A lawsuit filed in federal court this week seeks to remove the residency requirement for people gathering signatures for state ballot initiatives.
To get a statewide voter initiative on the ballot, the sponsors must gather thousands of signatures. And for the signatures to be valid, the people gathering them must be Alaska residents.
Political consultant and former Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate Scott Kohlhaas said that requirement is unconstitutional.
Kohlhaas is working to get four potential ballot initiatives before voters. He said the law has for years placed an extra burden on initiative sponsors in terms of who they can hire.
Kohlhaas said that limits their constitutional rights to free speech, political association and to petition the government.
“You can’t live on love,” Kohlhaas said. “The way that the system is set up is that only the best organized and the best financed groups are going to get an issue on the Alaska state ballot.”
Kohlhaas and an out-of-state man hoping to come to Alaska to work as a signature gatherer are the two plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Meantime, the state said it is reviewing Kohlhaas’s complaint.
Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Bakalar said it’s the job of her office to defend laws enacted by the Legislature and that only the Legislature or a court order can change the residency requirement.
Bakalar said the review – and any subsequent response from the state – could take up to three weeks.
Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz at a press conference last July announcing a new DUI unit. (Photo by Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage)
Anchorage had a record number of homicides last year and is on pace to possibly surpass that number this year. Mayor Ethan Berkowitz took some heat for comments he made last week when he said residents who were not involved in drugs or out after midnight were safe. He apologized a day later, saying he wishes he could undo those comments. He said when crime happens to someone in the city, he feels the weight.
BERKOWITZ: And it’s important to make sure that people who are victims by crime or concerned about crime know that I have that sympathy, and that I have that understanding. And I need to make sure that I convey that at all times.
TOWNSEND: What are you hearing, Mayor, from residents about their level of concern over safety? People should be able to expect the city to be safe, no matter what time of day it is.
BERKOWITZ: You know, there’s different ways of answering that question. I’ve always looked at the ability to generate a safe community is dependent on what we’re doing to prevent crime, what we’re doing to police it, how are we prosecuting it, what sort of punishments are in place, and the city only has the ability to exert levels on the policing. We have very little prosecutorial power. Most of the crime, the serious crime in the state, is charged at the state or at the federal level so… We’re also contending with the fact that we have an opioid epidemic and we are way short of the prevention piece here in terms of the detox facilities as well as the outreach.
TOWNSEND: As you’re well aware, we have Nixle alerts that go out. There’s a lot of social media sites, Facebook, Next Door, there’s other sites… Do you find those helpful or do they fuel the perception that crime is rampant?
BERKOWITZ: Well, police have been very appreciative of the help they receive from the public. They’ve been able to generate leads and successfully apprehend and arrest people who have committed crimes through Nixle. There’s also the reality that when people are intensely aware of everything that’s going on in a community, those concerns tend to become exacerbated. There’s a lot of really great things that are happening in Anchorage right now. We’ve grown the police department. We’re gonna have some more detox facilities come online. The state hopefully will resolve its fiscal gap and we’ll be able to start to put more prosecutors back online and sort of restore the troopers to the levels that they had historically been. So, there are a lot of things that are good that are happening. We sometimes when we’re caught in the social media world, we just see a small piece of the bigger picture.
TOWSEND: There’s been a lot of debate about SB91. A lot of people seem to be blaming an uptick in petty theft and property crimes on SB 91 and a perceived inability by law enforcement to make arrests. What’s your take on that perspective?
BERKOWITZ: There’s a lot of contributing factors to what’s going on. Senate Bill 91 isn’t even what they intended it to be. Senate Bill 91 was intended to replace incarceration with rehabilitation. They restricted the discretion that police officers and prosecutors have, which I think is an unfortunate step. But they didn’t back-fill at the same time with putting the rehabilitation resources in place. So in a little bit, we’ve not even seen SB91 the way it was created. We’re seeing half of SB91 and that’s part of the problem. But this is an instance where the state would allow the municipality to do more things for ourselves, and not dictate to us at the local levels how things should be policed and prosecuted, then I think we’d have a better ability to take care of the situation here.
Protestors at the U.S. Capitol in May. Photo by Liz Ruskin.
Sen. John McCain has announced he will vote “no” on the Republicans’ latest health care repeal attempt That appears to sink the bill. But anti-repeal activists aren’t taking any chances. They organized a protest in front of Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s Anchorage office again Friday, urging her to vote no. Murkowski said her position on the bill will hinge on data showing how Alaska would fare under the bill, and that could depend on where she looks.
Alaska is a tough state to treat, medically and politically, in a health care bill.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he understands that.
“Alaska is a third the size of the United States, with 750,000 people,” Graham told reporters at the U.S. Capitol this week. “It is a bedeviling problem.”
It’s unclear whether Senate leadership will put his repeal bill, Graham-Cassidy, to a vote now, but a hearing is scheduled for Monday. If Murkowski is still trying to make up her mind, she might read the reports of think tanks and consulting firms. Their calculations of the Alaska impacts of Graham-Cassidy vary wildly.
On the high end, the consulting firm Avalere said Alaska would lose about $1 billion over seven years, 2020-2026, compared to what it gets under current law.
But the Kaiser Family Foundation finds Alaska’s loss would be just $275 million over those same seven years.
And the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities says Alaska would lose $255 million in a single year.
The authors of three different reports see the divergent numbers are unimportant. The bottomline:
Photo via Avalere
“Under this bill, we found that Alaska is at risk of losing money,” Chris Sloan of Avalere said.
But $1 billion vs. $275 million?
“Well part of it is, you know, our number is rounded .. to the billionth,” Sloan said.
That’s right: they’re rounding their dollar figures to the nearest billion. (It’s a national report, not solely focused on Alaska.) Another difference among the reports: how they treat special allowances in the bill that would help Alaska.
For instance: One of the things the Graham-Cassidy bill would do is change funding for the 50-year-old Medicaid program. The bill would have the feds pay states a set amount per person, starting in 2020. But the bill has an exception for certain low-density states. That boils down to Alaska and Montana. The bill allows them to delay the change until 2027.
Sloan said Avalere assumes Alaska will not get that allowance, or others in the bill that would help Alaska but depend on the health secretary certifying eligibility.
“We didn’t want to predict what the secretary is going to decide, so our analysis … includes the per capita cap for Alaska,” Sloan said.
Avalere’s report was sponsored by the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy group.
Kaiser Family Foundation VP Larry Levitt. Photo via KFF.
The non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation, on the other hand, assumes Alaska will delay the
Medicaid payment cap. That’s part of the reason Kaiser’s report shows Alaska’s loss as much lower. But KFF Vice President Larry Levitt says Alaska would still have significant losses, because the block grants the bill provides aren’t as generous as Alaska’s benefits under the Affordable Care Act.
“The (Graham-Cassidy) block grant tries to equalize funding across states,” Levitt said, “not based on whether they’ve expanded Medicaid or not, or how high premiums are, but how many low-income people live in the state. And by that formula Alaska ends up losing a substantial amount of money, almost $300 million.”
That’s over seven years.
Another left left-leaning group, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities says Alaska would lose almost that much just in 2026.
“The difference is the baseline,” CBPP Senior Fellow Aviva Aron-Dine said. She worked on implementing the Affordable Care Act in the Obama administration.
Aviva Aron-Dine of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Photo: CBPP.
Aron-Dine said all of these reports compare what the bill would do relative to current law. So you have to make assumptions about the path we’re on now, like: how many Alaskans will be on the Medicaid rolls in 2026? What will insurance cost five years from now?
“The truth is, reputable well-intentioned analysts can just disagree about what it’s reasonable to assume,” Aron-Dine said.
Aron-Dine said a firm called Manatt may be best on take on these Alaska factors, because it does research for the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. Manatt’s latest report was made public on Thursday.
Its prediction of the seven-year impact: $1.1 billion.
The Alaska impact of ACA repeal bill? Depends where you look
Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media – Washington D.C.
Sen. Murkowski says her position on Graham-Cassidy will hinge on data showing how Alaska would fare. Consultants’ reports vary wildly, but they all show a loss. And now it’s not clear senators will vote on
Gov. Walker cites uncertainty over funding in opposing ACA repeal
Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau
Walker said he has spoken several times with U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whose vote could help determine the bill’s fate.
Gov. Walker pitches 1.5 percent income tax with a limit
Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau
Administration officials have a mouthful of a name for it: the “capped hybrid head tax.” It’s a flat 1.5 percent of wages and self-employment income, with a maximum of twice the value of that year’s Alaska Permanent Fund dividend.
Should independents be able to run in a Democratic primary?
Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau
A Superior Court judge is weighing how to define who is allowed to run the Alaska Democratic Party primary. The party wants to allow independent candidates to run in the primary without registering as Democrats.
The Mayor of Anchorage addresses concern over crime and safety
Lori Townsend, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
Anchorage had a record number of homicides last year and is on pace to possibly surpass that number this year. Mayor Ethan Berkowitz took some heat for comments he made last week when he said residents who were not involved in drugs or out after midnight were safe. He apologized a day later, saying he wishes he could undo those comments. He said when crime happens to someone in the city, he feels the weight.
Lawsuit seeks to allow non-Alaska residents to gather signatures for state ballot initiatives
Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
A lawsuit filed in federal court this week seeks to remove the residency requirement for people gathering signatures for state ballot initiatives.
AK: $15,000 and 2,000 miles later, Kotzebue High volleyball players show Sitka their skills
Sarah Gibson, KCAW – Sitka
Alaska’s high school sports teams spend a lot of time and money on travel. But $15,000 and 2,000 miles for a single trip? That’s unusual. Earlier this month the Kotzebue Girls Volleyball team travelled to Sitka to play Mount Edgecumbe and Sitka High School.
49 Voices: Jay Stange of Anchorage
Samantha Davenport, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
This week we’re hearing from Jay Stange of Anchorage. Stange is a math teacher at Dimond High School.
It’s become too common. Reports of a data breach that leaves thousands or millions of consumers vulnerable to identity theft, fraud or other types of scams. But what can you do to keep your personal information safe when online commerce is every day business?
Davyn Williams – consumer protection attorney-Alaska Dept. of law Chuck Harwood – regional director-Federal Trade Commission
Statewide callers
Additional resources:
www.identitytheft.gov (site to help victims of identity theft exercise their legal rights and report to law enforcement that they have been victims; operated by FTC)
Responders use boom to collect oil near the Valdez Marine Terminal on September 23, 2017. (Photo provided by Alyeska Pipeline Service Company)
Cleanup efforts indicate that a crude spill at the Valdez Marine Terminal was bigger than first reported.
According to Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, approximately 400 gallons of an oily water mix had been recovered from the Port of Valdez as of Saturday night.
When the spill was first reported Thursday, Alyeska estimated the volume of crude spilled to be less than 100 gallons.
“The cause of the spill, piping that released an oily water mix, makes it very difficult to give a precise estimate of the amount spilled,” Scott Hicks, who is leading the response for Alyeska, said in a statement. “But any crude oil in the water is too much, and we will bring all necessary resources and expertise to the response.”
The spill happened during testing of the Marine Terminal’s loading arms — the pipes that deliver oil to tankers. During an unplanned pause in testing, water that was sent through the loading arms flowed out of the water intake piping and into Port Valdez.
Response to the spill is ongoing. According to Alyeska, more than 23,000 feet of boom and more than 25 vessels have been deployed during the cleanup efforts. Overflights conducted over the weekend indicate the sheens have been contained.
Responders have placed booms at the Valdez Duck Flats and the Salmon Gulch Hatchery.
It all starts outside Unalaska’s Grand Aleutian hotel. The view is almost always the same — men moving piles of fishing nets. This day is no exception.
With the help of a crane, Andy Pirrello is part of a team hoisting huge nets into the back of a flatbed truck. His job? Compressing the nets, so they can fit tightly into shipping containers to be sent to Denmark. It’s not easy.
“You know you’re getting showered by rust, dirt, jellyfish, anything can fall off the back of the crane,” Pirrello said.
Pirrello has been coming up to fish in Unalaska for three years. Today, he’s happy to be helping clean up the island for the people who live here year round.
Pirrello has one person to thank for coordinating this project — Nicole Baker. In 2010, Baker started coming up to Unalaska as a fisheries observer and the piles of nets caught her eye.
When Nicole Baker first came to Unalaska, she was shocked to see piles of junky nets everywhere. (Photo by Berett Wilber/KUCB)
“I just noticed that there was a lot of old, junky nets lying around,” Baker said.
The nets are monstrous, from 5,000 to 20,000 pounds each. The industrial gear was used for catching pollock and cod.
Finding a way to remove and repurpose the nets became Baker’s passion project. For the past two years, she’s been looking for organizations capable of recycling the worn out gear. She sent samples to companies like Parley for the Oceans — which was working to make sneakers with Adidas out of nets confiscated from illegal fishing.
“And so I wrote those guys and emailed and said, if you’re interested in unused fishing nets, I know where you could possibly get some,” Baker said.
The problem was, they only wanted nylon nets and most of the nets in Unalaska are made of polyethylene or polypropylene.
So, Baker kept looking. Eventually she found the Global Ghost Gear Initiative, an organization focused on dealing with abandoned fishing gear, and they suggested a company capable of recycling the nets.
Plastix is based in Copenhagen, Denmark. CEO Axel Kristensen is focused on recycling unwanted fishing gear into high quality plastic pellets.
“It seems so unreasonable and not logic[al] to just throw it away when we know that if handling plastics right — if sorting and homogenizing it — you can actually reuse it over and over and over again,” Kristensen said.
According to Kristensen, Plastix is the only company in the world recycling fishing nets in this way. Once the nets arrive at the plant, they’re cut into smaller pieces, sorted by material type – be it polyethylene, nylon or polypropylene – and processed.
“You cannot produce a quality recyclate, if you don’t ensure that you get the right input,” Kristensen said. “If you get a lot of, excuse me for the word ‘crap,’ then you get crap recyclates.”
For now, Plastix is selective about who they work with. The company is small and they want to be sure they are only sent products they can recycle. If a container is loaded with unusable waste, it will end up in a landfill in Denmark.
Kristensen was happy to work with Baker to recycle the nets from Unalaska.
“We cannot do this alone,” Kristensen said. “We need someone like Trident [Seafood], Nicole Baker, all kinds of stakeholders to take part in this project.”
Plastix is a Danish cleantech company that turns unwanted fishing gear into high quality plastic pellets. (Photo courtesy of Plastix)
This is the first time the company has recycled nets from the United States and it involves buy-in from multiple parties. The boat captains or fishing companies are responsible for packing the nets small enough to fit into shipping containers. With the help of Trident Seafoods, Plastix is paying for the containers to be shipped directly to Denmark.
This is the first year of the collaboration, but Baker said there was high demand from fishermen looking to find a new use for their nets.
“I hope to keep this going somehow,” Baker said. “So we we’ll see.”
Continuing the recycling project will take more than just Baker. It will require investments from multiple people and organizations — from the fishermen to Plastix.
The Juneau electric vehicle fair was part of the National Drive Electric Week. (Photo by Elizabeth Jenkins/Alaska’s Energy Desk)
Alaska’s economy is powered by oil. So are the vast majority of cars and trucks worldwide. But globally, the market for electric vehicles is growing. So as more people move away from gasoline powered cars, the big players in the oil industry have started to pay attention — and that includes Alaska.
On a recent weekend, nearly 70 electric vehicles are lined up in a bare parking lot near downtown Juneau. It’s the city’s annual electric vehicle fair. The 1980’s song “Electric Avenue” is playing in the background.
John Cooper is here showing off his two EVs. And he’s proud to say he was one of Juneau’s early adopters.
Cooper said there are plenty of charging stations in Juneau. Range anxiety isn’t an issue. He said the convenience of owning an electric car was a big selling point.
“When you’re on the way to work, your car is [at] full [charge],” Cooper said. “And it’s an incredible feeling to get in the car — like, the whole time we’ve been talking — this car has been on and idling.”
It’s quiet because there’s no rumble of a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine.
Not too long ago, electric vehicles weren’t commercially available. But over the span of about five years, the number of EVs has reached into the millions worldwide.
That’s still only a tiny fraction of cars on the road. Even so, oil companies and Alaska state economist Neal Fried are paying attention.
“Does it keep me up at night? Not too often,” Fried said. “But it’s not just a thought experiment by any means.”
For the past 40 years, Alaska has paid its bills largely using oil revenue.
Recently, that’s presented the economy with some extreme challenges, and Fried said electric cars are potentially yet another threat. How big of a threat? That depends a lot on how quickly the shift happens.
“Look at iphones and how fast they were adopted. Could the same thing happen to us?” Fried said. “I don’t know.”
Then, there are companies like BP, which project much smaller numbers.
Sam Ori, the executive director at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, agrees with Fried that electric vehicles are nothing to scoff at.
The global demand for oil is still increasing, but Ori said as consumers snap up more electric cars, the demand could start to flatten out.
“It’s not as if people are going to stop showing up to buy oil from Alaska,” Ori said. “But the price that they buy that oil is going to be less than it otherwise would have been, because of this change in the oil market. And electric vehicles are a piece of that — a small piece, but they’re going to become a bigger piece of it.”
Already, Ori said electric vehicles and more fuel-efficient cars are affecting the global oil market.
That trend is likely to continue as countries consider measures to reduce carbon emissions. The Chinese government is thinking about banning gasoline-powered cars altogether.
But Ori said the transition isn’t going to happen overnight.
Juneau’s ten public charging stations around town give EVs owners a variety of places to plug-in. (Photo by Elizabeth Jenkins/Alaska’s Energy Desk)
“I think if people are thinking of it as like, ‘Well, are electric vehicles going to become so widespread in the next few years that they eliminate the demand for oil?’” Ori said. “That’s not happening soon.”
Still, Ori said globally it’s becoming cheaper to produce oil. Far-flung places where it’s expensive to drill, like Alaska, could start to look less and less appealing.
Back at Juneau’s electric vehicle fair, Monique Reeder is taking a break from the rain under a tailgate tent. She’s here promoting her dealership, which carries electric vehicles. But Reeder herself…
“You know, I actually don’t own a car,” Reeder said with a laugh. “But I do take home demos.”
In any case, Reeder doesn’t think the capital city’s enthusiasm to move away from gasoline cars has to be a reflection on the state’s economy. She said Alaska will have to adapt.
“Because we don’t want what’s happening with the barrel prices, we don’t want that to affect our economy so much, where it’s really hurting our budget because we’re dependent,” Reeder said. “If we can diversify, it’s going to be a positive all around.”
As for her business, Reeder’s been selling electric cars for about a year, and she said they’ve been flying off the lot.
This story contained contributions from both Elizabeth Jenkins and Elizabeth Harball with Alaska’s Energy Desk.
Ben Walker is a 7th grade science teacher at Romig Middle School in Anchorage. He’s one of the finalists for the 2018 Alaska Teacher of the Year Award. (Photo by Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage)
Being a teacher can be a tough job and often thankless job. But the state education department celebrates the profession each year by naming a Teacher of the Year. The winner will be selected in October from a group of four finalists. This week we’re bringing their voices to the air. Today, it’s Anchorage teacher Ben Walker who teaches 7th grade science at Romig Middle School. Walker said teachers have very different challenges today then in past decades.
WALKER: We have a number of students who are speaking English as a second language. We have a number of students who have some struggles that maybe didn’t necessarily exist or weren’t identified 20 to 30 years ago, so that’s a really big challenge to kind of address those.
The main thing, though is to — you know — when you focus on the student instead of the teaching, then you can really start to address those rather than worrying about yourself. And, “Well, I learned it this way. So everybody should be able to learn it this way,” and a lot of that takes giving up control and allowing your students to kind of teach you how they learn best. And then, using your expertise to further that.
TOWNSEND: It seems like it would inspire a lot more creativity.
WALKER: It inspires creativity on both ends when you give students the ability to kind of, you know, help shape their own learning. It’s not like in the 70s, there’s these free school ideas where kids just kind of came and could do whatever they want. That’s not really what it is, you know? It’s more of a, “Here’s kind of our goal, whether it’s content or skills. What are some ways we can get there that work for you?” So you’re still ending up in the same place.
TOWNSEND: Technology has transformed education. It’s transformed everything, but it can also be an enormous distraction. How much of a challenge is the distraction of online media versus the benefit of it for you in the classroom?
WALKER: You know, it really depends. I think there’s certainly a portion of our students who are overdoing that. But, at the same time, if a student or anybody is really interested in what they’re doing, they have the — they will not keep going to that as a distraction. I teach science, so coming from a scientific perspective, technology is awesome because, you know, if we were just going to rely on textbooks, we’d be so far behind with what science is actually doing. So we really try to embrace that.
TOWNSEND: One of the things that you said was students today must be able to learn, unlearn and relearn to remain competitive in the workplace. What do you mean by that?
WALKER: You know, it’s no longer that students are going to have one or two careers in their life, you know? I mean, when we talk about the shift to kind of the gig economy it’s called, where people are doing more shorter terms at different places. You need to be able to undo what you did, you know, keep what’s good about it and relearn something entirely different outside of your wheelhouse. And I think part of that is giving the students the ability to, you know, be in charge of their own learning.
TOWNSEND: How do you go about helping your students understand the relevance of what they’re looking at that maybe they can’t immediately connect to, but is crucial for them to move forward and really have that full picture?
WALKER: I spend a lot of time tying careers into what we do. So, just showing them that what you do here in seventh grade, when you start on this path, you’re picking up these skills, these ways of thinking. And, the other thing is that, you know, if we want a community that’s actually going to be a real, viable community, it needs to be STEM literate. It needs to understand science technology and engineering, especially in Alaska. You know, when you pick up the paper or go to the grocery store, or, you know, you go to vote, it’s nice to have a baseline of STEM literacy. So, you know, you look at some of the things that come up in our state, with our resources or our fisheries. If people want to have a valid input in that conversation, it helps if they at least have a basic understanding of what kind of things people are talking about. Otherwise, it’s going to be only people that have those understandings that are going to make these decisions.
TOWNSEND: What do you think in the future decades education will be, and what do you think it should be? Do you think it’ll be automated? Will we still have teachers in classrooms?
WALKER: You know, I don’t know to be honest, because there’s a lot of different things in play. You know, the fiscal reality of Alaska especially and just our world in general will probably lead to more personalized, digital type learning. However, education has always been like a social kind of learning context. But, I still think there’s a huge, huge part that needs to be personal relationships between either teacher and student or students and other students. So, I would be very sad if that completely went away and we were all just looking at a screen.
(From left to right) Kent Fielding, Eric Rush, Ben Walker and Karen Martin are the finalists for the 2018 Alaska Teacher of the Year award. (Photo by Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage)
Response task forces of fishing vessels and self-propelled skimmers at the Valdez Marine Terminal on Sept. 23. (Photo courtesy Alyeska Pipeline Service Company)
Alyeska Pipeline Service Company is investigating how crude oil ended up in the Port of Valdez after a spill last Thursday. Since cleanup efforts began, Alyeska estimates about 400 gallons of oily water have been recovered.
Alyeska reported that the spill happened during yearly testing of the loading arms at the Valdez Marine Terminal — the pipes that deliver crude oil to tankers. During an unplanned pause in testing, oily water flowed back through the system, out of the intake pipe and into the Port of Valdez.
There was containment boom in place at the end of the berth during the testing — that’s standard procedure, according to Kate Dugan, a spokeswoman for Alyeska. However, the intake pipe was located outside of the boom.
Dugan said Alyeska has ruled out a mechanical failure, but it isn’t ready to pinpoint human error during testing as the cause of the spill.
“That’s what the investigation is going to determine,” Dugan said.
Cleanup of the spill is continuing. Dugan said Monday morning overflights of the area confirmed that the only remaining sheen is contained to the vessel decontamination area.
The state has not yet confirmed the total amount of crude oil that ended up in the water. Geoff Merrell at the state Department of Environmental Conservation said the nature of the spill makes it hard to figure out.
“This is not a traditional spill and so oil volume estimating is very difficult and is an inexact thing,” Merrell said.
Merrell said the state is also investigating the root cause of the spill, but it hasn’t come to any conclusions yet because the current focus is on cleanup. Merrell added he’s received no reports of wildlife harmed by the spill.
Donna Schantz, executive director of the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council, said her group is generally happy with Alyeska’s response to the incident.
But Schantz added the amount of work it’s taking to recover from a relatively small spill should be a wake-up call.
“We’re fortunate that it wasn’t a larger amount spilled, fortunate that the weather cooperated… But I think it really makes people realize the challenges that we’d be faced with had this been a larger spill,” Schantz said.
Since the spill was first reported, more than 290 people, dozens of vessels and just under 22,000 feet of boom have been deployed.
Proponents of repealing the Affordable Care Act revealed yet another new bill Monday, with changes that appear designed to win the vote of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of three Republicans who killed the last repeal bill.
The latest version of the Graham-Cassidy bill, like the original, would give block grants to the states in place of federal spending on subsidies for insurance premiums and expanded Medicaid.
As in the original, the block grants in the revised bill would mean a cut in funding for Alaska, compared to what the state gets under current law. But the new proposal does not cut as deeply as the original Graham-Cassidy bill.
“There is a lot of special treatment for Alaska,” Timothy Jost, professor emeritus at Washington and Lee University School of Law, said. He reviewed the current bill draft for “Health Affairs Blog.”
Jost said the revision is peppered with money for states that have low population density, a higher poverty line and other descriptors that apply to Alaska and only a few other states.
“It just basically gives Alaska more money,” Jost said.
But even with the special treatment, Alaska would still lose $99 million over seven years when you compare the block grants to the federal funding in existing law. That’s according to a fact sheet that’s circulating with the proposal.
The bill also makes big changes to the traditional Medicaid program. Bill sponsor Sen. Lindsey Graham said government revenues aren’t keeping pace with health care spending.
“Most of you know that by 2042 the entire revenue stream will be consumed by Medicaid and Medicare spending, unless somebody does something about it,” Graham, R-S.C., said Monday, at the only hearing on the bill so far. It started late due to a protest. Capitol Police carried people out of the hearing room.
Graham’s bill, though, would increase spending for traditional (non-expansion) Medicaid in Alaska. The new version increases the federal matching rate for Alaska and Hawaii. It’s not clear how much money that would bring to Alaska. It’s possible it could more than make up for revenue losses elsewhere in the bill.
But there’s more than money at stake. The new version would also allow states to more easily drop insurance standards in the Affordable Care Act. States would be allowed to undermine protection for people with pre-existing conditions.
That has people like Todd Brown of Anchorage concerned. He said he ran into Sen. Murkowski at the farmer’s market in South Anchorage on Saturday. About 30 people were waiting to talk to her. Some, like him, wanted to talk about the repeal bill.
“I said, you know Lisa, I know there’s going to be a lot of pressure, and a lot of powerful people who are most likely going to offer you, you know, large packages of money and try to trade favors, but I hope you don’t allow them to buy you off,” Brown said.
Brown said Murkowski reassured him.
“She just looked at me real intently and squeezed my hand and said, ‘I don’t get bought off,'” Brown said.
Sen. Dan Sullivan said he’s undecided, too, and it’s not clear either Alaska senator will have to take a position. At least three Republicans have now announced they will vote no. If that holds, it would be enough to kill the bill.
ACA repeal bill now peppered with Alaska money to draw Murkowski
Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media – Washington D.C.
“There is a lot of special treatment for Alaska,” says one professor who has studied the bill. Murkowski says she can’t be “bought off.”
Valdez spill response continues as Alyeska investigates cause
Elizabeth Harball, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage
Alyeska has ruled out a mechanical failure, but isn’t ready to pinpoint human error during testing as the cause of the spill.
60 Alaska Guardsmen deploying to fight ISIS
Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
Dozens of helicopter pilots and maintenance personnel from Alaska’s Air National Guard are heading overseas to combat the Islamic State.
How much could electric vehicles put the brakes on Alaska’s oil economy?
Elizabeth Jenkins, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau
As more people move away from gasoline powered cars, the big players in the oil industry have started to pay attention — and that includes Alaska.
Unwanted Unalaska fishing nets find second life in Denmark
Zoe Sobel, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Unalaska
In Unalaska, unwanted fishing nets are everywhere. Now, for the first time, a company halfway around the world is recycling the nets.
2018 Alaska Teacher of the Year nominee: Ben Walker
Lori Townsend, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
Anchorage teacher Ben Walker teaches 7th grade science at Romig Middle School. Walker said teachers have very different challenges today then in past decades.
Changing the way you think to stay out of prison
Anne Hillman, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
How do you change who you are when you live in a world that constantly says you’re bad? Take a lot of classes.
(Dancers perform during the 2016 Elders and Youth conference in Fairbanks. Photo courtesy of the First Alaskans’ Institute)
The First Alaskans Institute has announced the keynote speakers for the Elders and Youth conference just ahead of the Alaska Federation of Natives this October in Anchorage.
The elder keynote address will be given by Clare Swan of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, a long-time advocate for Native fishing rights in Cook Inlet and on the Kenai Peninsula. Swan also served on the board of directors for CIRI, the regional corporation for Cook Inlet.
The youth keynote speaker is Chris Agragiiq Apassingok of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island. The 16-year-old gained notoriety earlier this year when he landed a harpoon strike on a whale during a successful subsistence hunt. An online backlash ensued after a radical animal rights activist criticized the teenager online, sparking national attention.
First Alaskans Institute is also hosting a private dance party with Canadian First Nations DJ group A Tribe Called Red during the conference. It’s the group’s second time performing in Alaska.
The 34th Elders and Youth conference begins October 16th.
An HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter from the 210th Rescue Squadron, Alaska Air National Guard, flies during training exercises in 2016. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Edward Eagerton)
Dozens of helicopter pilots and maintenance personnel from Alaska’s Air National Guard are heading overseas to combat the Islamic State.
The Guard announced Monday afternoon that 60 members of the 210th rescue squadron under the 176th Wing are deploying to assist in Operation Inherent Resolve, the United States’ military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The deployment will last four months, and airmen will be based in Southwest Asia. Major John Callahan, a spokesman for the National Guard in Alaska, declined to specify which country.
Operation Inherent Resolve began in 2014. It involves units from the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines who have conducted more than 17,000 air strikes and been part of efforts to arm and assist regional allies on the ground.
The guardsmen are pilots and support crews for Pavehawk helicopters used in rescuing service-members behind enemy lines. In Alaska they regularly take part in search and rescue missions in remote and dangerous terrain.
Guardsmen are set to deploy early Tuesday morning from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
Pen Hadow, leader of Arctic Mission, and Erik de Jong, co-skipper, aboard “Bagheera.” (Photo: Gabe Colombo, KNOM, 2017)
A team of explorers and scientists returned to Nome last week after attempting to be the first to sail to the North Pole. The three-week expedition, called Arctic Mission, was led by British explorer Pen Hadow, who had previously trekked solo to the North Pole from Canada, across the sea ice.
Hadow said on this trip, the international crew of 10, and their trusty dog Fukimi, hoped to make a global statement about climate change.
“Reaching the North Pole, while interesting as a technical challenge, is actually going to have far more serious consequences as a global warning, or signal, that something very substantial is happening across a substantial surface area of the planet,” Hadow said.
That “something” is the melting of ice in the Arctic Ocean. The team’s two yachts, Bagheera and Snow Dragon II, spent much of their time harbored in Sitka. Both vessels are sturdily built of steel and aluminum, which allows them to navigate through ice channels not much wider than their hulls.
Frances Brann, skipper of Snow Dragon, said the ice can give a false sense of protection:
“That ice is very serene, very still, like being in a harbor — when it’s not windy,” Brann said. “If it’s very windy, it would be a place that you wouldn’t want to be, because those huge sheets of ice wouldn’t just drift slowly around: They’d be moving faster, you’d have a potential to get crushed.”
It’s ultimately that wind which made them to decide to turn back, at around 80 degrees north latitude. According to the team, that was still as far north as almost anybody has made it by water. Tim Gordon is a marine biologist and head scientist on the mission.
“It was actually very relieving to see some ice,” Gordon said. “We’d spent two weeks sailing north in what is meant to be an area that is frozen solid all year round, sailing through open water. And to know that there is still some of it that is frozen year-round was actually quite heartening for me.”
They also took heart at the amount they were able to accomplish: The crew gathered data on marine ecosystems that have been long out of reach under the ice. Gordon said this will help scientists begin to understand how things like plastic pollution, ocean acidification and increased noise are affecting these organisms.
Heather Bauscher, a wildlife biologist, said there was personal growth, too, . One research task took her away from the sailboats.
“Some fog rolled in, and there was a moment where I realized, ‘Oh man,’” Bauscher said. “It was such a sense of relief and accomplishment, too, to be able to say that we went out in this tiny little dinghy, and sat in the central Arctic Ocean, surrounded by fog, and were able to navigate our way back.”
The team hopes that missions and research like theirs will prompt more legal protections for the Arctic, citing those already in place in Antarctica. Brann, skipper of Snow Dragon, is optimistic.
“We can make change. And this is something I think those of us who have spent significant time in Alaska are aware of,” Brann said. “There’s less people, more access to our government, and they’re more likely to be responsive. I hope those of us who’ve had political successes in the past can convince those who are newer to the game that it can be done, we can make a difference, don’t just give up.”
For now, as samples are sent to England for analysis and the boats sail home to Sitka, the team said they’re just happy to be back on dry land.
Kent Fielding is a high school English and History teacher from the Skagway School District. He’s one of the finalists for the 2018 Alaska Teacher of the Year award. (Photo by Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage)
Being a teacher can be a tough job and often thankless job. But the state education department celebrates the profession each year by naming a Teacher of the Year. The winner will be selected in October from a group of four finalists. This week we’re bringing their voices to the air. Skagway high school English and History teacher Kent Fielding started his career in Kentucky before moving to Alaska. Fielding taught at Mt. Edgecumbe before Skagway, where he has taught for the past 12 years. He said technology, especially phones can be a challenge in school but he says in Skagway, it’s crucial.
FIELDING: Because, all my kids travel for basketball, cross country. They’re involved in almost everything. They’ve gone sometimes a week at a time. But it makes it so much easier for me to communicate to them and teach them actually online, which is sometimes what I’m essentially doing. But I can imagine, having taught in Central Hardin in Kentucky, where I had classes of 39, that it’s probably almost impossible to keep track of all the devices, particularly phones.
TOWNSEND: Understanding the relevance of events in education, historical context, is really important. How do you work to help students understand those connections so that they can really learn and engage with why it’s important to know what happened before to inform what will happen in the future?
FIELDING: You know, one thing that we talk about in the classes, this idea particularly in our current political context, is the dangers of a single story. A single story is, if the only thing you know about is Mexicans are illegal immigrants, you have a stereotype that is untrue and you can’t really see them as people. So when you start talking about this single story, and I have kids pick out their single stories because they all have single stories about something. You begin to actually be able to connect the past. It’s easy to connect perhaps to some of the things that are going on today with the white supremacy, events in Charlottesville. So the idea of understanding can also help us understand the future, understand the present.
TOWNSEND: You said that “For me, getting education to go beyond the clasroom is the whole point of education.” What do you mean by that?
FIELDING: Well, I think we wanna create lifelong learners. I think that’s the whole purpose of education. And this past year, we went to the Marshall Islands to study climate change, because the Marshall Islands are atolls that are meters above seawater. And they’re places that are going to be first affected by climate change along with Northern Alaska. I wanted the kids to make the connections. And in October, they’re actually hosting a climate change conference in Skagway. In the Marshall Islands, the things that we did was we’d visit high schools, we’d talk to leaders, we met with the president, Dr. Hilda Heine — the female Marshallese president. We talked to community members. We looked at the erosion of sea walls. So it was like a nonstop learning project, and now they’re promoting this climate conference, which is like their own thing.
TOWNSEND: What do you think the future of education will look like? Will it be automated? Will there still be teachers? What do you think it will be and what do you think it should be?
FIELDING: (laughs) I think we’re moving more and more to computer-based learning, more online. I don’t think we’ll ever — I hope we don’t ever –get rid of the classroom teacher because I do think the teacher is important, primarily because I think one of the big reasons why students succeed is the relationship that students have with their teachers.
(From left to right) Kent Fielding, Eric Rush, Ben Walker and Karen Martin are the finalists for the 2018 Alaska Teacher of the Year award. (Photo by Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage)
Evelyn Yanez points to pictures and says the Yup’ik name of the animal, object or activity, during a Yup’ik immersion program for infants to 5-year-olds in the village of Igiugig. (Photo by Avery Lill/KDLG)
Four kids toddle around a cozy room. There are all the items typical for a pre-kindergarten classroom — stuffed animals, puzzles and teachers.
The puzzles are the kind with a hole cut out for each piece, and each piece is labeled in Yup’ik.
School has been underway in the village of Igiugig for a couple of weeks now. This year even the youngest set are included.
The village has opened its only early childhood education program, Unglu. It is a Yup’ik immersion program for infants to five-year-olds.
Unglu means “nest.” It’s a part of the larger endeavor, Wangkuta Qanriarait Nanvarparmiut Yugestun, which means “We all speak Lake Iliamna Yup’ik.”
The village started the project with an $850,000 Language Preservation and Maintenance Grant from U.S. Administration for Native Americans.
The grant is in its third and final year.
For the past two years, language apprentices have learned the language from elders who speak Yup’ik fluently.
Apprentices have also taught in the village school 30 minutes a day, four days a week during the school year. Now, they are expanding their efforts, and elders and apprentices are teaching a handful of toddlers three hours a day, five days a week.
“It’s far more than language. It’s spiritual, mental and physical,” project director AlexAnna Salmon said. “It’s everything into becoming what the Yupik really were,”
The vision behind Unglu is for kids to learn to speak Yup’ik from their earliest days.
Loretta Peterson grew up speaking English, so she is learning her native language alongside her 16-month old daughter.
“It’s just better for her to grow up with her original language. I only knew a small handful of words before I started,” Peterson said.
And the kids are learning.
They dance to the Yup’ik songs and listen as instructors point to pictures and say the names of animals and activities in Yup’ik.
Most of children are too young to talk, but when Salmon told her son to point to different parts of his body, like his knees and toes. The three-year-old did it without hesitation.
Yup’ik and Gwich’in political activist Desa Jacobsson died at age 69 in Anchorage after a lifetime of raising awareness for Native issues, including sexual violence against Native women. (Image courtesy of KTVA)
Desa Jacobsson is remembered for her weeks long fasts and multiple arrests to call attention to violence against Alaska Native women, Native rights, subsistence, and environmental issues. Today, Tuesday, that work is remembered as family, friends and supporters gather in Anchorage for her funeral.
Desa Jacobsson titled her final political campaign: B.O.O.B.S. It’s an acronym for Bothered Over Outrageous Budget Shortfalls. She started the campaign in January to protest the Alaska Legislature’s budget cuts to law enforcement. She didn’t want sexual assault victims left vulnerable in a state where many villages already don’t have officers. The title, B.O.O.B.S, was provocative, unapologetic, and female, just like most of Jacobsson’s work. But a cancer diagnosis in February cut her campaign short.
“There’s always a sense of pride in what she stood up for,” her daughter Teresa Jacobsson said. She grew up attending protests with her mother. “And it was difficult sometimes, because not everybody agrees with the way that she went about it, or was uncomfortable with what she was bringing up.”
Teresa called her mother’s parenting “non-traditional.” More than once, Teresa found out about her mother’s latest activism the same way everyone else did.
“I remember one time I was ironing my clothes, and I could hear my mother’s voice and I thought, ‘What the heck?’ And I looked up, and I looked at the news, and there she was,” Teresa recalled.
Jacobsson was protesting the Anchorage Police Department in the early 2000s after it became known that a number of Alaska Native women had been found dead and that the crimes remained unsolved. University of Alaska Fairbanks faculty member Diane Benson protested beside her.
“She was a ball of fire,” Benson said. “She never wanted the violence against Native women to be ignored.”
Both Jacobsson and Benson were survivors of sexual violence and wanted a different future for Native women. In 2002 they ran for Governor and Lieutenant Governor as Green Party candidates. They were the first Native women to run for these seats and won about 3 percent of the votes.
“One of my favorite memories is watching her with the press, and she would engage so easily,” Benson remembered. “She would have this glint in her eye, and big smile, and say exactly what she needed to say.”
The duo served on panels addressing sexual violence against Native women and worked to disrupt Governor Sean Parnell’s “Choose Respect” rallies. The women said that the message oversimplified and diminished the problem, while obscuring the core issue: power. Police led Jacobsson away in handcuffs at one rally when she attempted to approach Senator Lisa Murkowski who was speaking at a podium.
Jacobsson’s more famous acts of protest involved going up to three weeks without eating to raise attention for sexual violence. She called them fasts, not hunger strikes. A strike can imply violence; her campaign sought the opposite. Despite the lack of calories and the increased bodily stress, she never stopped working. Lisa Hoggblom at Bristol Bay’s domestic violence shelter remembers Jacobsson flying to Dillingham to help them during one fast.
“That’s a really hard thing to do, to put yourself under that strain to make a point, and she believed in it enough to keep on doing it while she was here,” Hoggblom said.
Jacobsson helped the shelter produce multiple videos. In one, 2005’s Heart of the Grizzly, Jacobsson looks at the camera and says: “If we look into ourselves for a solution, that requires action and that action is what quells silence and apathy. Every day and in each village we hear more and more Native women standing up.”
Jacobsson’s daughter, Teresa, said that in the days following her mother’s death she’s received a cascade of thank you’s for her mother’s actions, and the affirmation that these actions are what allowed so many others to stand.
Jacobsson was born in Hooper Bay and died in Anchorage on Thursday, September 21.
Desa Jacobsson’s family is holding a visitation for her today, Tuesday, in Anchorage at Evergreen Memorial Chapel at 11 a.m. Her burial will follow at 3 p.m. at Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery.
Fairbanks City Engineer Jackson Fox says the city has tested more than 160 wells around the city-operated Regional Fire Training Center, and in areas downgradient from the RFTC, for the presence of perflourinated compounds. Many have shown levels of PFCs that exceed the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Lifetime Health Advisory level, which can harm human health. (Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation graphic)
The Fairbanks City Council approved an ordinance Monday that’s intended to help provide drinking water for property owners in an area on the city’s south side who’ve lost the use of their wells due to groundwater contamination. Mayor Jim Matherly said it’s only the first step toward addressing the mounting costs of the contamination problem.
The council voted five-to-one to approve an amended ordinance that would provide a $2,500 stipend for two years to help pay water bills for property owners along 30th Avenue near the Regional Fire Training Center, who until recently had used their wells for drinking water.
Councilwoman Valerie Therrien said she voted no because she didn’t believe the ordinance would do enough to compensate those residents fairly for the loss of their drinking water supply.
“$2500 just isn’t enough to me,” Therrien said.
Therrien proposed paying the water bills for property owners who were most affected by the contamination for five years. The other council members rejected that motion over a concern it would cost the city too much, but agreed to her amendment to set the stipend at $2,500 – not up to $2,500.
Councilman Jerry Cleworth said the city had to draw a line somewhere.
“All I can say is it’s a compromise,” Cleworth said, “It probably won’t make very many people happy.”
The ordinance authorizes appropriating a hundred thousand dollars for the stipends. Councilman David Pruhs, who along with June Rogers cosponsored the ordinance, said the city in part modeled the stipend after the system North Pole set up earlier this year to help its residents deal with groundwater contamination caused by a chemical substance that leaked from an oil refinery in that city.
“Their stipend was $2,000 over a two-year period,” Pruhs said, “so we took their stipend and increased it.”
Tests show most of the PFC contamination at the RFTC site stems from a burn pit, where fires were set using petroleum products such as gasoline as an accelerant. Fox said a liner at the base of the pit kept soil underneath relatively clean. But PFC-laden foam sprayed by firefighters to extinguish fires in the pit slopped onto soil around it and migrated into the groundwater. (ADEC graphic)
City Engineer Jackson Fox told Pruhs that since the Fairbanks officials learned about the contamination last year, the city has paid more than $3 million to survey the problem and clean up around the training facility. That amount also covered the cost of connecting 20 properties with the area water system operated by Golden Heart Utilities, and for providing drinking water to those and another 20 properties in the area that have yet to be hooked up.
“We could be looking at connecting another 25 or so homes next summer,” Fox said.
Fox told the council that each hookup will cost the city $35,000. Pruhs used that figure to estimate the total amount the city will have pay in the coming year to mitigate the problem.
“So we’re looking at basically 65 to 70 homes, not including a water stipend at $35,000, added on to the $3 million that we’ve already spent,” Pruhs said. “So we’re looking at (a total of) $5.5 million.”
Cleworth said that equates to about a mill-and-a-half increase in the city’s property tax. And he said that’s why the council must move quickly to limit payouts and other costs and to recover compensation from the manufacturer of the firefighting foam and other parties.
“We need to get something done by next May,” Cleworth said. “Or else the residents are going to be hit with a mill-and-a-half of property tax increase.”
Therrien asked City Attorney Paul Ewers whether he’s been notified of any legal claims filed against the city over the contamination issue.
“We don’t have any lawsuits that were filed,” Ewers said. “We’ve had basically claims inquiries, and (we’re) just starting those discussions.”
Mayor Jim Matherly told council member the city must talk with officials from other agencies that have used the training center about their possible liability. He said he talked about that with Gov. Bill Walker last week while he was in town.
