An Anchorage Superior Court judge’s ruling has cleared the way for the state of Alaska to repeal its “80th Percentile Rule,” enacted by the state in 2004 as part of an attempt to reduce health care costs in the state.
The Dunleavy administration repealed the rule in 2024, saying it was counterproductive and argued it contributed to higher health care costs. Medical providers say that isn’t true and that repealing the rule will cause some clinicians to close down.
In 2023, a group of medical providers sued the state, alleging problems with the process used to repeal the rule. On Aug. 27, following a four-day bench trial in February, Judge Yvonne Lamoureaux ruled in favor of the state.
In her findings of fact and conclusions of law, Lamoureaux concluded that the repeal was not “unreasonable or arbitrary,” and the state did not conduct an improper procedure.
An appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court is possible.
When in place, the rule required that insurance companies reimburse out-of-network medical providers at a rate equal to the 80th percentile of charges for the given service.
If five clinics provide a given procedure, the required payment would be what the second-most-expensive clinic charges.
The rule was intended to prevent Alaskans from being left with large medical bills after visiting out-of-network clinics. The state and Alaska’s largest health insurance company, Premera Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alaska, contend that it required insurance companies to pay more for services than was warranted, contributing to higher insurance costs.
Photo of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University event Wednesday, courtesy of AP
NOTN/AP- An Alaskan resident attending Brigham Young University said she was just feet away when conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a campus event on Wednesday.
Margie Brown of Kasilof, Alaska, described the scene as “surreal” and said she is still processing what she witnessed.
“I’m okay. I definitely know I’m probably still in a little bit of shock,” Brown said in an interview with News of the North. “As he was setting his microphone down, you heard the crack, it was behind me, and I saw him, with my own eyes, get shot in the neck, and I knew it was the neck because there was a lot of blood.”
Videos posted to social media from Utah Valley University show Kirk speaking into a handheld microphone while sitting under a white tent emblazoned with the slogans “The American Comeback” and “Prove Me Wrong.” A single shot rings out and Kirk can be seen reaching up with his right hand as a large volume of blood gushes from the left side of his neck. Stunned spectators are heard gasping and screaming before people start to run away.
Brown, a history major finishing her last semester at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, said she and a friend signed up to attend Kirk’s appearance and they found seats near the stage, about 50 feet from where Kirk was speaking.
Immediately before the shooting, Kirk was taking questions from an audience member about mass shootings and gun violence.
Brown said she hit the ground hard before urging others to run.
FILE – Interior Secretary Doug Burgum listens as President Donald Trump speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
The rule was a key part of efforts under former President Joe Biden to refocus the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, which oversees about 10% of land in the U.S. Adopted last year, it allowed public property to be leased for restoration in the same way that oil companies lease land for drilling.
Industry and agriculture groups were bitterly opposed to the Biden rule and lobbied Republicans to reverse it. States including North Dakota, where Burgum served as governor before joining Trump’s Cabinet, pursued a lawsuit hoping to block the rule.
Wednesday’s announcement comes amid a flurry of actions since Trump took office aimed at boosting energy production from the federal government’s vast land holdings, which are concentrated in Western states including Alaska, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Interior officials said the Biden rule had sidelined people who depend on public lands for their livelihoods and imposed unneeded restrictions.
Burgum said in a statement that it would have prevented thousands of acres from being used for energy and mineral productions, grazing and recreation. Overturning it “protects our American way of life and gives our communities a voice in the land that they depend on,” Burgum said.
“The previous administration’s Public Lands Rule had the potential to block access to hundreds of thousands of acres of multiple-use land – preventing energy and mineral production, timber management, grazing and recreation across the West,” Burgum said.
Environmentalists had largely embraced the rule that was finalized in April 2024. Supporters argued that conservation was a long-neglected facet of the land bureau’s mission under the 1976 Federal Lands Policy Management Act.
“The administration cannot simply overthrow that statutory authority because they would prefer to let drilling and mining companies call the shots,” said Alison Flint, senior legal director at The Wilderness Society.
While the bureau previously issued leases for conservation purposes in limited cases, it never had a dedicated program for it.
Critics said the change under Biden violated the “multiple use” mandate for Interior Department lands, by catapulting the “non-use” of federal lands — meaning restoration leases — to a position of prominence.
National Mining Association CEO Rich Nolan said Burgum’s proposal would ensure the nation’s natural resources are available to address rising energy demands and supply important minerals.
“This is a welcome change from the prior clear disregard for the legal obligation to balance multiple uses on federal lands,” Nolan said.
The rule also promoted the designation of more “areas of critical environmental concern” — a special status that can restrict development. It’s given to land with historic or cultural significance or that’s important for wildlife conservation.
In addition to its surface land holdings, the land bureau regulates publicly-owned underground mineral reserves — such as coal for power plants and lithium for renewable energy — across more than 1 million square miles (2.5 million square kilometers). The bureau has a history of industry-friendly policies and for more than a century has sold grazing permits and oil and gas leases.
The pending publication of Burgum’s proposal will kick off a 60-day public comment period.
House Republicans last week repealed land management plans adopted in the closing days of former President Joe Biden’s administration that restricted development in large areas of Alaska, Montana and North Dakota. Interior officials also announced a proposal aimed at increasing mining and drilling in Western states with populations of greater sage grouse. Biden administration officials proposed limits on development and prohibitions against mining to help protect the grouse.
Attorneys general (from left to right) Treg Taylor of Alaska, Marty Jackley of South Dakota, Kris Kobach of Kansas, J.B. McCuskey of West Virginia, and Liz Murrill of Louisiana participate in a panel discussion on Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025, at the Alaska Oil and Gas Association conference in Anchorage. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
During a pair of public panel discussions during the last week of August, attorneys general from five conservative Republican states said they see climate ‘superfund laws’ passed by Democratic states as major threats to the fossil fuel industries of their state.
“I think that the group of people that are on this panel are all united in making sure that all of the expertise in all of our offices are being utilized to make sure that this doesn’t keep going, because it’s very, very dangerous,” said J.B. McCuskey, attorney general of West Virginia, at the annual meeting of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association.
Alongside him were attorneys general Kris Kobach of Kansas, Liz Murrill of Louisiana, Marty Jackley of South Dakota, and then-attorney general of Alaska, Treg Taylor.
The attorneys general said they are also concerned by lawsuits from states and local governments that could result in financial penalties against fossil fuel companies for disasters attributed to climate change.
Vermont made history in 2024 when it enacted a law that allows the state to hold fossil fuel companies financially liable for the negative impacts of climate change on that state. New York followed suit with a similar law later in the year.
Under both laws, fines levied by the states and paid by fossil fuel companies would go into a large fund that would be spent on projects that could mitigate natural disasters or subsidize clean energy projects.
“Now that we have a friendly EPA and a friendly administration, the blue states are deciding that they’re now going to be the EPA,” McCuskey said, speaking at a different panel hosted by the Republican Women of Anchorage.
The attorneys general, plus Ken Paxton of Texas, who was not present at the industry panel, nodded along as McCuskey spoke.
“Their argument is that every single permitted operation that happened in Alaska caused $75 billion worth of damage to the people of New York. It’s completely outrageous. And the problem isn’t just that it’s New York, it’s that Illinois has one. California is going to have one. Vermont’s going to have one. Massachusetts is going to have one. You name a place that has radical environmentalists running their government, and then it becomes an amount of money that’s not withstandable,” McCuskey said.
Taylor, who has since resigned as Alaska’s attorney general and is expected to run for governor, said he believes that in states with budget holes, “it’s pretty convenient just to raise taxes on oil and gas, right? And those states that don’t have oil and gas, that’s their way of dealing with their budget shortfalls, is to take it out of oil and gas through these types of acts.”
Republican attorneys general from five states speak at an event hosted by the Anchorage Republican Women on Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025, in Anchorage. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
Fossil fuel businesses and trade groups, including the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, filed suit last year against the Vermont law.
A group of Republican attorneys general, led by McCuskey, sued New York in February. Another McCuskey-led suit, filed in May, targets Vermont.
Those suits say companies should be financially liable for harm caused by climate change.
Speaking at the Alaska oil panel, Kobach said he’s concerned about climate lawsuits filed by cities and counties and believes they’re being encouraged by national environmental law firms and groups.
“The reason I’m so energized about fighting back against that is Ford County, Kansas, which you probably never heard of, where Dodge City is — little tiny county, rural county, very low population — somehow, they were convinced by some very well-heeled attorneys in California to be a plaintiff in one of these lawsuits. And so we’re chasing them around. My office is chasing them around, trying to get them kicked out of court because they don’t speak for the people of Kansas,” he said.
Taylor said he sees the same issue.
“We’re seeing those opportunistic plaintiffs’ attorneys convince municipalities and boroughs and cities to take on litigation that’s really not in their best interest and really puts money into their own pockets,” he said during the panel discussion.
McCuskey, of West Virginia, said his state is considering a law that would restrict the ability of local governments to sue.
Nationally, the fossil fuel industry is lobbying Congress to pass a liability shield law akin to the one passed in 2005 to protect the gun industry against lawsuits attempting to hold gun manufacturers responsible for gun crimes.
In June, McCuskey and other attorneys general wrote a letter to the U.S. Attorney General to offer support for a national liability shield to protect fossil fuel companies.
McCuskey, speaking at the oil panel, got a laugh from the audience when he asked attendees what they thought West Virginians would say if New York tried to collect a fine from the state of West Virginia.
“Our big joke is that the people in New York are literally looking down on us from the skyscrapers that were built with coal from West Virginia,” McCuskey said at the oil and gas association panel. “So they’re not just looking down on us figuratively, but both literally and figuratively, and they just have no contemplation of why their economies were built by the people who do the work that’s happening here.”
NOTN- Jim Duncan, a former Alaska House Speaker and longtime labor leader, is looking back on more than four decades in public life in a new memoir he says shows how politics is a lot like making sausage.
Duncan, who served in the Legislature from the 1970s through the 1980s eventually becoming Speaker of the House. Over that time, he sponsored dozens of bills and says he learned that compromise was the only way to get things done.
Duncan also lead Alaska’s largest public employee union and said his book Making Sausage aims to put Alaska’s political issues into perspective, he says much of what was covered in the 70s and 80s is still applicable today.
“It was a long process, but it was worthwhile in my mind, because it really brought me back to how important the issues are that we were addressing and how those issues are still alive today.” Said Duncan, “The one thing I mentioned in the book is that it’s, about history, but it’s not ancient history, because what we did when I was serving in the legislature and after, are still alive today, those issues still need to be addressed. And I hope that there will be some encouragement given to some folks too, if they read this and say, Okay, let’s get busy and try to resolve these issues. They need to be done.”
Duncan recalled sifting through nearly 20 boxes of legislative files to piece together the book, which details his work on oil taxes, education, and labor negotiations.
He said one of his proudest achievements was securing finality in collective bargaining for school employees, a fight that spanned 15 years.
“Education funding has been at the top of the list for past legislators and legislators for a number of years.” Duncan said, “You know, we didn’t adequately address it when I was in the legislature. We tried to, and we put together a foundation, a formula program, but unfortunately, that hasn’t been kept up to date, and there hasn’t been adequate funding. And we complain about our schools and the fact that we don’t think that they’re providing a good education, but we’re asking our teachers to do more with less. There’s less teachers. The classroom sizes have increased. They’ve got to bring in their own supplies, so it’s very difficult.”
Locally, he pointed to helping secure funding for the University of Alaska Southeast library, which he argued cemented the campus’ future in Juneau.
Much of Duncan’s book also revisits Alaska’s battles over oil taxes, a debate he said shaped his career and even led to his removal as House Speaker.
“You know, the fact that the state doesn’t have a long-term fiscal plan, so we can really clearly set our goals and attain those, it’s got to be resolved.” Said Duncan, “And the one reason that hasn’t happened is because, so far, when they talk about creating fiscal plan, what they look at is decreasing spending and increasing the permanent fund dividend, but they forget about the fact they need more revenues, and unfortunately, revenues, the ones that we can get would come from oil companies.”
Duncan said that Alaska’s state issues like education and state funding are also federal issues.
“Education is being attacked with the current administration, the Department of Education is being decimated, and they’re reworking the way that the federal government helps provide education, health care is under attack, as we know, there’s talks about trying to repeal parts of Obamacare, doing away with Medicaid funding and or reducing it and Medicare, and that’s going to have a tremendous impact.” Duncan said “So the important thing I think here, is that the issues that we were addressing, trying to address years ago, are still alive today and need to be addressed. And I hope that this might spur some if folks read this.”
Duncan spoke on today’s political landscape and expressed concerns on partisanship, “I think Alaska, we do better working on a bipartisan nature than some other states do, and what they do on the federal level.” he said, “I think there’s good ideas on both sides, whether you’re Republican or Democrat. The goal you is to try to bring folks together, and you gotta be willing to accept their thoughts and views. Also, I think unfortunately, on the federal level, that’s not happening. It’s become very strident.”
Duncan also weighed in on the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, which he helped establish during his time in office. While he said he supports a larger dividend to benefit rural and low-income residents, he argued it must be paired with new revenue sources, including changes to oil production taxes.
“The challenge is, how do you maintain the dividend, provide government services and see the dividend grow? You know, the dividend has been going down in recent years. It’s going to be the lowest this year than it has been for some time. And in fact, it’s probably the lowest it’s ever been.” Duncan said “The reason is because so much of those earnings needs to be used to help support government services, I support that we should have a larger dividend, because it does a lot of good for people who really need it in rural Alaska and elsewhere, in order to do that, you need to find revenues outside of the permanent fund earnings and outside of the general fund money that’s just generated from other sources.”
Making Sausage is available online through Amazon and Google Books, with audio and additional formats expected soon.
An early voting station is set up in the atrium of the State Office Building in Juneau, Alaska on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, the first day of early voting for the 2024 Alaska primary election. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
By: James Brooks, Alaska Beacon
An early voting station is set up in the atrium of the State Office Building in Juneau, Alaska on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, the first day of early voting for the 2024 Alaska primary election. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
A document submitted by the Alaska Division of Elections to the U.S. Department of Justice in response to a nationwide data request names 70 possible noncitizens who voted or attempted to vote in state or local Alaska elections since 2015.
Noncitizen voting remains extraordinarily rare, nationwide figures show, and Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, said there is no evidence that noncitizen voting changed the result of last year’s elections here.
Ahead of last year’s elections, Donald Trump and other Republican politicians said they believed large numbers of non-U.S. citizens would seek to vote and influence the result of elections.
Since becoming president, Trump has asked Congress to impose citizenship checks on all potential voters. His Department of Justice has asked all 50 states for copies of their voter lists in order to create a national government database.
Alaska turned over its voter list and other documents to the U.S. Department of Justice last month.
In response to a public records request filed by the Alaska Beacon, the Alaska Division of Elections provided copies of documents it delivered to federal authorities.
Most of the documents, including a copy of the state’s official voter list, were already public. The voter list, for example, is available for purchase from any state elections office and doesn’t include sensitive information beyond a voter’s name, how often they’ve voted, and where they live.
The state’s inactive voter list — showing people whose voter registrations have been flagged for review and possible removal — is also a public record, but it isn’t commonly circulated. Inactive voters can’t cast a ballot without additional ID checks.
WHERE’S THE LIST?
Ordinarily, the Alaska Beacon publishes copies of the documents it obtains via public records requests, but in this case, we’re not publishing the list.
The inactive voter list contains the names and addresses of tens of thousands of Alaskans who have committed no wrongdoing, and we believe the potential harm outweighs the benefit of publishing it.
The list may become available from other sources or news outlets, but because people may be listed as “noncitizens” due to paperwork errors or other innocent mistakes, and because we aren’t able to verify the citizenship of all 541 people, we’re not publishing it.
The inactive voter list provided to the DOJ and to the Beacon is from August. It includes 541 people whose voter records were tagged “NC” for non-citizen.
But it’s not clear whether these Alaskans are noncitizens or were on the list because of mistakes.
Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, said some people may have been erroneously labeled, so it isn’t correct to say that there were 541 noncitizens registered to vote.
“As we get more information, things change. So what I’m telling you today on a number may change tomorrow because of new information that we got,” Beecher said in an extended interview on Wednesday.
Stephen Kirch, the division’s spokesperson, said by email that “the DOE cannot say with any degree of certainty whether the current number of NC-coded entries is ‘abnormal’ or ‘unusual’ in a historical context. This is because the number is a moving target and not a static one; it is not tracked.”
The inactive voter list shows only people whose records have been flagged for additional attention and isn’t confirmation that they are not citizens. It may include people who filled out paperwork incorrectly or registered to vote shortly before becoming a citizen.
“It’s really hard to say whether this particular number (541) is a problem, because there’s so many questions behind even that particular number,” said Mara Kimmel, a former immigration attorney who now works as executive director of the Alaska chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
That total also might miss noncitizens who are on the active voter list but haven’t yet been identified.
Carol Beecher, the new director of the Alaska Division of Elections, answers questions from reporters on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
Beecher said she considers the “NC” tag to be “kind of like a file drawer. You put things into that file based on the status when you put it in there. But that could change.”
Kimmel said that the issue is “never as easy as it seems or as it would be framed. … Noncitizens voting has become a real political hot-button issue.”
In her experience, “there’s so much confusion and misinformation that is born out of a benign desire to participate in your new home.”
In Alaska, residents can register to vote by contacting the Alaska Division of Elections. Residents are also asked if they want to register when they update their driver’s license, get a new driver’s license, and apply for the annual Permanent Fund dividend.
As Beecher explained, if someone attests that they’re not a citizen through one method but says they are a citizen via a different method, that gets the attention of authorities.
“When we have gone in there and looked and contacted them, we have found that usually it was a mistake,” she said.
In other cases, particularly with the state’s “motor-voter” program, the mistake might come from a typo or someone’s misunderstanding of the rules, particularly if they don’t speak fluent English, as might be the case with new immigrants.
The Division of Elections doesn’t have investigative powers, which means voting officials rely on an applicant’s sworn oath about their citizenship. There’s no automatic double-checking, and it’s federally unconstitutional for the division to ask for proof of citizenship.
“All we get is the affirmation, and however frustrating that can be for everyone out there to say, ‘Well, why can’t you make sure?’ Well, we are not given that authority. So essentially, the division takes people at their word is really what it comes down to,” Beecher said.
If someone’s registration is flagged by a complaint or because of a discrepancy in the records, the division forwards the case to the Alaska Department of Law for investigation.
“We provide them with documents if they request that, as pursuant to an investigation, but if not, we may never hear from them,” Beecher said of the investigation.
Smith was born in American Samoa, an island territory in the South Pacific. Its residents are U.S. nationals — having some of the same legal rights as other Americans — but aren’t citizens.
During the subsequent investigation, Alaska State Troopers learned of 10 other American Samoans who had voted in Alaska. The state charged them with civil crimes in April, and this week, they were indicted.
All 10 are labeled noncitizens on the inactive voter list supplied to the Beacon and Department of Justice. They, and another 60 other people, are shown as having voted or attempted to vote at least once during the past 10 years.
It isn’t clear whether all of those ballots were actually counted. Many are labeled as “questioned,” meaning that they were subject to additional ID verification. Beecher said “it’s possible” that some were counted but that she didn’t have numbers.
She believes “very few” noncitizens have voted.
“I’m speaking very anecdotally, because I don’t have those kinds of numbers for you, but our sense is that it’s very small. And I think the underlying reason for that is because there is no nefarious intent out there to try to sway an election. It’s people who either — and this is my personal opinion — they’re confused about the rules or somehow ended up marking something that they didn’t understand,” Beecher said.
If the noncitizen-tagged voters on the inactive list had still been active, they would have represented just 0.09% of Alaska voters.
Last year, 340,981 Alaskans voted in the state’s November general election. The division’s inactive list shows six noncitizens either voted or attempted to vote in that election.
In Michigan, officials announced in April that they had found 16 credible cases of noncitizen voting out of about 5.7 million votes cast overall, or one per every 360,000 votes.
Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage and a supporter of election reform legislation in Alaska, noted that the rate of noncitizen voting in Alaska is likely well below the rate at which legitimate voters are being disqualified because of problems with the state’s absentee voting system.
“Any time you have people who are voting that shouldn’t be voting, that’s cause for concern,” Wielechowski said in an interview Wednesday.
“But at the same time, we’ve got hundreds of people that we know of, actually thousands of people who were disenfranchised,” he said, referring to the state’s regular practice of disqualifying absentee ballots because of submittal errors.
“In rural Alaska, we had 10% or 15% of the population in rural Alaska that was disenfranchised a couple of years ago, legitimate voters who were disenfranchised because of a bureaucratic technicality that’s not even checked. So I think there’s bigger problems,” Wielechowski said.
In 2023, Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, proposed legislation that would have required the Division of Elections to cross-check the state’s voter rolls with a national citizenship database.
“I always like to presume innocence, but we have to put the safeguards in place, and by having the division use those databases as a check and balance, I think that’s a very simple way to make sure that we’re crossing our T’s and dotting I’s,” Vance said Wednesday.
She noted that current Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, won his 2006 primary election via a coin toss that followed a tied election.
“When you look at how slim some of our elections are, how tight races can be, these numbers matter,” she said.
The Alaska Senate stripped out Vance’s citizenship provision and passed a revised bill, but the Republican-led House failed by a single vote to take up the legislation on the last day of the regular session in 2024. The bill died at the end of the session, and lawmakers started anew this spring.
In recent years, the Alaska Department of Law has requested funding for a part-time elections investigator. The Legislature has not approved that request.
“We shouldn’t have anyone voting in our elections on any level who shouldn’t be,” Vance said.
“This is important and significant because we want to make sure that we protect the sovereignty of every individual’s vote,” she said.
A voter in Alaska's special U.S. House primary election drops their ballot into a box on Saturday, June 11, 2022 as a poll worker observes. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
A voter in Alaska’s special U.S. House primary election drops their ballot into a box on Saturday, June 11, 2022 as a poll worker observes. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
NOTN- Juneau residents planning to vote in the city’s upcoming municipal election must register by Sunday, Sept. 7. That is also the deadline to update a mailing address with the state Division of Elections.
Anyone who will turn 18 by Election Day, Oct. 7, is eligible to vote but must still register by the Sept. 7 deadline. Alaska law allows residents to register up to 90 days before their 18th birthday.
The Oct. 7 election is being conducted by mail, but voters can check their status or update information
On September 19, ballots for this election will be mailed to registered Juneau voters at the mailing address they have on file with the State of Alaska Division of Elections. If you’re not sure about your registration status or mailing address, you can check online at myvoterportal.alaska.gov.
Vote Centers will open for in-person voting starting on September 22. The last day to vote is Tuesday, October 7.
Tricia Howe, a volunteer working at the Aug. 19, 2023, “weed smackdown” at Anchorage’s Tikishla Park, pulls another felled European bird cherry tree to put on a pile near the park’s softball field. European bird cherry trees, also known as chokecherry trees, are invasive plants that were once popular ornamentals in Anchorage and elsewhere but have since spread into wooded areas. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon) The invasive Prunus tree species have showy and fragrant white flowers, seen in this undated photo. (Photo provided by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources)
State officials have barred the import, transport and sale of two fast-growing invasive species that were once popular garden ornamentals but have now wreaked havoc on natural vegetation.
The Alaska Division of Agriculture on Friday said it issued a quarantine for the two species: Prunus padus, commonly known as the European bird cherry tree or mayday tree, and Prunus virginiana, commonly known as the Canada red or chokecherry tree.
An invasive Prunus tree sprouts from a fallen branch in Anchorage. (Photo provided by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources)
The order went into effect Monday.
In essence, it will extend through the state a ban that was imposed in 2017 in Anchorage. The trees have become a particular nuisance in Alaska’s largest city, where they have proliferated in greenbelts and other spaces and crowded out native species like birch and spruce.
State and local officials have been trying to remove these non-native trees, and the new policy should help that effort, said Division of Agriculture Director Bryan Scoresby.
“This quarantine prohibits the importation, transport, and sale within the state of these two trees and their parts,” Scoresby said in a statement. “Many agencies continue to pursue control measures with the goal of eliminating these invasive trees. With this quarantine, the flow of trees into Alaska will stop, making this goal more attainable.”
Invasive Prunus trees bloom along the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail in Anchorage in this undated photo. (Photo provided by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources)
The ornamentals quickly spread, displacing native vegetation, impeding animals’ access and upsetting natural food webs, according to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service.
Their berries can be toxic to moose, causing cyanide poisoning that is sometimes fatal.
Along with those problems, the invasives might be spreading disease to other trees, according to the Division of Agriculture. A fungal disease called “Black Knot” was recently discovered on chokecherry trees on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus, making the invasive trees potential disease spreaders, the division said.
The two tree species are prime targets of annual Anchorage “weed smackdown” invasive-removal events. There is also a concerted effort to remove the trees from Fairbanks, including on the UAF campus, where officials have been methodically replacing them with native trees.
Eradicating the trees might require more than simply cutting them down because new trees can grow out of root systems below stumps, according to the Cooperative Extension Service.
For all the damage the two invasive tree species cause in Alaska, however, some people have found ways to benefit from them. The toxin in their berries can be neutralized and eaten by people.
Seedlings of invasive Prunus trees cover a forest floor by a bike trail. (Photo provided by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources)
May 14, 2018 – Wind turbines in Kodiak, Alaska. (Photo by Dennis Schroeder / NREL)
For years, urban Alaska utilities have been studying large-scale wind farms that could help break the state’s dependence on natural gas power — encouraged by the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits from the federal government.
Next summer, however, those tax credits will largely disappear for projects that haven’t started construction, a consequence of the tax bill that President Donald Trump signed in July.
Clean energy advocates, and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, had said they hoped that Alaska wind projects could still advance in time to qualify.
But in recent weeks, board members and executives at the cooperatively owned utilities have acknowledged that the timeline now appears too short — which means any large-scale projects will now have to be built without the generous federal subsidies, or wait to see if Congress reestablishes a more favorable tax regime.
Critics say the absence of major new renewable projects will leave the state dependent on imported, liquefied natural gas and could make consumers vulnerable to price spikes.
“There’s an argument to be made that these electric cooperatives, whose boards have a fiduciary responsibility to the member-owners, have really frittered away one of the greatest opportunities they’ve ever had to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars of value to their members,” said Phil Wight, an energy historian and professor at University of Alaska Fairbanks. “At the highest level, I think that’s a fair argument.”
Since Congress approved expanded tax credits in 2022, Alaska has seen no large-scale wind or solar projects begin construction, while other states like Wyoming and Texas have received billions of dollars in clean energy investment.
At a recent meeting, board members at Golden Valley Electric Association, the utility that generates power for Fairbanks area residents and mines, rejected a developer’s bid to advance a large-scale wind farm on a schedule driven by the expiring tax credits. Utility officials said there was still too much uncertainty about final pricing and whether the project could capture the credits.
Meanwhile, officials at Anchorage-based Chugach Electric Association, the state’s largest power utility, say that another large wind project they’ve been studying with the same developer also won’t be ready to start construction in time to qualify for the credits.
Jim Nordlund, a Chugach Electric Association board member, said that if the Anchorage-area project had captured the credits, it was still far from clear that it could have provided power more cheaply than his utility’s existing natural gas plants.
That’s even assuming prices will rise when local fuel supplies dry up and utilities begin importing liquefied natural gas in the next few years, added Nordlund, a self-described clean energy advocate.
The price of renewable power generally, he said, “is really high.”
Alaskans who are frustrated about the pace of wind and solar development shouldn’t blame the urban utilities, Nordlund added. Private companies, not the utilities themselves, have been advancing projects that failed to materialize, he said, and politics also played a big role.
“If you want to blame anybody for this, it would be that big bad bill. That’s what Trump wanted to do, and it worked,” Nordlund said. “It shut down, at least for the time being, our projects.”
But renewable energy boosters say that the urban utilities deserve at least some share of the blame for not advancing projects more urgently while the tax credits were in place.
The utilities could have developed large wind developments themselves, those advocates argue — or they could have done more to create a stable and attractive market for private developers.
“The utilities are uniquely bureaucratic and expensive in their own self-development. And they’re uniquely bureaucratic and obstinate and slow if a private company is developing,” said Ethan Schutt, who formerly managed the energy assets of an Indigenous-owned regional corporation.
Advocates say utility leaders have also failed to endorse, and in some cases outright opposed, legislation proposed multiple times in recent years to establish renewable energy quotas — which they say could have encouraged more private developers to work in the state.
Large-scale power projects “need to be thoughtfully implemented,” Natalie Kiley-Bergen, energy lead at an advocacy organization called Alaska Public Interest Research Group, said in an email.
“Had more progress been made in the last five years — even the last 15 years — to create a competitive market environment with regulatory and economic certainty for these projects, we could have seen responsible project commitments regardless of federal changes,” Kiley-Bergen said. “Not capitalizing on these tax credits is a product of years of moving slowly on the tremendous opportunities to diversify our energy generation.”
A risk of price spikes?
After its initial discovery in the 1950s, Cook Inlet, the offshore and onshore petroleum basin southwest of Anchorage, produced huge quantities of natural gas.
There was enough fuel to generate not just the vast majority of the region’s electric power, but also to supply plants that produced fertilizer and exported gas in liquefied form to Asia.
But those plants have now closed amid Cook Inlet production declines. And for more than a decade, the urban electric utilities have been contending with risk that gas supply won’t be adequate to meet demand.
Generous state tax credits temporarily approved by lawmakers in 2010 helped stimulate new drilling, but only temporarily, and they were subsequently repealed. Three years ago, Cook Inlet’s dominant producer, Hilcorp, warned utilities that they should not expect new long-term commitments of gas when their existing contracts expire in the coming years.
Clean energy advocates say that Alaskans’ dependence on gas-fired power — Chugach Electric Association generates 87% of its power from the fuel — makes residents vulnerable to both supply disruptions and fluctuations in price.
The utilities have responded to the looming local gas shortfall with plans for new infrastructure that could offload imported liquefied natural gas, known as LNG, shipped from Canada or the Gulf of Mexico.
But unlike gas from Cook Inlet, which producers have long sold at a fixed cost, utilities would likely have to buy LNG at rates that swing with the market, similar to the price of oil, according to Antony Scott, an analyst at the Renewable Energy Alaska Project advocacy group who once studied petroleum pricing for Alaska’s state government.
Given the risk of price spikes that could translate into higher electricity prices for consumers, diversifying with new wind and solar development should be a “no-brainer,” Scott said.
“It’s just like an investment portfolio. Do you want to invest only in Tesla?” Scott said. “A rational, prudent investor would have a diversified portfolio.”
Scott’s advocacy group, and others in Alaska, have pushed the utilities to diversify, in part through lobbying for the creation of the renewable energy quotas.
They cite analyses like a study released last year by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which found that new renewables would be cheaper than burning gas in existing plants and, by 2040, could meet up to 80% of demand.
“Ratepayers in Alaska have been saying, for a long time, that we need renewable energy projects here at home, and we need to be capturing energy here at home,” said Alex Petkanas, clean energy and climate program manager at the Alaska Center conservation group. “This is not something that is a surprise — that our local natural gas supply is ending, and we need to replace that with new generation.”
A rejected agreement
Utility staff and board members agree that they need to diversify away from gas, with the chief executive of Matanuska Electric Association saying in 2022 that it was “untenable” to continue generating 85% of power from one type of fuel.
Chugach Electric Association aims to cut its carbon emissions in half by 2040, which would likely require sharp reduction in its use of natural gas. And a Golden Valley Electric Association strategic plan approved last year calls for the utility to finalize agreements with private developers to bring on “large-scale wind resources” at prices that will lower members’ power costs.
None of those utilities have moved to build major wind or solar farms themselves; instead, they’ve looked to private companies to do the construction and sell the power onto the grid.
Just one firm, Longroad Energy, has advanced large-scale wind projects on a timeline that could have qualified for the expiring tax credits. One is outside Anchorage in Chugach Electric Association’s region, and one is outside Fairbanks, in Golden Valley Electric Association’s region.
The Fairbanks area project, known as Shovel Creek Wind, could produce one-third of the power consumed by Golden Valley’s members — and even generate more than 100% of their demand at certain times, depending on the size of the development, said Golden Valley’s chief executive, Travis Million.
But at a July board meeting, Golden Valley’s board members rejected an agreement that Longroad had proposed to keep the project on a timeline to qualify for the credits.
Golden Valley, said Million, still needed more time to finish a study of how much it would have to spend on infrastructure upgrades and its existing fossil fuel plants in order to accommodate power from the new wind project. Utilities must balance swings in power production that stem from the natural variability of wind.
“Without having that step done, there’s just so much uncertainty about the cost. And not knowing what that end result would be to our members, we just could not commit,” Million said in a recent interview. The details of the proposed agreement — including Longroad’s estimated pricing — are confidential under a non-disclosure agreement.
There was additional uncertainty, Million added, about whether the Trump administration, which has been hostile to wind power, would grant the credits even if Shovel Creek advanced on the required timeline.
But Million also acknowledged that the utility could have done more work earlier to speed up the process.
“We should have done a lot of these studies on the front end, to really understand sizing and needs on Golden Valley’s system, before we really started going down this path with trying to find developers,” Million said.
Longroad, through an Anchorage-based consultant, declined to comment. Million said that Golden Valley plans to finish its study and hasn’t ruled out advancing Shovel Creek on a slower timeline than Longroad’s proposal.
The utility is also studying a substantial, if smaller, wind project that could still qualify for the tax credits.
“We have to take control”
In Anchorage, meanwhile, officials with Chugach Electric Association said that Longroad’s work on the nearby Little Mount Susitna wind project slowed as the company focused on advancing Shovel Creek.
The developer, said Chugach board member Nordlund, isn’t ready to make the initial investment in Little Mount Susitna and couldn’t do the continuous work required in order to take advantage of the tax credits — though the utility, he added, hasn’t given up on the project moving forward in the future.
Nordlund ran for the Chugach board in 2023 as an advocate for wind and solar, saying then that “the time to act on renewables is now.”
But he said in a recent interview that there’s “misinformation” circulating that utilities are dismissing proposed wind and solar developments that would generate power more cheaply than natural gas, when that’s not clearly the case.
Chugach has its own non-disclosure agreement with Longroad that Nordlund said bars him from getting specific about prices.
But speaking generally, he added, Alaska is a tough market for private developers, compared to the Lower 48 and foreign countries where they otherwise might invest.
Construction costs in Alaska are higher given the remote setting, harsh environment and lack of contractors competing for business, Nordlund said; the relatively small consumer base also means that developers can’t capture economies of scale.
“I think we need to create a better climate for independent power producers to do business in Alaska,” Nordlund said. The stalled legislation to establish renewable energy quotas could have helped, he added, by giving those private developers more certainty that the utilities were “serious” about bringing on wind and solar projects.
“More could have been done,” he said.
Nonetheless, Nordlund said he thinks the inherently “conservative” culture of Alaska’s utilities is changing, with executives increasingly open to accommodating wind and solar power.
Chugach officials say the utility is still pursuing renewables and remains open to proposals from developers — though they are now refocusing on more modest projects that they can advance in-house, at least in the early stages. Viable projects could then, potentially, be handed off to private developers.
At meetings in recent weeks, board and staff members have discussed a small-scale solar farm that Chugach is studying at the site of one of its existing gas power plants on the far side of Cook Inlet.
They’ve also heard a presentation from a consultant who is examining potential sites for new hydroelectric development, though those projects would face a lengthy permitting process.
“We now have to take control and get in the lead,” Dustin Highers, Chugach’s vice president for corporate programs, said at a recent board meeting.
But some experts like Wight, the energy historian, remain skeptical that those efforts will end up displacing very much gas, with the exception of the smaller wind project in the Fairbanks area that he said could still “make a real difference.”
Pursuing smaller projects with better coordination between regions could be a better strategy, Wight said. But failing that, he said he expects utilities to largely continue their dependence on natural gas — whether through imported LNG, or through a proposed pipeline project from Alaska’s North Slope that’s struggled to secure commitments from investors.
“They’re going to dabble a little bit in renewables here and there, and then they’re just going to hope for cheap gas,” Wight said. “As a state, we’ve been so oil- and gas-dependent for so long that I do think there’s a cultural barrier there, to bring in the new folks who want to think differently.”
Nathaniel Herz welcomes tips at natherz@gmail.com or (907) 793-0312. This article was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter from Herz. Subscribe at this link.
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy talks to reporters during a news conference on Monday, May 19, 2025. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
NOTN – Governor Mike Dunleavy is criticizing the Alaska Legislature for failing to take action on education reform, pointing out that the state remains last in the nation for student outcomes.
In a letter to legislators Friday, he emphasized that increasing funding won’t improve results without meaningful policy changes, and called on lawmakers to act immediately.
According to lawmakers who spoke with News of the North, Dunleavy has declined to call a second special session this year.
Dunleavy warned that if the legislature does not pass education reforms during the next regular session, he is prepared to call additional special sessions in 2026 until changes are made, stressing that each year of inaction affects an entire cohort of students.
