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A commercial tour boat ran aground during low tide Friday on the Chilkat River Flats near Pyramid Island. According to Haines Harbormaster Henry Pollan, no passengers were on board the Alaska Excursions vessel, just a captain and crew members. The vessel Klondike Kate set anchor and waited until the boat floated to start heading back to Skagway.

Pollan and assistant harbormaster Melina Shields communicated with the crew while they were stranded earlier in the day. She said they “seemed to have the situation under control.”

The Haines police department, fire and rescue and Wildlife Troopers were notified but were not needed.

Pollan said most nautical charts show the flats as an undesirable travel area, so boats getting stranded is an uncommon situation.

Alaska Excursions currently holds a commercial tour permit with the Haines Borough. The permit allows the company to bring tourists on a motorized watercraft to Glacier Point. Its tour route starts in Haines or Skagway, sails to view Sea Lion Rock, and then heads north to Glacier Point.

In 2019, Alaska State Troopers found that the company had not registered its canoes. In February 2018, employees publicly criticized the company’s safety when owner Robert Murphy applied for a new Glacier Point tour permit. A few months later in July, a man died while on an Alaska Excursions canoe tour.

As of Friday afternoon, no one from the Alaska Excursions Skagway office was available to answer questions. A call to Murphy was not immediately returned.

The post Tour boat freed after being stranded in the Chilkat River Flats  appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has vetoed a bill from Rep. Genevive Mina, D-Anchorage, that sought to raise the priority of public transit programs like buses in state transportation planning.

Senators passed House Bill 26 by a 16-4 vote on April 29, and the House approved it on a 22-14 vote May 1. 

If the bill had been enacted, it would have mandated that the state include rural transit programs, like those in Nome and Tok, when drafting a statewide transit plan. 

It also would have mandated coordination with the Alaska Railroad, state ferry system, tribes and local planning groups when drafting a statewide transit plan.  

In his veto message, the governor said the bill was “unnecessary” and “redundant” because the state is already doing what the bill mandates.

In addition, the message said, adding transit explicitly in the core planning priorities of the Alaska Department of Transportation “inappropriately seeks to elevate a single mode of transportation above others.”That could affect the way the state applies for and receives federal grants, the message said.

Rep. Genevieve Mina, D-Anchorage, said that while the “state is doing planning related to public transit, part of the issue that the advocates that we have been working with have been facing is that they’re not always consistent about how they do those activities.”

In the past, she explained, rural transit groups have missed out on federal grants that have gone to urban ones in Alaska.

In addition, she feels the state hasn’t properly planned for ways to incorporate commuter rail programs on the Alaska Railroad or the Alaska Marine Highway into a statewide network.

“We’re not doing our best efforts as a state to really coordinate all these efforts together, so (the bill) would be the vision of incorporating that in the department’s responsibilities, even though they are doing some of this work already,” Mina said.

She said she does not expect legislators to override Dunleavy’s veto, which is his 12th during the 34th Alaska State Legislature.

Legislators passed 111 bills during the two-year legislative cycle, and more vetoes are possible as lawmakers gradually transmit their work to the governor for consideration.

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Alaska’s governor enacted two bills this week, giving final approval to a bill that sets a uniform disaster evacuation scale for the state and another that raises the amount of annual funding for the Alaska Legal Services Corp.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed Senate Bill 192, the evacuation system bill, on Wednesday, and he allowed House Bill 48, the civil legal services fund bill, to become law without his signature on Thursday.

SB 192, from Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, R-Nikiski, mandates that officials use a standardized three-level designation when communicating when Alaskans should leave the area of a disaster. Previously, that system was only optional, and the lack of a standard has occasionally caused miscommunications around wildfires.

“I am thankful that Alaskans will get clear and easy to understand instructions about when to prepare to leave and then when to evacuate in an emergency,” Bjorkman said. 

HB 48 affects the organization that provides free legal help to Alaskans in civil cases. The Alaska Constitution mandates that the state provide free legal defenses in criminal cases, but Alaskans in civil lawsuits are not mandated to receive help.

In Alaska, domestic violence victims are frequently involved in civil lawsuits as they seek to separate from abusive partners and establish new lives.

HB 48 requires that 25% of all state court filing fees go to ALSC, up from 10% in current law. That higher percentage is worth an extra $400,000 to the corporation and is expected to help an additional 800-850 people annually.

Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau, sponsored HB 48 and said on Friday that she appreciates the administration allowing it to become law.

“More Alaskans may be able to access civil justice,” she said by text message.

Lawmakers have proposed the 25% figure since 2011. 

Sen. Forrest Dunbar, D-Anchorage, has been seeking it for the past four years. A prior bill fell just short of passage in 2024 after then-House Rules Chair Craig Johnson, R-Anchorage, blocked it from coming to a final vote in the House, Dunbar said.

Dunbar said he was “very glad to see” the bill become law.

“ALSC provides critical services to some of Alaska’s most vulnerable populations,” he said, crediting ALSC’s current director and her predecessor for their work on the bill.

“Maggie Humm and Nikole Nelson deserve a ton of credit for educating legislators on both sides of the aisle and turning support for Civil Legal Services into a bipartisan goal,” he said.

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