Boat and fishing vessel owners will likely be required to meet new registration and title requirements next year. The change is part of Senate Bill 92, which passed through the state Legislature this week. The bill aims to give the state, municipalities and individuals more tools to hold owners of derelict and abandoned vessels legally liable.

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The Senate sent the bill to Gov. Bill Walker’s desk Thursday after the House passed the legislation earlier this week.

The bill makes three significant changes. It will make it easier to track vessel ownership via state boat registration requirements and a new titling program. It also lowers the legal bar to hold derelict vessel owners liable and would create a derelict vessel prevention program.

Alaska Association of Harbormasters and Port Administrators Executive Secretary Rachel Lord worked with a statewide task force craft the bill. She said the new registration and title requirements would create a better paper trail for vessel ownership.

“It ends up being people saying, ‘Oh no, that’s not my boat. That’s that guys boat. I sold it to him yesterday for $15 on a bar napkin,’” Lord explained. “It sounds silly and trite, but it happens all the time and all over the state.”

Currently, federally documented vessels are not required to register with the state, but that would change under the new law. Non-federally documented boats over 24 feet would also be required to have a title of ownership.

Homer Harbormaster Brian Hawkins also worked on the state task force. He said the bill would specifically help ports and harbors track down owners of federally documented boats at risk of becoming a problem, which he said tend to be old commercial fishing vessels.

“We didn’t know how many documented vessels were operating in the state, and it’s that fleet that often times would become the future derelict vessels – some of those as they age out,” Hawkins said.

The bill also allows the state and municipalities to impose civil penalties and individuals could take action against owners of derelict vessels in civil court.

Currently, derelict vessel owners can only be charged criminally, but the law also imposes stiffer penalties for those found guilty.

Holly Wells is Homer’s city attorney and is a shareholder at Birch Horton Bittner & Cherot in Anchorage.

Wells helped the task force craft the bill’s language, and she said the legislation not only lowers the legal bar, but it also clears the path for small communities and villages to give proper notice, impound and scrap derelict boats.

“Communities like Homer that have the resources to remove derelict vessels and have the luxury of contacting legal council to help craft local laws have been very lucky because they have been able to address this issue pretty efficiently,” Wells said. “The communities that don’t have those resources haven’t had the ability to take care of the problem. This is a really big step in the right direction.”

The bill also tasks the state Department of Natural Resources with creating a derelict vessel prevention program, which will be funded by title fees.

Harbormaster Hawkins said the program’s largest undertaking would be creating a cradle-to-grave plan for vessels in an effort to make sure they are disposed of properly.

“When you look at the fleet with a critical eye, you will notice it is aging,” Hawkins added. “There are a lot of vessels that are getting in the 30s, 40s, 50-year-old range, and many of these will eventually become vessels that need to be disposed of or something done with.”

Hawkins hopes the program will provide more avenues for vessel owners to scrap their boats rather than abandon them in local, state or federal waters.

It’s not clear when the bill might be signed into law, but Gov. Walker has 90 days to either approve or reject the legislation. The bill would go into effect Jan. 1, 2019.

The Haines Borough School Board renamed the high school gym. The facility, known for decades as the Karl Ward Gymnasium, will now be called the Haines High School Gymnasium.

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The action comes after allegations of sexual abuse by Ward were made public in the community.

“When I heard there were people who walked by the gym or walked by the plaque and felt pain, I just thought that was awful,” School Board President Anne Marie Palmieri said.

The High School gym was named after Karl Ward in the early 1990s.

A sign bearing his likeness was hung in the hallway outside the gym, but it’s since been removed.

Ward worked as a teacher, principal and superintendent at the Haines School from the 1950s through his retirement in the 1970s.

Ward died more than 20 years ago.

KHNS reported last month about alleged sexual abuse by Ward when he worked at the Haines School.

Several former students of the Haines School also have shared memories of Ward’s behavior, including inappropriate touching, with the Chilkat Valley News.

Palmieri hopes the school board’s action will help community members heal.

“I hope that by changing the name, it provides some closure for people who were affected by this,” Palmieri said.

Board member Sara Chapell also supported changing the gym name.

“To hear that it hurt people to walk by the gym is really terrible,” Chapell said. “I’m in full support of changing the gym name. I also would support at some point, looking at whether it makes sense for us to have named facilities on our campus at all, and whether we should extend this change to other named places on the campus.”

The board voted unanimously in favor of the name change.

The Haines Borough Assembly passed a resolution last week to create a policy for naming public facilities within the Haines Borough.

The new policy will require a public comment period prior to the adoption of a name for a facility, or whether that name is to be removed.

Public facilities can only be named after people five years after their death.

Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @aprn

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Why are so many fighter pilots leaving the Air Force?

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

The Air Force has a multi-billion dollar problem with one of its most expensive assets: pilots. The American military overall is having trouble filling its ranks. For the Air Force, the issue is retaining pilots after they’ve gone through years of costly training.

Derelict vessel bill heads to Gov. Walker’s desk

Aaron Bolton, KBBI – Homer

The bill aims to give the state, municipalities and individuals more tools to hold owners of derelict and abandoned vessels legally liable.

Sen. Murkowski weighs in on Mueller’s Russia probe

Associated Press

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said this week that the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller III should be allowed to proceed to its natural end and that she would support legislation approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee to protect the inquiry.

Haines School Board re-names high school gym

Abbey Collins, KHNS – Haines

The Haines Borough School Board renamed the high school gym. The facility, known for decades as the Karl Ward Gymnasium, will now be called the Haines High School Gymnasium.

Senate passes bill adding ‘hunting preserve’ to 8 state wildlife refuge names

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

The Alaska Senate has a passed a bill that adds “hunting preserve” to the names of eight state wildlife refuges.

Walrus haul out near Bristol Bay village

Avery Lill, KDLG – Dillingham

Residents saw a few hundred walrus hauled out at the beginning of April. By the end of April, they reported seeing about a thousand. On a recent flight over the shoreline, an Alaska Fish and Game biologist saw only 100.

AK: What does Black Panther mean to America’s most diverse community?

Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Residents of Anchorage got a chance to get up close and personal with the film Black Panther when one of the stuntwomen and actresses from the film visited Clark Middle School to talk to the Mountain View community last Saturday.

49 Voices: Lyndea Kelleher of Anchorage

Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

This week we’re hearing from Lyndea Kelleher in Anchorage. Kelleher is graduating from the University of Alaska Anchorage on Sunday and will be the student speaker at the commencement ceremony.

The Air Force has a multi-billion dollar problem with one of its most expensive assets: pilots.

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Across all of its branches, the American military is is having trouble filling its ranks. For the Air Force, the main issue is retaining pilots after they’ve gone through years of costly training. And those staffing problems are only likely to get worse in the years ahead.

At Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, the 90th Fighter Squadron has a heritage room — basically a club house — decorated with memorabilia, beer steins and a large, well-worn popcorn machine.

“In every single fighter squadron across the Air Force you will find a popcorn machine that produces jalapeno popcorn,” Lieutenant Colonel Dave Skalicky, who commands the squadron, explained. Skalicky is tall, clean cut and talks in excitable bursts tinged with faint remnants of his Minnesotan roots.

At Air Force bases around the world, elite flyers have a ritualistic affinity for the snack. Junior officers are tasked with frying the jalapenos, sprinkling salt and popping the corn, as well as brewing coffee, ahead of early morning mission briefs.

In addition to his command responsibilities, Skalicky still flies an F-22 Raptor several times a week. The planes are one of the most agile, powerful jet fighters in the world. And Alaska is a choice assignment for getting to fly them. F-22s are regularly scrambled to intercept Russian long-range bombers that approach the U.S. And the wide open training ranges mean pilots have free reign to push the cutting-edge machines to their limits.

“It’s like getting tossed the keys to an Indy car,” Skalicky said of his first time flying a Raptor.

Simply becoming an Air Force pilot is competitive. But flying jet fighters is a whole other echelon, one which qualified officers reach only by surviving years of academic work and batteries of tests.

Which is why it’s surprising that, even in Alaska, the Air Force is coping with a staffing shortage so severe that one general labeled it the “national aircrew crisis.”

In FY 2016, “the total force was short 1,211 fighter pilots,” Lieutenant General Gina Grosso told a House Armed Services subcommittee last year.

That figure fit within a broader deficit of 1,555 pilot positions across all the Air Force’s mission sets. Bomber and cargo plane pilots are also in short supply. But the problem is more acute with jet fighters.

According to a report this April from the Government Accountability Office, for more than a decade the gap between the number of pilots authorized and the number actually serving has widened. The GAO found that currently 27 percent of fighter pilot positions are unfilled.

This is not just a liability for military readiness and national security, Grosso explained. It’s also an extremely expensive problem. Training one pilot for his or her first assignment in an advanced plane like the F-22 takes $11 million. The upper-end estimate is that current pilot shortage amounts to a capital loss of $12 billion.

“Make no mistake, your Air Force is always there,” Grosso told lawmakers. “However, being always there comes at a cost to equipment, infrastructure, and most importantly our airmen.”

So why are all these young, highly trained, elite pilots leaving?

One of the main reasons is that commercial companies are hiring them away. Globally, more planes are in the air, with growth in passenger air travel and cargo shipping prompting an accelerating demand for qualified pilots. Air Force pilots are attractive because they have typically met or exceeded the number of in-flight hours required by regulations. And a wave of older pilots are leaving the workforce as they turn 65, hitting the Federal Aviation Administration’s mandatory retirement age. Amid this boom, the salaries in the commercial sector are significantly higher than in the military.

But that’s just a piece of what’s going on.

“It’s not about the money,” David Gould said. Gould retired as a colonel after 26 years in the Air Force, much of it spent flying C-130 cargo planes. Now he works for United Airlines. The pay bump is nice, but Gould says the main reason that pilots leave is tied to the same reason they join in the first place: they want to fly as much as they can.

“I would guarantee it on my life: if you just had them do it enough, nobody would get out,” Gould said.

The problem, according to Gould, is Air Force pilots are in the cockpit less and less.  Instead, they’re spending more time in training sessions and handling administrative duties.

“After a while you kind of look back and go, ‘I’m a pilot and I’m flying, if I’m lucky, once a week. What am I doing the other 80 percent of my time?'” Gould paused, before answering, “Stupid paperwork.”

This isn’t just one retiree’s griping about the bygone days. The recent GAO report found the same thing. It also cited the Air Force lifestyle as one of the main reasons pilots opted not to re-enlist. Career-minded flyers face prolonged deployments, long work days and frequent moves that all put tremendous strain on family life.

Once they’ve met their service requirements, Gould says many younger pilots look around and decide the chance to keep flying cool aircraft isn’t worth the headache and personal sacrifice.

At the squadron-level, commanders like Skalicky try to tap in to pilots’ enthusiasm for the work itself.

“There is so much energy and so much drive in these people, in this professional corps of airmen that we have, that harnessing that energy, focusing it to get this mission done is more of a privilege than a challenge,” Skalicky said.

Air Force leadership is keenly aware of the pilot problem. They convinced Congress to increase the maximum allowable bonus pay given to pilots who re-enlist mid-way through their careers to $35,000 a year. According to Air Force spokesperson Erika Yepsen, the organization is also currently testing different personnel programs, such as halving some deployments. There is an additional experiment allowing some fighter pilots stay at stateside bases for an extra three hitch to spare them and their families moves. And the Air Force has hired contractors to take on some of the administrative work that had been saddling pilots.

Adoption involves more than connecting children and parents — is about navigating new relationships between families. On the next Talk of Alaska we’ll speak with birth moms and adoptive moms about their experiences with adoption, how its changed over time and misconceptions about the process.

HOST: Anne Hillman

GUESTS:

• Jackie Shepherd – adoptive mom
• Monica Hall – birth mom and author
• Tami Jo Watson – adoption services, Catholic Social Services

Participate:

• Call 550-8422 (Anchorage) or 1-800-478-8255 (statewide) during the live broadcast
• Post your comment before, during or after the live broadcast (comments may be read on air).
• Send email to talk@alaskapublic.org (comments may be read on air)

LIVE Broadcast: Tuesday, May 8, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. on APRN stations statewide.

SUBSCRIBE: Get Talk of Alaska updates automatically by email, RSS or podcast.

Western Alaska is likely to see a jump in fuel prices this month. Vitus Energy, a company that services around 200 communities from the Aleutian chain to the Kotzebue sound, anticipates that consumers will see higher prices by the end of May.

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“West coast crude on May first of 2017 was 50.69 a barrel,” director of sales Mike Poston said. “On May first of 2018 it’s 72.18 a barrel. For ANS crude the difference amounts to 51 cents a gallon. And refined products are pretty similar to that. And you put sales tax on top of that – it’s pretty significant.”

Bristol Bay Industrial Fuels president and CEO Robert Cox said in an email that world oil prices have risen substantially since BBI received the last shipping in September 2017. The company expects to pay more for fuel this summer, which will then show at the pump.

Consumers in rural areas are likely to see such a jump in prices because transportation of fuel to rural Alaska occurs mainly during summer months when waterways are free of ice. Most terminal operators store a certain amount of product during the winter, and that allows them to sell fuel at last year’s prices until barges arrive carrying new fuel at current market prices.

“The price of gasoline at the pump in Anchorage has been going up almost every week all winter long,” Poston said. “The folks in Vitus’ service area haven’t seen those increases. The benefit is that they haven’t had to pay the steadily increasing price every time they go to fuel up. But that does make it more of a shock when it does finally hit.”

Poston cautioned that the rise in fuel prices isn’t guaranteed. But sooner or later, an increase in crude oil prices is typically reflected in consumer’s pocketbooks.

“As the cost goes up, the price has to go up,” Poston said. “And we don’t know exactly how much that’s going to be. We don’t know exactly the date that’s going to happen. But we just know it’s coming.”

Asked who might experience this price increase, Poston’s answer was simple: every community in western Alaska.

Update: 4:30 p.m.

Alaska is one step closer to getting a gas supply for its massive natural gas pipeline project.

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The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation announced on May 7 that it settled on the terms of a gas sales agreement with BP Alaska.

The final agreement hasn’t been signed yet. But corporation President Keith Meyer said the key terms — that is, the volume of the gas and how much it will cost — have been figured out.

BP owns more than a quarter share of Prudhoe Bay and about one-third of the nearby Pt. Thomson field.

Meyer said the company has committed to selling all of the gas it can produce from those fields, but that won’t fill the pipeline.

The state corporation will need gas supply agreements with all of the North Slope producers for the project to run at full capacity.

What this agreement could do is help the project get financing this year. Meyer said he sees the gas supply agreements as a key piece in that process.

“So now that we’ve got the the supply pieces falling into place now that lets us get a lot more clarity on the financing piece which is also underway. But that’ll take really through the balance of this year,” Meyer said.

This agreement is one of many the state corporation is negotiating right now. It is on a tight timeline to get them done in time to meet peak gas demand in 2025.

The state corporation must get final agreements to buy gas from producers, line up buyers and secure the federal and state permits to build the $45 billion project.

ORIGINAL STORY:

Alaska is one step closer to getting a gas supply for its massive natural gas pipeline project.

The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation announced on May 7 that it had agreed on the terms of a gas sales agreement with BP Alaska. According to a media release from the state corporation, the two have not finalized that long-term gas sales agreement, but they expect to do it this year.

BP owns more than a quarter share of Prudhoe Bay and about one-third of the nearby Pt. Thomson field. But, it is not clear how much gas BP has committed to selling to the state-led project.

This agreement is one of many the state corporation is negotiating right now. It is on a tight timeline to get them done in time to meet peak gas demand in 2025.

The state corporation must get final agreements to buy gas from producers, line up buyers and secure the federal and state permits to build the $45 billion project.

The Fairbanks North Star Borough has received a federal grant to improve local air quality. The $4 million Targeted Air Shed Grant announced by the Environmental Protection Agency last month is the latest aimed at reducing fine particulate pollution from wood and coal burning.

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Borough air quality manager Nick Czarnecki says the grant will fund a a borough program that helps people convert cleaner burning fuels.

”The big difference with this funding is it’s going to target switching out solid fuel burning appliances such as wood, pellet and coal to cleaner burning alternatives such as fuel oil, natural gas or propane,” Czarnecki said.

Czarnecki says borough residents who reside within an EPA defined air quality non-attainment area can also apply for funds to purchase emergency power backup systems to eliminate the need for wood fired heaters.

”Such as a battery backup or a generator or solar panels that would provide power to their oil boiler,” Czarnecki said. “So that if the power goes out, you know, they would still have heat.”

Czarnecki adds that participating in the borough program brings a deed restriction which bans future installation of solid fuel burning devices at the property. He says the grant will take a bite out of the estimated 12,500 wood and coal burning stoves and boilers in the non-attainment area.

”We’re projecting that this money can be used to change out around around 476 devices,” Czarnecki said.

Czarnecki says qualifying residents are eligible for between $6,000 and $14,000.

”The $14,000 is specifically for if you remove a hydronic heater and go to electric, natural gas or propane,” Czarnecki said. “The incentive levels are based on the level of emission reductions we get because we want to incentivize those devices that would see the greatest emissions reductions.”

Czarnecki notes that there’s still $1.7 million remaining in an earlier EPA grant funded version of the borough program, which helps residents upgrade to more efficient wood stoves and boilers.

Sealaska Corp. distributed its 2017 annual report to shareholders Thursday, showing it had a very good year.

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The regional Alaska Native corporation for Southeast said it earned $43 million in profit last year — tripling its 2016 earnings.

“2017 is a great year, it’s a milestone, it should be recognized,” CEO Anthony Mallott said. “But the excitement is really the new era, the change. That we have confidence that we can keep that business performance going and just create consistency of growth for Sealaska that we haven’t had in our history.”

The first graph in the annual report tells the story of the company’s turnaround at a glance; a total reversal from being $35 million in the red in 2013 and a clear trend line into the future.

Last year was the final year in a five-year plan that included a goal of financial stability based on the businesses Sealaska directly operates. Previous years’ profits relied on its passive investment income and revenue sharing income from other Alaska Native corporations.

The plan called for realigning Sealaska’s business interests with its shareholders’ values. “Relevant and meaningful” was the refrain in the boardroom.

“We are focusing on enhancing the health and the productivity of our ocean and land environment,” Mallott said. “That ocean and land environment is our homelands. Enhancing the health and productivity of our homelands is what our ancestors have done for 10,000 years. We’re just following a path.”

In other words, ruthless corporate exploitation is out. One practical effect in recent years has been Sealaska selling off its grab bag of far-flung businesses.

“There was a broadness of the operating portfolio and no tie to, why is Sealaska in these businesses?” Mallott said. “So we were in stand-up guard services that were in Miami. We were in plastic injection molding facilities that were in Guadalajara (Mexico), Alabama and Iowa. We were in a global logistics company based out of Georgia. We were in heavy civil construction in Hawaii.”

The new corporate philosophy also meant generally scaling back timber operations, entering the carbon credit market through forest preservation, and expanding government contracting services focused on environmental work. And in 2016, the corporation began adding new lines of business in seafood processing in the Pacific Northwest.

Sealaska does still own some real estate near San Francisco it once intended to develop into a resort casino for a small California tribe. Mallott said that’s a legacy project from a previous CEO that Sealaska’s been trying to unload for years. It got caught up in the 2008 financial crisis.

“There’ll be a developer, we’re just not the right developer,” Mallott said.

Mallott said there will be no more casinos in Sealaska’s future, and no other lingering misalignments in its portfolio.

Timber remains Sealaska’s main income source among its businesses, Mallott said. But he said it will soon be overtaken by its second-most profitable line: government contracting in environmental services. That’s included contracts with the Forest Service and NOAA, and work on salmon habitat restoration and water quality monitoring.

Seafood was a small piece of the profit pie. But Mallott expects a lot of income growth among its recently acquired packing plants, and said expansion into other foods is coming.

There is a big caveat on Sealaska’s 2017 profits. Roughly two-thirds came from sources it has little control over: financial investments and revenue sharing from other Alaska Native corporations. Without those two sources, which can vary a lot from year to year, Sealaska still would have turned a profit.

Sealaska Board Chairman Joe Nelson said that’s a huge milestone.

“The next phase for Sealaska is going to be a lot more energy focused on our people, our communities, our homeland, which is core to our mission,” Nelson said. “You know, we’re a for-profit company, that’s never been in question, but we’ve really turned things around in terms of our operating companies such that we’re able to get to the real work of investing in our communities.”

One community investment the annual report highlights is in Sealaska’s scholarship program. The corporation set aside an extra $10 million last year, nearly tripling the endowment that helps pay for shareholders and their kids’ post-high school education. It’s already boosting scholarships being awarded this spring.

For accounting purposes, it’s an expense. But philosophically, Mallott said it isn’t.

“The money we put into (Sealaska Heritage Institute), the money we put into put into scholarships, the money we put into internship programs – we don’t consider those expenses, we consider those investments,” Mallott said. “It flows through as an expense if you read (generally accepted accounting principles), but they’re an investment, for sure. The ability to help our people attain their educational goals is positive for them personally, provides upside for our communities, having a better educated base of community members, and can lead to talent development specifically for Sealaska. It’s all part and parcel.”

Mallott came up through those programs himself.

“I was a scholarship recipient and an intern,” Mallott said. “Joe (Nelson) was a scholarship recipient and an intern. Our vice chair was a scholarship recipient and an intern. So it’s been working, we just think there’s so much more we can be doing.”

The more Sealaska’s business operations grow, the more Sealaska can invest in its communities. Mallott said income from its business operations will be half the net income pie within the next couple of years, and longer term, he’s aiming for three-quarters.

“At three-quarters, you really diminish volatility that our passive investment sources have,” Mallott said.

Subsidiaries aside, Mallott said Sealaska’s turnaround also came from cutting the corporate headquarters’ operating budget by about 40 percent since 2012. A lot went into that. For example, reorganizing many human resources managers at many subsidiaries into a centralized human resources team.

“And, we were clearly overspending at that point in time, as well,” Mallott said.

The geographic consolidation and clearer mission also helped cut costs. Like the third-party audits that backstop financial reports. Mallott said they became less complicated, and less expensive.

The message is that Sealaska’s financial turnaround is validation that tying traditional values to business practices was the right call.

“Plastics was not a part of who Sealaska was,” Mallott said.

But Mallott said that’s only half the story. The company’s next five years will tell the rest.

Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @aprn

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State corporation announces tentative deal with BP to buy gas for Alaska LNG project

Rashah McChesney, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

The agreement is one of many the state corporation is negotiating to get the project online by 2025.

Sample sales present snag for major alcohol law revision

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

The Alaska Legislature is nearing the session’s end. One thing that’s not clear is whether lawmakers will completely revise state alcohol laws for the first time in 35 years. Some brewery and distillery owners want to head off a proposal limiting how much they can serve customers.

Governor Walker to enter Democratic primary in election bid

Associated Press

Alaska’s governor and lieutenant governor are planning to run for re-election by entering into the Democratic primary in August.

Report: More staff needed for Alaska public assistance backlog

Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

According to the state ombudsman’s investigation report released Monday, the Division of Public Assistance is swamped with applications and has failed to meet state and federal mandates for processing them in a timely manner. The report also says members of the public have had great difficulty getting responses to questions, and that the division’s processing for long-term care is “inefficient and ineffective.”

Calista denies CEO mishandled sexual harassment complaint

Teresa Cotsirilos, KYUK – Bethel

Calista’s Board of Directors alleges in a press release that ousted chairman Wayne Don is deliberately spreading misinformation about the company.

Fairbanks North Star Borough receives federal grant to fund cleaner burning appliances

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

The $4 million Targeted Air Shed Grant announced by the Environmental Protection Agency last month is the latest aimed at reducing fine particulate pollution from wood and coal burning.

Rise in fuel prices anticipated in Western Alaska

Isabelle Ross, KDLG – Dillingham

As ice breaks and barges carry fuel into rural Alaskan communities, companies are likely to begin charging prices that reflect global oil prices that have been rising since this fall.

How Sealaska went from $35M in the red to $43M in the black

Jeremy Hsieh, KTOO – Juneau

The Alaska Native corporation’s leadership says 2017 was a milestone year financially, and that it validated the realignment of its business portfolio with its shareholders’ traditional values.

Can Alaska bison help save permafrost? Russian scientists want to find out

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

Part of the theory is that herd animals pack down snow, freezing the soil much deeper. Other herd effects may also reduce greenhouse gas production.

An investigation of complaints against the Alaska Division of Public Assistance found several major problems causing aggravation for thousands of Alaskans.

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According to the state ombudsman’s investigation report released Monday, the Division of Public Assistance is swamped with applications and has failed to meet state and federal mandates for processing them in a timely manner. The report also says members of the public have had great difficulty getting responses to questions and that the division’s processing for long-term care is “inefficient and ineffective.”

State Ombudsman Kate Burkhart said division staff are focused on helping people and doing the best they can with the resources they have. One of the most crucial recommendations in the report is to add personnel to deal with the communication problems and a backlog roughly 20,000 applications deep, Burkhart said.

“I think the division is at a place where they have to work their way out of the backlog,” Burkhart said. “They can’t manage their way out of it. They have to have the staff adequate to meet the demand, and the division has documented an increase in demand through increased applications for benefits like food stamps and Medicaid.”

The report says the Division of Public Assistance has already been working on many of the issues identified during the investigation, including streamlining its systems for processing applications and making plans to deal with documents more efficiently. But both Burkhart and Division Director Monica Windom said eliminating the backlog is unlikely without adding dozens of new positions.

Windom said she’s keenly aware that budget cuts in recent years have put an increased focus on reducing state government. She said the division has been trying various strategies the last couple years and until recently, was reluctant to ask for more staff.

“Because we know it’s a tough ask,” Windom said. “We have not made the progress. We do eliminate some of the backlog every month, but we do add to the backlog every month, because just the number of cases are just too high for the staff we have to get the work done.”

It remains unclear if the Legislature will fund additional positions, which Gov. Bill Walker has requested.

A conference committee is still considering different versions of the state operating budget from the House and Senate. The House’s version would fund 41 temporary workers at the Division of Public Assistance, while the Senate’s budget does not include any funding for the positions.

The Calista Regional Corporation denies its CEO mishandled a sexual harassment complaint.

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Calista’s Board of Directors alleges in a press release that ousted chairman Wayne Don is deliberately spreading misinformation about the company.

Don and his attorney said in interviews with KYUK that Calista CEO Andrew Guy failed to properly respond to a sexual harassment complaint against a former employee.

Tthe woman never made even one complaint to Mr. Andrew Guy that she had been sexually harassed,” the board claimed in their statement Friday.

“The woman who was harassed did not approach Andrew Guy,” Calista Communications Manager Thom Leonard reiterated in an interview Friday with KYUK.

The board’s new chairman Paul George Guy released the statement, which further claims that Wayne Don made “incorrect and misleading” statements to both KYUK and the Delta Discovery and violated his “fiduciary duties.”

Friday’s press release is the latest in a series of allegations that Calista has made against Don, who is refusing to resign from the corporation’s board.

His fellow board members already have stripped Don of his chairmanship and voted to publicly censure him.

An unnamed former Calista employee is accused of repeatedly sexually harassing a woman.

According to Don and his attorney, the woman told CEO Andrew Guy what was happening, but Guy failed to respond to her complaint.

The harassment claim eventually made its way to Calista’s Human Resources Department, and Calista investigated and fired the offending employee.

In their statement Friday, the Board denied the woman ever told Andrew Guy about sexual harassment. It also cast doubt on whether she was harassed at all.

The board said that Calista’s former employee had not, in fact, repeatedly sexually harassed the woman and that “this highly inflammatory statement is completely false.”

However, the press release then says an attorney who reviewed the allegations concluded that it was “likely” that the employee’s conduct violated Calista’s sexual harassment policies.

The release further says that the employee was fired as a result of an investigation, apparent contradictions in the corporation’s press release.

“Yeah, I don’t have any further light I can shed on that,” Leonard said.

Attorney Sam Fortier said Don tried to address Andrew Guy’s alleged failure to respond to the sexual harassment, but that Calista’s Board of Directors shut him down.

Fortier said that the board is now pushing Don out of the corporation.

Calista claims that they publicly censured Don for different reasons.

The board’s press release states that Don committed at least 14 instances of misconduct while serving as Calista’s chair, though Leonard didn’t know what any of that misconduct actually was.

“The specific details on that have not been shared by the board at this time,” Leonard said.

Fortier said that he and Don stick by what they said in KYUK’s previous coverage.

“Everything we told you is true,” Fortier said. “And we have the evidence to back it up.”

The board also previously claimed that Don had threatened CEO Andrew Guy, interfered with an internal investigation, and improperly issued orders to other employees.

Neither Andrew Guy nor the current Calista Board chair Paul George Guy could be reached for comment Friday.

Wayne Don still refuses to resign from Calista’s board and says that the board has called a special meeting.

It’s not clear is whether the Alaska Legislature will completely revise state alcohol laws for the first time in 35 years. Some brewery and distillery owners want to head off a proposal limiting how much they can serve customers.

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Getting alcohol producers, wholesalers and retailers to agree can be a challenge. The concerns of groups that want to prevent and treat alcohol abuse make it even more complicated. But until last week, these groups were in agreement over the need to make changes.

At a Senate Finance Committee meeting in April, Soldotna Republican Sen. Peter Micciche described what went into the legislation, Senate Bill 76, to change the state’s alcohol laws, known as Title IV.

“We brought together a group of folks that perhaps don’t always see eye to eye, and over an extensive series of meetings, brought it – the Title IV you see today – where they have agreed that this is the path forward for the industry,” Micciche said.

Among the many changes the bill would make: it would adjust license fees to cover a bigger share of state costs to regulate alcohol sales, it would simplify the licenses that alcohol sellers must have and it would make the penalties more consistent for businesses whose workers sell alcohol to minors.

Until last week, it didn’t address the divisive issue of how much breweries and distilleries can sell directly to the public as samples. But on Friday, the House Labor and Commerce Committee amended the bill, dropping the amount of beer and liquor samples these businesses can sell by a third.

Brandon Howard is the co-owner and co-founder of Amalga Distillery in Juneau. His business’s tasting room has helped attract customers’ interest since it opened nearly a year ago.

“When they visit a brewery or a distillery, they expect to have an experience in a tasting room,” Howard said. “And it’s where we build our brand. It’s where we establish ourselves.”

Howard is concerned about the late change to the bill.

“To come in and potentially undermine this bill, that’s been worked on by a steering committee over the last six years at the end of session is irresponsible and selfish,” Howard said. “I mean, it’s unconscionable.”

But there are bar owners who support the change. They see the current laws that allow breweries and distillers to serve alcohol as disturbing what was once an even playing field, turning it into one that’s unfair. That’s because bar owners have to pay many thousands of dollars for their licenses.

Abby Williams, co-owner of Louie’s Douglas Inn in Douglas, said she expected competition with similar bars.

“What I didn’t expect going into business and into debt by purchasing a beverage dispensary license and doing an extensive remodel on a building, that I would soon be competing with the manufacturers: those that manufacture or distill a bottle of liquor for an amount substantially less than the price I’m required to pay to the distributors,” Williams said.

The bill still has a couple of steps where it could be changed or stalled. It goes to the House Finance Committee next. Then it would face a vote on the House floor. And if the House passes it, the Senate – which already passed it – will have to decide whether to agree to the House’s changes and send it to Gov. Bill Walker’s desk.

Gov. Bill Walker’s chief oil and gas advisor has taken a new job.

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Later this month, John Hendrix will join the NANA Regional Corporation as the president of its commercial group. That group includes subsidiaries that do oil field and mining support services, as well as construction and capital projects.

Hendrix has been in Walker’s cabinet for nearly two years.  When he was hired in 2016 for the $185,000 a year position, his focus was on figuring out how Alaska can produce more oil.

In a media release, Walker’s office congratulated Hendrix on the new position and said  he’ll continue working on projects with the Office of the Governor.

Scientists use lots of expensive sensors and satellites for studying climate change in Alaska. But more and more, they’re also relying on something that’s a lot more low tech — traditional ecological knowledge.

Brian Brettschneider, with our Ask a Climatologist segment, says traditional knowledge involves getting out into communities to ask residents for their climate observations and experiences.

He says in Alaska it’s considered best practice to use traditional knowledge in climate research.

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Interview highlights:

I like to think of the climate system as a puzzle and we have lots of pieces to the puzzle. Some of those pieces are thermometers, satellite images and river gauges. When we put those pieces together in the puzzle and we can start to get an idea of what the system looks like. But there are more pieces. So if we go to the communities and ask where do ice jams form? And when did the brush start to move in? And when did the permafrost thaw out? Those are more pieces of the puzzle.

A really good example is up on the North Slope, there was a time they thought bowhead whales were critically endangered. But the local Inupiat hunters really had a better feel for what those whale populations were like and they worked with, say, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to come up with a new way to track populations. And it turns out they were correct.

It’s really transitioned over the last 20 years or so where it was viewed at one time as an afterthought or an add on. But it really has become an integral part to studying remote areas in Alaska and all of the Arctic North. There’s a lot of benefit to using this data to better understand the world we live in.

Brian Brettschneider is a climatologist based in Anchorage, with the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The National Weather Service is automating weather balloon launches in Alaska as part of a shift that will concentrate staff at the agencies urban forecast offices.

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The National Weather Service’s first automated weather balloon launcher came on line in Kodiak last fall, and the second recently went into service in Fairbanks.

Outside what looks part RV, part Mars base, National Weather Service meteorologist Ed Plumb describes automated steps leading up to a balloon launch.

“This beeping starts about 15 minutes before the balloons can release, and this is indicating that there’s hydrogen now flowing and filling up the balloon,” Plumb said.

The $700,000 robot sits on a gravel pad near Fairbanks International Airport, the same location where twice daily launches have occurred for decades. The new automated launcher responds to the push of a button at the Weather Service’s Fairbanks headquarters five miles away, sparing staff from twice trips to manually deploy the atmospheric data gathering balloons. Plumb says meteorologists will use the freed up time to work more closely with government agency and industry customers.

”So the Weather Service has sorta shifted its paradigm. This is just a little piece where it gives us more time to do that sort of mission,” Plumb said.

“Our plan is to reinvest these positions and re-invest the people,” Weather Service regional director Carven Scott said.

Scott says positions eliminated by auto launchers at 11 rural Weather Service offices will shift to forecast stations in Fairbanks, Anchorage and Juneau.

“We will lose some capability, some operation capability, at these WSOs,” Scott said.

Jim Brader is a longtime agency meteorologist in Fairbanks, and Alaska chair of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, which takes issue with the automation and downsizing of rural Alaska offices.

”We basically are spending $17 million in Alaska to outsource 30 jobs across rural Alaska, where jobs are highly needed, and reducing services to rural Alaska too.” 

The Weather Service’s Scott counters that the balloon launch technology needs upgrade and that it’s a struggle to staff the agency’s remote offices.

”It’s much easier to fill a position in Fairbanks, Juneau and Anchorage than it is in Kotzebue or McGrath,” Scott said.

Scott emphasizes that the Weather Service is not abandoning rural Alaska, and plans to keep one paid caretaker at each station, and train up a base of local volunteer observers.

”To help us have eyes in the villages, to report on a severe weather event,” Scott said.

Additional stations scheduled for downsize and transition to automated weather balloon launchers this summer include those at Annette Island, Yakutat, Utqiagvik, St. Paul and Bethel. Alaska’s six other stations will convert the following year.

After a heated debate, the Fairbanks City Council approved an ordinance Monday that added regulations to the marijuana industry. The amended ordinance maintains the city’s ban on on-site consumption of cannabis. But it would allow more than twice as many retail shops as the original ordinance introduced by Mayor Jim Matherly.

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The council chambers were once again packed with partisans for and against the marijuana-regulating ordinance introduced by Mayor Jim Matherly three months ago. But this time, it was the councilmembers’ turn to talk as they debated a flurry of amendments to the ordinance, starting with a provision limiting the number of retail shops in the city to 12.

Matherly says he chose that number because that’s how many of the shops were operating or about to open.

“Nine were open, three were in the queue — that’s where I originally started with the 12 to get it on the table for discussion,” Matherly said.

Jerry Cleworth said the substitute ordinance that he and June Rogers introduced set the limit at 15, based on the principle that marijuana ought to be regulated like alcohol, as legalized-marijuana supporters have long advocated.

“Right now, inside the city, we have 15 operating package stores, which is the equivalent to a retail establishment for cannabis,” Cleworth said.

Valerie Therrien moved to amend the substitute ordinance to eliminate the limit and to delete a provision that would require the city to reduce that number to 11 over time.

“We don’t need to put a number on the number of establishments that we need to have in our community,” Therrien said. “I believe that zoning is going to take care of that.”

The council members approved that proposal by a five-to-one vote, with Cleworth dissenting. Therrien then moved to increase the retail-store limit to 25. She said that would be fair for the six shops now in business, as well as the three that are close to opening and 16 others that’ve submitted applications and are under review by the state Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office.

“I don’t think it was fair to the marijuana industry to limit the number of licenses after people had already initiated and spent their money,” Therrien said, “And now say to them, ‘Oh, we’re going to cut it down to 15.’ ”

After a lengthy debate, the council narrowly approved setting the limit at 25, with Cleworth, Rogers and Jonathan Bagwill voting no and Joy Huntington, David Pruhs and Therrien voting yes – and with Matherly casting the fourth and tie-breaking affirmative vote.

Pruhs and Therrien also prevailed in a vote to eliminate a proposal to establish a new method of measuring the minimum buffer of 750 feet between a marijuana retail shop and residential areas, schools and rehab facilities. Their amendment re-established the use of the borough’s simpler system of measuring property line to property line.

But they did not succeed in convincing the council to go along with a provision to authorize establishments to allow consumption of marijuana on-site. Pruhs told marijuana advocates at the meeting that that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.

“No one on this council has a taste for on-site consumption,” Pruhs said. “It’s not legal in the state of Alaska. It’s not legal in Fairbanks.”

But the council approved the amended ordinance 6-to-0. Afterward, Matherly suggested to all in attendance that they may not have heard the last word on the issue.

“This is not the last you’ll see of this ordinance, I’m sure, and the discussion surrounding it,” Matherly said. “Just so everyone knows.”

But for now, the city’s marijuana industry has for the first time a complete set of rules under which to operate.

Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @aprn

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Legislature approves use of Permanent Fund to pay for state government 

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

For the first time in the Alaska Permanent Fund’s 40-year history, the Legislature has adopted a plan to draw money from the fund to pay for state government. Governor Bill Walker says he’ll sign the bill plan. Supporters say it protects the fund.

Is meth back in Alaska? Or did it never leave? 

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Opioids like heroin get the most attention when you hear about the drug epidemic in Alaska. But people working at the ground level are warning of a parallel problem that’s getting worse.

Walker’s oil & gas advisor leaves for job at NANA

Rashah McChesney, Alaska Public Media – Juneau

John Hendrix will head NANA Regional Corporation’s commercial group.

Fairbanks City Council approves marijuana regulations that limit retail shops to 25

Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks

After a heated debate, the Fairbanks City Council approved an ordinance Monday that added regulations to the marijuana industry.

New automation initiatives driving National Weather Service push to focus staff in urban offices

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

The National Weather Service is automating weather balloon launches in Alaska as part of a shift that will concentrate staff at the agencies urban forecast offices.

Ask a Climatologist: Traditional knowledge is critical to climate research

Annie Feidt, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

More and more, scientists rely on traditional ecological knowledge to study climate change.

Indian Country Today’s new editor Mark Trahant on the future of Native journalism

Christine Trudeau, KYUK – Bethel

Last week KYUK got a visit from Mark Trahant, the new Managing Editor of “Indian Country Today.” A longtime independent journalist, Trahant has been coming to Alaska for decades, and served as a college professor here.

Opioids like heroin get the most attention when you hear about the drug epidemic in Alaska. But people working at the ground level are warning of a parallel problem that is getting worse.

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Methamphetamine is appearing in the state at greater volumes than ever before. Its negative health impacts are being exacerbated by the opioid crisis, reaching new users and being used in riskier ways.

Sitting at his desk in a one-story building on Wasilla’s Main Street, 30-year-old James Savage explained that the first time he used meth it was to get off painkillers.

“I was absolutely miserable in all facets of my life,” Savage said of his years abusing drugs.

Savage was first prescribed pain medications after breaking his foot falling off a ladder when he was 19 years old. A former wrestler who grew up in Alaska, Savage is big guy, and he was given high doses of strong opioids early in his treatment. It started a spiral into addiction, with years spent circulating through pain management clinics in Anchorage and the Valley. Eventually a prescriber flagged Savage for doctor shopping and his prescription was cut off.

And in recent years, as stories of unintended opioid addiction have become more commonplace, this is usually when people turn to heroin. But Savage did not. He hates needles and was reticent to try replicating a high-potency pharmaceutical high with street heroin. Instead, he got advice from a drug buddy that he could detox by using methamphetamine.

“You have a lot of folks that are under the impression that their addiction is bad enough with heroin,” Savage said. “They decide go to methamphetamine to try and wean themselves off.”

Savage bypassed the debilitating pain and discomfort of opioid withdrawal by going into a days-long meth induced mania, followed by two or three days of coma-like sleep.

What followed was what he called seven months of “white knuckle sobriety.”

Eventually, Savaged relapsed. But instead of returning to opioids he started using meth, “all day, every day.”

In 2015, Savage entered a treatment program and has been in recovery for almost three years. Now he works at Fiend2Clean, a recovery support nonprofit based in Wasilla.

While opioids are getting a lot of media and policy attention, meth never left Alaska after its last devastating iteration in the early 2000s. Though one of the most public manifestations of the problem — meth labs — stopped appearing, the supply merely shifted without demand ever fully going away. Now, use of meth alongside opioids is increasing, as people cope with the drowsy, narcotic effects that can go along with high doses of heroin and painkillers.

“Someone who typically passes out or falls asleep after injecting heroin will be able to stay awake,” Savage explained. “They’ll feel the effects longer, without falling asleep or having an adverse reaction to the amount of heroin they’re using.”

This is essentially a way of balancing out powerful drugs to stay functional for those trying to hold down jobs or mask their addiction by not nodding off in public, according to Savage.

But there’s also a purely recreational reason: the combination makes for an intense rush. In the past, combining shots of heroin with cocaine or other amphetamines was called a speedball. Now, meth has eclipsed other uppers as the most common accelerant in speedballs.

The health calamities associated with meth are rising in Alaska, in part because the drug itself is more potent all the way down to the street level and because of how it is being used in combination with other drugs. The rate of meth-related overdoses increased by more than four times in less than a decade, going from 1.4 fatalities per 100,000 persons during 2008–2010 to 5.8 per 100,000 between 2014–2016, according to a report by the state’s Division of Public Health in November of 2017. Of the 193 lethal overdoses caused by meth in that period, 54% also involved an opioid like heroin.

This is prompting alarm among those closest to the drug problem. Ron Greene has spent 30 years in the treatment field, and is the clinical director of the Narcotic Drug Treatment Center in downtown Anchorage, one of the state’s only methadone clinics.

“We see as much methamphetamine use here as we see opiate use in this clinic,” Greene said from behind his cluttered desk.

Greene forecasted the current heroin crisis as early as 2003, when he saw the drug of choice among people seeking treatment shifted away from prescription pills to potent black tar heroin. From his current vantage point, meth is “out of control.” Based on drug test results among people entering treatment, he estimates 60 to 70 percent of the people seeking care for opioid addiction also have meth in their system.

That overlap is consistent with what similar methadone clinics are seeing outside of Alaska, too.

“We’re seeing the exact same thing: Intravenous drug use, heroin, methamphetamine,” Greene counted off. “We’re seeing the same thing as our counterparts down there in the Lower 48.”

Across the country, meth has never been cheaper or more pure than it is right now. Over a decade ago, most meth in Alaska and across the Western states was manufactured in small domestic operations within houses, RV’s and apartments. But since federal legislation in 2006 limited access to many of the essential ingredients, production has moved abroad.

According to the most recent threat assessment from the Department of Justice and Drug Enforcement Agency, nearly all the meth arriving in the U.S. is made in industrial labs by drug cartels in Mexico. That production model has pushed quality and consistency way up,  even as prices have gone down. The U.S. market, according to the DEA, is awash in inexpensive, potent methamphetamine.

Lieutenant Jack Carson with the Anchorage Police Department says it has been a long time since they’ve seen a “mom’n’pop” meth operation.

“We just don’t see that that often any more,” Carson said, explaining that buying the finished product from Mexican or Lower 48 suppliers is significantly cheaper than trying to collect the necessary precursor ingredients in Alaska.

“What we are seeing is meth coming in bulk from the source states in Lower 48, coming into the mail system, then getting distributed down,” Carson added.

For suppliers who can get drugs into the state, Alaska is an exceptionally lucrative market. Street prices in Anchorage remain several times higher than in Lower 48 cities, both for meth and heroin, though the potency of both has risen. When drugs move out to smaller Bush communities or commercial fishing towns, the price goes up again.

Law enforcement agencies say the size of the shipments they’ve intercepted has risen significantly the last few years, too. Federal drug cases used to be built on one-pound shipments they interdicted. Now it is not uncommon to find five-pound packages being trafficked into Alaska.

Given the country’s widespread issues with addictive drugs, and minimal policy measures affecting the supply of meth, federal officials don’t anticipate the trend reversing any time soon.

For the first time in the Alaska Permanent Fund’s 40-year history, the Legislature has adopted a plan to draw money from the fund to pay for state government. Gov. Bill Walker said he’ll sign the bill. Supporters said it protects the fund.

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But opponents are concerned about the pressure it could place on permanent fund dividends.

There’s been a lot of uncertainty over the $65 billion permanent fund’s future.

But Nome Democratic Rep. Neal Foster said Senate Bill 26 removes that uncertainty. Both legislative chambers passed it Tuesday.

“The Permanent Fund Corporation has been asking for stability and predictability, so that they can plan how they invest,” Foster said. “SB 26 allows that to happen.”

Alaska’s state government is spending $2.4 billion more than it’s bringing in, in taxes, fees and oil royalties. And the piggy bank it’s used to cover past deficits – the Constitutional Budget Reserve – is low.

The bill draws roughly 5 percent of the fund’s market value.

“SB 26 does not specify how these funds are to be split,” Foster said. “That will be left to future legislatures to determine.”

In the Senate, Eagle River Republican Sen. Anna MacKinnon said limiting the draw prevents the Legislature from spending down fund earnings so that dividends disappear.

“The bill before us guarantees Alaska’s dividends into the future, for my children and my grandchildren,” MacKinnon said.

But the effect on PFDs concerns some bill opponents. They’re split between Republicans who want deeper cuts to government services and Democrats who want some combination of higher oil and gas taxes and an income tax to shore up the budget.

Juneau Democratic Rep. Sam Kito III said the state should look at more taxes, since Alaska can’t rely on oil revenue.

“We need to start being adults, and figuring out what do we want as a state government, then figuring out how we’re going to pay for it, instead of continuing to try and milk a cow that right now is – I’m worried about — getting way too skinny,” Kito said.

North Pole Republican Rep. Tammie Wilson said she’s concerned that spending will squeeze out the dividend once the Constitutional Budget Reserve is spent.

“I have seen nothing in the history since I have been here that shows that we will be able to stop spending money,” Wilson said. “And at this point, all I can use is the budget that we currently have before us. And with this bill passed as is – and no Constitutional Budget Reserve – then there would not be any more than a couple hundred dollars left for the dividend.”

Some bill opponents said the only way to protect dividends is to enshrine them in the state constitution.

Even with the earnings draw, next year’s budget will have a roughly $800 million gap. The Legislature will likely turn to the CBR to close the gap. But it won’t have that option for many more years.

Gov. Walker said the bill is an important step. Walker generally takes time to review bills, but he said minutes after the House adopted it that he’ll sign it.

“You know, it’s not something we take lightly,” Walker said. “These are tough, tough decisions. There’s no question about it. But, you know, they had to be made.

Dividends would be $1,600 this year under the House and Senate budget proposals. For the third straight year, dividends would be more than $1,000 less than they would be under the formula written into state law.

The Senate passed the bill on a 13 to 6 vote, with Palmer Republican Sen. Shelley Hughes joining the five minority-caucus Democrats in voting no.

The House passed it, 23 to 17. The majority caucus voted 15 to 7 in favor, while eight minority-caucus Republicans voted in favor and 10 voted no.

The bill is a major step toward the Legislature finishes its work on the budget and ending the session.