The long story about our town’s 20-year-old golf course published in last week’s CVN included my comments but omitted the very public matter that I was “talking loudly about” with a CVN reporter at Deerheart on the evening of May 26. (The reporter, who was not Will Steinfeld, was seated about four seats away from me.)
The matter I raised – which still has not been reported by the CVN – was why and how the FAA approved a private, golf course landing strip nearly adjacent to the Haines airport and in the apparent flight path of our town’s commercial air traffic.
Such an arrangement would seem to needlessly create an air traffic hazard both to the flying public and to amateur pilots landing at the golf course. When Will Steinfeld interviewed me for his golf course story, I emphatically told him the greater public interest wasn’t that our town had a golf course – the course has generated dozens of news stories since its inception – but that there are now two airstrips operating in close proximity to each other. At Deerheart on the evening of May 26, Clayton Jones approached me after overhearing my conversation about those concerns, assuring me the FAA had no problem with his new airstrip. Remarkably, when I asked Jones what would happen if his plane were landing at the golf course while golfers were golfing, he told me that any golfers playing Hole 6 would have to get out of the way.
I’m a bit tardy getting this out, so apologies. The Haines Woman’s Club’s 4th of July Pie Sale was a great success! With the hard work of our members and generous non-member donors, we baked and sold 70 delectable pies! That’s a tie with our biggest sale ever! We also received cash donations, which boosted our take for the day and were greatly appreciated. Pie or cash donations were received from: Teena Larson, Inez Gross, Clara Yoder, Anita Hunter, Bonnie Johnson and Tom Ganner. Thank you so, so much! I must commend my incredible club members. Most of them are brand new to the club and this was their first club function. I can say, they did a bang-up job — every one of them! The community turned out in great numbers and didn’t let us down — without you, we would not be successful — so thank you Haines! A special thanks to our “auxiliary,” (aka husbands), who worked behind the scenes to support us and do some of the heavy lifting. We hope to see you at the Holiday Bazaar in November!
Susan Johnston, Acting President Haines Woman’s Club
Amid the chaos of a busy Alaskan summer, KHNS listeners heeaded the call and helped us raise $80,000 toward our $90,000 goal during this year’s Summer Fund Drive! They also met the mark for a $25,000 challenge offered by major donors, swelling our campaign total past $100,000. Big thanks goes out to our members, volunteer deejays, board of directors, dessert bakers, area musicians, local businesses and others who contributed their talents, time and monetary support to lift up the community that is local radio! If you missed the drive and would like to give, visit khns.org today. In gratitude,
Every summer, when the salmon start returning to the Chilkat River, I feel a sense of relief and gratitude. Like many people in the Chilkat Valley, my family and I look forward to harvest season.
The value of that harvest is hard to overstate. In a place where the cost of living is high and food often travels thousands of miles to reach our stores, salmon provide real economic value to local families. Wild salmon give us a measure of food security that can’t be taken for granted.
But the value of salmon goes beyond economics. For my family, salmon are what connect us to this place. The annual return of the fish ties us to the river, the seasons, and the generations of people who have depended on these waters before us. They remind us where we come from and why this place matters.
That’s why protecting the Chilkat River is so important. A healthy river supports healthy salmon runs. Healthy salmon runs support families, local businesses, traditions, and communities. The benefits ripple far beyond the riverbanks.
As we celebrate another salmon season, I’m thankful for what the Chilkat River provides. I hope we continue to protect this remarkable watershed so future generations can experience the same connection to place, the same food security, and the same sense of belonging.
The Haines Borough administration took a local church to court without Assembly direction.
The Assembly met on June 9. The court appeal was filed on June 10. When asked why the matter had not come before the Assembly before filing, Borough Manager Alekka Fullerton said, “By the time it came to me, it was, we need to file tomorrow or not.” That explanation exposes a lack of transparency.
Why was direction not sought from the Assembly during its June 9 meeting before taxpayer funds were committed to litigation?
When the issue finally came before the Assembly on July 14, the Manager defended the effort to overturn the unanimous BOE decision because the contract assessor believed the church’s property was not used regularly enough to qualify. Yet the law establishes no minimum frequency of use. It mandates an exemption for property “used exclusively” for nonprofit religious purposes.
During that same meeting, the bBorough attorney was asked whether Haines could add a minimum-use requirement to its code. He advised that it could not because bBorough code must conform to the mandatory exemption established by state law and the Alaska Constitution. That exposes the central contradiction: Why pursue through litigation a minimum-use interpretation the BBorough cannot lawfully add to its own code?
The Assembly unanimously directed that the appeal be withdrawn. That discussion should have occurred before the bBorough went to court, not afterward. Every taxpayer should be concerned when public money is committed to litigation without Assembly direction, transparency, or public discussion.
Michelle Sparck (center) poses for a photo with Bering Straits Native Corporation summer interns in Nome on July 20, 2026 during a voter outreach trip. (Photo courtesy of Michelle Sparck)
A Native-led voter mobilization group is working to boost Alaska Native voter education and turnout this election season.
Get Out the Native Vote is a non-partisan effort now underway to reach voters across the state’s vast and varied geography and get them to cast ballots in the primary elections on August 18 and the midterm elections on November 3.
Alaska Native voters make up roughly one in four Alaskan voters, said Michelle Sparck, director of the initiative, who is Cup’ik from the Southwest village of Chevak. She said part of voter education is raising awareness of when Alaska Native voters came out in force and reached a peak voter turnout of 66% in 1982. Some regions had nearly 80% voter turnout, Sparck said. That’s when decisions on subsistence policy, abortion and moving the Alaska State Capitol from Juneau were on the ballot.
“I call it the birth of the Alaska Native super voter. That generation made it a cultural value,” she said. “With that political capital that the 1980s generation built, they were able to own their sovereignty and self-determination tools.”
An Alaska voter drops their ballot into a ballot box on Nov. 1, 2024, in Anchorage City Hall. (Photo by Andrew Kitchenman/Alaska Beacon)
But voter turnout has declined significantly in the decades since. In the last election in 2024, 30% of Alaska Native voters cast their ballots. That meant Alaska Native voters made up 11% of state voters, according to data compiled by Sparck.
The mission of the campaign is to turn that decline around and reach historic highs again.
“This is what we’re capable of, and this is what this is our potential, and and I’m so excited to hold the mirror up to the communities because a lot of them really just had no idea what their performance is over the last, you know, 40-some years,” Sparck said.
“The challenge to the community is to say: own our power. We need to get out and vote,” she said. “Not should we go out and vote, we should make informed decisions.”
Get Out the Native Vote is supported by a partnership between the Alaska Federation of Natives, First Nations Institute and Cook Inlet Tribal Council with some funding from private foundations and the Carter Center, which was founded by former President Jimmy Carter. The campaign is collaborating with local, state and Tribal governments; regional Native corporations, organizations and service providers; schools; prisons and community groups to host voter education and outreach events around the state. Sparck spoke on a video call on Tuesday after returning from a voter outreach visit in Nome, and before heading to visit Utqiagvik, then the coastal community of Wainwright.
The August 18 primary falls within the summer subsistence fishing season, which is challenging for many people to find time to vote, Sparck said, but she’s found a helpful analogy.
“We’ve realized that if we describe primaries like basketball regionals, light bulbs go off their heads,” she said, smiling. “You have to win at regionals in order to make it to state. So a lot of people now know what primaries mean.”
Spark said 131 voting precincts in the state, more than a quarter, rely entirely on the U.S. Postal Service and air carriers to receive and mail their ballots.
Get Out the Native Vote working to make sure post offices are staffed, and helping the Alaska Division of Elections to recruit staff and volunteers so that each precinct has elections workers, bilingual poll workers and outreach workers to help with Native language translations. Sparck is also finding youth volunteers for a “Youth at the Booth” program, whose goal is to have two 17 and 18 year old volunteers assist at polling places and learn about elections in the process.
Particularly in the Arctic, the initiative is partnering with the North Slope Borough and local community leaders to make sure all precincts are staffed and open, in hopes of avoiding repeats of past election years where rural residents could not vote due to issues with staffing poll workers. In 2024, polling stations in rural villages of Wales and Kaktovik never opened. In Northwest and Western Alaska, voting hours were reduced in Marshall, Shaktoolik,Diomede and Kobuk. Primary ballots arrived late in at least 14 other Native villages.
“I get a lot of (precinct) chairs calling me before an election saying, ‘I don’t think I can do this.’ And we’re like, ‘You can do this. Your community can’t vote without you,’” she said. The organization’s goal is to have a well-staffed polling station in each village.
Alaska Native communities have also had the highest rates of rejected ballots, according to the Alaska Federation of Natives. One of the main issues is an incomplete witness signature on the ballot. In 2022, one in eight rural mail-in ballots were rejected, totalling more than 7,500 ballots rejected from rural Alaska.
A bipartisan elections bill that would have removed the witness signature requirement, among many other measures aimed at improving voting access, passed the Alaska State Legislature this year, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed it.
An 18 year old Ahtna shareholder registers to vote at a Get Out the Native Vote event at their Convention in June 2026 in Glennallen. (Photo courtesy of Michelle Sparck)
Between now and November, the campaign is working to distribute voter information, with guides on how to register, cast a ballot and find more information on state and federal candidates.
“So we’re trying to make things easier, but we’re building the plane as we’re flying it,” Sparck said. “You know, it’s still a work in progress, and we’re glad to have the alliances we have.”
This year, the annual Alaska Federation of Natives convention, where thousands of people from across the state convene in Anchorage, will be held one week later than usual to accommodate early voting at City Hall across the street. “So we’re excited that we’re going to have an ability to send people across the street to go vote or drop off their absentee ballots,” Sparck said.
The campaign is planning to hold voter outreach events in Alaska Department of Corrections facilities where roughly 40% of incarcerated people awaiting trial and sentencing are eligible to vote. Organizers are also working with service provider organizations to reach people who are unhoused or housing insecure, as well as foster youth who are turning 18, and inform them about their voting rights.
“We try to recognize every avenue to access voters, and especially those that are low propensity or disenfranchised. We try to meet their needs in every way, so it doesn’t mean we’re doing it 24/7, but it means we are trying to dedicate time and create the allyship and coordination with organizations that are more intimate with those groups to to best deliver that,” she said.
Get Out The Native Vote shares outreach events and regional voting updates on their Facebook page, and website at aknativevote.com.
Michelle Sparck (left) and Get Out the Native Vote volunteers smile at a tabling event in Bethel. (Photo courtesy of Michelle Sparck)
Deputy Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District Deputy Superintendent Katie Gardner and Superintendent Randy Trani discuss a concealed-carry weapons proposal during a regular school board meeting at the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District in Palmer on May 5, 2026. (Photo by Amy Bushatz/Mat-Su Sentinel)
The Mat-Su school board recently passed a policy to arm classroom teachers. I’ve been struggling to find the right word to describe it.
The district claims the policy is about “maintaining a safe and secure learning environment.” In a profession obsessed with research-based decision making, nothing supports the claim that armed teachers make schools safer, especially when there hasn’t been a gun-related death in an Alaskan school in over twenty-five years. The board claims the policy will not “change the educational environment.” When you hide guns in classrooms, the environment changes immediately.
The board’s concealed carry program will cost an estimated four hundred and fifty thousand dollars — roughly forty-five thousand dollars per gun. With forty-nine schools and over one thousand teachers, guns will be in a fraction of schools. The chance a gun related incident will happen near an armed teacher is miniscule. The cost of “protecting” such a tiny number of classrooms is fiscally irresponsible.
This isn’t even the worst part of the policy. The school board is arming themselves. According to the policy, the superintendent can approve to arm board members. If the superintendent denies a board member’s request, they can appeal the decision… to the board!
I don’t support arming teachers, but arming board members is absurd. First, board members are rarely in school buildings. Their usefulness as security is next to nothing. Second, most board members have no training in classroom management, school procedures or deescalation. Third, because board members are not regular participants in classrooms they have no understanding of individual students, classroom dynamics or school culture necessary to understand volatile situations.
Finally, and I can’t stress this enough, board members are not school employees. In fact, they are barred from being employees by Alaska Statute AS14.14.140. It begs the question, why do board members need guns at all? To threaten people in board meetings? Outside a board meeting, individual board members have no authority.
There is simply no logic that justifies arming board members. Then again, logic is hardly a motivating factor these days. Guns don’t belong in classrooms, books do. An expensive lesson the Mat-Su board had to learn from a federal judge. And while they claim this policy will “maintain a safe” environment, they literally struck the phrase “safe spaces” from their library policy and have actively made their schools less safe for LGBTQ students.
All of this brings us to the real problem: school boards. Nothing prevents school boards from enacting irrational policies like this. Many board members have no experience in education. No training is required of board members. Every year we put the fate of our schools into the hands of people whose only requirement for eligibility is a pulse and valid voting registration.
It was a struggle, but I finally found a word to describe this situation: asinine.
The Alaska Native Medical Center is reflected in the campus pond on Sept. 9, 2022. The hospital is among several facilities on the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium campus in Anchorage. ANTHC is the nation’s largest Native tribal organization. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
The federal government has agreed to pay the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium $400 million to settle claims of inadequate cost coverage over several years.
The settlement, announced on Tuesday by the U.S. Justice Department, stems from a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit tribal health group in 2021 against the Department of Health and Human Services, which operates the Indian Health Service.
At issue in the case are “contract support costs,” the term for the expenses necessary for administration, facilities maintenance and other functions that support the healthcare services that tribal organizations provide through contracts with the federal government.
In a statement, the Justice Department acknowledged that the federal government owed ANTHC money to cover contract support costs.
“This settlement reflects our commitment to resolving litigation fairly and ensuring that federal resources are appropriately directed toward serving Native communities,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in the statement. “We are pleased to have reached an authorized agreement that benefits American Indian and Alaska Native communities and remains consistent with the legal framework established by Congress.”
Natasha Singh, ANTHC’s president and chief executive officer, characterized the settlement as a fair resolution of a longstanding dispute over costs borne by the organization.
“ANTHC welcomes the authorization of this settlement, addressing contract support costs that have long been owed to Tribes that assumed responsibility for delivering healthcare on the federal government’s behalf. This settlement marks an important step toward ensuring that resources accurately reflect the true cost of operating a complex Tribal health system and advancing self-determination in healthcare,” Singh said in a statement.
For more than a decade, different tribal health organizations have claimed that the Indian Health Service was underpaying contract support costs. There is a history of litigation and Congressional action over the issue.
In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in. Ruling in a case concerning tribes in Arizona and Wyoming, the court said the Indian Health Service is obligated to pay the full costs of contract support services.
Those costs are necessary for tribal health organizations to provide medical services, the 5-4 ruling said. If the costs are not fully covered by the IHS, “the tribe would have to divert some program income to pay such costs, or it would have to pay them out of its own pocket,” amounting to a penalty for pursuing self-determination under federal law.
The settlement is in line with that 2024 ruling, as well as with the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, the federal law through which tribal organizations administer their own healthcare programs, the Justice Department said.
ANTHC is the nation’s largest tribal health organization. At its approximately 140-acre campus in east Anchorage, it operates the Alaska Native Medical Center, which is one of the state’s biggest hospitals, along with various in-patient services, research and epidemiology services and an environmental health program, among other functions. It provides services throughout the state.
The consortium, formed in 1997, has embarked on a facilities expansion program, enlarging the hospital’s emergency department and constructing a skilled nursing facility for patients needing extended care, along with other periodic upgrades.
Singh, in her statement, said the ANTHC board had “committed resources toward long-standing needs across our system of care” in anticipation of the settlement announced Tuesday. Those commitments include the investments in the ongoing construction projects, she said.
CBJ- The City and Borough of Juneau Flood Information Hotline is now available during weekdays. Residents can call the hotline with non-emergency questions and concerns related to the 2026 glacial lake outburst flood. The hotline is available at 907-500-0890 on Mondays through Fridays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Once Suicide Basin is filled, the hotline will extend operating hours to include Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Once release has begun – and a wireless emergency alert text message goes out – the hotline will move to 24/7 operations through the event.
Wooden gavel with books in background. Law and justice concept
By: James Brooks, Alaska Beacon
Wooden gavel with books in background. Courtesy of Alaska Beacon.
Two of Alaska’s largest labor organizations have sued Gov. Mike Dunleavy for failing to promptly fill two seats on the board that governs the state’s public employee pension plans.
The Alaska AFL-CIO, National Education Association-Alaska and five individuals filed suit Wednesday in Anchorage Superior Court, seeking a court order that would require the governor to fill seats on the Alaska Retirement Management Board that are designated for the teachers’ and public employees’ unions.
According to the complaint, the seats have been vacant since March 1. The unions sent lists of possible nominees to the governor four months before that, on Dec. 1.
Under state law, “a vacancy on the board of trustees shall be promptly filled.”
The unions sent a warning letter to the governor’s office in late May about the issue.
Stephen Cox, the attorney general designee whose confirmation was rejected by the Alaska Legislature this year, responded to the message. Now working as Counsel to the Governor, Cox said the law reserving seats for the unions “warrants further analysis, as it potentially encroaches upon the Governor’s constitutional appointment authority.”
Cox said the governor will be requesting a formal legal opinion from acting Attorney General Cori Mills.
“The administration does not comment on lawsuits,” said Jeff Turner, the governor’s communications director, when reached for comment.
The Beacon contacted the Department of Law on Monday afternoon as well, seeking comment about the lawsuit. It did not respond by 8 a.m. the following day.
The plaintiffs are being represented by attorney Scott Kendall, who has frequently fought cases against the Dunleavy administration.
By phone on Monday afternoon, Kendall said the issue is “very important” because the board handles billions of dollars’ worth of investments on behalf of state residents.
Two board meetings have already taken place without union representatives.
“This isn’t the, ‘Oops, this slipped through the cracks sort of issue.’ The new nominees were put forward by both unions three months before the prior terms expired. Those filings were acknowledged by the Department of Revenue, which handles this. So everything was done timely,” he said.
In the complaint, the plaintiffs state that if the issue goes to trial, Cox should not have a role because state law requires the Department of Law — through staff attorneys or hired counsel — to represent the state in legal issues.
Kendall said the legality of laws constraining a governor’s appointment powers have been repeatedly tried in court and upheld.
“To be honest, it’s befuddling. There’s a very clear statute. There’s a very clear regulation. They say these people shall be appointed promptly, and they shall be from lists from these two groups,” he said. “So I think it’s quite honestly bizarre that we’re even in this situation, but here we are nonetheless.”
