NOTN- With food insecurity surging and federal food assistance programs in limbo after November, Resurrection Lutheran Church is hosting the first-ever Juneau Hunger Jam today to raise funds and awareness for the Southeast Alaska Food Bank, along with their own meal programs.
The event will be a live-streamed telethon on the church’s YouTube channel and will feature performances from more than a dozen local musicians, including community choirs and High Cost of Living. Organizers say all proceeds will go directly to support the food bank, which supplies groceries to pantries and meal programs across Southeast Alaska.
“The food banks have been hit hard. They lost federal programs that were benefiting them and us, that got them food. As an example. We’re being hit really hard right now.” said Bradley Perkins, event organizer and church representative. “Our food pantries open on Tuesdays from noon to 4:30 and we are pretty much, running out of food by 2:30 or 3:00, and we have huge numbers of people coming in, not just those who we normally see that experience food scarcity, we’re seeing federal workers, we’re seeing teachers, and we’re seeing just all kinds of people, and our meal service program is also just gone off the charts.”
The food bank’s supplies have been strained since the recent federal freeze on SNAP benefits and other food distribution programs.
“When things happen like the cutting off of SNAP and federal workers being furloughed, we wanted to raise some money for them so that they can have a buffer to handle these blips that hit in the system.”Said Karen Lawfer, “We want to make sure that they have food security to handle all of these ups and downs. So how else to do that, but by having a lot of fun and raising money? So that’s when we came up with the Juneau Hunger Jam.”
The telethon will take place from 6 to 10 p.m. at Resurrection Lutheran Church. The event will include live performances, a silent auction, and an in-person studio audience. Food donations, particularly shelf-stable items will also be accepted at the church during the event.
Photo of burglary suspects from JPD’s Facebook page
NOTN- Juneau police are asking for the public’s help identifying three suspects accused of burglarizing a local church early November 1.
First reported by the Juneau Independent, the Juneau Police Department said officers began investigating the incident after receiving a report of a burglary at the Juneau Church of Christ, located on Trinity Drive. Surveillance video showed three individuals breaking into the church between 2 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. police said.
Approximately $4,000 worth of electronics and other items were reported stolen, including an Apple MacBook Air, Panasonic HD camcorder, GoPro Hero 3, Sennheiser wireless microphone system, and various audio-visual equipment. Police said the thieves also took plastic decorative flowers and laundry detergent.
Investigators released surveillance footage in hopes of identifying the suspects, available on JPD’s Facebook page.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Sergeant Lee Phelps at the Juneau Police Department at (907) 586-0600. Anonymous tips can be submitted through JuneauCrimeLine.com.
FILE – Alaska Airlines planes are shown parked at gates with Mount Rainier in the background on March 1, 2021, at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
AP- U.S. airlines began canceling hundreds of flights Thursday due to the Federal Aviation Administration’s order to reduce traffic at the country’s busiest airports starting Friday because of the government shutdown.
Airports that will see cuts include Anchorage International and Seattle Tacoma, both directly affecting Alaskan travelers.
More than 500 flights scheduled for Friday were already cut nationwide, and the number of cancellations climbed steadily throughout Thursday, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions.
The FAA order to cut flights at 40 of the busiest airports across the U.S. includes New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, according to a list distributed to the airlines and obtained by The Associated Press. But the impact will disrupt travel at many smaller airports too.
The FAA seeks to reduce service by 10% across “high-volume” markets to maintain travel safety as air traffic controllers exhibit signs of strain during the shutdown. The move also comes as the Trump administration is ramping up pressure on Democrats in Congress to end the shutdown.
Airlines will phase in the 10% reduction in their flight schedules at the airports across more than two dozen states. Just hours before the reductions went into place, airlines were scrambling to figure out where to cut and some travelers began changing or canceling itineraries preemptively.
Travelers with plans for the weekend and beyond waited nervously to see if their flights would take off as scheduled.
The affected airports included busy connecting hubs and those in popular tourist destinations, such as Atlanta, Denver, Orlando, Miami and San Francisco. In some of the biggest cities — such as Dallas, Houston and Chicago — multiple airports will be affected.
Flight cuts will begin gradually
Airlines will phase in the cuts at the direction of the FAA, eliminating 4% of flights at the 40 airports on Friday and working up to 10%, according to three people familiar with the plans who were not authorized to discuss them publicly.
Delta Air Lines said it planned to cancel roughly 170 flights Friday. By late Thursday afternoon, United Airlines had called off 145 flights and American Airlines had canceled 32 for Friday, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
The FAA had not yet published an official order as of the afternoon.
Some airlines planned to focus on slashing routes to and from small and medium-size cities.
The flight reductions just weeks before the busy holiday season prompted some travelers to change their plans or looking at other options.
Fallon Carter canceled her Friday flight from New York to Tampa, Florida, where she planned to spend the weekend at the beach. She was worried about making it back to Long Island to be a bridesmaid at her best friend’s wedding.
“I don’t know if I get there, will I get home?” Carter said.
The FAA is imposing the reductions to relieve pressure on air traffic controllers who are working without pay during the shutdown, which began Oct. 1, and have been increasingly taking sick days. Most controllers work mandatory overtime six days a week, leaving little time for side jobs to help cover bills unless they call out.
In recent weeks the FAA has delayed flights when airports or its other facilities are short on controllers.
Shuffling schedules
Airlines said they would try to minimize impact on customers, some of whom will see weekend travel plans disrupted with little notice.
United, Delta and American were among carriers that said they would offer refunds to passengers who opt not to fly, even if they purchased nonrefundable tickets.
The head of Frontier Airlines recommended that travelers buy backup tickets with another airline to avoid being stranded.
The cuts also could disrupt package deliveries because two airports with major distribution centers are on the list — FedEx operates at the airport in Memphis, Tennessee, and UPS in Louisville, Kentucky, the site of this week’s deadly cargo plane crash.
The cuts could affect as many as 1,800 flights, or upward of 268,000 passengers, per day, according to an estimate from Cirium.
Airlines are used to dealing with canceling thousands of flights on short notice during severe weather, but the difference now is that these cuts during the shutdown will last indefinitely until safety data improves.
Shutdown already straining travel
The shutdown is putting unnecessary strain on the system and damaging confidence in the U.S. air travel experience, said U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman.
Kelly Matthews, who lives in Flat Rock, Michigan, and frequently flies for work, said she has canceled most of her upcoming trips and understands why federal airport employees have stopped showing up.
“You can’t expect people to go in to work when they’re not getting a paycheck for the continuation of over a month now,” she said. “I mean it’s not a matter of them not wanting to do the job — but you can’t afford to pay for gas, your day care and everything else.”
Controller staffing worsening
The past weekend brought some of the worst staffing issues since the start of the shutdown.
From Friday to Sunday evening, at least 39 air traffic control facilities reported potential staffing limits, according to an AP analysis of operations plans shared through the Air Traffic Control System Command Center system. The figure, which is likely an undercount, was well above the average for weekends before the shutdown.
NOTN- The City and Borough of Juneau’s Assembly began early budget discussions on Wednesday, bracing for a projected $6 million loss following the passage of two ballot measures exempting food and utilities from local sales tax.
Finance Committee Chair Christine Woll said the Assembly convened sooner than usual, typically, the city begins its budget process in December to address the significant fiscal impact of the new exemptions, which take effect next month.
“When food and utilities become tax exempt for residents here next month that will, impact the amount of money the city is taking in.” Woll said, “And essentially the high-level message coming out of that meeting was the assembly wants to use those extra savings we ended up with at the end of last year to take our time, to really look at our whole city budget with the public and talk about what priorities we have before making any large cuts.”
Still, Woll said city departments have been directed to “tighten spending” and pause new projects until the Assembly determines long-term strategies to balance the budget.
“You won’t be seeing the pool hours changing, or any of our facilities being shut down immediately.” Said Woll, “As we think towards next year, we will see significant service reductions, and we don’t want to make those decisions too early before getting a lot of input from our community. But you know, in anticipation of some big cuts, we asked our city manager to be pretty conservative.”
Woll added that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fully fund Phase Two of the HESCO barrier flood protection project helped to relieve financial pressure, but doesn’t have any impact on the city’s budget.
“We really didn’t have funding in place for it, and so it was going to be very complicated, especially with the ballot initiative passing, that had really tied our hands.” she said, “Unfortunately, because it wasn’t in our budget, it doesn’t replace any funding. It doesn’t give us more funding, but it does mean that we can move forward with a project that otherwise I’m not sure we were going to be able to do.”
A sign in a convenience store along Barlowe Road in Hyattsville, Maryland, on Oct. 28, 2025, advertises that it accepts SNAP benefits. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
The U.S. Department of Agriculture will reduce the largest monthly food assistance payments by about 35% in November, a smaller decrease than the department initially estimated, according to a court filing late Wednesday.
That means the maximum monthly benefit likely would be roughly two-thirds of the usual benefit flowing to recipients, rather than the half initially projected.
USDA miscalculated how to adjust benefit payments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to account for a lack of full funding during the government shutdown, a department official said in a filing to the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island.
The formula the government initially used and sent to states Tuesday would have resulted in about a 50% cut to the maximum monthly benefits, and left some households without benefits.
SNAP pays benefits on a sliding scale depending on the size of a household, the household’s income and other expenses such as housing. By cutting the maximum benefit by one-half, the department would have spent about $3 billion from a SNAP contingency fund instead of the full $4.65 billion in the fund, which is what the court ordered it to spend.
The error was first reported to U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. by the coalition of cities and nonprofit organizations that sued to force the government to pay SNAP benefits this month.
An analysis submitted by Sharon Parrott, a former White House budget officer who now leads the left-leaning think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, showed that the table the department submitted to the court and sent to states on Tuesday would fall short of the court’s order to spend the entire contingency fund.
The groups said the department’s error was another reason the court should compel the government to transfer funds to pay out full benefits for November.
“Defendants’ approach means that only around $3 billion—out of the $4.65 billion Defendants have said is available—will be spent on SNAP benefits in November, leaving more than $1.5 billion in contingency funds unspent,” they wrote in a Wednesday brief. “Defendants opted for partial (and delayed) SNAP payments, but even then, did not manage to do that correctly.”
The department said in its filing later Wednesday that it independently discovered its miscalculation and worked to fix it before Parrott’s declaration hit the court docket.
“Defendants realized this error and worked to issue new guidance and tables as soon as it was discovered, not in response to Plaintiffs’ notice filed earlier this evening,” USDA’s brief said.
The parties are scheduled to argue before McConnell again Thursday afternoon.
Commercial fishing boats are lined up at the dock at Seward’s harbor on June 22, 2024. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
The number of people working in Alaska’s famed seafood industry has set a new record low, surpassing last year’s record low, according to figures published this month by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development in its magazine, Alaska Economic Trends.
In 2024, an average of 5,393 people were employed as fishers, processors or other seafood workers each month in Alaska, wrote analyst Joshua Warren. That’s down by 443 jobs from the same figure in 2023.
Alaska remains the No. 1 seafood producer among U.S. states, according to federal statistics, and produces more seafood than every other state combined.
The state department of labor has kept a monthly tally of seafood jobs in the state since 2001, and industry employment has been in a steady decline since 2019 due to a variety of factors, including a lack of available fish, competition from cheaper international sources, and high operating costs that can make fishing uneconomic.
Since the start of 2001, the high point of fishing employment was in 2015, when an average of 8,501 people were employed in the seafood industry each month.
Historically, seafood employment was significantly higher due to reduced rates of automation and the fact that Alaska seafood tended to be processed and packaged locally.
The modern trend has been toward direct export and processing internationally, where wages are lower.
Seafood employment in Alaska is extremely seasonal, with a peak in June and July during the salmon season and a low ebb in December, before a new season of fishing in federal waters offshore.
In July 2024, only 17,361 people worked in the Alaska seafood industry, the lowest annual peak on record since January 2021. In July 2013, the highest peak, more than 25,000 people were employed in the state’s seafood industry.
Rendering of proposed Welcome Center provided by Golbelt.
NOTN- The Juneau Assembly held a Committee of the Whole meeting Monday night and among a number of meaty topics, reviewed Goldbelt Inc.’s proposal to develop a large-scale cruise ship facility and supporting infrastructure on West Douglas.
“we’re still just getting in more information on the project.” Said Deputy Mayor Greg Smith, “We want to hear more about master planning back there, because it’s potentially significant development, there’s hundreds of acres of what we believe to be much better developable land for housing.”
Mayor Beth Weldon said the proposed project, still in its early stages, would include extending North Douglas Road, building an onshore terminal and parking area, wastewater treatment facilities, a small boat harbor, and two cruise ship berths.
The project, nicknamed “Goldbelt Aaní” has no officially announced opening date.
According to Goldbelt, Goldbelt Aaní, will highlight Lingít culture and boost the city’s economy.
The Assembly also discussed updating the West Douglas master plan, which will help guide long-term development on the island.
“We’d like authorization to start doing some master planning.” said Smith, “The assembly said, Yes, bring in some more information about what Master Planning might look like, how much it might cost, try to work in collaboration with Goldbelt, should they want to.”
The Master plan along with Goldbelt’s proposed cruise port, involves potentially developing hundreds of acres of land, with a critical focus from the city on establishing a second crossing to enable future development.
“We felt that there should be master planning in relation to their project. Goldbelt doesn’t feel like there should be.” said Smith, “We have to figure things out, you know, if they want to use utilities out there, or emergency services and other city services like that.”
According to the city, public outreach and public comment will be a big part of the master plan process, which will proceed as Goldbelt prepares to submit a conditional use permit.
Maureen Hall and Jennifer Skinner of St. Vincent de Paul
With Thanksgiving fast approaching, St. Vincent de Paul is gearing up for an anticipated community tradition, the annual Thanksgiving Basket Program, which provides full holiday meals to hundreds of local families in need.
Jennifer Skinner and Maureen Hall of St. Vincent de Paul spoke about the effort Monday noting that the organization expects higher demand this year due to recent cuts and delays in federal food assistance programs.
“We’ve been providing meals at Thanksgiving time for families in Juneau for a few decades now,” Skinner said. “We definitely see the need and meet the need for our neighbors here in Juneau. We anticipate, about 400 Thanksgiving baskets a year, but this year, given the current climate in our area, we are certain we’re going to see higher numbers than that.”
Families can register to receive baskets by visiting svdpjuneau.org and clicking on the events page, by calling 907-789-5535, or by scanning QR codes posted around town.
The baskets include all the fixings for a traditional Thanksgiving meal turkey, stuffing, canned yams, cranberry sauce, gravy, and more.
“So the items we’re looking for donation as well are, you know, the stuffing mix, canned yams, instant mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy mix, pies, butter, turkeys, and anything that goes into your own personal Thanksgiving meal prep is stuff we try to provide for our families.” said Skinner.
Volunteers play a crucial role in the program. Skinner said many Juneau residents make the annual basket delivery a personal tradition.
“We have a couple of folks that return every year as a day date to go and deliver Thanksgiving baskets. And they just really get a kick out of spending that time together and helping neighbors in need.”
Deliveries will take place on November 22, a pre-covid addition to the Holiday tradition that Hall said was inspired by a local man in town.
“I remember one year seeing an elderly gentleman come all the way from Douglas on the city bus, having to walk the extra couple blocks to where we were handing them out, he had a roller suitcase with him, and I thought, My gosh, we need to expand how we do the deliveries.” Hall said, “Instead of having people, often with disabilities or lack of transportation come to us, we continue to go to people’s homes and do all the deliveries that way.”
Skinner said local businesses and organizations are also encouraged to contribute food or monetary donations. “There’s always a way to give,” she said.
Nearly 2,000 Juneau families rely on SNAP, she said, and with the federal government shutdown surpassing records and funding running dry, those numbers could make this year’s Thanksgiving distribution one of the most critical yet.
United Way of Southeast Alaska has published an updated list of local food resources, including food pantries, meal programs, and emergency support services, to help residents access food assistance.
WASHINGTON — Following major Democratic wins in local and state elections across the country on Election Day, top Democratic congressional leaders pushed for a meeting with the president to end the federal government shutdown, which on Wednesday became the longest in U.S. history at day 36.
“The election results ought to send a much-needed bolt of lightning to Donald Trump that he should meet with us to end this crisis, his shutdown,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “It’s time to hold a bipartisan meeting. The takeaway from last night was simply unmistakable.”
Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both New York Democrats, sent a Wednesday letter to President Donald Trump, calling for a bipartisan meeting at the White House to end the government shutdown and to address the spike in individual health care premiums.
“Last night, Republicans felt political repercussions,” Schumer said after Tuesday’s Election Day wins for Democrats. They included passage of a redistricting measure in California to offset partisan gerrymandering by GOP states, governorships in New Jersey and Virginia and local races across the country.
For more than a month, Democrats have voted against approving the House-passed GOP stopgap spending measure over concerns that health care tax subsidies will expire at the end of the year. As open enrollment begins, people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace are seeing a drastic increase in premium costs.
Sanders pushes back on dealmaking
Schumer did not detail what kind of deal Democrats would accept, but said any negotiation “must address the health care needs of the American people.”
However, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said that Democrats should not accept any agreement with the GOP unless there is a commitment from House Speaker Mike Johnson and the president to pass legislation to extend those tax credits.
“Bottom line is, we need to be successful in protecting the health care of the American people, and if it’s just a piece of legislation that passes the Senate … so what? Where does it go? Then it becomes just a meaningless gesture,” Sanders said.
Republicans have maintained that they will only have a discussion on health care after Democrats agree to resume government funding.
Lawmakers have acknowledged that a new stopgap spending bill will need to be extended past the Nov. 21 deadline, but have not come to an agreement on a new deadline.
Thune plays down Democratic victories
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Wednesday that he was skeptical the government shutdown played into major wins for Democrats across the country.
“The shutdown doesn’t benefit anyone,” he said.
The South Dakota Republican noted the shutdown may have played a role in suburban Virginia, where a large share of federal workers live and are furloughed due to the government shutdown.
“In Northern Virginia, that has a lot of federal workers, so it certainly could have been a factor in the elections,” Thune said. “But I think it’s hard to draw conclusions.”
But Thune said he’s focused on ending the government shutdown, and hopes progress can continue to be made before senators are scheduled to be out next week for recess due to the Veterans Day holiday.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy this week warned that if the shutdown continues into next week, it could lead to certain airspace needing to be closed due to a shortage of air traffic controllers who have continued to work amid the shutdown.
Trump, in a social media post, blamed two factors for Republicans not performing well on Tuesday: his absence from the ballot, and the government shutdown.
“I think if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans, and that was a big factor, and they say that I wasn’t on the ballot was the biggest factor,” Trump said during a Wednesday press conference.
Withholding SNAP benefits
As the government shutdown has continued, the Trump administration has tried to get Senate Democrats to agree to the stopgap spending measure by directing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to not tap into its contingency fund to provide food assistance to 42 million people.
Two federal courts found that the Trump administration acted unlawfully in holding back those Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits, and USDA agreed that it would partially release SNAP benefits.
Trump earlier this week wrote on his social media platform that SNAP benefits would only be released when Democrats vote to reopen the government, a move that would likely violate the two court orders.
“SNAP BENEFITS, which increased by Billions and Billions of Dollars (MANY FOLD!) during Crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term in office (Due to the fact that they were haphazardly ‘handed’ to anyone for the asking, as opposed to just those in need, which is the purpose of SNAP!), will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!,” he wrote.
However, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt seemed to walk back that statement on Tuesday, arguing that the president’s social media post did not refer to the court order, but to future SNAP payments.
“The president doesn’t want to tap into this (contingency) fund in the future and that’s what he was referring to,” Leavitt said.
100 US dollars. Macro photo of banknotes of money in the US currency one hundred dollars.
Every morning, Alaska’s court system publishes an updated list of new civil lawsuits filed across the state during the past week.
And every morning, that list is dominated by debt collection cases, newly filed by credit card companies, debt collection firms or businesses seeking repayment. On Tuesday, of the 115 listed cases, 84 were for debt collections.
In the first nine months of 2022, the court system saw 1,869 debt collection cases filed. Every year since then, the number has risen. Through the first nine months of this year, there were 3,447, almost double the figure filed in 2022.
“It’s pretty wild, the rise of them,” said attorney Stacey Stone, who practices in Alaska and is familiar with the issue.
January Advisors, a national data consulting firm that noted the rising trend in August, concluded that multiple factors may be driving it.
During the COVID-19 emergency, many Americans received financial aid that helped them pay down debt and build savings. Those programs have now ended, and American consumer debt is now at record highs, according to figures published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The number of people who are behind on their credit card payments is also on the rise, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reported earlier this year, and the number of car repossessions is rising.
Automated software programs also are making it easier for companies to more easily file large numbers of debt collection cases.
In June, the National Center on State Courts concluded that easier access to generative AI software is likely to increase filings in contract cases, like debt collections.
Typically, a credit card company or medical provider will try first to get payment on an overdue bill directly. But if a bill still goes unpaid, many companies will deem the debt uncollectable. At that point, they sell the rights to the debt to a collections company.
The sale means the company with the unpaid bill will get at least some money, and then it becomes the collections company’s job to try to recoup the debt and earn money for itself.
Court filings in Alaska and elsewhere indicate that debt collection companies are filing more cases in an attempt to collect on the unpaid debts they’ve bought.
Two researchers with Pew Research Center, in a September analysis, said that can have significant consequences for regular people.
People who are sued for consumer or medical debt rarely hire attorneys, they noted, and in many cases, people may not even be aware that they are being sued.
The Debt Collection Lab — a research group that includes Princeton University — found that in Oregon, private collection agencies filed the bulk of lawsuits on behalf of credit card companies, health care providers and utilities.
Only four percent of debt defendants responded to the cases filed against them, and as a result, Oregon courts awarded default judgments in favor of the debt collectors in almost seven of 10 debt cases filed between 2017 and 2023.
Data on the result of Alaska cases was not immediately available, but a preliminary examination of court dockets and filing patterns by the Alaska Beacon shows that the trends in Alaska are similar to those in other states.
A frequent filer in Alaska courts, a national debt-buying company called LVNV Funding, increased its filings by 350% in a handful of states between 2019 and 2024, January Advisors found.
In Connecticut, the top 10 most frequent filers in debt cases accounted for more than 80% of all debt cases filed in that state last year, January Advisors found, indicating that the most frequent filers are stepping up their aggressiveness.
“More people are defaulting on their debt right now because people are living paycheck to paycheck for various reasons, so I think you do have an organic process happening, but also there’s an aggressive process happening that’s uncharacteristic,” Stone said.
In Alaska, even a state representative has faced a debt-collection lawsuit whose details appear typical of the kinds of cases being filed here.
On Oct. 27, a debt collection firm known as Jefferson Capital Systems filed suit in Anchorage District Court against Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River.
According to the complaint, Allard took out a loan from Celtic Bank in 2023 and didn’t fully repay it. Celtic Bank subsequently transferred the debt — just $1,075 — to Jefferson Capital, which filed the lawsuit.
The attorney who filed the lawsuit didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Allard didn’t know about the suit until she was contacted by the Alaska Beacon, which was already writing this article.
“Oh my God; I had no idea what this was about,” she said.
Stone is Allard’s attorney and said cases like these seem to come out of left field. She said they tend to be filed in bulk, and as a result, they may be inaccurate, especially when a case is filed by a third-party firm that has purchased debt from another source.
Allard has an attorney; most Alaskans named as defendants in a debt-collection case don’t have that, according to a review of online court records.
Unlike in criminal cases, the state is not required to assign someone an attorney.
In most instances, that leaves the defendant to represent themselves or to seek help from a group like the Alaska Legal Services Corporation, a nonprofit that provides legal help to many Alaskans in civil lawsuits.
Maggie Humm, the corporation’s director, said it doesn’t have enough funding to take on every request for help that it receives, but it is seeing a surge in the number of requests for help on debt collection cases.
From 2022 through 2024, “there was a 61% increase in applications for all consumer protection matters,” which includes debt collections, said Humm.
Though the group hasn’t closed out this year, Humm said the number of people seeking help is about the same as last year.
If an Alaskan doesn’t respond to a debt collection lawsuit and a court issues a default judgment on behalf of a debt collection agency, a judge could order the garnishment of part of their income.
“Here in Alaska, we know that collectors file more cases because we have the Permanent Fund dividend … and they can garnish a percentage of it if they get a default judgment,” Humm said.
A court order also might allow a debt collector to go after someone’s checking account, other assets or — in the case of a member of the military — their military pay.
In September, the New York Times analyzed the surge of debt collection lawsuits and noted that part of the reason for the surge is that people don’t bother to defend themselves in court.
A court defense may make someone less attractive as a target, the Times found, and if more people defended themselves, debt collectors might begin seeing lawsuits as an unprofitable way to do business.
