the estimated cost of the project was $45-65 billion, which is quite a range, and interesting given that the number $44 billion keeps getting tossed around now, as if pipeline construction is the one thing that has miraculously gotten cheaper since 2015. 

Following recent legislative hearings, and watching Glenfarne executives attempt to justify their asks for free gravel and tax-exempt passage across state, borough and private lands, it seems that the laughably vague dollar sign graphs are still the best available data. Glenfarne is simply the latest character in a saga that has outlived its welcome.

They haven’t sent out any brochures or hosted any meetings, but I’m trying to write down what they say anyway, so that a few years from now, I can flip though my now organized and labeled folders and highlight the dates that came and went, the promises made and abandoned, just the latest in an archive of corporate lies.

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The Alaska Legislature approved a broad omnibus crime bill that will increase criminal penalties for a variety of offenses and streamline victims services. The bill includes over a dozen pieces of legislation and garnered bipartisan support.

The Alaska Senate unanimously passed House Bill 239 on Tuesday, after assembling the combination bill package over the last several weeks. Lawmakers in the House concurred with the Senate’s changes by a vote of 39 to 1 on Wednesday morning. It now advances to Gov. Mike Dunleavy for consideration.

The omnibus crime bill includes provisions to create stricter criminal penalties for AI-generated child sexual abuse material, hit-and-run incidents and sexual assault by a healthcare worker. It also raises the age of consent from 16 to 18 years old and restructures the Alaska Board of Parole, among other items.

Sen. James Kauffman, R-Anchorage, spoke in support of the omnibus bill on Tuesday. “We hear of sausage-making in the legislative process — this is a big piece of sausage,” he said. “And having seen it in Senate Finance, I was impressed with the content, the quality of how so many things came together, and it came together so well.”

Sen. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, carried the omnibus bill in the Senate. He noted that the state will carry some fixed and indeterminate costs for enacting the changes across several state departments, but said it’s worth the price tag to protect public safety and improve protections for victims.

“Changing the statutes is not enough. Sometimes it calls on us to have more prosecutors, more police and more people in the field to actually enforce these crimes,” he said on the Senate floor. 

“I hear consistently from the public, when we look at these public safety measures, is ‘Who’s going to be there to enforce these laws?’ This is an example in which the fiscal notes reflect that this bill will cost money, but the public really believes in it, and they want these measures to take place, and they want our public safety professionals to go and do the things they need to enforce these laws,” he said.

Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, sponsored the bill to enact state criminal penalties for AI-generated child sexual abuse material, and spoke in support ahead of the vote. She spoke in favor of concurrence on Wednesday morning. 

“There’s a couple of windows that I would like tighter, however we have to get agreement with every region of the state. And I think this bill does that. This bill prioritizes justice. And this is justice for all of those who have not had a voice,” she said.

Some members of the House all-Republican minority caucus raised concerns at the number of bills included in the omnibus bill and the need for more public discussion and hearing on the individual bills. But Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, argued that hearing each bill would take legislators hundreds of hours and an omnibus bill was the best way to pass and enact needed criminal policy changes. 

Rep Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage, backed a bill to raise the age of consent from 16 to 18 years old, aimed at prosecuting sexual violence against 16 and 17 year olds. “For years we were collaborating on this, whether we knew we were collaborating or not,” he said on Wednesday on the omnibus crime bill. 

“We have the highest rate of sexual assault in the country, and the majority of victims being young. Being younger is a risk factor,” he said. “What we are doing today is telling predators that 16 and 17 year olds are off limits.” 

The omnibus crime bill now includes: 

• House Bill 239 — would increase criminal penalties for hit and run incidents by drivers that cause a death and knowingly fail to stop and render assistance, and it establishes mandatory sentencing of four to seven years for a first hit and run felony conviction.
• House Bill 101 — would raise the age of consent from 16 to 18 years old, with provisions to allow minors to consent to sex with someone up to six years older than them. The draft bill also allows 16 and 17 year olds to consensually exchange sexual or explicit messages within the six year close-in-age gap without penalties.
• Senate Bill 247 — would create state criminal penalties for creating AI-generated child sexual abuse images or videos that depict sexually explicit or obscene content involving anyone under 18 years old.
• House Bill 62 — would establish a statewide tracking system for sexual assault examination kits, expedite processing times and ensure that survivors can privately monitor the status of their own kit. The bill was sponsored by the governor.
• Senate Bill 100 — would establish the crime of organized theft, including mail theft and medical record theft.
• House Bill 242 — would redefine criminal law to prohibit any sexual contact or assault by a healthcare worker during professional treatment, a change to the current law that only applies to patients being unaware of sexual contact or assault for criminal charges to apply. 
• Senate Bill 17 — would establish the crime of airbag fraud for knowingly selling, installing or manufacturing a counterfeit airbag in a vehicle. 
• House Bill 81 — would establish that minor marijuana related convictions remain confidential on individuals’ personal records, under certain criteria.
• House Bill 384 —  would expand confidentiality agreements between victims and service providers by updating the definition of “victim counseling center” to include tribal organizations.
• Senate Bill 233 — would reassign the administration of the Controlled Substances Advisory Committee from the Department of Law to the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. 

Changes to the Board of Parole

The provision to restructure the Alaska Board of Parole was originally introduced by Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage, as Senate Bill 62 last year. The provision expands the Board of Parole from five to seven members, enacts term limits of no more than two five-year terms and implements new criteria for board seats.

The Board of Parole is appointed by the governor, and is charged with reviewing applications and eligibility for parole, for which there were 199 applicants last year. Advocates and lawmakers have raised concerns around Alaska’s parole approval rates dropping significantly in recent years — to some of the lowest rates in the nation. 

Tobin and proponents of the changes to the parole board said the board’s workload was a reason to expand the board and said the added criteria for the board seats is important for fairness and accountability to those under review for parole.

The new criteria for board seats would require that one member be a licensed physician, psychologist or psychiatrist, one member have experience in the field of criminal justice, one member have experience in providing drug or alcohol addiction recovery support or who has personal experience with addiction, and one member of a federally recognized tribe in the state.

Senators also added criteria for parole eligibility so that parole board members consider an applicant’s age at the time of offense. 

While the officials with the Alaska Department of Corrections have said rising costs across the prison system are in part due to an aging population and increasing medical needs, the Board of Parole has not granted anyone geriatric or medical parole in the last five years, according to state data.

Senators included a new provision to allow the corrections commissioner to authorize medical parole of a prisoner, with electronic monitoring, if that prisoner has a terminal, permanent or progressively degenerative disease and is deemed to not pose a threat to public safety. Senators also included legislation introduced last year, Senate Bill 31, to establish an address confidentiality program to help protect victims of domestic violence or stalking and police or correctional officers and their families. Individuals enrolled in the program will have their mail forwarded to a designated post office box to help keep their home address private.

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The state of Alaska may soon offer managed retirement accounts to businesses in the state that don’t already offer a retirement plan. 

By a 31-9 vote on Monday, the Alaska House of Representatives approved Senate Bill 21, the “Alaska Work and Save” program sponsored by Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage. 

The Senate, which approved a prior version of the bill in April, gave its final approval to the House-passed version by a 17-3 vote on Tuesday.

If enacted by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, SB 21 would require the Alaska Department of Revenue to create and administer an automatic individual retirement account program with open enrollment.

Under the program, eligible workers would have 5% of their paychecks automatically deducted and deposited into an investment account.

“Currently, 64% of businesses do not offer a retirement option for their employees, and this is a great way to retain and recruit workers,” said Rep. Mia Costello, R-Anchorage, who sponsored the bill in the House.

Costello said the ultimate goal is for Alaska to join a partnership with one or more other states that offer similar programs like Colorado’s SecureSavings program. Sixteen other states already have those programs, she said.

Alaska’s program would allow participants to also shift some of their Permanent Fund dividend into a retirement savings account. 

The Department of Revenue estimated that the state would need to spend about $660,000 to set up the program in its first year and approximately $360,000 annually, which the state would pay for with fees collected from participants statewide.