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The Legislature is working toward the largest capital budget in a long time. Municipalities are hearing “yes” instead of years of “no” to some of their public works funding requests. In addition, more state money is headed to schools. And Alaskans are likely to get a check from the state this fall more than double the amount of last year’s Permanent Fund dividend. All thanks to elevated oil prices — more than 50% higher than a year ago — and the large tax and royalty payments that are flowing to the treasury from North Slope oil producers. Lawm...
WRANGELL — Anyone who wants to get a pizza midweek at the Marine Bar or a steak or burger at the Elks Lodge knows that worker shortages have forced employers to reduce their days and cut back on offerings. “This worker shortage is real, and it’s not going away anytime soon,” Dan Robinson, research chief at the Alaska Department of Labor, told legislators last month. “For nine years in a row, more people have left the state than have come here,” he told the Senate Finance Committee. The population has been stable as births have outpaced de...
Unless the Legislature acts, Alaska nonprofits will have to stop selling raffle tickets online June 30. The state has allowed online sales by registered nonprofits since early summer 2020, as the pandemic shut down or made difficult group events and in-person ticket sales. Temporary legislation allowing charitable groups to sell and draw winning tickets online expires in less than two months, though a bill under consideration would make the provision permanent. The legislation “will modernize Alaska’s charitable gaming program,” Deb Moore, exec...
Legislation to restore and increase the state licensing fee on sportfishing guides and operators ran into problems in the Senate Finance Committee last week, as lawmakers questioned why out-of-state boat owners who bring up guests are not required to get a license and pay the fee. “My district has got to be one of the top guided areas in the state,” said Committee Co-Chair Sen. Bert Stedman, whose district stretches from Sitka to Prince of Wales Island, including Petersburg. And while that means a lot of non-residents pay local operators for...
Global supply chain shortages and delays have extended past grocery stores, car dealers and electronics to the Alaska Marine Highway System. The state ferry Kennicott was delayed coming out of winter overhaul. Instead of returning to service last week, as had been scheduled, the ship left Ketchikan on Tuesday for a two-week trip to Juneau, Yakutat and then into the Gulf of Alaska before sailing into Bellingham, Washington, to fully start its summer runs. The Kennicott's scheduled return to servi...
With just a few weeks left in the legislative session, House and Senate budget writers appear to agree that $2,600 is a good number to put into the hands of Alaskans this fall. But how they get there is different. The House-passed version of the state budget appropriates enough money to send every eligible Alaskan about $2,600 — half would be the annual Permanent Fund dividend, and half would be called “energy relief” to help people pay the higher prices for gasoline, diesel and heating fuel. Those same high prices have generated a lot of mo...
The state budget plan adopted by the House earlier this month includes an additional $263,000 in one-time funding for the Petersburg School District, an almost 5% boost from a state aid formula that has not increased since 2017. The one-time appropriation for a total of $57 million may be the political compromise to help Alaska's 54 school districts this next year as lawmakers continue to debate a change to the formula in state statute. Superintendent Erica Kludt-Painter discussed House Bill...
Juneau-based Alaska Seaplanes will add Wrangell to its route map starting May 26. The company, which operates a fleet of 14 single-engine aircraft, mostly nine-passenger planes, will run a daily flight from Sitka to Petersburg to Wrangell and back to Sitka. Encouragement from SEARHC "was instrumental" in starting the Sitka-Wrangell service, Andy Kline, Alaska Seaplanes marketing manager, said last Wednesday. SEARHC is based in Sitka where it operates the Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center, providing...
With more than 260 would-be ferry passengers stuck on a waitlist for travel out of Bellingham, Washington, and sailings full until late July, the Alaska Marine Highway System has scheduled an extra run of the Matanuska to bring the people and their vehicles to the state. The additional sailing is scheduled to leave Bellingham on May 25. There was time in the ship’s schedule, which ferry management had been holding open in hopes the Matanuska could restart service that week to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, after being gone from the C...
The Alaska Marine Highway System has been hoping since last August to bring back the Columbia to service this year after an almost three-year absence, but with the start of the summer schedule only weeks away the state has not announced a decision on the ship. The Columbia's summer return is contingent on hiring enough crew to replace staff that were laid off, retired, quit or moved to other ships since the state's largest ferry was pulled out of service in the fall of 2019. "We're pouring a...
A big part of a well-functioning democracy is running for office or, if you don’t want your name on the ballot, backing a candidate, taking a position on a ballot issue, and writing checks for the campaigns you support. Writing those checks to elect your favored candidates and contributing to campaigns to win, or defeat, ballot propositions that do, or do not, serve your interests and align with your beliefs is everyone’s constitutional right. Freedom of expression includes the freedom to spend your money to promote your own self-interests and...
The House Finance Committee has rejected the governor's proposal to rely almost entirely on federal funds to operate the Alaska Marine Highway System next year, with the Senate Finance Committee moving in the same direction. The committees differ on the amounts but both want to see more state money in the budget for the ferries, using some federal infrastructure money to replace state dollars but not nearly as much as the governor. Total appropriations for the ferry operating budget next year...
Maybe Alaskans were tired of hearing the all-too-familiar refrains: Good candidates don’t run for public office anymore; it’s too expensive; ill-mannered social media posts go after their families and disrupt their lives; voters are too easily swayed by misleading attack ads; and no one wants to hear the truth about solving the country’s problems. So why bother running for office. Clearly, 51 candidates to fill the seat of the late Don Young, Alaska’s congressman for the past half-century, decided to ignore all the reasons not to run. Or maybe...
This year’s switch to ranked-choice voting in Alaska is something new, maybe even surprisingly new for those who missed or forgot about the 2020 statewide ballot initiative that put forth the change. But new, while exciting for some people, can be scary and disconcerting and disruptive for others. This coming from a 70-year-old who is stuck so deep in his own comfort zone that I wear the same button-down cotton shirts (never white), same two-tone saddle shoes, use the same hair shampoo and same original flavor Crest toothpaste. Hey, nothing w...
No, this column is not directed at oil producers. They are not the guilty party in this tale of cost escalation. Nor is this column about the many businesses around the world stressed by energy prices that have shot up faster and higher than fireworks on the Fourth of July. As crude oil has jumped, surged and spiked from just over $65 a barrel on Dec. 1 to painfully over $100 a barrel this month, consumers have been paying more at the pump — whether the corner gas station for a dozen or more gallons to fill up a car or pickup, a couple h...
A state Department of Transportation official told legislators that the ferry system is "burning out our crew" with lots of overtime amid staff shortages, and that the problem jeopardizes tentative plans to bring back the Columbia to service in Southeast for the first time since fall 2019. The Alaska Marine Highway System as of March 16 was down 125 employees from the minimum needed to staff its full online summer schedule plus the addition of the Columbia, according to a department...
Many Alaskans will be hurting under $5-a-gallon gasoline, and rural residents who pay even higher prices will hurt even more. The state treasury, meanwhile, is flush with higher oil production tax and royalty checks, depositing tens of millions of dollars more each month than expected at the start of the year. Oil at $100-plus a barrel is guilty on both counts — making people poorer and making the Alaska checkbook richer. To use one to help the other, many Alaska lawmakers seem to be nervously coalescing around the idea of using much of the a...
The state has started negotiations to sell the Malaspina to a company owned by a business that operates a new multimillion-dollar cruise ship terminal at Ward Cove in Ketchikan. M/V Malaspina LLC and the Alaska Department of Transportation “have agreed to negotiate in good faith on the sale of the 59-year-old vessel,” the state announced Monday. “MVM’s letter of interest outlines a plan to use the Malaspina to showcase Alaska’s maritime history and support a Ketchikan-based tourism business,” the state said. “Among other uses, they propose...
The state of Alaska, Congress and the president, individual companies and people do not all have the same capabilities and authority to show their disgust and dismay at Russia’s unprovoked, murderous attack on Ukraine, a sovereign nation at war with no one until Russian President Vladimir Putin decided he had to prove that he is the toughest, meanest kid on the planet. But everyone needs to do something. The world has suffered far too many deaths, ruined countries, poverty and famine due to wars over the centuries to sit by and watch more of t...
State ferry system and Transportation Department officials plan to gather this week in Ketchikan to consider options for fulfilling the advertised summer schedule amid a continuing shortage of onboard crew. The department failed to meet its self-imposed timeline of hiring enough workers by March 1 to ensure that the Columbia on May 1 would return to service for the first time since fall 2019. The Alaska Marine Highway System had said it needed to hire at least 166 new employees to staff up its fleet — a gap of about one-quarter of its total aut...
First a trade war, then a battle against an infectious virus and now a real war are all affecting Alaska seafood exports. Shipments to China fell from as high as 30% of Alaska’s total seafood export value in the 2010s to 20% in 2020. “The U.S.-China trade war has displaced $500 million of Alaska seafood,” Jeremy Woodrow, executive director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, told legislators last week. And though people bought more seafood to prepare at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, sales to restaurants and food services fell by 70...
It’s not often you hear political debates that invoke religion and booze but have nothing to do with temperance, the social ills of alcohol or strict adherence to church teachings. In Alaska, those points are being offered in the context of the state budget and oil prices — both of which are similar to alcohol and religion in the 49th state. They can be intoxicating, debatable and divisive. High oil prices of recent months — and even higher in recent days after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine — have made Alaska rich again, for now....
The Alaska Department of Transportation is asking anyone interested in taking ownership of the nearly 60-year-old Malaspina to speak up by March 7. The state has been spending about $75,000 a month to keep the unused ferry moored and insured at Ward Cove in Ketchikan for more than two years. The ship has not carried passengers or vehicles since late 2019, and requires tens of millions of dollars of repairs, steel replacement work and new engines to go back into service, according to the...
State Transportation Department officials recently told legislators the ferry system needed to quickly hire at least 166 new crew in order to meet minimum staffing levels for this summer’s schedule starting in May. “Staffing goals for the summer season will not be met at current recruitment rates,” the department reported in its presentation to the House Transportation Committee on Feb. 15. Insufficient staffing could result in scaling back ferry service plans. About 350 new hires would be even better, covering vacancies due to sick leave...
A 45-page bill to restructure the Alaska Marine Highway System as a state-owned corporation, run by an appointed board of directors, similar to the Alaska Railroad, is going to take longer than one legislative session to review, amend and adopt — if even then. “This is going to take a big lift,” said Robert Venables, executive director of the Southeast Conference, an economic and community development nonprofit for the region that supports the concept of a ferry corporation. “This is aspirational,” he said Feb. 23, a day after the Senate Tr...
