A group of activists in Juneau filed paperwork on Tuesday in hopes of putting a question on the 2024 local election ballot about whether the capital city should begin enforcing “ship-free Saturdays.”

About 20 people gathered at Marine Park downtown to rally for the proposed ballot initiative as the season’s first cruise visitors were heading back to their ship after a few hours in town. Afterward, advocate Karla Hart and four other residents went to City Hall to file the initiative. It would ban all cruise ships that carry 250 or more passengers from visiting Juneau on Saturdays and the Fourth of July. 

“We want one day where we don’t have buses, where we don’t have helicopters, where we can go to Auke Bay,” she said. “One day a week.”

Hart has long been critical of the growth of tourism in Juneau and how it affects people who live here. She said the ballot initiative should be a wake-up call for city officials. 

“I decided that it seems that the city isn’t able to do things on their own, but that the citizens have the right to ask for these things. And since the city doesn’t seem to have the will to do negotiating on behalf of making life better for the residents, then we can,” she said.

At a tourism panel last week, Cruise Lines International Association Alaska spokesperson Renée Reeve said ballot initiatives are a big concern for cruise lines. She said negotiated agreements with the city often take longer but are better for the community.

“We don’t turn on a dime, and it may take a little bit longer for us to come to the decisions and for us to make decisions together. But it’s a far better way than litigation and ballot initiatives, in my opinion,” she said.

The city recently announced it had negotiated a conceptual agreement with cruise lines that could limit the number of daily passengers that come off their ships and into Juneau. But the agreement is still far from final, and no specific numbers have been shared with the public yet. If approved, the limits would go into effect during the 2026 season.

If the “ship-free Saturdays” ballot initiative is passed by voters, that could go into effect next year.

City Tourism Manager Alix Pierce said if that happens, it could have widespread impacts — including on all of the other Southeast communities that cruise ships visit. 

“When Juneau makes a move, even something like daily passenger caps that are kind of vetted and reasonable, it impacts everybody else up and down the chain,” she said. “And we need to be very cognizant of that as we move forward.”

Last season, city officials in Sitka denied a citizen’s petition to put a visitor cap on the ballot, saying the proposed legislation would be unenforceable under the Alaska Constitution. Pierce said she does not know if that would happen with the Juneau initiative. 

“We’ll have something in front of the assembly as soon as we can on what the implications might look like,” Pierce said.

This isn’t the first time activists have tried to pass ballot initiatives to limit cruise ship traffic in Juneau. In 2021, Hart proposed three separate ones aimed at different aspects of cruise ships’ impacts. 

All three failed to get enough signatures to make it on the ballot, but Hart said she’s more confident this time around. 

Once the city clerk certifies the initiative, the group has 30 days to collect nearly 2,400 signatures.

A Superior Court judge sentenced a Washington man Tuesday to 99 years in prison for murdering a prominent Ketchikan surgeon.

Judge Michael Wolverton handed down the maximum possible sentence to 39-year-old Jordan Joplin for the murder, saying it was one of the most “brazen and craven” acts he’d seen in his 40 years on the bench.

The front row of the courtroom was packed with Eric Garcia’s family and friends. They wore shiny, maroon ribbons pinned to their chests. 

Eric’s brother, Saul Garcia, was the first to take the stand.

He described Eric as a loving brother and skillful surgeon. He remembered being approached at a Mexican restaurant in town by a group of Spanish-speaking workers after Eric’s death. They said his brother had provided them medicine when they couldn’t afford it.

“They recounted how comfortable they felt to have access to a Spanish-speaking medical professional, that related to their culture. They were worried about the future of their medical care, as they didn’t feel comfortable speaking English,” Saul said.

Garcia was a prominent surgeon in Southeast Alaska. He lived in Ketchikan but performed surgeries for smaller communities in the region. Last year, Joplin was found guilty of murdering the surgeon.

The two men were in a romantic relationship in the years leading up to Garcia’s murder. In 2017, Joplin administered a fatal dose of morphine and other drugs to Garcia and loaded three large shipping containers with nearly 2 tons of Garcia’s expensive personal belongings to send back to the lower 48.

Saul Garcia said in the six years since his brother’s death, the family has been swimming through a disorienting fog of grief. 

“I felt guilty by not knowing Eric had been suffering from domestic abuse. How did I not not know that? How did I not pick up on it? Why didn’t I call more frequently?” He asked.

He then turned to Joplin.

“Joplin, you’ve made your decision,” Garcia said. “You have chosen your fate. I’m here today to seek justice for Eric and collect on all of your failed gambles. To ensure your unconscious wish of becoming imprisoned for life becomes a reality. I’m here for that.”

Eric Garcia’s sister wasn’t present in the courtroom but delivered a statement through District Attorney Mark Clark. She described their upbringing in a small town in Puerto Rico and Garcia’s life in Ketchikan.

“Eric didn’t have a lot of time for himself – he was working more hours than he could physically deal with,” she wrote, outlining the time when Joplin entered her brother’s life. “At this point in his life, he was very lonely, working many night shifts.” 

She and Saul said that their brother was a romantic partner, friend, and protector to Joplin. During the trial, the prosecution presented evidence that Garcia had paid for Joplin’s child support, mortgage, and legal fees, as well as jointly leased a car to help Joplin build credit. 

The only person who took the stand to support a lower sentence for Jordan Joplin was Blake Joplin, the defendant’s half-brother. He painted a different picture of Jordan. Blake said he met Jordan 13 years ago, when the pair were connected on Facebook. He said they have the same father but weren’t raised together. They eventually connected in person and Blake said that the brother he met wasn’t someone capable of murder.

“Jordan is loving. He’s just a generally really happy individual, very positive,” Blake Joplin testified.

The elder Joplin said he and his half-brother had talked regularly for 13 years.

Jordan Joplin was also given the opportunity to testify for himself, which he did through his attorney.

“Mr. Joplin has asked me to note that he acknowledges Dr. Garcia’s death and the effect it had on the family and Dr. Garcia’s friends and the community of Ketchikan and that he maintains his innocence of the crime,” defense counsel Lars Johnson read.

Prosecuting attorney Erin McCarthy asked for the greatest sentence possible though.

“The domestic, intimate relationship Mr. Joplin fabricated between himself and Dr. Garcia is not only a factor to consider, but it is as much the murder weapon as the poison Mr. Joplin ultimately used to kill the man who loved him. Perhaps the most horrific part of this crime is how Dr. Garcia wholly gave his heart to Mr. Joplin. While for Mr. Joplin, Dr. Garcia was disposable,” McCarthy said in her final comments, adding that the amount of malice and forethought in this crime was chilling.

Wolverton agreed. He paused for a long time before delivering his statements. He also disagreed with the defense’s position that the community impact shouldn’t be factored into sentencing in this case. 

“The community condemnation both from this courtroom today, throughout the community of Ketchikan and all the way up to Anchorage and throughout Alaska calls for imposition of a significant sentence,” Wolverton said.

He then addressed Joplin directly, saying that his actions were inexplicable. “You had access to Dr. Garcia’s wealth,” he said. “He wasn’t withholding.”

The judge also gave him two years for the theft, to be served concurrently. As Joplin was fingerprinted and led out of the courtroom, Garcia’s family and friends cried and exchanged hugs with prosecuting attorneys. 

The poet Robert Burns once said, “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.” That holds true whether the bloodshed takes place on the Gaza Strip today — or in Iran more than 40 years ago, the setting for a play to open in Anchorage on Friday night.
 
The script for “When the Moment Comes” is based on a true story about what happened to a group of Baha’is, who refused to convert to Islam.

The year was 1983, four years after Islamic revolutionaries ousted the Shah of Iran, when their focus shifted to religious persecution.

The play is set in the ancient city of Shiraz, where a group of Baha’is have been jailed.

One cell is full of Baha’i women, who pass the time in song and prayer.

“There’s a line in the play which says the prison was our schoolhouse, and we learned many lessons in there,” said Nava Sarracino, who is both a producer and a performer in the play.

She plays Ruhi Jahanpour, who was swept up in an Islamic Revolutionary Guard crackdown along with a group of friends.

They were told their lives would be spared if they would do one thing: renounce their beliefs.

As they await their fate, they try to cheer each other up and play games. One is called “Remember,” in which they talk about happier times before the revolution — when they could wear dresses and skirts in public — and attend school.

The scene shifts to another cell with a group of Baha’i men, who face the same choice. As they wait, they recite the work of famous Persian poet Hafez.

One of the lines from his poem “Reunion” foreshadows their future: “My soul like a hummingbird, yearning for paradise, shall rise and soar, from the snares of this world.”

“It’s a story that not too many people know about,” says John Sharify, who plays Dr. Zia’uh’llah Ahrari. “They take me away for my execution for the simple fact that I insisted on continuing to practice my faith.”

For Sharify, “When the Moment Comes” is more than just a performance.

“This hits home because this story, which is a story that needs to be told and heard by everyone, is also a family story,” he said.

Although John Sharify is not Baha’i, his mother, Gloria Taslimi Sharify, is. Her brother, Abdul Hussein Taslimi, along with a group of other Baha’i leaders, disappeared in August 1980, never to be seen again.

Sharify wonders if his uncle might have known some of the men in the play, like Hedayat Siyhavashi, who hid a trove of Baha’i documents in his own home, so others wouldn’t have to take the risk.

“What’s interesting from the play’s perspective, is that he’s a very jokey, funny, not very serious person. And yet he took on this serious and very scary role,” said Dannesh Bastani, who plays Hedayat.

When the guard comes to take Dr. Ahrari away, Hedayat begs the guard to take him as well.

“Surely you have room for one more,” he says to the guard. “Why not me?”

The guard calls Siyavashi a fool and tells him he doesn’t have time for his jokes. He then takes Dr. Ahrari away to be hanged. Hedayat, though, did not escape execution.

Bastani hopes their stories will evoke more thought and a sense of gratitude for the freedoms we enjoy in this country.

“I can pray to a specific god, and it’s OK,” he said. “And I’m not going to be thrown in prison for it.”

Although the play is a story about Baha’is and is supported by the Anchorage Baha’i Community, the cast is made up of members from a variety of faiths.

The director, Tamara Rothman, is Jewish.

“I realized I really know little or nothing about the Middle East,” Rothman said, “and I know much less about the Baha’i faith.”

Although there are millions of Baha’is all over the world today, the religion is not well-known because it’s a relatively new faith. Worshippers recently celebrated the 200-year anniversary of the their religion, that began when a Persian prophet named Bahá’u’lláh preached that all the faiths of the world come from one heavenly source — and that he was one of a long line of messengers from God that included Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha.

At the time, Islamic leaders called Baha’i beliefs an abomination to Islam, and it marked the beginning of Baha’i oppression in Iran that human rights groups say continues today.

“This play may have been set in 1983, but the same conditions persist,” Rothman said. “We’ve been watching on the news the plight of other Iranian women who are arrested by the morality police, who find themselves getting beaten because a little lock of hair is showing from under their head scarf.”

As for the women in the play, the Revolutionary Guard brought 10 of them together to hang one at a time, forcing them to watch each other die — all except Ruhi Jahanpour.

“She was there during one of the darkest chapters of world history, not knowing whether she would live or die,” said Sharify. “Somehow her life was spared. I’d like to ask her, ‘Why do you think that is?’”

Sharify will have a chance to ask the real Ruhi that question himself. Jahanpour will travel from Alabama to Alaska to sit in the audience, where she will watch Sarracino on the stage play herself as a young woman.

One of the most powerful scenes in the play comes when Ruhi recounts her friends’ final moments.

“Do you think they were sad on the day they went to their execution? Were they crying?” she is asked in the script.

“No,” she responds. “They were laughing all the way to the place of execution. The guard couldn’t believe it. He asked them, ‘Do you know where I am taking you?’   ‘Oh, yes,’ they said.”

“When the Moment Comes” opens on Friday at 7 p.m. The performances are at Grant Hall on the Alaska Pacific University campus and run through Sunday. There’s also a panel discussion with Baha’i refugees from Iran on Sunday. Many of the refugees, who fled Iran after the 1979 revolution, resettled in Canada and Alaska.

Ann Boyles, a Canadian author, wrote the play. It’s a co-production of Tamara Rothman and Nava Sarracino, supported by the Anchorage Baha’i community. The play is also part of a global campaign called “Our Story is One” to raise awareness about religious persecution.

Right now, a pair of four-lane, one-way streets slice through Anchorage’s Fairview neighborhood to connect two of Southcentral Alaska’s major highways, the Seward and Glenn. Or, as Assembly Vice Chair Meg Zaletel recently put it, a “giant monstrosity that cuts through the heart of Anchorage.” 

Tens of thousands of vehicles zoom by every day on Gambell and Ingra streets, which used to be neighborhood roads. Transportation officials repurposed them as high-volume highway connectors after the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake, physically dividing Fairview, causing disinvestment, and creating dangerous conditions for pedestrians and cyclists. 

Now, the state Department of Transportation and its consultants are working through a study that began in 2021 to come up with potential fixes. They published a preliminary list of project options in February, and are refining those options based on public input. While the concepts for a new high-speed highway are getting the most attention, there are hints of consensus forming around far less expensive options that could change how everyone gets in, out and around the city.

All of the options have different impacts on traffic patterns, quality of life, homes, businesses, parks and even Merrill Field. 

The flashiest idea calls for building a new highway bypass through the Airport Heights neighborhood with an elevated viaduct over park land.

Or, rebuilding the connection in place in Fairview as a more traditional high-speed highway – but below street-level with new, crosstown connections for local traffic on top.

Aaron Jongenelen is the head of AMATS, the area’s metropolitan transportation planning organization. He said there seems to be too much focus on building expensive new infrastructure, and not enough on improving local connections. 

“As a transportation planner, it’s our responsibility in AMATS to say whether or not alternatives that are brought forward can be paid for,” Jongenelen told the Anchorage Assembly last month, at a meeting where state transportation officials and their consultants walked through the concepts. “And, no, I’ll say it right now, we can’t afford this stuff.” 

Federal money could help with the upfront costs. But Jongenelen said that’s just part of the issue. 

“Maintenance is a huge concern because when you accept federal dollars, you have to be able to show that you’re gonna be able to maintain those systems,” he said. “We can’t maintain our systems now, both in pavement and winter maintenance. It’s a struggle for all of the agencies. And when you look at these alternatives here, it looks like a massive amount of pavement is being added. Because it’s not just the highway, it’s all the other stuff you have to do in addition to it.” 

Formal cost estimates for the different alternatives haven’t been developed yet as part of the state’s study. But old estimates from past highway connection studies put the more ambitious solutions in the hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Zaletel, who is an alternate on the AMATS policy committee, said price tags that high make for unrealistic projects. 

“And so I really don’t know why we’re going through this exercise,” she said. “You’re going to have a piece of funding missing where some neighborhood’s gonna have to – and Fairview has – live with the consequences of the unfunded idea for decades and decades.”

AMATS’ long-term plan for the problematic highway connection is much simpler: redesign the existing roads as what are known as “complete streets.” That is, with non-motorized users in mind, instead of as an afterthought. That would likely mean fewer vehicle lanes, lower speed limits, safer sidewalks, better crosswalks and bike-friendly improvements. The AMATS estimate for that is about $75 million. 

That is on the table in the ongoing state study, both as a standalone solution and to complement the flashier ones. Several Assembly members indicated they are interested. 

Lindsey Hajduk is with the nonprofit NeighborWorks Alaska, which is partnered with the Fairview Community Council looking for solutions to repair damage to the community caused by the existing highway connection. 

She said she’s still hopeful there will be consensus.  

“But we do have major concerns about some of these options,” Hajduk said. “And are really trying to find that place of, what can we say yes to? What can we promote and push? And when hear the department say, ‘Is a highway needed, and if so, where?’” 

That’s the overarching question the state’s study intends to answer. 

“It’s that, ‘Is a highway needed?’ piece that we’re still really pushing on,” she said. 

Assembly Chair Chris Constant said the fact that DOT’s goals on this project are about improving the immediate neighborhood, rather than traffic congestion or vehicle travel times is noteworthy. 

“It’s a local project, and we’re working to take care of a local problem, that is a federal highway running through a residential neighborhood. I think that is a sea change of difference,” he said. “Because it’s no longer the conversation about traffic moving without stopping from the edge of Anchorage to the edge of Anchorage. 

The project team plans to hold another workshop, open house, and public comment period this summer, all leading up to the team’s formal recommendation in October. 

More information about the state study is available at sewardglennconnection.com.

The Alaska House of Representatives passed its $6 billion operating budget Thursday. That’s the spending plan for day-to-day government operations beginning next June. 

Alaska News Nightly host Casey Grove spoke with Alaska Public Media’s Capitol reporter, Eric Stone, to learn more.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Casey Grove: So, what’s in the budget?

Eric Stone: For that, let’s hear from Rep. DeLena Johnson. She’s a Palmer Republican and the House’s operating budget chair.

“This budget prioritizes public safety, education, a strong Permanent Fund dividend, essential services to Alaskans and provides support to Alaska’s most vulnerable populations,” Johnson said.

Some of the highlights are $175 million in one-time funding for public schools, which is equivalent to a $680-per-student increase. And another $44 million for school bond debt reimbursement. There are 10 new Village Public Safety Officers, more attorneys in the Department of Law, and $90 million in community assistance. 

And lots of priorities from the mostly Democratic and independent minority are in there too. Couple of note — an amendment from Ketchikan independent Dan Ortiz that, after some modifications, wound up adding $5 million each to statewide seafood and tourism marketing programs. And another from Juneau Democrat Andi Story adds about $9 million to help with reading programs for young students.

Johnson says nobody’s totally satisfied — and that makes it a good compromise.

“Each person here gave a little and each person got a little. That’s what this budget represents,” Johnson said.

And one of those compromises is the Permanent Fund dividend.

CG: Yeah — always a topic of interest. What is the PFD looking like?

ES: At this point, the House is sticking with about $2,300. That’s the amount set by the Finance Committee. There were a few attempts to change it on the floor, but none wound up sticking. Johnson says the budget as written has a surplus of nearly $80 million. And Rep. Jaime Allard, an Eagle River Republican, says it’s an attempt to pay the biggest dividend possible without jeopardizing future payouts.

“No, it’s not a full PFD, but I want the community and the state constituents to recognize that it is the third largest. We’re doing the best that we can, and in order to make that PFD and the dividend for the long duration of the time, we have to be very careful and wise to what we’re doing,” Allard said.

But not everybody agrees that the state can afford it. Members of the House minority, mostly Democrats and independents, say the budget is artificially low and doesn’t account for lots of stuff that will eventually need to be rolled into the budget — like more than half a billion dollars in capital projects that the House and Senate have agreed to spend. Rep. Cliff Groh, an Anchorage Democrat, put it this way.

“This budget is based on fantasy and it’s, it’s not set us up for success either in the next few years or across generations,” Groh said.

He said new revenues could help with that. And minority members also pointed to some other missing pieces.

CG: What sorts of things?

ES: One missing piece we heard a lot about is the rising cost of energy. Here’s Rep. Maxine Dibert, a Democrat from Fairbanks.

“I can’t in good conscience send a budget over to the other body without addressing energy,” Dibert said.

One specific item is funding for electrical transmission line upgrades that could make energy more affordable, especially in the Interior. The state got a giant federal grant for that, and it requires more than $200 million in matching state funds over several years.

But members of the Republican-led majority said there’s another place for that. Here’s Rep. Will Stapp, a Republican from Fairbanks.

“Energy is certainly the number one problem facing the Interior. It is however, a problem that can best be solved through the budget in the capital budget, Madam Speaker, not the operating budget,” Stapp said.

And the Senate rolled out its draft of the capital budget today — they’ll work through amendments in the coming days and pass it over to the House.

CG: So where do things go from here?

ES: Well, pretty soon, the Senate will take its crack at the operating budget. And they are pretty skeptical that the budget is in fact balanced. The Senate’s operating budget chair, Sitka Republican Sen. Bert Stedman, sounds a lot like what we heard from the Democrats and independents in the House. He’s been beating this drum all session — asking folks to look at what’s not in the budget, and he says with capital projects, bills and everything else, it’s not balanced.

“So (by the) time you add that all in, you’re underwater, somewhere around $276 million. So that’s a lot of gap-osas to deal with in the conference committee. And we have to get the ends to meet,” Stedman said at a press availability on Wednesday.

And that was before amendments added a little under $20 million to the budget. Stedman has been pretty consistent that the dividend should be a quarter of the state’s annual draw from the Permanent Fund, which this year would come out to about $1,600 per person.

For now, though, we’re on track to avoid a government shutdown. This week was the agreed-upon deadline for the operating budget to pass, and it did. But it remains to be seen whether it’ll stay on track.

Julie Kitka, the longtime president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, has been nominated by Alaska’s congressional delegation to be a new co-chair of the Denali Commission, which oversees a variety of federal programs in the state.

AFN is the largest Alaska Native organization. Kitka was elected as its president in 1990, but she joined the organization years earlier. AFN announced in February that Kitka would be stepping down in time for a new president to be selected before this year’s convention.

The Denali Commission, established through an act of Congress passed in 1998 and shepherded by the late Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, is an international federal agency that provides infrastructure and interagency economic support in rural Alaska.

KItka would be the top federal leader on the commission if the nomination is approved. The commission also has a co-chair from the state government, Micaela Fowler.

Kitka is already a member of the commission, representing AFN on it.

Congressional delegation members, in a statement released on Thursday, said Kitka is highly qualified for the position.

“For 33 years, she served as the President of the Alaska Federation of Natives, successfully balancing the needs of a diverse group of tribes, village corporations, regional corporations, regional nonprofits and tribal consortiums, while advocating for Alaskan Natives on a local, state, and federal level,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said in the statement. “There is no one I can think (of) who is more qualified to advocate for economic development in rural Alaska than Julie.”

“Julie’s wealth of leadership experience and vast knowledge of rural Alaska uniquely qualify her to lead the Denali Commission and execute its important mission,” Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said in the statement.

“Julie Kitka is a force of nature. Her work at the forefront of Alaska Native politics has inspired and motivated many across the state,” Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, said in the statement.

If Kitka’s nomination is approved by the U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, she would replace Jocelyn Fenton, currently serving as interim federal co-chair.

For something that’s legally required, taxes can be tough to figure out. The U.S. system is complicated — and unfortunately, most of us never learned how to do our taxes in school.

The deadline to file your taxes this year is April 15. But it helps to get started as soon as possible.

In this guide from Life Kit, we share 6 expert tips you should know about filing your taxes — from what steps to take as the deadline approaches to whether hiring a tax preparer is worth it.

1. You don’t have to pay to file your taxes.

One free option: Download your tax forms from the IRS website, read the instructions, fill everything out and submit by mail or online. That’s easier if someone like a parent has walked you through it before, or if you have a simple tax situation like one job in one state for the entire year.

If your tax situation is more complex, there’s free online software you can use. If your adjusted gross income is $79,000 or less, you qualify for a program called IRS Free File. Find out more at the IRS website.

If you don’t qualify, you can still get deals on online tax software, says Akeiva Ellis, a certified financial planner and the cofounder of The Bemused. She uses a service called Free Tax USA; it charges $14.99 per state, and the federal return is free.

2. Consider tagging in a professional.

Another option is to go to an accountant or tax preparer. That might make sense if you’re doing your taxes for the first time or if you’ve had a major life change — like getting married or starting a new business. It may also make sense if you want to do some tax planning for the year ahead, says Andrea Parness, a CPA and certified tax coach.

If you’re looking for a pro, start by asking friends and family for referrals, she says. And then interview the person. Prepare questions for them: Will they be giving you tax advice or just filling out the forms and submitting them? Will you have an appointment? And what happens if they make a mistake?

3. Gather your documents.

The IRS has a list of documents you might need. Tax preparers can give you one too. Some common examples: W2 forms, which your employers send you by mail; student loan interest forms; bank interest forms; and any receipts for things you’re planning to take as a tax credit or deduction, like medical expenses or charitable donations.

4. Look into tax credits and deductions.

Both are benefits that save you money on taxes. A tax credit lowers your final tax bill; it comes off the top of what you owe. A tax deduction, on the other hand, “reduces the amount of income you have to pay tax on,” Ellis says.

To figure out which credits and deductions you’re eligible for, look at the IRS website. If you use software, it’ll prompt you with questions to help figure this out. So will tax preparers.

But do your research. “You certainly always want to be able to educate yourself and not just depend on someone else asking you, ‘Hey, did you buy a new car? Did you do this? Did you put your kid in daycare?’ … Everybody runs their practice differently and not everybody asks those questions,” Parness says.

5. You can file an extension — but you still have to pay.

If you think you won’t make the April 15 deadline this year, file an extension with the IRS online. Then you’ll have until mid-October to file the forms. But if you owe money, you still need to estimate how much and pay it now, or you might get hit with penalties later.

6. Plan ahead for next year.

Think about what went wrong on your tax return this year. For instance, did you end up owing a ton of money? Did you get a huge refund? That often means you gave the federal government an interest-free loan. You can make changes now so that doesn’t happen next year. For instance, “ask your employer for a W-4 form so you can properly tell them how much taxes to take out of your check,” Ellis says.

Also, look out for tax credits, deductions or rebates that you’re newly eligible for. A little planning and research now could lower your next tax bill.

Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or sign up for our newsletter.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

A fire broke out at one of Ketchikan’s fire stations early Tuesday morning, with multiple emergency vehicles presumed destroyed and heavy structural damage to the building. 

No one was injured in the fire at the southern region station. South Tongass Fire Captain Mio Rhein said no staff were on site when the fire started. 

“We got the fire alarm reported by the alarm company,” Rhein said. “(We) responded as we normally do, and found it to be smoked (out), with some small amount of flame showing out of the one end, and heavy smoke rolling out of the doors.”

Rhein said the blaze was mostly concentrated in one end of the bay, but there were a few smaller fires as well as heavy smoke damage throughout the building. The Ketchikan Gateway Borough said in a written statement that the fire was started by a piece of equipment, but that the exact source will be confirmed following a State Fire Marshal investigation.

The South Tongass Fire Department has only four full-time staff and relies heavily on about two dozen volunteers. When responding to calls from home, Rhein said most of the firefighters have basic “turnout gear” like coats and pants, but they need to retrieve an “apparatus,” or emergency vehicle, from the station.

“Normally you come to the station in your personal vehicle, you grab the apparatus, and respond to the fire,” Rhein said. “So it is a bit disconcerting when the apparatus is inside the fire.”

One of the South Tongass fire engines was not in the building at the time. It was stationed in nearby Saxman, so Rhein said that allowed them to respond quickly. 

“You get up in the middle of the night and go to a fire. And you expect fire, but you just don’t expect it to be in the fire station,” Rhein said. “That’s definitely an anomaly and an incredible irony. And not as funny as it may be in a couple of years.”

The fire broke out at 2 a.m. Wednesday morning and was under control before 4 a.m., according to the borough. Borough officials said they expect at least three vehicles will be a total loss, with two more damaged.

South Tongass responders are currently operating out of the Ketchikan city’s downtown station, and are still providing full fire and EMS service to their service area.

The City and Borough of Wrangell has loaned Ketchikan one of its three ambulances to maintain emergency service while the burned vehicles are replaced.

KSTK’s Colette Czarnecki contributed information to this story.

WASHINGTON — Longtime Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour went public this week with alarming claims about two of the company’s jets, including the 787 Dreamliner.

In a virtual meeting with reporters, Salehpour said Boeing was so eager to meet its production goals that it took “shortcuts” when it fastened together the carbon-composite fuselage of the 787. That could dramatically shorten the life of the plane, he warned, potentially causing it to break apart in mid-flight.

“I’m doing this not because I want Boeing to fail, but because I want it to succeed, and prevent crashes from happening,” Salehpour said. “The truth is, Boeing can’t keep going the way it is. It needs to do a little bit better, I think.”

Boeing disputes Salehpour’s claims, calling them “inaccurate” and saying the company is “fully confident” in the 787.

Salehpour joins a growing list of current and former Boeing employees who say the company has ignored their concerns — and then retaliated against them when they spoke up. The company denies that, but aviation experts say Boeing needs to do a better job of listening to its employees.

The latest allegations come as Boeing is struggling to rebuild trust with airlines and the public after a door plug panel blew out in midair from a 737 Max 9 in January.

That incident has already forced CEO Dave Calhoun to announce he will depart at the end of the year. And it prompted the company’s Chief Financial Officer, Brian West, to acknowledge that Boeing has made mistakes.

“For years, we prioritized the movement of the airplane through the factory over getting it done right. And that’s got to change,” West said at an investor conference last month. Boeing’s leaders also need to do a better job of listening to its workforce, he said.

A ‘disconnect’ between Boeing’s leaders and the factory floor

In its statement about the latest allegations, Boeing said all employees are encouraged “to speak up when issues arise. Retaliation is strictly prohibited at Boeing.”

But independent experts charged with evaluating the company’s safety practices say that’s not how many Boeing employees see it.

“You cannot have a safety culture where the people that are doing the work don’t believe what they’re hearing,” said Javier de Luis, a lecturer in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

De Luis’s sister Graziella died in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in 2019. De Luis served on an expert panel convened by the Federal Aviation Administration after the crash of that Boeing 737 Max 8 jet, and another one the year before, that killed 346 people in total.

De Luis says the panel found a “disconnect” between Boeing’s management and the factory floor.

“It’s one thing to hear, ‘yes, speak up if you see anything wrong.’ And then you go and talk to the folks that are doing the work. And they say, ‘yeah, but my buddy spoke up and next thing he knew, he was being transferred out, or being given write ups for minor things,'” de Luis said.

Other whistleblowers say they faced retaliation

Former Boeing mechanic Davin Fischer says he spoke up — and paid a steep price for it.

Fischer worked for Boeing as a mechanic at the factory in Renton, Wash. where the company builds the 737 Max. He says Boeing’s leaders were constantly pushing to speed up production.

“Hey, we need to go faster, faster, faster,” Fischer said. “They cared more about shareholders and investors than they did planes, their employees, anything.”

When Fischer finally pushed back, he says he was demoted in retaliation, and then fired from the company in 2019. Fischer says many of his friends who still work at Boeing are afraid to speak out.

“People there are scared, a hundred percent,” he said. “Because they don’t want to get fired.”

There’s also the example of John Barnett, a longtime quality manager who blew the whistle on Boeing in 2019, alleging that the company was covering up serious defects with the 787 Dreamliner.

“I’m not gonna lie, it’s been rough on me. It’s been rough on my family. I’m still dealing with issues. I’m still having anxiety attacks, PTSD,” Barnett said in a 2019 interview with Ralph Nader. (Nader’s grandniece, Samya Stumo, was killed in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302).

Barnett said his managers at Boeing retaliated against him by docking his pay and creating a hostile environment, eventually forcing him into early retirement.

“It’s taken a serious mental and emotional toll on me. But you know, I want to try very hard to keep the focus on the safety of the airplane. That’s what my story is about,” Barnett said. “It keeps me up at night. I can’t sleep. It’s taken a heck of a toll on me.”

Barnett filed a complaint against Boeing for wrongful termination. On the third day of depositions in that case last month, Barnett was found dead in his truck of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to police in South Carolina.

Latest whistleblower says Boeing must account for its mistakes

The latest Boeing whistleblower, engineer Sam Salehpour, alleges that he faced retaliation as well. His lawyer, Debra Katz, says Salehpour brought his concerns to managers repeatedly.

“Initially, he was just told to shut up. Then he was told he was a problem. Then he was excluded from meetings,” Katz said. “He was barred from speaking to structural engineers. He was barred from speaking to mathematicians and others to help him understand the data. And at one point, his boss threatened him with physical violence.”

Katz says Salehpour reported the threat to human resources. That’s when Boeing moved him from the 787 to a different plane. Still, Salehpour insists he’s not angry.

“Despite the treatment and retaliation I have experienced in the company, I’m not bitter,” Salehpour told reporters this week. “Boeing has to realize that implementing a real safety culture moving forward also means accounting for, admitting the mistakes and correcting the mistakes that have been made over 20 years.”

Salehpour will have another chance to share his story next week, when he’s scheduled to testify before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday.

Boeing has been invited too, but it’s more likely that someone from the company will testify at a later date.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

State education officials continue to dispute the federal government’s claim that Alaska didn’t fund schools equitably during the pandemic.

In December, federal education officials said Alaska failed to meet conditions attached to COVID relief funding for schools. The rule, called “maintenance of equity,” said states couldn’t disproportionately reduce state funding to its highest need districts when it gave out pandemic relief.

The U.S. Department of Education says Alaska did that in four school districts: the Juneau School District, Anchorage School District, Fairbanks North Star Borough School District and Kenai Peninsula Borough School District.

But during an April 5 press call, Alaska Department of Education and Early Development Commissioner Deena Bishop said Alaska followed its funding formula as usual during the pandemic.

“This equalized funding approach did not change during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Bishop said. “Alaska did not reduce per-pupil spending on education in any of our school districts in order to take advantage of federal funds.”

Bishop said districts lost students during those years. Since state funding is based on enrollment in a district, a drop in enrollment means a drop in state funding.

“This is not a reduction or cut, it’s simply how the state formula works,” Bishop said.

Alaska’s school funding formula starts with a base amount per student — called the base student allocation — and then makes adjustments for things like school size, the number of students with intensive special needs and other factors specific to each district. The goal is to recognize the wide range of students’ needs across the state and provide the funding to meet them.

The state also has a provision called “hold harmless,” which helps districts who’ve lost students by gradually reducing the amount of state funding they receive over the course of three years instead of immediately.

All those factors mean state funding varies from year to year. During the pandemic, as some students dropped out of brick and mortar schools and enrolled in homeschool programs, the amount of funding they generated for districts changed.

Bishop stressed that the maintenance of equity requirement was the first of its kind.

“For states with an equalized per-pupil funding formula like ours, there was no way to know how to comply, if simply maintaining your funding and distribution in the same historical manner was insufficient,” she said.

And she said the state’s passage of the disparity test — a separate federal rule that allows the state to count some federal aid as state education funding — shows that the state fairly funds all districts.

Last week, federal policy advisor Austin Reid told the Alaska Senate Education Committee that more than 40 states were initially deemed out of compliance with the maintenance of equity requirements. 

“To date, I’m aware of at least seven states that have made supplemental appropriations to demonstrate compliance for fiscal year 2022, with payments ranging from several hundred thousands of dollars, up to nearly $100 million,” he said.

Last month, the Department of Education said Alaska could resolve its non-compliance by sending nearly $30 million to the four school districts. The department did not respond to a request for comment on Bishop’s claim that Alaska did fund schools equitably by following the formula.

Bishop said it’s too early to say whether supplemental payments are the only solution. She said she hoped to meet with federal education officials sometime this week.

More than 70% of Alaskans live in the communities along the road system stretching from Fairbanks, through Anchorage, to Kenai, known as the railbelt. Residents of those communities are facing a spike in energy costs that will bring up prices statewide, due to a looming shortage of Cook Inlet natural gas. On this episode of Alaska Insight, host Lori Townsend is joined by John Sims, CEO of ENSTAR Natural Gas, to discuss the future of railbelt energy and Cook Inlet gas production.

Related:

• Cook Inlet gas production and railbelt energy | Talk of Alaska

This Week’s Headlines:

• Alaska House passes operating budget with roughly $2,300 PFD
• Alaska delegation nominates longtime Native leader to be co-chair of the Denali Commission
• Majority of Alaskans voted across party lines in ’22 primary, study says

It’s been a snowy winter in Anchorage, so snowy, in fact, that 2023-2024 will go down as at least the city’s third snowiest winter on record.

A whopping 132.4 inches of snow — just a little over 11 feet — fell on Anchorage over the winter, as of the latest measurement Friday. That’s only 0.2 inches shy of the second snowiest winter of 1954 and ’55 and about two inches away from the all-time record of 134.5 inches set in 2011-2012.

But will the city see enough snow still this season to break either of those records?

Not likely, at least for the all-time record, say National Weather Service climate researcher Brian Brettschneider and meteorologist Carson Jones, in this special edition of Ask a Climatologist and His Forecaster Friend. But Jones isn’t ruling out a second-place finish just yet.

Listen:

[Sign up for Alaska Public Media’s daily newsletter to get our top stories delivered to your inbox.]

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Carson Jones: So if we get another shower to that moves over our measuring location in West Anchorage, say tonight, then we might get into that second place category. We only need .2 inches. But otherwise, as you get further in April, we’re just getting a lot of daylight, the sun is getting stronger. Particularly if it snows during the daytime hours, it’s really hard to measure any accumulation. So it really has to happen overnight. But last year, we measured 1.7 inches in May. So there is that chance for something late season to happen that could could throw us over into the record territory.

Casey Grove: Yeah, I’m a little bit torn on this, because I was out at your guys’ office back in 2012 to see the measurement that broke the all-time record. So I’m kind of like, well, I got to see that, like, I’m not really interested in breaking the record as much. But how does that measurement actually work? It’s been, you know, 12 years since I saw that happen. I’ve killed a few brain cells since then. So like, what do you actually do? Is it a certain time of day? And how do you carry out that measurement?

CJ: Yeah, so with everything, it has to be standardized for the climate record (for) accuracy. So we measure at a minimum four times a day, so 4 a.m., 10 a.m., 4 p.m., 10 p.m. But in conditions like this, like we had today, really heavy shower goes over, you might get some accumulation really quickly, but it’s 35 degrees. So we go out, and we’ll measure that quickly, just so it’s not lost to melting, essentially.

CG: Gotcha. And then, are you you just use like a ruler? How do you do that?

CJ: We have a snow table in the yard behind our office. And that’s a white surface, so it tries to not really absorb any heat. So we measure it on that table, and then we clear it off on those six-hour increments.

CG: Well, so Brian, I wanted to ask you, is there any significance climatologically? Does that tell you anything that we had such a huge snow year this year?

Brian Brettschneider: Not really, because if you look at say, the last 15 years, you know, we had that record snow year in 2011-12. And this year, that’s near the record. We also had some pretty lousy snow winters, as well. So over the last 15 years, our average snowfall is only two inches more than the long-term average. And so it can be a little bit difficult to communicate that when you have a big snow year, and two in a row, that maybe this is the new normal. But (in) 2014-15, 2015-16 (Anchorage had) 20 inches, 25 inches for the entire season. That could happen again. Let’s hope not, but we shouldn’t expect big snow years to be the normal now.

CG: Correct me if I’m wrong, but the difference that you would expect to see with climate change, as the climate warms, is that the atmosphere can hold more moisture, right? But with snowfall, that’s more complicated than maybe more precipitation from more moisture, because you’re also warming things up. And of course, it needs to be cold enough to snow, right? So how does that all work again?

BB: So yes, but it is a little tricky, as you noted, with snow. So as you warm things up, the air can hold more moisture, and so as long as you’re still below freezing, you can squeeze out more snowfall. So what we’ve seen in most of the mainland (of Alaska ) is an increase in snowfall for the core winter months, you know, December, January, February, and a dramatic reduction in snow in the fall in the spring. And so that kind of, the net is, you know, we’re kind of hanging in there on snowfall, but we’re really squeezing that snow season in. And all you have to do is look at Juneau. You know, when you warm things up three or four or five degrees, you get a whole lot of winter rain. And so far in Southcentral, most of the mainland, we have avoided winter rain. We still get some but not like they do down in Southeast. But that’s probably our future in coming decades.

CG: What’s the snowpack like? I mean, the fact that there’s still snow out there from like November seems to indicate that we would have a pretty deep snowpack right now. Is that the case?

BB: Statewide we’re running at about 25% above normal for the snowpack. Here in Anchorage, we are at 22 inches for our snow depth. And that’s kind of notable, because we’re only two days away from, two or three days, from when we typically melt out our snowpack. So obviously, it’s going to be a little bit late this year. You know, if I had to guess, I would say probably about 10 days or so it’ll melt out, because it tends to go pretty fast once it starts going, and we’re supposed to get up to near upper 40s to maybe even near 50 degrees in seven or eight days. So it’ll it’ll start melting in a big hurry.

The Alaska House on Thursday rejected a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would guarantee Permanent Fund dividends paid out according to a formula in state law. House lawmakers had been waiting for more than a month to take a final vote on the measure, one of several elements of a long-term fiscal plan for the state proposed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in 2021.

Rep. Ben Carpenter, R-Nikiski, brought the amendment forward.

“The purpose of this constitutional amendment is to protect the Permanent Fund and improve the stability and predictability of our state finances,” he said.

For decades, the state paid out Permanent Fund dividends based on a formula in state law. That changed in 2016 when Gov. Bill Walker vetoed half of the payout. The Alaska Supreme Court upheld the veto, saying the PFD had to compete for money in the budget just like any other state program. And ever since, the PFD has been the subject of intense debate during the legislative session.

In 2021, a bipartisan group of lawmakers put their heads together and came out with a report aimed at settling the annual debate. Among their recommendations was to create “constitutional certainty for the PFD.” 

And House Joint Resolution 7, if approved by the House, Senate and the voters, would do that.

The problem, said Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, is that the formula would pay out a much larger dividend than the state can afford. The formula calls for a payout of more than $3,000 this year.

“This creates a billion-dollar instant deficit,” Josephson said. “This is sort of like, press green button, create fiscal crisis.”

Supporters of the amendment didn’t disagree with Josephson.

“I think it’s correct. It will, if passed, it will cause a crisis,” said Mike Prax, R-North Pole.

But, Rep. Craig Johnson, R-Anchorage, who also backed the resolution, said it would make a formula rewrite a financial necessity.

“Basically, all this bill does, is it forces us to make a decision,” Johnson said.

But would it? Rep. Jesse Sumner, R-Wasilla, was a bit more skeptical.

“I’m just not certain that there’s the will in the body to actually address this, and I would like to know that,” Sumner said.

He asked the House to show its commitment by advancing a bill that would change the formula — instead of the older calculation, it’d be set at 50% of the state’s annual draw on the Permanent Fund. And the House agreed by a near-unanimous vote, taking the bill out of the hands of the Finance Committee and sending it to the floor.

But the move didn’t explicitly link the two. The formula would have to pass on its own at an unspecified later date. Rep. Justin Ruffridge, R-Soldotna, acknowledged that moving one item without the other would be an act of faith.

“I hope that this body has the intention and the trust with each other. I know that’s difficult to have in the political arena, but we may have to have it — just a little bit of trust that we can see this through to the end of the process,” Ruffridge said.

And ultimately, the necessary two-thirds majority to pass didn’t have that trust. The resolution failed 22-18, five votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to advance.

Despite the setback, Carpenter said he’s undeterred.

“The only thing that we can do is to press forward and continue building support for something, and time will tell whether we’re going to be successful at that,” Carpenter said.

An Anchorage Superior Court judge on Friday struck down an Alaska law that allows the state to distribute cash payments to the parents of homeschooled students on the grounds that it violates constitutional prohibitions against spending state money on private education.

“This court finds that there is no workable way to construe the statutes to allow only constitutional spending,” wrote Judge Adolf Zeman, concluding that the relevant laws “must be struck down in their entirety.”

The decision has major and immediate implications for the 22,289 students enrolled in state-operated correspondence programs used by homeschooled students. 

Lon Garrison, executive director of the Alaska Association of School Boards, said he believes that with the allotment program eliminated, the state will automatically return to the system it was using before 2014, when the program was created.

Zeman also ruled unconstitutional a law that requires correspondence programs to create individualized learning plans for participating students.

“I’m blown away by his verdict,” said Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River and co-chair of the House Education Committee. She said she had been expecting a ruling on the funding aspect, but not something as broad as Friday’s decision.

Scott Kendall, the attorney who represented plaintiffs suing the state, said he believes the changes will not disrupt correspondence programs.

“What is prevented here is this purchasing from outside vendors that have essentially contorted the correspondence school program into a shadow school voucher program,” he said. “So that shadow school voucher program that was in violation of the Constitution, as of today, with the stroke of a pen, is dead.”

The change throws a hot potato into the halls of the Alaska Legislature, which has been struggling for months to pass education legislation. 

“This is going to become a hot-button legislative item,” said Rep. Justin Ruffridge, R-Soldotna and co-chair of the House Education Committee. “I would imagine that would quickly become a No. 1 legislative priority.”

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, also expressed concern.

“It couldn’t have come in some ways at a worse time to do because this, it’s a major, major policy issue. And we’ve got the budget that we’re dealing with — the capital budget, the operating budget, we’ve got energy, a whole host of energy issues, and a whole host of bills that are out there,” he said.

Wielechowski said the attorneys for the plaintiff expect the state to ask for a stay, which would postpone the enactment of the ruling.

“My hope is there is a stay until the school year’s out so that parents can get through the school year,” he said. “And then we’ll see what the Supreme Court says and hopefully the Supreme Court takes it up quickly, picks it up quickly and gives us some final guidance on this.”

The stakes for correspondence programs and public schools in general are high. Since the 2014 law, roughly 10% of Alaska school enrollment has shifted from school buildings to correspondence programs, with the pace of the shift accelerating over the past four years.

Allotment program was Dunleavy brainchild

Alaska has operated correspondence programs for homeschooled students since before statehood, but only recently have those programs begun giving cash allocations to families.

In 2013, then-Sen. Mike Dunleavy sponsored legislative language that allowed parents of correspondence program students to spend their share of state education money, labeled an allotment, on “nonsectarian services and materials from a public, private, or religious organization.” 

Article VII, Section 1 of the Alaska Constitution states in part that “No money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution,” and Dunleavy simultaneously attempted to amend that section of the constitution.

The constitutional amendment failed, but Dunleavy’s proposal became law the following year, even as some legislators raised concerns that it could be found unconstitutional. 

The state began allowing parents to spend correspondence program money on nonreligious materials, but those materials could be purchased from public, private or religious organizations.

After Dunleavy became governor in 2018, the state appeared to expand the ways that allotments could be used.

In 2022, reporting from the Alaska Beacon found several state-licensed homeschool programs had begun allowing participants to use their allotments to pay for classes at private and religious schools after Dunleavy became governor.

Jodi Taylor, the spouse of Attorney General Treg Taylor, wrote publicly that year about her plans to use correspondence allotments for private school tuition and wrote instructions to help other parents follow suit.

Two months later, Deputy Attorney General Cori Mills issued a legal opinion concluding that the practice did not violate the Alaska Constitution to pay for one or two classes, while saying that the money can’t pay for most of a student’s private school tuition.

The idea appears to remain widespread today. The Alaska Policy Forum, a limited-government group that once included Jodi Taylor on its policy board, listed nine programs that permitted allotments to be spent on private schools.

Teachers and parents file lawsuit

In response to the state’s decision, a group of four teachers and parents filed suit against the state’s education commissioner and the state of Alaska in January 2023, alleging that the state’s system of correspondence program allotments “is being used to reimburse parents for thousands of dollars in private educational institution services using public funds thereby indirectly funding private education in violation … of the Alaska Constitution.”

It was the first time that the constitutionality of the program, then almost nine years old, had been challenged.

The plaintiffs were represented by Kendall, an attorney with the firm Cashion, Gilmore and Lindemuth. They argued in written filings and in an October oral argument that the allotment program violated the plain language of the state constitution. 

In its section on public education, the constitution says: “No money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

Attorneys representing the state of Alaska argued that the allotment program should be preserved because even though a school district might use the program unconstitutionally, “the statutes also have many constitutional applications.”

Judge Zeman, examining the legislative history of the program, concluded otherwise, saying that “the statutes were drafted with the express purpose of allowing purchases of private educational services with the public correspondence student allotments.”

He went on to say that there was no way for the state to repair the unconstitutional language by regulation and that he could not rule only part of the law unconstitutional.

“Parents have the right to determine how their children are educated,” Zeman wrote. “However, the framers of our constitution and the subsequent case law clearly indicate that public funds are not to be spent on private educations.”

Attempting to preserve part of the law would amount to effectively writing a new law, Zeman concluded.

“If the legislature believes these expenditures are necessary—then it is up to them to craft constitutional legislation to serve that purpose—that is not this Court’s role,” Zeman said.

‘Huge ramifications’

Wielechowski said he was stunned by the ruling. Several legislators said they had expected Zeman to preserve the allotment program but limit its use.

“I read the whole thing — and then I got to that last page. And I didn’t expect that, for them to strike down the entire statute, the entire section. I was surprised at that. And it’s got potentially huge ramifications. Really enormous ramifications,” Wielechowski said.

Garrison said he was “pretty excited” about the ruling because he has long had concerns about state education money going to private and religious organizations. 

Those concerns have been echoed by others in the state Capitol during this year’s debates over a multipart education bill. Dunleavy encouraged lawmakers to increase the number of state charter schools, but opponents of the idea feared that the combination of allotments and charter schools would amount to a “shadow school voucher program,” as Kendall said.

“Really what was going on here was the reimbursement of state funds to pay for tuition at private schools. That was really, in a nutshell, what this case was all about,” he said. Now that cannot happen any longer, but Kendall stressed that the ruling does not affect parents retroactively.

Garrison said that those fears were at the root of his opposition to Dunleavy’s charter reform proposal, which would make the state Board of Education and Early Development a charter school authorizer. He said that could lead to privately operated charters. Garrison still opposes the policy, but this ruling puts that concern to rest, he said. 

NEA-Alaska, the state’s largest teachers’ union, funded the lawsuit against the state, and afterward, it issued a congratulatory email to supporters.

“We’re still reading through the entire ruling but it’s fair to say that this is a big win for public education in Alaska,” NEA-Alaska President Tom Klaameyer said in the email. “I wanted to say thank you, particularly to our Board of Directors, for believing in this lawsuit and putting our money where our mouth was to uphold the Alaska Constitution.”

The Alaska Department of Law had a different conclusion. 

Responding by email Friday evening, Mills said, “We have just received this 33-page decision from the Superior Court a few minutes ago and are beginning to review. But we can see that the court apparently struck down the correspondence study programs as contrary to the state Constitution. The ruling is very concerning. This is a public school program for public school children. This could result in taking away important public education opportunities from Alaskan families. We are evaluating next options.”

Allard said she doesn’t understand the resistance to the allotment program and its uses.

“We’re trying to educate our children. Why are we trying to fight the different ways that children learn?” she said. “If we want a better education system, then we need to be flexible.”

Appeal is likely, experts believe

Though the state of Alaska has yet to say whether it will appeal Friday’s decision, Kendall, Wielechowski, and others said they expect that the Alaska Supreme Court will eventually be asked to examine Zeman’s conclusions.

It’s also possible that the decision could be stayed — or put on hold — until the end of the state’s fiscal year on June 30 to avoid disruptions for students in correspondence programs. Wielechowski said he would support such a stay. 

It’s possible that the Alaska Supreme Court won’t have the final word on the topic, either. A decision by the state’s high justices could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Allard said she believes that’s likely.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that Maine could not prohibit a state-run voucher program from being used at religious schools. That decision followed a similar one out of Montana in 2020. 

“There is no doubt, based federally, that they support public funding for all schools, including faith-based,” Allard said of the Supreme Court justices.

But Wielechowski, a practicing attorney, said those cases involved instances where states attempted to allow public money for non-religious schools but not religious ones.

Here, Alaska’s Constitution prohibits public money for religious and non-religious private schools alike, treating them equally.

“The U.S. Supreme Court would have to fundamentally say that public funds must be used for private education and religious education,” he said. “I would be shocked if the Supreme Court said that.”

Alaska’s lone member of the U.S. House says her chief concern is the economy and how her constituents are faring in it. 

Rep. Mary Peltola visited Ketchikan April 3, as she campaigns for her second full term in office. She sat down with KRBD’s Michael Fanelli to discuss some of the pressing issues facing Alaskans, ranging from housing to mental health to a changing climate.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Michael Fanelli: First off, I want to ask about housing, a shared concern across Alaska, but especially here in Ketchikan. Prices have been soaring in recent years. I recently moved here, and it is very difficult to find — there’s very few rentals on the market at any price, let alone an affordable price. So I’m just curious what can be done at a federal level to help both housing affordability and availability in Alaska?

Mary Peltola: Well I think that across Alaska, I don’t think there’s a community that is an exception to very, very limited rentals, very limited market for buying homes. And we are very aware of how overcrowded homes are, how hard it is to find a place, how expensive like you say. And this isn’t unique to Alaska, but I think it’s exacerbated in Alaska. And I have really been working hard with folks at the Anchorage municipal level, letting them know that we can no longer at the federal level or state level expect municipalities to shoulder this burden alone.

We’ve got very, very high commodities right now. All of the commodities to build a home have really skyrocketed in price. The freight costs are much higher now. But there are programs at the federal level that I think that we need to revisit. Chief among them is NAHASDA, and that is a housing program for Native people. Most communities in Alaska qualify for the NAHASDA housing and have a regional housing authority in each region that shepherds that money and those projects. That has been underfunded and it has not been reauthorized for a very long time, so that is a priority for me. I think VA, the (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs), could be doing a much better job working with veterans to make sure that vets have housing. There are young people, such as yourself, who really need single unit homes or smaller homes, smaller apartments, smaller options, more affordable options. But this is just something that everybody is feeling very acutely right now.

MF: Opioid and other substance use addictions are a big problem here as they are throughout Alaska and the country. And a crucial part of addressing that, obviously, is having healthcare and mental healthcare resources. And I know that federal dollars exist to support that. What is holding us up from receiving more federal support for mental health?

MP: That is a good question. And that is not something I’ve focused on. And not that it’s not important, it is very important. I think across Alaska, we are short on providers, both for physical health and mental health.

So one of the positions — we’re a very small staff, but we are continuing to staff up. One of the positions that we are creating, because of the huge, generational funding packages that have come out of the 117th Congress, we have hired a grants coordinator, to help communities, to help different interest groups, look for and successfully achieve many of the federal grants that are out there. I think that most Alaskans know that grants are not very easy to compete for. You have to know a lot of the magic words. So we are very pleased to report that we have a new person in that position who’s well trained, well qualified to do that work.

MF: I want to talk about climate. You mentioned in that (address to the Alaska Legislature), you talked about houses sinking into the permafrost. There are entire villages in Western Alaska that need to be relocated because of erosion. Here in Southeast, we just saw a devastating landslide in Wrangle. And scientists are saying that the landslides are becoming more common because of climate change. So I’m curious what you are working on, what can be done to slow down the effects of climate change?

MP: Well, I think everyone is leaning into renewables, both in terms of it being a, renewables providing a cheaper form of energy for households, but also to reduce our larger carbon footprint. And as far as Alaskans are concerned, this will ultimately benefit us because we won’t be barging back in refined oil at very top dollar. And everyone, like you say, can see impacts within their own lifetime of weather changes. Our shoulder seasons of spring and fall are much longer. So this is a very real issue for Alaskans.

Fishermen, we can see that in our lifetime fish abundance has gone way down and certainly a contributor to that has to be the climate. Chinook salmon are on the downtrend. Across the state there isn’t a river that has abundant Chinook returns at this point. Reds are doing fantastic because reds do well when there’s a one or two degree temperature increase. So there are definitely signs that need to be taken seriously. And we are working on that. It is very important to me that we meet these goals of making sure we’re not raising our global temperature by too many degrees.

MF: I appreciate that answer, I’m glad you mentioned the fish, because another aspect of climate change is related to fish, which you’re really passionate about. You ran on that platform. And science has shown that warming water is a leading culprit in things like the snow crab crash and the king salmon on the Yukon and king salmon all over aren’t doing well, right.

MP: I also want to put a plug in for herring and herring eggs. This is herring egg season, and we’ve also seen a drastic downturn in the numbers of herring. And that’s a huge concern, especially in Southeast Alaska, but honestly, all over Alaska. I trade for herring eggs. A lot of people I know rely on herring eggs. There’s a dish called Eskimo salad and herring eggs is a huge, critical ingredient in that recipe. So how the herring is doing is really of importance to so many people across the state.

MF: Yeah, so you recognize all of these problems. And so I guess what I struggle to wrap my head around is, I think something a lot of Alaskans wrestle with. We live in this place that is full of so many wonderful natural resources. And at the same time, we are fiscally reliant on oil extraction, which is destroying those natural resources. So I’m curious how you reconcile those two things.

MP: So having served in the state legislature for 10 years, I’m very acutely aware of where our money comes from, and the obligations the state has to fund education, public safety and transportation. And around 80% of the budget that the state has comes from oil taxes. And we’ve seen that we’ve been in an economic slump for at least 11 years. Getting the Willow project approved and moving has already infused $2 billion into the Alaskan economy. And as Alaska’s sole congressman, it really is my job to care deeply about the economy. I think it is Congress’s job to care about the economy and how people are doing. Everybody needs a good paying job. Everybody’s got to put beans on the table. And in Alaska, the economic engine has been resource extraction. And we have not, in a fast enough way, come up with an alternative to this. And I think we’re all leaning into it, but one of the obstacles is a very cumbersome permitting process. It takes about 10 years for anything to be permitted in Alaska, whether that’s a renewable project, or a petroleum project. That is too long. I think that’s unreasonable to expect that there are going to be investors who can float a project through permitting for 10 years. 

But we’ve got to have a system — if we’re really going to transition, if we’re really, you know, onto renewables, if we’re really going to transition away from petroleum, we have to do so much more than we’re doing. We don’t even have the workforce that we need to put in these new power systems and transmission lines and then maintain them. That’s actually the number one obstacle that we’re facing right now. And we are having conversations with labor and other trades, to figure out ways, pipelines to get young people into those careers. And that’s something that we’re very serious about. And we’re seeing more and more school districts certify young people before they even graduate, get various certifications, so they can go on to different fields. But having good paying livable wage jobs is so important in Alaska, because like you say, you’re just not going to make ends meet, if you have multiple part time jobs or jobs that aren’t accounting for the high cost of living here.

MF: Can I end on a lighter note? I’m curious how you’re liking the job. You’ve lamented the current state of Congress, you’ve called it the “do nothing Congress.” A lot of people are quitting, a lot of moderates are throwing in their hat. What is your take? Do you have hope for Congress moving forward?

MP: I do have hope, I am very hopeful. I think Americans and certainly Alaskans are ready for our elected officials to get to work and accomplish things and work together. I think we are leaning in that direction. I really enjoy working with both of our US senators. I have a good working relationship with our governor. So I feel that our statewide delegation works very, very well together, very collaboratively on everything, whether it’s Military Academy nominations, or appropriations or amicus brief letters. We work so well together. And it’s been a surprise, I mean, to me, and a couple other members, but it’s been really good. And I love working for Alaskans. I love meeting Alaskans and learning more about our state and working as hard as I possibly can in Washington, D.C., to explain how unique we are and just all the things we’ve got going in Alaska.

ISTANBUL — From President Ebrahim Raisi on down, Iranian officials are heaping praise on the attack the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched against Israel Sunday. The widespread response comes despite Israel saying 99% of Iran’s more than 300 missiles and drones were intercepted.

Raisi said the IRGC had “taught a lesson to the Zionist entity,” using Tehran’s preferred term for Israel.

Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency reported that a top Iranian lawmaker, Mojtaba Zonnouri, said the IRGC’s “punitive operation” was a “victory” and “was a cause of pride for the people as it humiliated the Israeli regime.”

At the United Nations in New York, Iran’s Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani declared the operation was “completely in line with the Islamic Republic’s inherent right to self-defense” after an airstrike in Damascus killed seven IRGC members, including two generals, on April 1. Iran blames Israel for the strike, but Israel has not claimed responsibility for it.

Iravani added that Iran’s missiles exclusively targeted “military objectives” and said Iran had “no intention of engaging in conflict with the U.S.”

Iran’s English-language Press TV news site led with a story based on anonymous IRGC sources who claimed that “all hypersonic missiles in Iran’s strikes against Israel hit targets.” That claim could not immediately be confirmed.

Praise for the Iranian attack also spread beyond Iran itself. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, and some Russian news sites quoted officials who were quick to applaud the attack too.

Worries about escalation and questions about deterrence

One unprecedented aspect of the Iranian attack on Israel is that it was not farmed out to proxy militias such as the Houthis in Yemen, various militias in Iraq or Hezbollah in Lebanon, although those groups did carry out attacks they said were in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

In the days between the April 1 strike in Damascus and Iran’s response, Israel made a point of warning Iran that any attack launched from Iran itself could provoke a retaliatory attack on Iranian soil. That in turn prompted Iranian officials to warn that any strike by Israel would be met with an “even greater” and more resolute Iranian response.

Tehran also had a warning for Washington, saying that if the U.S. used any of its assets in the region to assist with an Israeli attack, American personnel and bases would be legitimate targets for future attack. That warning was seen as possibly intended to fan fears abroad of a wider regional conflict.

Israeli media reported that the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel’s Negev Desert had been struck but no significant damage had been caused. Aside from this, any other possible damage in Israel from the attack so far is unclear.

Iran was fairly specific about what it was trying to accomplish with its attack. The head of Iran’s air force, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said the intention was to hit the Nevatim Airbase and the Israel Defense Forces intelligence center at Mt. Hermon in the northwest. But preliminary reports said the base remains operational, and there are no reports of significant damage to the intelligence center.

The attack has also raised questions both in and outside Israel about what recent events mean in terms of Israel’s ability to deter attacks against it.

What that may mean for the way Washington goes about supporting its closest Middle East ally, and for Israel’s approach to maintaining its own security, is likely to be the subject of much discussion and planning over the coming weeks and months.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Technicians have laid the first stretch of fiber-optic cable for the massive AIRRAQ broadband internet network in Western Alaska. It’s a partnership between telecommunications provider GCI and Bethel Native Corporation.

In a press release, GCI said that crews took advantage of a late winter construction window to lay 45 miles of cable over the frozen tundra, beginning in Napaskiak and ending just south of Eek. Crews will complete the remaining miles of the tundra route segment in the spring, crossing the Kuskokwim River and other smaller waterways on the way to Eek, according to the release.

The first miles of cable are just a fraction of the more than 900-mile network planned for completion by the end of 2027, which will connect Bethel and a dozen other communities to the new network.

RELATED: With massive federal funding, Western Alaska fiber optic projects prepare for rollout

In addition to stringing cables over the tundra and through the Kuskokwim River, the AIRRAQ Network has received federal funding to deploy hundreds of miles of sub-sea cables tracing the Bering Sea coast to Emmonak near the mouth of the Yukon River. This would bring the network within around 120 miles of an existing fiber network serving Nome, operated by Quintillion.

The network is anticipated to deliver 2.5 gigabit-per-second speeds at urban speeds and urban pricing to the far-flung communities of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Both GCI and Bethel Native Corporation have touted the AIRRAQ Network as the key to closing the digital divide in Western Alaska.

According to GCI program manager Rebecca Markley, AIRRAQ has a very busy summer ahead, with plans to deploy both sub-sea and river cable. The project is also planning to deploy the landing stations and fiber shelters that will ultimately deliver broadband directly into homes across the region, some as early as fall 2025.

TJ Beers stood across the street from the Capitol in a navy suit and held a sign that caught the late afternoon sun on Tuesday. It was printed on a large piece of cardboard, reminiscent of what an unhoused person may sleep on, and said: “A record 51+ homeless residents died on Anchorage streets in the 2023-24 year.” On its reverse was printed: “Please support a homeless bill of rights.”

Beers traveled from Anchorage to Juneau to ask lawmakers to join three other states in codifying the civil and human rights of people experiencing homelessness. He said a bill of rights would keep homeless people safe and be a first step to helping them become housed.

“I want to help the homeless people, I want to push for a homeless bill of rights. Because we need one, the homeless situation in this country is bad and it’s getting worse,” Beers said.

His push comes as those rights are being decided in Alaska and nationally.

Three states — Rhode Island, Connecticut and Illinois — have passed bills that affirm that homeless people have equal rights to housing, medical care, freedom of movement and private property. Lawmakers in California, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, Missouri, and Massachusetts have proposed them.

Yet as Alaska grapples with housing its growing homeless population, new measures could move in the opposite direction for people who sleep on the street.

Alaska lawmakers are considering a proposal from Gov. Mike Dunleavy that would further criminalize homelessness. In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case at the end of the month that could determine if homeless people may be penalized for sleeping outside when adequate shelter is unavailable.

Beers’ sign is accurate — Anchorage authorities counted 52 people who died outside this last winter. There is no low-barrier shelter in Fairbanks, where hundreds of people are estimated to be homeless and the temperature can drop to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Juneau’s assembly will consider allowing “dispersed camping” this week in the absence of enough shelter. All of Alaska’s major cities have struggled to house or shelter homeless populations that often end up on the street.

More than 3,200 people are estimated to be homeless in Anchorage, a number that far exceeds the city’s ability to house or shelter them. Beers has been homeless there, and slept in Sullivan Arena.

“That was a big nightmare,” he said. “The drugs, the fights, the overdoses. It was a nightmare. You talk about gnashing of teeth! Boy, that was there.”

Beers is now housed through a voucher program in Anchorage. By his count, he was homeless for four years after he was unable to find affordable housing in Maine.

Homeless people are not allowed to sleep where they may block streets, sidewalks or trails. But a new proposal aimed at deterring protests would also further criminalize homelessness. Rather than a simple violation, sleeping outside could be a crime.

If Senate Bill 255 or its companion, House Bill 386, becomes law homeless people will be further limited in where they can stay, Attorney General Treg Taylor said on Wednesday.

“I think that would keep them from putting their tents across sidewalks, roadways, alleyways,” he said. “I think they’d be more limited to parks, those types of places where people aren’t trying to go from point A to point B.”

Taylor explained that the increased penalty would come if a homeless person were asked to move and did not do so.

Senate Judiciary Committee members expressed concern over the bill’s other potential effects this week, suggesting it may have an uphill route to becoming law before the end of the legislative session.

Alaska is not the only state that has restrictions on where homeless people may sleep or sit.

At the end of April, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to hear arguments in a case from Oregon that will determine if it is cruel and unusual punishment to arrest or ticket people for sleeping outside if they have no other safe place to go. An Alaska civil rights nonprofit joined a brief supporting the plaintiff last week. The outcome could affect whether the proposed law is constitutional.

A safe place to go

Alaska lawmakers are considering upstream methods for addressing homelessness as well. The Senate’s proposed capital budget includes a $6 million appropriation for Housing Alaskans, a public-private partnership.

Sens. Forrest Dunbar and Elvi Gray-Jackson, both Anchorage Democrats, sponsored a resolution that would acknowledge the lack of affordable housing in Alaska and call it “one of the most urgent needs of our state.” Housing advocates and people who manage shelters have said increased affordable housing is the best way to combat homelessness.

Most homeless people don’t get the opportunity for an introduction on the Senate floor, like Beers did this week, when he was a guest of Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage. It makes Beers a representative of their humanity and dignity on the marbled floors and lushly carpeted halls of the Capitol.

After speaking with lawmakers, he held his signs in the cooling evening in front of the state courthouse across the street. As he told his story, he paused at the moment that he learned that a homeless companion in Maine had died from exposure after Beers left the state. His eyes brimmed with tears.

“If I hadn’t left, maybe he wouldn’t have died,” he said.

He unfolded another cardboard sign. “A warm bed not a cold grave,” it said.

Persistent outages of weather observation stations across Alaska have caused problems for rural communities, aviators and climatologists for years. Now Alaska lawmakers are hoping to spur the federal government to do something about it.

A joint resolution currently working through the state Legislature would urge Congress to address Automated Weather Observing System outages persistently happening across the state. The legislation was heard for the first time on Tuesday by the Senate Community and Regional Affairs committee.

The owner of Alaska Air Transit, Daniel Owen, told legislators of a recent weather station outage his company experienced when flying a charter for the Lower Yukon School District.

“Our job was to go out to Scammon Bay and Hooper Bay and pick up some school kids. Neither one of the AWOS was functioning 100%. The Scammon Bay AWOS was completely out of service,” Owen explained.

According to Owen the Scammon Bay station has been out of service since March 29 and isn’t scheduled for maintenance until May.

AWOS weather stations collect data on weather conditions, wind direction and speed, along with other critical information needed for pilots, such as cloud cover, visibility, temperature and air pressure. If a station in an Alaska community is not reporting weather data, and another federally approved weather source is not available, then a commercial pilot cannot legally or safely fly there according to FAA’s Part 135 regulations.

Under the FAA’s Instrument Flight Rules, during poor weather pilots must be able to access weather data in a rural community before landing there. IFR is considered the safest way of flying compared to Visual Flight Rules, although Owen and others told legislators that Alaska pilots frequently use VFR under poor weather conditions like low cloud ceilings and low visibility.

But Grant Aviation’s Daniel Knesek, a board member of the Alaska Air Carriers Association, said there are workarounds that pilots use sometimes when an AWOS is not transmitting.

“There’s times when we have to provide a radio to the village agent in a village so we can call them and they can play the weather reporting over the radio, onto a phone call, just so we can receive the weather briefing in order to be legal to fly IFR, to fly to that destination,” Knesek said.

According to Knesek, Grant Aviation serves over 60 communities in Alaska and about 30% of them have an AWOS or other weather reporting system. He says there is still a lack of aviation infrastructure in Alaska, compared to the Lower 48, which impacts food shipments, medical supplies and delivery of vital services in rural areas.

The Federal Aviation Administration is responsible for the vast majority of weather stations and aviation related infrastructure in the state. The agency operates and maintains over 100 stations across Alaska, while the National Weather Service is in charge of about 40 stations. That includes the station in Kodiak.

But according to FAA data, on an average day last year about one out of every three weather stations was experiencing some type of outage.

Advocates agree that AWOS outages are a multi-layered issue. Given the lack of infrastructure in Alaska, what does exist is antiquated, using mainly copper wire to transmit the data from AWOS stations. Station maintenance can also take months.

“In the part of the United States where the environment is changing most rapidly, we just can’t afford to have this loss of information,” said Alaska-based climatologist Rick Thoman.

He said depending on the type of outage, an AWOS station could fail to transmit data to the web but could still be collecting data, or it could be offline altogether.

“If that data is not online, then it’s gone. We can’t get it. That information cannot be ingested into, say, weather models, because it is not online,” he explained.

The irony is that sometimes the FAA maintenance worker tasked with fixing a community’s AWOS issue can’t fly in due to the local weather station being offline, prolonging the gap in service.

Thoman said various stations have gone months, or even a year or more, without transmitting vital weather data. The AWOS in the Yukon Kuskokwim-Delta community of Hooper Bay for example, has not transmitted data since ex-Typhoon Merbok devastated Western Alaska in September 2022.

“Western Alaska and Southwest Alaska have been particularly hard hit by this outage. On St. Lawrence Island, the FAA weather station at Gambell has not reported reliably since late 2022. It was working after Merbok but went offline then,” Thoman said.

The FAA noted this was an issue years ago and prioritized AWOS in its Alaska Aviation Safety Initiative. That plan includes actionable steps the administration is working on through the end of the 2024 fiscal year. The FAA’s Alaska Aviation Safety Initiative included setting up eight new AWOS stations in various communities across rural Alaska, including one in the Aleutian community of Perryville and a few in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

Improving aviation safety has also been a priority of Alaska’s congressional delegation, given that as of 2019, the state has the highest rate of aviation fatalities in the country. There’s currently legislation working its way through the U.S. Senate to address some of these issues.

Congress recently approved another stopgap measure which is an extension for the FAA to continue operating until May 10 or whenever the reauthorization act is passed. Advocates hope the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2023-2024 will include language forcing the FAA to address AWOS outages in Alaska.

Sen. Dan Sullivan recently told Alaska’s News Source he urged the FAA to focus more on Alaska following the National Transportation Safety Board reporting in 2019 that Alaska has the highest rate of aviation fatalities in the country.

“So they have, at my urging, initiated a program that is focused exclusively on Alaska aviation safety and what we need to do more, in terms of bringing in infrastructure, and making sure we have the assets that the Lower 48 states have,” Sullivan said.

As for the joint resolution currently being heard in the state capitol, it is scheduled for another hearing before the Senate Community and Regional Affairs committee on Tuesday.

Tribal citizens in Sitka are being squeezed out of Sitka’s housing market, and some are leaving town, according to a new study commissioned by Baranof Island Housing Authority, with support from Sitka Tribe of Alaska. Now, they are hoping the data – and community input –  will guide them towards solutions.

Cliff Richter is the Executive Director of the housing authority. He said the last tribal housing needs assessment was conducted about five years ago.

“Our data was getting a little stale,” Richter said.

Sitka Tribe and the housing authority collected responses from over 300 Alaska Native or Indigenous households in Sitka and nearly 200 households of Sitka Tribe of Alaska tribal citizens outside of Sitka. The survey found that Native residents in Sitka are more likely to rent instead of own, live in older housing such as mobile homes, and rely on friends or family for shelter. The survey also found that tribal citizens are leaving Sitka at a higher rate than other residents.

Robin Sherman is the Communications Director for Sitka Tribe of Alaska.

“An astounding number of the people who responded said that they were really interested in living in Sitka, but lack of housing, you know, or affordable housing was a big barrier,” Sherman said.

Richter said the survey data has already influenced decision-making at the housing authority, which is now prioritizing higher-density housing and smaller lots in planning a new subdivision on Herb Didrickson Drive. They have other ideas on strategies to expand affordable housing, like weatherization and replacing mobile homes, but Richter said the next step is to involve the community in establishing priorities and solutions. While the survey focused on tribal housing needs, Richter said the issue – and the solutions – are community-wide.

“We’re seeing this as information that’s going to benefit the entire community,” he said.

You can read the full tribal housing needs assessment here.

On a recent weekday afternoon, Cayley was playing with her four-month-old daughter, who’s nicknamed Bun or Bunik, the Iñupiaq word for daughter. We’re not using Cayley’s last name to protect her family’s privacy. 

Bunik is just starting to learn how to roll over from her tummy to her back. Her doctor said she’s right on track developmentally, but that’s not something Cayley takes for granted. 

When she first got pregnant, she had been working at a metals mine in Alaska for two years. 

“That’s what made me realize I should check my lead levels and be more careful about that,” Cayley said. 

When her job tested her, Cayley’s blood levels of lead were over six micrograms per deciliter, that’s well above what’s considered “high” by the CDC although it still falls below OSHA limits. She said her midwife consulted with a health expert in Seattle because she didn’t have enough experience with prenatal lead exposure. 

“When I first realized that the lead levels could be concerning, I was pretty scared,” Cayley said. “I was really scared when the midwife was worried about the lead levels, and she was talking to somebody in Seattle.”

High exposure to lead can be harmful to people, especially babies and children, whose brains and bodies are still developing and high lead levels during pregnancy can lead to low birth weight or even miscarriage. 

State epidemiologists say Alaskans can be exposed to lead through many jobs and hobbies including mining, fishing and hunting. And while they recommend that all children are screened for lead exposure, only about 12% of kids in Alaska are tested, which is lower than the national average of 18%. So the state is re-launching a working group to coordinate public health efforts around lead exposure and the Anchorage Health Department is starting a lead testing clinic, so families can get connected with help if their kids test high. The clinic will test people for lead Wednesdays at the Anchorage Health Department, with a sliding scale fee from free to $40.

Dr. Michael Savitt, pediatrician and chief medical officer for the city, said if lead is in the house, it’s easy for young kids to be exposed because they put everything in their mouths. 

“No lead in the blood is considered normal, but certain levels become concerning,” Savitt said. “So, that’s why we’re starting a lead clinic so that we can get a handle on the situation.”

Kids can be exposed through many things including old paint, soil, antique toys, game meat with lead shot, or hunting supplies. Savitt said if families think their child may have been exposed, they should get tested, either at the new clinic or through their healthcare provider. 

“If mom is the one who has the lead contamination source, then it may be passed to the baby and breast milk,” Savitt said. “But if there’s any concern, any consideration that there may have been an exposure, I would urge people to have their blood tested. It’s a very simple test.”

Savitt said the clinic will test people for lead on-site, so the results will be available within about 15 minutes. And he said the clinic can connect anyone with high lead levels to care. Sometimes lead poisoning is asymptomatic, but Savitt said high lead levels can lower kids’ IQ, and cause behavior and hearing problems. 

“The child can be irritable, fretful, can complain of headache, abdominal pain,” Savitt said. “There may be a poor appetite, which would impact growth. It can affect the central nervous system.”

Statewide last year, about 4% of Alaskan kids who were tested had high lead levels. Many of the effects of lead poisoning on kids are permanent, but the right care can help reduce lead levels to prevent more harm.  

Allison Natcher, who manages the state’s Environmental Public Health Program, said it’s important for families to consider ways they could be bringing lead and other contaminants into the house. And she said the state is re-starting a multidisciplinary working group to help reduce Alaskans’ lead levels. It includes public health nurses, doctors, epidemiologists and tribal entities. 

“It’s everybody coming together saying, ‘We recognize that we need to make improvements and we want kiddos to be safe and healthy’ and that also extends to their parents too,” Natcher said. 

If kids get tested and have high lead levels, the environmental health department can work with them to figure out how they’re getting exposed. Natcher said good nutrition can help prevent high lead levels by reducing lead absorption. 

“We recommend consumption of foods rich in iron, calcium, zinc, selenium, fiber, and vitamins B, C, and E, in addition to reducing your sugar intake,” Natcher said.

Cayley, the mother who was working in a mine, couldn’t negotiate a position with less lead exposure, so she quit her job a couple months after testing high. Since then, her lead levels have come down and the last time she was tested she was within the normal range. Her daughter Bunik is on track developmentally and Cayley plans to test her lead levels in the future.

RELATED: Anchorage Health Department to offer low-cost baby check-ups

State officials have delayed the usual May 1 deadline for Alaskans in much of the state to remove snow tires, as Anchorage nears a record winter snowfall total.

Department of Public Safety Commissioner James Cockrell pushed the deadline back to May 15 in a Monday emergency order for areas of the state above 60 degrees north latitude, including Anchorage, most of the Kenai Peninsula, the Interior and northern Alaska as well as all parts of the Sterling Highway. He cited heavy snow this winter, which has pushed Anchorage to tie its second-highest total for recorded snowfall as of Friday.

“Many parts of Alaska are experiencing prolonged winter weather after a near record setting snow season that has extended icy road conditions well into April,” Cockrell said in a statement. “This 15-day extension for the studded tire removal deadline will provide additional time to switch to regular tires without compromising safety.”

Anchorage drivers also face a municipal deadline for removing studded tires, which is typically matched to the state deadline. Mayor Dave Bronson quickly moved the municipal deadline when the state deadline was extended last year, but a question to his office about this year’s deadline wasn’t immediately answered Monday.

This year’s deadline extension does not affect areas south of 60 degrees, including the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands, the southern Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak and Southeast Alaska. Drivers in those areas remain under their usual April 15 deadline to remove studded tires.

Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola is far ahead of her Republican challengers in campaign fundraising. She raked in $1.7 million in the first three months of the year.

About 90 percent of that is from individuals. But, like most incumbents in Congress, she also received dozens of contributions from political action committees. Many of the committees are affiliated with unions and trade associations. PACs related to oil and coal companies also gave to Peltola, a Democrat who has acted to support domestic oil and gas development.

The Republican contenders raised just a fraction of Peltola’s haul during the first quarter of the year. Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom’s total came to $260,000. Nick Begich III, relying almost exclusively on individual contributors, is only about $40,000 behind Dahlstrom, but Dahlstrom’s campaign finance report shows signs of continued fundraising might. Several political action committees linked to House Republican leaders gave to Dahlstrom. One, the Congressional Leadership Fund, is also making independent expenditures to support her candidacy. So far, the fund has spent $75,000 on pro-Dahlstrom ads, and it can spend more: Federal law puts no limit on independent expenditures.

Peltola is also benefiting from independent expenditures. A group called Center Forward Committee has bought ads worth $300,000 to support her. The organization promotes moderate candidates.

If you’re bummed out about missing the total solar eclipse in the Lower 48 this month, start planning now. The next total solar eclipse in North America will happen in 2033, in Alaska. 

University of Alaska Anchorage physics and astronomy professor Travis Rector said the world sees about one to two solar eclipses a year, but the next one in North America will be on March 30, 2033.

“It’s going to pass over the northwestern part of the state of Alaska,” Rector said. “So the path of totality will be visible in Western Alaska. So over towns like Nome and Kotzebue, and all the way up through Utqiagvik.”

Rector said a path of totality is typically between 50 and 100 miles wide, and if you’re outside of that zone, you’ll be able to notice a change in the sky. However, he said you’re going to want to be in Nome, Kotzebue or Utqiagvik to get the full experience.

And Rector said he anticipates areas near those towns will see a high amount of visitor traffic as people flock to view the eclipse.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if hotels in these communities are already getting phone calls for making reservations nine years in advance,” Rector said.

As it happens, there’s already interest in Nome. Leon Boardway works at the Nome Visitors Center and said he found out about the impending Alaska eclipse from a meteorologist friend of his.

“No sooner that I talked to him, somebody called me up and said, ‘We want to come up there in 2033 to see this eclipse,’” Boardway said.

So far, Boardway said he’s received three calls about the eclipse, all of them from out-of-state. He said Nome has had a few tourism setbacks in recent years, and he’s hopeful that the city will be able to accommodate an influx of eclipse visitors. 

“We’ve had a couple of hotels burned down and everything and then we’re coming out of this COVID thing,” Boardway said. “And you know, everything kind of slowed down. But I think we’re in a position now to get things going again, and rejuvenate all this stuff.”

Cloud cover climatology for the March 30, 2033, total solar eclipse in Alaska. pic.twitter.com/i0TG9KvtwT

— Brian Brettschneider (@Climatologist49) April 7, 2024

Another question for prospective eclipse chasers, will you actually be able to see it from Alaska — a state known for inclement weather?

National Weather Service climatologist Brian Brettschneider has looked at the historical data and mapped out the projected cloud cover for the region. While that part of the state is very cloudy, he said the eclipse will come at the least cloudy time. 

“If you were to pick a time of the year for there to be an eclipse anywhere in the state, really it would be the western part of the state, which is the sunniest part of the state. And in March or April, which is the sunniest time of the year,” Brettschneider said. “So while the map may look like it has a high likelihood of cloudiness, it’s really the best time of the year.”

Brettschneider said the eclipse will be particularly rare for the community of Utqiagvik. 

“They’re going to have experienced totality for about two minutes, plus or minus,” Brettschneider said. “And it is their only total eclipse in a 1,000-year period. So this is the chance of a lifetime. And of the lifetime of many generations of people as well up there.”

If you miss the Alaska eclipse in 2033, you’ll have an opportunity for an annular eclipse in 2039, viewable from Anchorage and Fairbanks. Brettschneider said that’s when the moon passes in front of the sun, but doesn’t cover it. 

“The moon will be a little farther away than typical,” Brettschneider said. “And so the moon will be smaller than the sun from our perspective. And so it doesn’t completely black out the sun. There’ll be a ring of sunlight around the moon.”

After 2033, Brettschneider said the next total eclipse in Alaska will happen in 2097 and will pass over Denali.

A Superior Court judge in Anchorage has found a key benefit to families who choose certain types of homeschool violates the state Constitution. The ruling has to do with correspondence school allotments. Those are cash payments to families of homeschooled children meant to reimburse the cost of things like textbooks, services and even private school classes.

Here’s what to know.

What does this ruling say?

The ruling recaps the case so far and the laws at issue.

In January 2023, four parents of school-age children sued, challenging the constitutionality of a 2014 law “authorizing school districts with correspondence programs to provide an annual student allotment to a parent or guardian of a student enrolled in the correspondence study program for the purpose of meeting instructional expenses for the student.”

The law allows families to purchase “nonsectarian services and materials” from public sources, like school districts, in addition to “private or religious organization(s).” The purchases have to be approved by the school district and abide by state standards, including by coming up with an Individual Learning Plan. The allotments can be up to $4,500 per student per school year.

Judge Adolf Zeman found that system unconstitutional. He found that it violates Article 7 of the Alaska Constitution, which says, in part, “No money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or private educational institution.” Basically, the allotments are paid to parents, some of whom spend them on private school courses, and that’s unconstitutional, according to the ruling. 

And the judge didn’t just invalidate spending on private or religious schools — he found that there was no way to narrow the law enough to be constitutional and tossed out the whole correspondence school allotment system. So providing allotments to buy textbooks, public school courses, activities — all of that is now invalidated, as is the law that lays out what an individual learning plan is.

“If the legislature believes these expenditures are necessary — then it is up to them to craft constitutional legislation to serve that purpose — that is not this Court’s role,” wrote Judge Zeman, who was appointed to the bench in 2020 by Gov. Mike Dunleavy.

How did this system come about?

Basically, the allotment system is an effort to give students and families more choices over their education.

In the ruling, Zeman reaches back to legislative debate that began just over 11 years ago in 2013. Then-Sen. Mike Dunleavy sponsored the bill, and he pitched it to lawmakers alongside a constitutional amendment, appearing to acknowledge that the Alaska Constitution doesn’t allow public money to be spent on private school classes.

“A parent could decide, ‘I want my child to take a Latin course at Monroe Catholic.’ The teacher could agree to that in the ILP. Currently, we cannot do that under the state of, under the current constitutional language,” Dunleavy said in his initial presentation of Senate Bill 100. Language from that bill was later incorporated into House Bill 278, which passed into law in 2014.

Of course, correspondence learning and homeschool have a long history in Alaska. Prior to 2014, said Lon Garrison of the Association of Alaska School Boards, correspondence students would learn from curriculum provided by their local district or a statewide homeschool program. 

That changed with the allotment program, Garrison said.

“It gave that opportunity for parents to really kind of determine what they wanted in terms of curricular material and instructional materials,” Garrison said.

But what allotments were spent on changed over time, said Scott Kendall, an attorney representing the plaintiffs. Around 2020 or 2021, he said, private schools began promoting the idea of dual enrollment, essentially using the allotments for private school tuition.

“In fact, you would enroll in a private school, and they would enroll you in the correspondence program, and you would basically just submit your tuition bills as those were, in fact, expenses related to correspondence school, or homeschooling, and then you get paid back,” Kendall said.

Jodi Taylor, the wife of Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor, wrote an op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News detailing exactly how parents could use the correspondence school program to pay for private school tuition. She used a private Catholic elementary school as an example.

A few months later, Treg Tayor issued an opinion saying that allotments could likely be spent constitutionally on private or religious school classes, but could likely not be used to pay for full-time enrollment in a private school.

Proponents, including Jodi Taylor in her op-ed, say the system gives families the choice to pursue the education they want for their children. Attorney Kirby West of the Institute for Justice, which argued in favor of the allotment program, said parents use their allotments for all manner of things.

“Online courses through public universities is a really common one, to either supplement homeschooling curriculum, or just standalone enrollment in college courses from public universities. Many, many parents do use the allotment for tuition at private school,” West said, including her clients, who she said use it for tuition at a Catholic school in Anchorage.

What are people saying about the ruling?

Unsurprisingly, the plaintiffs say the judge’s ruling is sound. And the judge actually went further than Kendall asked. He asked them to invalidate spending on private or religious schools, and the judge said there’s no way to make the rest of the law constitutional and threw the whole program out.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Treg Taylor says the ruling is flawed.

“I don’t agree with the logic that he applied to the ruling,” Taylor said. “He made two statutes completely unconstitutional, which I think was unnecessary. And so I think he, his decision went overboard in what I think was within the law.”

He said the issue has his and Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s attention, and they’re seeking a stay and an appeal. He declined to say whether public money should be spent on private or religious schools.

In a prepared statement, the head of the Department of Law’s Civil Division, Cori Mills, said the ruling is “very concerning.”

“This is a public school program for public school children. This could result in taking away important public education opportunities from Alaskan families. We are evaluating next options,” Mills said through a spokesperson.

Kirby West, the Institute for Justice attorney, says they also plan to appeal it to the Alaska Supreme Court. She said the allotments aren’t a “direct benefit” to a private or religious school described in the Constitution — they’re payments that parents can spend on all manner of things.

“If the state, for example, created a program that was giving a monthly allowance to people to purchase food, no one would think right that that is a direct benefit for Walmart, or Fred Meyer or another grocery store, because the state doesn’t know how people are going to spend their money,” West said. “They don’t know what they’re going to buy or where they’re going to buy it.”

Basically, the people getting the “direct benefit” are the parents — not private or religious schools.

How are lawmakers reacting? 

Leaders in the state House and Senate say they’re considering their next steps. Kendall says the solution could be simple — because the constitutional issue has to do with private and religious schools, he said lawmakers could simply pass a bill that says allotments can’t be used at those kinds of schools.

And it’s early, but the ruling has policymakers’ attention. Speaker of the House Rep. Cathy Tilton, R-Wasilla, said her Republican-led majority caucus wants to address the issue.

“It will be a high priority,” she said. “We’ll be talking about it as a full caucus here in the next day or two to find our path forward.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, a self-described “veteran homeschool mom” who co-sponsored the allotments bill alongside Dunleavy, said the judge got it right.

“I actually think it was a really sound decision,” Giessel said. “When I realized last summer that promotional statements were being made about how to apply these allotments, that this had gone way beyond what I had pictured when the bill was on the floor in 2014.”

And Rep. Justin Ruffridge, R-Soldotna, a co-chair of the House Education Committee, said the Legislature should act “this session, in my opinion.”

“I think there’s some concerns with how some of the funds were used, but overall, I support correspondence schools in the state,” Ruffridge said. “I think there should be allotments for those kids to be able to use and go to school with. so I think there needs to be some work done to make sure that that can continue.”

Asked whether he believes it’s appropriate for allotments to be spent on classes through private or religious schools, Ruffridge said flatly, “No.”

Rep. Dan Ortiz, I-Ketchikan, said the judge’s ruling is “an accurate interpretation” of the state Constitution and said he believes the House’s largely Democratic and independent minority caucus would support legislation that would make the program constitutional.

“I think we’re going to be supportive of trying to come up with a solution that works with the Constitution and that protects, continues to provide the opportunity for students to receive their schooling through correspondence,” Ortiz said.

And Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau, said he believed the Legislature could pass language fixing the constitutional issues with the allotment system alongside a broader, long-term school funding increase.

“I think any opportunity we can find to increase the (base student allocation), without compromising Alaska’s constitution or good education system, we should take,” Kiehl said. “I think that if there needs to be a bill, to keep a strong correspondence, homeschool support system, that’s another great opportunity to fix that problem while we fix the funding.”

So, while there seems to be broad agreement that the issue should be fixed, when and how to do so seems to be an open question.

What does this mean for parents and students, and what lies ahead?

Those are both very hard to answer at this point, but the changes are not expected to take effect this school year. The administration says there are about 24,000 students who could be affected by the ruling. Education Commissioner Deena Bishop said she plans to send a letter to school districts with more details of the road ahead, but she said the plan for now is to stay the course.

“I will be sending out a letter today to all school districts with some direction,” Bishop said. “At this point, we’d like them to continue to finish out the year as they’ve been working.”

Kendall says the plaintiffs plan to seek a stay, putting the ruling on hold, until the end of the fiscal year in June in order not to disrupt the school year and allow time for an expedited appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court. The Institute for Justice is asking for a longer stay, according to a filing from Kendall, who said the plaintiffs will oppose the longer hold on the decision. The state also plans to appeal, the governor said in a social media post.

The appeal, though, could take a while — months or years.

Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee expanded and advanced a bill that would limit Alaska students’ sports participation to teams that match their sex at birth. Twenty-four states have passed similar laws.

House Bill 183 was amended in the committee’s Friday meeting to include collegiate sports as well as elementary and middle school sports. Transgender girls are already barred from participation in girls high school sports by a regulation adopted by Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s appointees on the state Board of Education and Early Development last year.

Both supporters and opponents of the controversial proposal feel their rights are at risk. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River, said its aim is to maintain fairness for girls and women who participate in sports.

Reps. Andrew Gray and Cliff Groh, both Anchorage Democrats and committee members, opposed the bill’s expansion and advancement.

Gray attempted to keep the bill from advancing out of committee, but his objection failed.

“We’ve heard a lot of testimony against the bill. I think we should respect the will of the people of Alaska to not bring this very hateful, harmful legislation to the body,” he said.

Groh said he was concerned that the proposal would be vulnerable to lawsuits. “I think that the costs of adopting this legislation very much exceeds the benefits. I’m also very concerned about the potential for successful constitutional claims against this legislation,” he said.

Dozens of Alaskans testified against the bill on Friday. While the voices of support were outnumbered in public testimony, hundreds of people wrote to the House Education and Judiciary committees to encourage the bill’s passage.

Michael Garvey, the advocacy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska, said the bill is unconstitutional and discriminatory.

“Alaska’s constitution provides explicit privacy and due process protection, which apply to public schools. HB 183 cannot be implemented and enforced without violating those rights,” he said. “Additionally, HB 183 would deprive transgender girls of equal access to opportunities to engage in sports, which are a way to build skill, resilience and community.”

Olivia Emery, the mother of an LGBTQ child, was tearful in her testimony. She said her daughter is not trans, but already experiences a lot of bullying.

“This would be a green flag for classmates who already wish to cause her harm both mental and physical,” she said, echoing the concern of other testifiers.

Alexander Rosales, an Eagle River resident, testified in support of the bill on Friday. He said his experience in the military showed him that men and women have different physical capabilities. “So I want to come here as a dad, as a man and speak on behalf of women,” he said. “We should be protecting, looking out for them and stand beside women and defend their rights in sports and not look at it as somebody’s being disenfranchised in any way.”

In order to become law, the bill would have to be approved by the House and the Senate.

Peter Pan Seafood Co., the state-backed processing company that has faced dire financial troubles recently, announced Friday it was ceasing operations.

“We’re saddened to share that Peter Pan Seafoods will be halting operations at its processing plants, leading to the discontinuation of both summer and winter production cycles for the foreseeable future,” the company said in a Facebook post Friday night.

The company faced mounting troubles, including legal claims from fishermen claiming back-owed payments for unpaid deliveries of seafood.

Silver Bay Seafoods recently announced it would acquire Peter Pan’s Valdez facility, as well as operate Peter Pan’s facilities in Dillingham and Port Moller during the 2024 salmon season. It never specified, however, if the King Cove plant would be included.

“This is so sad because I (worked up in King Cove) from ‘96 through last summer,” one commenter posted. “I have good memories from King Cove and the plant, have my kids in the school for a few years.”

King Cove, a community of around 800 residents, relies on the processing facility as its main economic engine. The city already faced hardship when Peter Pan opted last minute not to open for winter’s “A” season, forcing local fishing boats to scramble for new facilities where they could deliver their catch.

“Thanks for waiting until the last possible minute before you told the community of King Cove,” another person commented. “Wouldn’t even tell the fishing fleet of King Cove face to face what was happening, we all have to find out on Facebook.”

Peter Pan said current or former employees can seek processing jobs at Silver Bay Seafoods, but did not specify which facilities would be hiring.

Governor Mike Dunleavy is approaching the halfway mark in his second term as the 12th top government executive in Alaska. His recent veto of a bipartisan education bill and a failed override has left education funding in limbo while the legislature works on operating and capital budget plans. What does the governor think of those budgets and what would he agree to for an education spending plan? Governor Dunleavy joins us on this Talk of Alaska.

Listen:

HOST: Lori Townsend

GUESTS:

• Gov. Mike Dunleavy, R-Alaska

Related:

• A judge has thrown out a key part of Alaska’s homeschool system. Here’s what to know.
• Alaska House passes operating budget with roughly $2,300 PFD
• Dunleavy says new polling data shows Alaskans want education reform with BSA increase

PARTICIPATE:

Call 907-550-8422 (Anchorage) or 1-800-478-8255 (statewide) during the live broadcast

Send an email to talk@alaskapublic.org (comments may be read on air)

Post your comment before, during or after the live broadcast (comments may be read on air).

LIVE Broadcast: Tuesday, April 16, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. on APRN stations statewide.

It was an early summer morning in 2018, and Alex Patrick Umble’s family hadn’t heard from him. His mother, Maura Condon Umble, thought his absence was strange, but she didn’t panic.

“I had this important meeting that I needed to go to, I thought, and so I went to work,” Maura said.

While Maura was at work, her boss was on the phone with the director of public safety at a nearby college, who reported that a young man had shot himself on the school’s athletic field.

“My boss came running down the hall, but my boss didn’t tell me,” Maura said. “He just said, ‘Maura, you need to go home right now. You need to go home. Rob needs you at home.’ And my boss kissed me on my forehead, which was very bizarre.”

Once she made it home, Maura learned that the reports were about her son. Twenty-four year old Alex had shot and killed himself days after purchasing a gun.

When gun violence in America is discussed, people typically think about mass shootings, homicides or even domestic violence. But, in fact, the majority of gun-related deaths in the United States are suicides.

In 2023, more than 42,967 people died from gun related injuries. Over half of those deaths were suicides.

Alex is one of the tens of thousands of Americans who lose their lives to suicide every year.

Adam Garber, executive director of CeaseFirePA, a research group that advocates for stricter gun laws, says big cities have typically had the highest gun death rates. But that trend has started to shift. Last year, York, a small city in Pennsylvania, had a higher per capita gun death rate than Philadelphia, Garber said.

“It is really everywhere right now,” Garber said.

Every year, more than 900 people in Pennsylvania die by gun suicides and 48 are wounded by gun suicide attempts. Suicides make up the majority of gun deaths in Pennsylvania.

“Most people who make a suicide attempt are any one of us,” Garber said. “They’re in a moment of crisis, they got laid off from a job, they go through a divorce or a bad breakup.”

Paul Nestadt, a psychiatrist and professor at Johns Hopkins University, is one of the country’s leading researchers in suicide and what leads to it. He says most people don’t know how prevalent suicide is because we shy away from the topic in our personal relationships and in the media.

“When there’s a mass shooting or homicides, there’s a lot more coverage, and of course, those are very tragic, but suicides kind of kind of slip under the radar a little bit,” Nestadt said. “There’s not as much willingness to talk about them. I think that’s changing. It becomes hard to ignore as the rates climb.”

Easy access to guns in America has also worsened the issue, Nestadt said.

Pills are more often used in suicide attempts—though most attempts involving pills are not fatal. Yet, the smaller fraction of people who use guns to try to take their lives almost never survive.

“Most suicide attempts in the U.S. are by overdose or poisoning things like sleeping pills or Tylenol or opiates,” Nestadt said. “And yet those are usually non-fatal. Only about 2% of people that make an attempt by overdose die. But firearms, which are only used in about five or 6% of attempts, are so lethal that if you happen to have access to a firearm, when that impulse comes and you use that firearm, the chance of death is 90%.”

Nestadt says the time between the impulse and act to take one’s own life is short.

“There’s a study that finds 87% of people make that decision and act on it in the same day, about a quarter of people within five minutes.” Nestadt said. “And so what happens in those impulsive moments is people use what they have available to them. It comes on very quickly. If there’s nothing available, the impulse can pass.”

There is another fallacy Nestadt wants to dispel.

“There’s this myth that if someone is suicidal and is thwarted in some way or is able to survive the attempt, that they’ll just keep trying, that they’ll just find some other way. But that’s not what the data shows,” Nestadt said. “In fact, the majority of people, about 94% of people who survive a serious suicide attempt continue to survive.”

As with other forms of gun violence, raising awareness around suicide means having conversations about the very sensitive and often uncomfortable topic.

And Maura is committed to talking openly about how her son’s suicide has affected herself and her family.

Maura and her family decided to disclose Alex’s struggles with depression in his obituary. She is disappointed that suicide is a taboo topic. However, she wants to hold her local government officials accountable for having these conversations, too. So, when Pennsylvania’s Democratic Lt. Gov. Austin Davis announced plans to fund a state gun violence prevention office, she realized the proposal was missing a component.

“He did not mention gun suicide as part of the issue. I was really disappointed,” Maura said.

She thinks about what she could have done and what the state could’ve done to prevent Alex’s death. And she struggles to come up with an answer.

“I have to really give myself a pep talk that, slowly but surely, we can make some progress,” Maura said. “Maybe it will help others, even if it wouldn’t have helped Alex.”

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 9-8-8 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Content warning: this story includes discussion of sexual abuse.

A man who served for years as a village public safety officer and pastor in Southwest Alaska has been held on charges linked to child sexual abuse he allegedly committed as the head of a Baptist church in Florida.

Monte LaVelle Chitty, 62, was arrested April 5 in the small town of Woodville, Texas by state police and U.S. Marshals, after authorities say he was attempting to flee child-abuse related charges in the Florida Keys. He was arrested in March and charged with two felonies involving a 15-year-old girl from the church he was leading in Marathon, Fla. The charges include sexual battery and lewd and lascivious molestation, and a misdemeanor of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Chitty was a VPSO in the communities of False Pass and Akutan for several years, and a pastor in Cold Bay for a short period. He moved to Alaska and began leading the Cold Bay Chapel in 2010. Overall he spent about a decade in communities along the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian chain, then left the state in 2021.

Stephanie DeVault is a former member of his Alaska congregation.

“We used to Google him every couple of years because we knew,” DeVault said.

DeVault said she was upset but wasn’t surprised when she heard that Chitty had been charged with molesting a teenager at his church in Florida.

“We have serious doubts that this is the only girl that he has ever violated,” she said. “And maybe if the truth reaches more people, more girls or women will come forward with what has happened.”

In Florida’s Monroe County, Chitty was also a registered volunteer with the sheriff’s office who offered his services as a pastor. But he hadn’t performed any services for the office to date, the office said.

According to a police report from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, a young female member of the church said she passed out on a couch in Chitty’s office after he gave her alcohol, which she believed was spiked with an unknown substance. She said she later awoke to the pastor sexually assaulting her.

Police say Chitty contacted them before they spoke with the victim, allegedly attempting to get ahead of the allegations and denying he assaulted her. Detectives later found text messages they said were from Chitty that corroborated the allegations made by the young girl. According to the report, Chitty admitted to sending the texts but denied sexual contact.

In Alaska, DeVault and her husband Tyran, who filled in as a pastor at the Cold Bay church before Chitty arrived, say a similar situation happened there. According to DeVault, a young woman showed them inappropriate messages from Chitty and told them she feared for her safety.

“He got ahead of it and went to (other parishioners) and said, ‘Oh, those messages aren’t what they seem like, she was making it up. She’s a wayward girl. That’s why she was staying with our family,’” DeVault said. “And he was able to convince them that what he had written was not what it appeared to be. And we have the messages, there’s no question what they are.”

DeVault said the young woman was an extended family member of Chitty’s and was living with him and his family at the time. She said she and some other parishioners helped the girl get to safety, get a plane ticket and get out of town. Nothing ever came of the incident, DeVault said, because the girl was in her 20s. Still, she said it wasn’t right.

“While technically not illegal, it was obviously immoral and disgusting and all manner of other things,” she said.

The DeVaults essentially gave up their church membership at that time. But Tyran said they weren’t the only ones who left the congregation.

“The Sunday before he came there, we had 50 people at services,” he said. “And that’s about a town of 60. And then a few months later, there was only three left.”

DeVault said there were reservations about Chitty when he arrived and sought out a position at the church, but the congregation wanted a full-time minister and he was willing to fill the role. According to DeVault, sometimes those positions are tough to fill in the remote community.

The same can be said for VPSOs. They generally work with Alaska State Troopers, and the program is managed under the state’s Department of Public Safety. But the officers work for the Alaska Native organizations or regional municipalities that hire them.

The public safety program has had trouble filling positions in the past. Micheal Nemeth is the public safety coordinator for the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, the regional tribal organization that hired Chitty. Nemeth said it can sometimes be difficult to find applicants who fit the program and the remote communities they serve.

“If you have someone who just wants to be a police officer, it’s really not a good fit for the program,” Nemeth said. “You have to be committed to that whole-ball-of-wax kind of thing where you’re the jack of all trades and you wear many hats.”

The VPSO program was founded in 1979 as a means to provide public safety to more remote areas in Alaska. Officers provide various services to communities, including community policing, emergency, medical and fire response, search and rescue operations, as well as public safety education.

Nemeth has worked in the program for more than two decades. He said when Chitty was hired, troopers were in charge of performing background checks. Now, the regional association runs the hiring process and does extensive background checks, as well as several interviews to get to know the applicants and their families to feel out whether they are a good fit for the communities they’ll be working in.

Chitty was hired as a VPSO by the association in 2014, after he left Cold Bay. He worked in False Pass for just one year and was later stationed in Akutan for about five years.

According to Nemeth, there were no serious complaints or allegations of sexual assault filed about Chitty while he served in the program. Someone once reported that he used language they weren’t comfortable with while he was in uniform, but officials spoke with Chitty and there were no further complaints. Nemeth said he left on good terms with plans to buy a boat and try to retire in Florida.

Nemeth said APIA, with the help of the Department of Public Safety, does its best to keep communities safe from people who might abuse their positions of power as public safety officers.

“In my 22 years in our region, there’s never been an accusation or indication or anyone fired due to something that happened related to any type of crime,” Nemeth said.

Still, he said, sometimes people can slip through the cracks.

“The sad thing is that there are people with bad intentions and they get through the web we’ve created to filter them out in society itself, not just in law enforcement,” Nemeth said.

Like in many small or remote communities, resources for victims of sexual and domestic abuse can be difficult to find in the region. But Nemeth said the regional association is working to bolster their services.

“We can provide advocacy, safety planning, assistance with protective orders, court accompaniment, promotion of healthy relationships,” he said. “(APIA does) domestic violence (and) sexual assault prevention programs, traditional healing events. They also sometimes will have to refer people to other entities to get the proper services that they need.”

He said people can contact APIA to learn more about these resources and request behavioral health services. Nemeth said he hopes there aren’t more victims, but if there are, that they get the help they need.

“The last thing we want is, God forbid, there (are) victims in the region … for them not being taken care of, and for investigations not being done, for possible charges to be filed,” he said.

Candace Nielsen grew up in Nelson Lagoon and is a former mayor and former resident of Cold Bay. She said this case needs exposure, and she hopes spreading the word about Chitty’s arrest can help any other possible victims come forward.

“It definitely is one of those things that we need to shed light on,” Nielsen said. “I feel like, in our communities, there’s just never enough opportunity to do that. And with the fact that he held such a position of power, I don’t know if anybody ever had an opportunity to say anything if they were a victim.”

Chitty was arrested in Texas after he reportedly approached a church group that was working with people experiencing homelessness. A church member there contacted law enforcement, who apprehended him.

He is being held on a $1.3 million bond.

The Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association has several behavioral health clinics and offers telehealth to the communities across the region. It also operates a We All Really Matter/WARM crisis line that can be reached at 1-844-359-2743. APIA also works with Unalaskans Against Sexual Assault and Family Violence to provide services to communities without clinics. USAFV’s 24-hour crisis line can be reached at 907-581-1500.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy is defending the state’s correspondence school program after a Superior Court judge declared cash payments to Alaska homeschool parents for educational expenses unconstitutional.

The judge found that the state’s allotment program, which reimburses parents up to $4,500 per year for books, supplies, activities and even private school classes, violates a section of the Alaska Constitution that prohibits the use of public money “for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.” The state plans to appeal the case to the Alaska Supreme Court.

The plaintiffs say they brought the suit after noting an uptick in private schools advertising that parents could use their correspondence school allotments to pay for classes or tuition. Public correspondence schools monitor the students’ progress and must approve expenses to be reimbursed.

On Talk of Alaska Tuesday, Dunleavy focused the argument on the “direct benefit” portion of the constitutional language.

“Our argument is that it’s an indirect benefit to the institution. It’s not a direct benefit to the institution,” Dunleavy told host Lori Townsend. “And so, what we’re talking about here is public school students trying to get a public outcome, a public educational outcome, by using a whole host of different vendors, both private and religious.”

But Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, had a different take.

“That’s not how I interpret that. I think it’s pretty clearly a direct benefit,” Wielechowski told reporters on Tuesday afternoon. “There was a lot of discussion about what direct and indirect benefits were during the Constitutional Convention, and I don’t think that was what their intent was.”

Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, agreed, adding that he would not support amending the Constitution to remove the prohibition on spending public funds on private and religious schools.

In the House, majority caucus lawmakers said they wanted to wait for the court case to proceed before considering a legislative fix. But House Education Committee co-chair Rep. Justin Ruffridge, R-Soldotna, said the Constitution is clear.

“Should public monies be used for religious and private instruction? I think our Constitution currently indicates that the answer to that is no,” Ruffridge said.

Fellow Education Committee co-chair Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River, agreed but suggested changing the Constitution.

“Based on what is in our Constitution, currently, it appears the allotments can’t be used for that,” Allard said. “Would I be open to saying OK, that the dollars can follow the child and be used in a faith-based school but maybe not pay for that Bible study class? I think that’s a good compromise,” Allard said.

Ruffridge agreed that a constitutional amendment would be a “worthwhile discussion” but said the proposal faces long odds in a closely divided House.

Lawmakers in both the House and Senate offered support for the homeschool system as a whole.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has upheld its denial of a permit for the proposed Pebble Mine, upstream from Bristol Bay. 

The decision issued Monday is the latest in a long string of legal and administrative rulings against the project.

But opponents of the gold mine say their fight isn’t over. 

“Pebble will not be over until we have federal legislation, basically saying Bristol Bay is protected forever, and it’s permanent,” said Lindsey Bloom, a strategist with SalmonState, part of the coalition of tribes, Native corporations, fishermen and lodge owners that has fought the mine for decades. 

More than a year ago, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a final determination that a mine in that area of the Bristol Bay watershed would damage or destroy miles of salmon streams and more than 2,000 acres of wetlands. The decision is referred to as a veto.

In its decision Monday, the Corps said as long as the veto is in place, it can’t issue a permit.

Pebble Vice President Mike Heatwole said the company is focused on a lawsuit seeking to overturn the veto. He points out that the Corps’ decision is based on the veto and it didn’t address Pebble’s points on appeal. 

The Corps specified that its decision is made “without prejudice,” suggesting that Pebble can request a reconsideration if the EPA veto disappears.

For mine opponents like Bloom, the seemingly endless administrative appeals and lawsuits point to the need for Congress to pass a law putting a stop to the project.

“History shows us that the mining industry doesn’t take no for an answer,” she said. “And so they will continue to litigate, most likely, and keep this going for generations to come until we have those permanent protections for Bristol Bay that are so needed.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the Biden administration is about to deal a blow to a different mining proposal in northwest Alaska, the Ambler Mine. The Times says that the Interior Department is going to recommend against a 200-mile road to the copper deposit, finding it would “significantly and irrevocably” hurt the environment and more than 30 tribal communities that fish and hunt in the area. The report is based on anonymous sources. The Interior Department didn’t confirm or deny the story.

Ambler Metals, issued a statement urging the federal agency to reconsider. Kaleb Froehlich the company’s managing director said if the Times report is true, the agency would be making a political decision that ignores local support for the mine and denies jobs to Alaskans. 

Dimond High School grad Alissa Pili was drafted 8th overall by the Minnesota Lynx on Monday in the Women’s National Basketball Association draft.

Pili is the sixth Alaskan to make the WNBA. She now shares the record as the highest overall WNBA draft pick by an Alaskan with her new teammate Ruthy Hebard of Fairbanks. Hebard was taken 8th overall by the Chicago Sky in 2020 and now plays for the Lynx. Pili addressed her WNBA Draft prospects before lacing up to play in the Great Alaska Shootout at the Alaska Airlines Center in November.

“That’s always been a childhood dream of mine to be drafted,” Pili said.

Pili graduated from Dimond in Anchorage in 2019, and initially played for the University of Southern California, earning Pac-12 Freshman of the Year honors and being named to the All-Pac-12 team.

Pili then transferred to the University of Utah in 2022 where she starred as the team’s leading scorer and rebounder for the last two years and was named the 2023 PAC-12 Player of the Year.

Pili is Inupiaq and Samoan, and has developed a following of Indigenous basketball fans eager to see her wherever she plays.

Utah head coach Lynn Roberts remarked on Pili’s homecoming before the University of Utah won the 2023 Great Alaska Shootout last November. Pili was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.

“I think what’s pretty neat is the pride that Alyssa has in being from Alaska,” Roberts said. “There’s a ton of pride in being Alaskan and her heritage and her family.”

Pili’s season with the Lynx will begin in under a month when the Lynx tip off in Seattle against the Seattle Storm on May 14.

Pili was one of the most decorated athletes in Alaska sports history before she began her college career. Pili won 10 state championships in five sports for the Lynx and was named Gatorade Player of the Year for Alaska basketball three times.

The Alaska Sports Hall of Fame recently named Pili the women’s Pride of Alaska award winner for the second year in a row.

Last year, when Gov. Mike Dunleavy proposed legislation last year to allow companies to inject carbon dioxide deep underground, he billed it as a way for the state to raise money while helping fight climate change.

Now, with the Alaska House of Representatives prepared to vote Wednesday on House Bill 50, the goals have shifted: Revenue-raising provisions have been stripped out, and backers now say it’s a way to increase oil production and burn more coal while cutting emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas.

“We have a lot of companies that — their bottom line is trying to be carbon-neutral in whatever they do. So we don’t we definitely don’t want to stop those companies from investing in our state,” said Rep. Mike Cronk, R-Tok and a supporter of the bill.

In Alaska, mineral rights are generally owned by the state. Carbon storage, or carbon sequestration, involves capturing carbon dioxide and injecting it thousands of feet underground, in what’s known as “pore space.”

HB 50 would set rules for industrial plants that collect carbon dioxide from a particular source — such as a coal-fired power plant — and inject it into the space. Because the state owns the pore space, it has the right to charge companies for using it.

“Who would have thought a few years ago that a state resource would be pore space?” said Rep. Donna Mears, D-Anchorage.

Other countries have imposed carbon caps or taxes on carbon emissions, and publicly owned companies are facing pressure to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide they produce. A growing number of corporations are making “net-zero” pledges, promising to balance their emissions with other acts, such as carbon sequestration, that reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Australia-based oil and gas firm Santos, for example, has set an international goal to be net zero by 2040. Santos is developing the Pikka oil project on Alaska’s North Slope.

“It’s forward-thinking,” said Rep. DeLena Johnson, R-Palmer, of HB 50. “There’s been some constraints on national and international banking rules as far as providing funding for Arctic projects, and this is an attempt to alleviate some of the concerns that folks have about resource development.”

Carbon sequestration remains in limited use, but states — particularly oil-producing ones — are racing to set rules and take advantage of large federal tax incentives.

Taxes and royalties from oil production are Alaska’s second-largest source of general-purpose revenue, and even Democrats in the state Legislature vote favorably on measures supporting additional drilling. 

When it comes to the carbon sequestration, the biggest objections haven’t been about climate concerns but about state revenue. As the bill advanced, lawmakers removed language requiring minimum payments in exchange for carbon injections.

Now, the bill says the commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources will determine the financial terms of any carbon deal, possibly down to zero.

“It’s a little unclear what the monetary values are going to be,” said Rep. Will Stapp, R-Fairbanks and a supporter of the bill. 

John Crowther, deputy commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources, said sections of the bill imply that the commissioner will impose — through regulation — fees that pay for that department’s costs.

The Department of Environmental Conservation said in hearings that it will absorb additional work through its existing budget. 

Officials for the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, in charge of part of the project, said they believe formulas within the bill will pay for their costs.

Asked whether he believes the carbon bill will be revenue-neutral, Cronk said he’s not sure.

“I hope so. I don’t know,” Cronk said. “When you put anything new in place, when things need to be adjusted, we can adjust it as things progress. So we all have to keep an open mind on that.”

On the House floor on Monday, Mears unsuccessfully offered an amendment that would have required a minimum 4% royalty for carbon injections, something that would have given the state guaranteed revenue if the program advances.

“(The bill) is being supported by the industry so that investment is more favorable. Which is fine, but … for goodness sakes, this is a way to make the industry more money, and 4% is a pretty low bar,” she said afterward. “Where’s our share? That’s our responsibility.”

Mears’ proposal was defeated by a 24-15 vote, as was an amendment from Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, that would have limited carbon injections to only places where oil and gas development is already permitted.

Under the current language of the bill, carbon wells would be allowed on almost all state land, with exceptions for things like parks.

Looking into the future, proponents say they’re optimistic that successful carbon storage programs could make unpopular energy solutions more popular. 

Stapp is carrying the bill on the House floor for a vote scheduled Wednesday morning.

Coal has traditionally been the cheapest source of electricity in his Interior town, but coal is rapidly being phased out as a power source in the United States because of the pollution it causes.

If carbon sequestration can deal with that problem, “I don’t know why anyone would not want to build a coal plant, if it’s net zero,” Stapp said.

“You could have a system in which you could have coal power that does not have any emissions. I tend to believe that would be kind of amazing for Alaska, given its abundance of an easily accessible supply of coal,” he said.

The Alaskan Independence Party held its statewide convention last weekend in Fairbanks for the first time since 2008. A new board of directors wants to focus on getting party members to run for state offices.

The AIP holds a convention every two years. John Wayne Howe was elected Saturday as chair of the party, which boasts 19,000 members in Alaska.

In an interview, Howe mingled the names of Alaska’s two main political parties, implicitly critiquing similarities between their platforms.

“We are the third largest. We are the largest one outside of the Democrats and the — Demlicans and Republicrats,” Howe said.

Howe was one of the first Alaskans to register in the party when it was formed in the 1970s. He has run for U.S. House and Senate seats and for governor under the AIP banner.

“The big thing that we are working for — we want to get candidates on the party,” he said. “And if anyone listening wants to run under the Alaskan Independence Party, the only party born in the state of Alaska.”

Bert Williams was just elected as party secretary. He said the party is looking at state legislative races.

“We don’t really have any interest in more federal positions such as Senate or House of Representatives or the presidential election,” Williams said. “And when the party was founded, Joe Vogler, he was very adamant for the party to be focused on the state.”

Vogler founded the party after he didn’t like the way Alaska’s statehood commission prepared the territory to join the U.S. in 1959. The AIP charter says its members would like to have had a vote on other options. In 1973, Vogler started serious advocacy for Alaska to secede, although Howe said the AIP’s platform does not explicitly call for it.

“And it is possible that we could achieve a level of independence and still be connected with the U.S.,” Howe said. “Which Joe was not against, being connected with the U.S.; he just didn’t want the oppression the way that it is currently set up.”

At the state convention, the party reinvigorated its platform, and Howe said members passed some new planks.

“There’s one that I like real well: ‘Independence for every individual Alaskan is our goal and must be executed by all peaceful and lawful means,’” Howe said.

The new board also thanked former chair Bob Bird, saying he organized party affairs after the unexpected death of the previous chair, Lynette Clark, who took over from Vogler.

In addition to recruiting candidates for office, another focus for the party now is communication. Members hope to launch a new website sometime this week.

Research shows cultural tourism is on the rise in Indian Country, because travelers crave authenticity and want deeper experiences with Indigenous peoples — a trend that could help Alaska tribes develop their own tourism businesses.

The Alaska Native Heritage Center is one of five Indigenous groups that will receive federal money to expand cultural tourism. The Heritage Center’s director, Emily Edenshaw, predicts it will benefit the state’s entire travel industry.

“It’s a sleeping giant,” Edenshaw said. “It’s untapped.”

Edenshaw says it’s an opportunity to re-think tourism in Alaska, which she believes has come to rely too much on wildlife and scenery to draw tourists.

“Come and see the mountains and the brown bears — and come explore and discover and go on the glaciers and look at the berries,” says Edenshaw, reciting the typical travel industry pitch that she says needs to be updated. “What about the Indigenous experience? Our people have been here for 10,000 years, in some cases even longer than that.”

The Heritage Center will receive about $50,000 to boost tourism. The money comes from the Office of Indian Economic Development, under the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which has partnered with the American Indian Alaska Native Travel Association to oversee the grants.

The association’s director, Sherry Rupert, says it’s a good time to invest in Indigenous tourism.

“Visitation to our communities is increasing. That’s why we’re so interested in supporting efforts up in Alaska,” Rupert said. “Alaska has the largest number of federally recognized tribes than in any other state. There is so much potential there for these small communities.”

Rupert says cultural tourism not only creates jobs and economic opportunity, but also helps tribes hold on to their heritage.

“I think it really sparks a light and really sparks that pride in who they are, so it helps us to preserve our cultural identity.”

Edenshaw says the AIANTA grant will be used to create a new position, a cultural tourism navigator, who will work with other communities to develop their own visitor experiences.

The grant will also be leveraged with other public and private funds — and will augment ongoing efforts at the Heritage Center to study on the impacts of cultural tourism.

“We need to get the data. We need to know how many jobs it creates. We need to know the economic impact through a cultural tourism lens,” said Edenshaw. “And the truth is, this has never happened in Alaska.”

As the Heritage Center approaches its 25th anniversary, Edenshaw says tourism is not just about how Alaska Native cultures lived in the past. She says it’s also about their future.

Edenshaw hopes that as Indigenous tourism grows, it will help to bridge cultural divides within the state by giving Alaskans an appreciation for Native cultures, as well as generate empathy and understanding for some of the struggles and historical trauma Native peoples have faced.

Other organizations to receive AIANTA funding for cultural tourism are: the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe in New York, the Pine Ridge Area Chamber of Commerce in South Dakota, the Shonto Economic Development Corporation in Arizona and the Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association in Hawaii.

After a brief period of warm, springy weather, many Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta communities plunged back into negative temperatures the second week of April.

“Even though it might not feel like spring is coming, it’s coming,” said Johnse Ostman, a hydrologist with the Alaska-Pacific River Forecast Center and the National Weather Service in Anchorage.

And with spring, and warming weather, comes river breakup.

“Breakup is complicated and changes every year, absolutely,” Ostman said. “And (when predicting breakup) we take into several different, measurable data points.”

One factor is snowpack – how it compares to previous years, and the “snow water equivalent,” or how wet the snow is.

Ostman said he and his colleagues primarily get that data from National Resources Conservation Service snow telemetry sites and monthly reports.

Another factor is ice thickness.

“We’re relying upon community observers, whether they be from a program called Fresh Eyes on Ice, which is through University of Alaska – Fairbanks or maybe Bethel Search and Rescue and the ice road folks, (or) observers we have on the ground in different villages to just tell us (…) what is the ice thickness is compared to what it was in past years,” Ostman said.

Ice conditions are also important to consider, according to Ostman. Community partners on snowmachines can report on ice conditions throughout the winter, and that information together with satellite imagery in the visible and microwave spectrums helps put together a more complex picture of the river ice.

It’s still early in the forecasting season, but Ostman said air temperature also plays an important role as breakup approaches.

“We’re looking at: what do the climate models tell us about what we should expect our temperatures to be? So it’s more of like a trend analysis at this point,” Ostman said. “Are we cooler than historically average for this time of year? Are we trending warmer? And then maybe how is that distributed across the state? So that we can predict where we’re going to start melting that snowpack and rotting that ice.”

When talking about averages, Ostman said that generally compares against the “climate-normal” period, or between 1991 and 2020.

A broad look at Y-K Delta breakup

Around a month out from many villages’ median breakup dates, it’s hard to say exactly how breakup may look this year on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

“In the most broad terms, we are not as cold as we were, say, last year,” Ostman said. “We have less snow in most places than we had last year. And we think that breakup will not be as late as it was last year. And probably overall, we think (…) the impacts from breakup will be less severe.”

Last year, severe ice-jam flooding impacted communities on the Yukon, Kuskokwim, and Tanana rivers, prompting a disaster declaration from Gov. Mike Dunleavy on May 13, 2023.

Conditions vary widely this year. On the Yukon River, the Porcupine Basin area has above-average snowpack. Tanana and Galena have average to below average. And moving west of Galena, snowpack generally increases.

“That western coast, the Lower Kuskokwim has a higher than average snowpack by maybe 20 to 30%,” Ostman said.

Although it’s an incredibly educated guess, fed by all these complicated data streams, Ostman said predicting breakup is also something of art.

“It’s subjective. We have to make sure that we use what we know and what we’ve learned from the past to help predict what’s going on,” Ostman said. “But really, what we’re looking at is we’re looking at a forecast temperature model going out about seven days, and then super smart people who come up with climate models that project out even further. So they’re looking at other models to say, ‘What do we think is going to happen over that next week?’”

As potential breakup dates get closer, Ostman said the air temperature data becomes more and more important.

“If you can accumulate the number of days greater than freezing, we can take that in and with these temperature forecasts, continue to sort of close the window on a particular date, and then use historical breakup dates to better inform us how wide that window is to start with,” Ostman said. “And so we just keep shifting that around.”

Taking all the factors into account, Ostman said that communities west of Galena can expect breakup two to five days later than their median. East of Galena, it will likely be more like one or two days later than the median.

Thermal or dynamic? 

There are two main types of breakup: thermal and dynamic. Thermal breakup is where temperatures gradually warm and the ice sort of mushes out and floats away. Dynamic breakup is the kind that can cause ice jams and flooding, where temperatures stay cold and then suddenly warm dramatically, unevenly melting river ice.

“Not only are we forecasting sort of a window of time for breakup date-wise, on that temporal scale, but we’re also looking at what the basin flood potential is for most villages on the Yukon, most villages on the Kuskokwim, and other places across the state — but those two rivers in particular,” Ostman said. “Historically, we’ve assigned a range of flood severity, or flood potential at these sites.”

The forecast center’s breakup outlook from April 12 indicates that many areas of the state are leaning more toward the dynamic type of breakup – the kind that can cause ice jams and flooding.

Midwinter surveys found some areas of jumbled ice on both the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers which can increase flood potential.

“We don’t have a way to quantitatively, say: ‘X, Y, and Z gives you a flood potential of 1, 2, 3 or 4,’” Ostman said. “There’s nothing built that way. So it’s using a lot of historical knowledge, past floods, and what we know about climate, snowpack, ice thickness, how high the river was when it froze up.”

Ostman said he and his colleagues wouldn’t be able to make breakup predictions like they do without information from community partners.

“I got an email from someone in Bethel this morning who told us about a couple of areas that we really need to pay attention to as we look at break up,” Ostman said. “And these are places that it was like, ‘Okay, we’ll look at those in the satellite imagery, and some of the remote sensing tools. We’ll take what you’ve told us and apply that to this qualitative and subjective breakup flood potential estimate that we’re going to put out.’ Because we are putting it out for each of the communities on the Kusko, and he’s identified a couple of those where we should be maybe paying attention.”

There are a lot of factors that go into modeling breakup and a lot of uncertainty, given that Alaska is huge.

“If I tell you it’s going to be sunny two weeks from now, you’re probably not going to believe me,” Ostman said. “But if I tell you it’s going to be sunny two days from now, you might decide to plan a picnic, right? And then would be less likely to call me a liar if I was wrong. So that’s kind of where we are – we’re building up to that. And so each of these products will build on the other one. And we’ll have more confidence because the model has more skill at that point.”

As breakup inches closer, so will the tools to help communities prepare for whenever and however the river ice crumbles.

The Alaska-Pacific River Forecast Center’s first Kuskokwim community breakup call is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday. To participate, call +1 (866) 203-1705, and use participant code 1145901.

The Senate has rejected both articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, swiftly ending the trial triggered by the House’s narrow vote to impeach in February.

The articles charged Mayorkas with willfully ignoring the law and breaching the public’s trust. Republicans argue that Mayorkas is refusing to enforce immigration laws. Democrats call the opposition a policy dispute, and said it did not rise to “high crimes and misdemeanors,” as required for impeachment.

The Biden administration said the Democratic-led Senate made the right call and dismissed Republican efforts to attack Mayorkas unfounded.

“Today’s decision by the Senate to reject House Republicans’ baseless attacks on Secretary Mayorkas proves definitively that there was no evidence or Constitutional grounds to justify impeachment,” said Department of Homeland Security Spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg.

Republican leaders said decried the lack of a full trial on the issue.

“By doing what we just did, we have in effect, ignored the directions of the House, which were to have a trial,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “No evidence, no procedure. It’s not a proud day in the history of the Senate.”

Republicans in both chambers are eager to put the issue of border security front and center during this election year. President Biden’s handling of the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border remains a weak spot politically for him, according to recent public opinion polls.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Spring is returning to Anchorage and so are the city’s bears, prompting warnings from local authorities to properly store trash and avoid provoking the animals.

Cory Stantorf, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Anchorage area biologist, said Tuesday that staff had received only a few local reports of bears so far this year, primarily from the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson area.

Anchorage police posted a close-up photo on Facebook of a black bear in a dumpster, seen Monday evening in the Government Hill neighborhood near base. The person who reported the sighting to police dispatchers said “people are flocking around it to take pictures,” prompting police to call for giving bears and other urban wildlife a wide berth.

“Can we locals please not behave like tourists?” police wrote.

Stantorf said only police had responded to that call, adding that Fish and Game staff haven’t shot any bears in Anchorage so far this season.

He said Monday’s incident is a good reminder for residents to regain their bear awareness as bruins return to town. A good first step is securing bird feeders and other potential attractants like trash, which can be stored in locking bear-proof containers. Feeding game is an offense under state law, carrying a fine of $320.

“If you know bears, this is what keeps bears coming around to neighborhoods,” Stantorf said. “Once they figure out there’s a food source there, they keep coming back.”

Heavy snowfall, like the snow dumps this winter that have made it the city’s second deepest ever recorded, has driven moose into urban areas. 

But Stantorf said the deep snow doesn’t have a major impact on bears because they tend to stay near their dens immediately after emerging from hibernation.

“The only thing that might hinder them with a lot of snow is the ease of traveling (soft snow vs. hard snow) as they are foraging in the spring, otherwise, it does not seem to impact them,” he said in an email.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy has declared April Bear Awareness Month, and Fish and Game has posted a Facebook video featuring tips on bear-proofing urban homes.

Police say residents should call 911 if they’re in imminent danger of being harmed by wildlife. Regional Fish and Game offices can also take phone reports regarding wildlife, which can also be submitted through Fish and Game’s website.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number to call to report wildlife danger.

Growing up, China Kantner spent half the year on the Kobuk River, at her family’s camp near the village of Ambler.

“In the fall time, we would go upriver, wait for the caribou to go through, pick berries, maybe get a couple of pike, dry some pike while we were there,” she said.

The Kantners would spend winters in Kotzebue and come back upriver in the spring in time for geese and caribou.

Kantner is a member of Protect the Kobuk, a group of 700 people, mostly residents of Northwest Alaska. They’re fighting to block development of the Ambler Road — also known as the Ambler Access Project — a proposed 211 mile industrial road that would cut through the Kobuk River’s watershed to access copper and zinc deposits.

For many people in the region, the river is a source of clean drinking water and a habitat for the animals they depend on for food, like salmon, sheefish, waterfowl and caribou.

“This is totally a food security issue,” Kantner said. “We want to protect what we have and the animals and plants that we rely on.”

On Tuesday, the environmental nonprofit American Rivers released its annual list of 10 “endangered” U.S. rivers — rivers facing immediate threats from climate change, pollution and development. The Kobuk is number eight on the list.

“Our most endangered rivers report is really highlighting a river in crisis, that’s at a crossroads,” said Sarah Dyrdahl, Northwest Region Director for American Rivers.

The Ambler mining district is said to hold millions of pounds of copper, zinc, cobalt and other metals that are increasingly in demand for the production of clean energy technologies.

“They’d be coming in and destroying this last pristine land, not only in the United States, but in the world,” said Clarence Putyuk Wood-Griepentrog, a lifelong resident of Ambler. “If we need copper, we need zinc, there are mines down [in the] States. They’re already on a road system. Go to those guys.”

Wood-Griepentrog is Inupiaq and has commercially fished for chum salmon in Kotzebue sound going on eight seasons. He said he’s concerned about the road interrupting caribou and bird migration and pollution coming downstream from the mine threatening salmon, sheefish and other species.

“Everything’s connected here. Our watershed is our lifeline. If that water gets contaminated we’re all doomed.”

Ambler Metals spokesperson Shalon Harrington wrote in an email that the company “recognizes and fully appreciates the cultural and ecological importance of the Kobuk River for the Northwest Arctic and its people and remains committed to the highest level of environmental protections for the eventual development of any mines in the Ambler Mining District.”

While no protections come with the endangered status, Dyrdahl said it helps to bring attention to rivers that are facing an imminent threat, “where there’s an opportunity for action in the next year.”

In the Kobuk River’s case, Dyrdahl and other advocates are eyeing an upcoming decision on the Ambler Road.

The New York Times and Politico reported Tuesday the Biden administration will soon deny permits for the road, which passes through Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve.

Even so, activists are preparing for a long fight. The road has support from Alaska’s congressional delegation and the state-owned development bank known as AIDEA, who argue the state has guaranteed right of way across federal land under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980.

Kantner sees parallels to the decades-long legal battles over Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay.

“People in that region have been fighting Pebble Mine for a long, long time,” Kanter said. “We have a lot of work to do, regardless of what the decision is.”

Alaska has one of the highest rates of binge-drinking deaths in the United States and those rates increased during and after COVID-19. But there are more options than ever for treating alcohol use disorder in the state, including several medications that can make it easier for some people to reduce or quit drinking. 

Katie Schneider, a physician assistant and the clinical director for the detox program at Southcentral Foundation for twenty years, said about half the people in their 14-bed facility on any day are working on alcohol dependence. And in the decades she’s been working there, the options for helping them with medication-assisted treatment have expanded. 

“It’s actually really improved a lot,” Schneider said. “When I first started practicing, the only thing that we had was something called Antabuse, which caused people to vomit every time they had alcohol. That is also still an option; it’s just not one that we use a lot.”

Antabuse has been around for about 75 years, but it didn’t help people with cravings and caused severe reactions to food or drink with even tiny amounts of alcohol. Now there are several options of medications that address alcohol dependency, which offer a gentler path to recovery. 

Schneider said she encourages anyone in the detox facility to consider medication. 

“We encourage everyone to do medication assisted treatment, because we feel that you should put every tool in your toolbox that you can,” Schneider said.

Because drinking is often a coping mechanism, there’s no one path to reducing or stopping. Schneider said medications may also include treatments for underlying disorders. She said drinking can mask mental health struggles and part of recovery is figuring out the root causes of alcohol abuse, not just addressing the drinking itself. 

“Nobody wakes up one day and says, ‘I want to ruin my life with drugs and alcohol,’” Schneider said. “There’s always underlying causes. There’s childhood traumas, there’s mental health disorders, there are maladaptive behaviors, all kinds of reasons.”

That’s also something Seth Workentine thinks about in his work. He’s an addiction medicine fellow at Providence Alaska in Anchorage and he said he always asks his patients for more information about when and why they’re drinking and sometimes those patterns reveal depression or anxiety. 

He said there are also several longer-term medications to help with alcohol cravings. He said he has had a few patients who prefer antabuse, but it’s not very popular anymore. Acamprosate is a newer medication which helps reduce cravings for alcohol. 

“And so patients feel that they’re able to reduce their use, or even go off completely, and find that they’re thinking about alcohol a lot less,” Workentine said.

He said another medication is naltrexone, which can be used for reducing or quitting alcohol or opioids. He said some patients describe naltrexone as “taking the fun out of drinking.”

Workentine said he encourages people using medication-assisted treatment to stay on the medications as long as they’re willing: six months, a year, or even sometimes indefinitely. He said these medications improve success rates for recovery. He also said he’s seen a shift toward more harm-reduction approaches to addiction. Not everyone, he said, is ready to quit drinking completely.

“There’s this general shift in medicine to do more patient centered care,” Workentine said. “We’re a patient’s coach. We’re there to help them achieve the goals that they set out. There’s no longer what we call ‘paternalistic medicine,’ where we describe what goals the patient should have.”

Schneider said she’s also seen this shift in addiction medicine. She said earlier in her career, doctors required patients to stop drinking completely when prescribing medications for alcohol use and that’s changed.

“If someone goes from drinking a fifth a day to having two drinks a day, that is a win and we should celebrate that,” Schneider said.

She said she hopes that anyone who wants to change their drinking reaches out to a healthcare provider.

RELATED: New online tool connects Alaskans with traumatic brain injury to care

The Alaska Senate rolled out its first draft of the state’s operating budget Wednesday. The budget includes a roughly $1,300 Permanent Fund dividend for residents, plus about $175 in an energy relief check. The Senate’s PFD proposal earmarks 25% of this year’s drawdown on the Permanent Fund for the state’s annual payout.

That is substantially lower than the roughly $2,300 payout passed by the House. The Senate’s operating budget chair, Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, said the state has been “blessed” the last couple of years by high oil prices. But Stedman warned that high prices won’t last forever.

“I would suggest that we use a reasonable dividend expectation that can be attained going forward so we don’t put ourselves in a position where we have fairly strong dividends and we get up one year and there is no dividend. That’s what I want to avoid,” Stedman told reporters on Tuesday.

Stedman and other members of the bipartisan Senate majority have warned in recent weeks that the larger dividend passed by the House doesn’t leave room for agreed-upon spending on capital projects or recently-passed bills. 

Meanwhile, Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who has made large dividends a key part of his platform, said on the statewide call-in show Talk of Alaska Tuesday that he’d prefer a dividend above $2,000. He suggested spending a portion of the state’s roughly $2.8 billion savings account known as the Constitutional Budget Reserve.

“Well, the CBR’s got money in it, too,” Dunleavy told host Lori Townsend. “And during these difficult inflationary times, I think we have to give due consideration to what people are going through, as the caller kind of alluded to, but certainly the Legislature is going to make their decisions. And again, I know it’s, from all indications, it’s not going to be a full PFD. Hopefully it’s somewhere north of $2,000 to help people.”

House Speaker Cathy Tilton, R-Wasilla, said Tuesday she’d like the biggest dividend lawmakers can provide, but she said she’s not sure that spending from the savings account will be possible.

“I think that the bigger question would be, would we be able to go into the Constitutional Budget Reserve, and have the votes available for that?” Tilton said in a news conference.

It takes a three-quarters vote in the House and Senate to spend from the account. That means the Republican-led majority couldn’t do it alone, and they may not get support from their colleagues — minority-caucus Democrats and independents spoke out against what they saw as an unbalanced budget as it passed the House earlier this month.

There was a similar debate last year between the House and Senate over the size of the PFD and whether to spend from the savings account. In the end, the House voted to adopt the Senate’s budget after negotiators added some $34 million in projects to the spending plan. 

That led lawmakers this year to agree on a budget timeline with specific checkpoints. Lawmakers have stuck to the plan so far.

The Senate’s draft budget also addresses a disputed funding shortfall that threatens federal grant funding. Earlier this year, the federal Department of Education said the state had underfunded school districts in violation of a first-of-its kind grant requirement attached to a COVID recovery bill. The Senate’s draft budget would send some $11.9 million to two Alaska school districts to make up for the shortfall.

The Dunleavy administration has resisted the federal government’s call to pay up, saying the state’s funding formula did not change over the life of the grant. Though a policy expert recently told senators that many states initially failed to comply with the requirement, Alaska is the only state that has yet to resolve the issue.

The budget also includes $175 million in one-time aid to school districts, equivalent to a $680 increase in per-student funding. That provision was also included in the House budget.

Senate leaders say they hope to pass a final budget by early May. It’ll then likely go to a conference committee to work out the differences between the House and Senate.

New research shows that the health consequences of wildfire smoke exposure stretch well beyond the smoky days themselves, contributing to nearly 16,000 deaths each year across the U.S., according to a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) analysis released in April. The analysis warns that number could grow to nearly 30,000 deaths a year by the middle of the century as human-driven climate change increases the likelihood of large, intense, smoke-spewing wildfires in the Western U.S. and beyond.

“This really points to the urgency of the problem,” says Minhao Qiu, a researcher at Stanford University and the lead author. “Based on our results, this should be one of the policy priorities, or the climate policy priority, of the U.S., to figure out how to reduce this number.”

Another analysis, led by researchers from Yale University, finds that the human death toll every year from wildfire smoke could already be near 30,000 people in the U.S. Deaths from cardiovascular disease, respiratory problems, kidney disease, and mental health issues all rise in the days and weeks after smoke exposure.

Together, the studies point to an underappreciated threat to public health, says Yiqun Ma, a researcher at Yale and an author of the second study.

“It’s a call to action,” she says—outlining the real, and significant, human stakes of failing to rein in further human-caused climate change.

How bad is smoke for health?

Wildfire smoke is rarely listed as a cause of death on people’s death certificates. But research has shown that tiny particles present in smoke worsen many different health problems. These particles penetrate deep into people’s lungs and can cross into the bloodstream or even into the brain. Repeated exposures, or high-concentration exposures, can supercharge other health problems, from heart and kidney disease to hastening the onset of dementia symptoms. In some cases, the stress from wildfire smoke is so great that some people die.

Because the harm from wildfire smoke can accumulate and isn’t always immediately obvious, the long-term risks from wildfire smoke exposure have gone underappreciated.

“It’s not obvious, necessarily, if you’re looking at any individual case,” says Sam Heft-Neal, an environmental economist at Stanford and an author of the NBER study. Stepping back and looking at the data statistically makes the picture much clearer, he says: smoke is a big problem that is contributing to thousands of deaths already in the U.S.

Physician and researcher Juan Aguilera, now at the University of Texas School of Public Health in El Paso, has studied the impacts of air pollution on his patients’ health. He had just moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2020 when the smoke descended. “The 2020 wildfires brought a lot of perspective to people living in the Bay Area,” he says.

Aguilera and colleagues sampled people’s blood before and during the smoke event. They found markers of stressed immune systems and inflammation, signs that people were heavily impacted during the smoke. “As scientists, we do understand that things like chronic inflammation, chronic stress, lead to chronic conditions that are often related to mortality,” he says.

The exact mechanisms by which smoke impacts people’s health are still being unraveled. Some evidence suggests that wildfire smoke is more harmful than other tiny particles, like pollution from fossil fuel combustion or fine dust. It’s likely more harmful smoke is produced when wildfires burn through urban areas, where everything from houses full of insulation to car batteries, and metal are torched.

Aguilera compares the risk of inhaling wildfire smoke to smoking cigarettes. “Being in a wildfire-prone area, it seems something equivalent to smoking like one pack a day, or 10 packs a week,” says Aguilera.

Big problems, big impacts

Despite the growing understanding of the health risks from wildfire smoke, the costs have not been factored into most policy decisions, says Susan Anenberg, a public health and pollution expert at George Washington University.

The new research adds to a body of work “showing that wildfire smoke is one of the largest public health consequences of climate change,” Anenberg says.

By 2050, the overall annual economic cost credited to lives lost from wildfire smoke could reach $240 billion, according to the NBER analysis. That is larger than previous estimates of all climate-related damages combined—including direct costs related to wildfire and tropical cyclone damages.

“Our estimates of the damages of climate change are undercounting the true effects,” Anenberg says.

The NBER analysis used a suite of different computer models, trained on fire observations from 2000 to 2021, to figure out the relationship between fire activity and how much smoke was produced. The researchers then linked that smoke to weather patterns, letting them see how the smoke spread and drifted into different parts of the U.S. at various times. They linked those maps of smoke pollution to county-level death records across the country from 2006 to 2019 to see how deaths changed when the overall exposure to wildfire smoke went up or down.

In years like 2020, some northern California counties were exposed to double their normal pollution load for the year. In conditions like those, the total number of deaths increased by almost 6%. But even small increases in smoke exposure averaged out over the year, push mortality up. “Our findings are consistent with a host of recent work suggesting there is no safe level of air pollution exposure,” the study authors write.

Those same models also let them look further into a climate-changed future. Even with aggressive climate action in coming decades, wildfire activity is forecast to grow—and with it, smoke exposure. By the middle of the century, models suggest people across the U.S. will likely experience two to three times as much smoke as they did before 2020. Smoke-related deaths could rise by at least 8,000 people every year. With less aggressive climate action, the number of deaths could be even higher.

“Not to be an alarmist, but the results are staggering,” says Aguilera. “They paint a difficult picture for years to come.”

The Yale study, led by Ma, uses a similar strategy to estimate the impact of smoke on deaths across the country. But the researchers also looked at the recorded causes of death. Even at very low concentrations, smoke was associated with a higher frequency of deaths related to heart disease. They also saw upticks in the number of deaths related to mental health, endocrine problems, and even diabetes.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Kristin Paniptchuk’s water broke on Christmas Eve at her home in the western Alaska Inupiat village of Shaktoolik, and then she began to bleed profusely.

The local clinic in the tiny village of 200 people on the Bering Sea couldn’t stop the bleeding or the contractions brought on by a baby that wasn’t due for another two months. With harsh winds grounding an air ambulance from nearby Nome, medical staff called on their only other option: the Alaska Air National Guard. Five days after a military helicopter and then a cargo plane whisked Paniptchuk to an Anchorage hospital, she delivered her daughter Kinley, premature but healthy.

Over the past year-and-a-half, Paniptchuk, whose daughter is now a toddler, has been thinking about how lucky she was.

“I’m just really thankful that they were able to come and get me,” she said. “Who knows what would have happened if they didn’t?”

The Alaska Air National Guard conducted 159 such missions last year in largely roadless Alaska, many during vicious storms. In one instance, a military helicopter flew nearly 660 miles to pick up a pregnant woman with stomach pains from an Alaska island 2 miles from Russia’s waters. Last month, two airmen armed with pints of blood parachuted into another western Alaska community to care for a woman experiencing internal bleeding because it was the fastest way to get there.

Now, those rescues could be drastically curtailed as personnel changes take an outsize toll in a state more than twice the size of Texas, Guard leaders and members say. A nationwide move to balance the number of the top-earning positions among the Air National Guard across 54 state and territorial units means the Guard will soon convert many of Alaska’s highly paid Active Guard and Reserve members — who are essentially the equivalent of full-time active-duty military — to dual status tech positions, a classification with lower wages, less appealing benefits and different duties. Many say they will quit rather than accept the changes.

The transition, leaders say, could cut the number of the Alaska Guard’s medical rescue missions to about 50 a year and also affect critical national security work in the state, located just across the Bering Strait from Russia. That work includes scanning for missile launches from Russia, North Korea and China; tracking spy balloons over U.S. air space; and flying a refueling plane for U.S. fighter jets that respond to Russian bombers near American airspace — something that’s already happened five times this year.

“If we’re only watching the skies Monday through Friday and they launch a missile on Saturday, well, that’s failure,” said Alaska Guard commander Brig. Gen. Brian Kile.

Alaska is slated to convert 80 members, or about 4% of its 2,200 personnel, to tech positions — the most in the U.S. The problem is that much of the Alaska Guard’s unique role — missions that require being on alert 24 hours a day, seven days a week — can’t be done by the tech positions, the Guard said.

“They’re trying to make all of the units look equal, and the problem with that is they took no consideration of location and of mission into account when they did this,” Kile said. “To do that for Alaska is incredibly impactful.”

Local leaders have met with National Guard leadership, hoping to change their minds about the cuts in Alaska.

In a statement to The Associated Press, the Air National Guard said the staffing reset was “driven by the desire to achieve equity across all units resourced by the same program.”

In past statements, Guard officials have said they attempt to address staffing imbalances where some National Air Guard units have more of the highly paid Active Guard and Reserve members than others. Alaska has spent years adding these personnel to support its work.

Officials did not respond to emailed questions.

Rather than take a pay cut, more than 80% of the 80 Alaska members whose jobs are being converted to tech positions have indicated they will leave the Guard, some for private sector jobs. Some of those who stay will lose more than 50% of their salaries, which in some cases translates to more than $50,000 a year plus benefits, making living in expensive Alaska a huge challenge.

“You’re living in fear for the future,” said Sgt. Sharon Queenie, a Yup’ik Eskimo and Guard member who monitors the skies for errant aircraft or spy balloons. The single mother of three will see her $104,000 annual salary cut in half, which she said could force her to sell her house.

Maj. Mark Dellaquila lives in North Pole, a small community near Fairbanks, with his wife and five children. He said he would lose $60,000 a year when his job — already unfunded — is converted to a tech position.

The Pennsylvania native said he and his wife decided early on that Alaska would be their forever home.

“We’re in Alaska trying to grow roots and raise our kids here and now have this seemingly arbitrary decision just yank all of those roots right out of the ground,” he said, choking back tears. “It’s hard.”

The State of Alaska is appealing a decision that brought back a personal watercraft ban in Kachemak Bay waters.

The ban originally went into effect in 2001, and prohibited all personal watercraft — commonly known as jet skis, the brand name of a Kawasaki product — from going in the Kachemak Bay and Fox River Flats Critical Habitat Areas. These areas include all of the waters in Kachemak Bay, as well as the mud flats and marshlands at the head of the bay spanning nearly 230,000 acres in total.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game repealed the ban in 2021, which led to Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang being sued by Kachemak Bay Conservation Society, Cook Inletkeeper, Friends of Kachemak Bay State Park and Alaska Quiet Rights Coalition. Judge Adolf Zeman ruled that Vincent-Lang did not have the authority to repeal the regulation in November, and the ban went back in place. Last month, the state filed an appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court to reverse the decision and send it back to the state Superior Court.

Penelope Haas is the vice president of Kachemak Bay Conservation Society. Haas said she is concerned about the potential amount of money the state will spend on the lawsuit and appeal.

“It is concerning to us to observe the kind of inordinate amount of money the state seems to be spending on this litigation when their case really feels quite weak,” she said. “You know, they’re spending Alaskan taxpayers money to fight the ruling by the judge that is actually really cut and dry.”

Haas said their attorneys estimate that this case could cost the state as much as half a million dollars.

After denying the state’s motion for reconsideration, the Superior Court issued a final judgment in February. However, the state filed a motion for a stay on putting the ban back in place, as well as notifying the public of the change. A stay temporarily stops a legal action from going through. The stay was partially granted on March 19. The state doesn’t have to follow its public notice process, but the ban must stay in effect.

According to an email from state Department of Law communications director Patty Sullivan, the public notice process includes putting the reinstated ban in the state’s “Online Public Notice System, publishing it in a newspaper of general circulation, and giving direct notice to anyone who requested it from the Department, all Alaska state legislators, and anyone who the Department believes is interested in the action.”

While the ban is back in place, Haas said to report personal watercraft that go into Kachemak Bay.

“If folks see jet skis in the bay, if they see them launching in the harbor, or they see them running around out there, they should call the Alaska State Troopers,” she said.

Since the ban has been reinstated, Alaska State Troopers haven’t received any reports of personal watercraft in the bay, but Alaska State Park Ranger Jason Okuly said in an email he made note of seeing two of them last month during the March 23 Winter King Tournament.

Personal watercraft remain banned in Kachemak Bay State Park. The 2021 Fish and Game repeal did not affect park waters.

As the case continues, the Supreme Court will hear from both parties and determine whether to uphold the ban or reverse the judge’s decision. Oral arguments are scheduled for July 31 at 11 a.m.

Vi Waghiyi grew up in the village of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island, where meat from walrus, seal and bowhead whale sustained her family through long winters. 

“My people continue to live off the land and ocean like we have for millenia,” Waghiyi said. “Our elders call the Bering Sea our farm.”

Today, as an elder herself, Waghiyi wants her grandson to have access to the same traditional foods. But food security in the Arctic is increasingly threatened.

The burning of fossil fuels is heating the region four times faster than anywhere else on the planet. Warming waters are disrupting the food chain, and melting sea ice is erasing animal habitat and making hunting more dangerous.

“And we are some of the most highly contaminated people on the planet because of our reliance on our subsistence foods,” Waghiyi said.

Because plastic waste piling up across the planet is making its way up to the Arctic. Plastics contain toxins that have been linked to long-term health problems like cancer, hormone disruption and damage to the heart, liver and kidney, which threaten Alaska Native communities. That’s according to a new report from Alaska Community Action on Toxics and the International Pollutants Elimination Network. 

Waghiyi, who is the director of environmental health and justice for Alaska Community Action on Toxics, is a co-author on the report, along with other scientists and Alaska Native leaders who are calling for an end to new plastic production worldwide. They’ll represent Alaska’s Arctic communities at a meeting of the United Nations later this month. 

Pamela Miller, a long-time Alaska scientist who works with both organization, is also a co-author. She said strong currents in the ocean and the atmosphere naturally move from lower latitudes to the poles, carrying plastic and other pollutants along with them. 

“We now know that there are microplastics in fish, in walrus, in ring seal, bearded seal, spotted seal, and many different whale species,” Miller said. “These are the animals that have been relied on for centuries for sustenance.”

The accumulation of plastics in the Arctic is made worse by climate change.

“We also know that with climate warming happening so rapidly that the highest concentrations of microplastics are found in those areas where there’s the most rapid melting of sea ice,” Miller said.

The melting of sea ice, permafrost and glaciers also release plastics and chemicals that have long been bound in ice. 

In 2022, the United Nations set out to write a treaty on how to deal with growing plastic waste. They’ve held several meetings to hash out the terms, including one happening later this month in Ottawa, Canada. There, the authors of the new report will join representatives from more than 170 other countries. 

Miller says there’s only one real solution to the plastics problem. 

“The first thing is to curb the production of chemicals and plastics,” she said. “Since they’re reliant on fossil fuel production, that also means curbing fossil fuel production.”

But not everyone agrees with her. 

Most plastic is created with chemicals derived from fossil fuels. And as demand for oil and gas in transportation or home heating drops with the switch to cleaner energy, many in the fossil fuel industry see plastics as a way to support their future business.

At a treaty meeting last fall, representatives from oil and gas producing companies and countries pushed for recycling and cleanup solutions instead — despite years of research suggesting that only a small fraction of recycled plastic gets transformed into new items.

Waghiyi says she hopes that Arctic Indigenous communities are able to push back against those industry interests. 

“Our people have done all we could to make sure our land, airs and waters are protected,” Waghiyi said. “These multinational corporations do not take human health into account.”

She says she’s headed to Ottawa to fight to protect the health and food of her grandson. 

The vast Tongass National Forest just grew a little bit larger, with the addition of five acres to the Kootznoowoo Wilderness on Admiralty Island. 

The property, known as Wheeler Creek, was privately owned until the Southeast Alaska Land Trust and the Wilderness Land Trust teamed up to buy it. Then they transferred ownership to the Forest Service.

The swath of land is tiny compared to the 17 million acres that make up the Tongass. But Margosia Jadkowski, director of marketing and communications for the Wilderness Trust, said protecting it is still important.

“It has some important habitat contained on the property itself, on those five acres,” she said. “It has an abundant pink salmon run, its important king spawning habitat as well. And its habitat for a number of important land species including brown bears.”

Jadkowski said Wheeler Creek has boat access, which made it a prime target for building cabins or even a commercial lodge. But with the new wilderness designation, it can’t be developed for building projects, mining claims or timber sales. 

More than 35% of the Tongass is protected as wilderness, but across the forest there are still a lot of small private properties leftover from the mining camps. Groups like the Wilderness Land Trust have been working to purchase them for conservation. 

“When you have these private inholdings within wilderness, they sort of act as tears in the fabric of wilderness protection,” Jadkowski said. “They’re kind of weak spots, because they don’t carry any of the protections of the surrounding wilderness.”

The trust works with willing sellers to buy up those private properties and transform them into public lands. Their efforts have also added more than 180 acres of land to the Chuck River Wilderness, which sits about 70 miles south of Juneau at the head of Windham Bay.

And their partners at the Juneau-based Southeast Alaska Land Trust have purchased and conserved an addition 3,600 acres of wetland, wildlife habitat and open spaces, both in and outside of wildness areas.

Jadkowski said the Wilderness Trust is working to acquire another property in Chuck River. And it’s researching other properties they might want to protect.

“We’re also developing a data-driven analysis tool where we can look at things like biodiversity, climate resilience and wildlife migration corridors,” Jadkowski said.

Once finished, Jadkowski said, the tool will help to showcase the many benefits of growing conservation areas in Southeast Alaska.

This month, Anchorage residents voted down a $4.1 million bond that would’ve fulfilled supporters’ yearslong goal to get two cemeteries built in two communities on opposite ends of the municipality — Eagle River and Girdwood. Right now, neither community has a public cemetery.

Tommy O’Malley said he’s been working on getting a cemetery in Girdwood for so long that when the bond failed, people reached out to him in sympathy. 

“The people that have called me up that know that I’ve been doing this a long time, they’ve been giving me condolences, like, you know, my mom died or something,” O’Malley said.

Fifty-six percent of voters rejected the bond to help fund the Girdwood work and two other cemetery projects. It was one of just two bonds to fail in this year’s city election. But supporters of the projects, O’Malley included, say they’re not giving up on the cemeteries just yet. They say they’ll look for other funding and work on improving messaging on the projects’ importance.

“The inertia is making sure that people understand the need,” said Tom Looney, one of the drivers of the other major cemetery project, in the Eagle River-Chugiak area.

In Girdwood, O’Malley said the land for the proposed cemetery, uphill from the Double Musky Inn, is already owned by the city, and the $1.75 million in bond money would’ve gone to developing the essential parts of his vision. 

“Even without the driveway, even without the trails, you could go back with a grid and pick your grave site and bury a person or put their cremains in the ground,” O’Malley said. “And the grid would keep track of where the bodies are buried.”

On the other side of the municipality, up north, Looney said it’s important for the Eagle River area to have its own public cemetery. It’s a symbol of any community, he said.

“You go and visit a community in the Lower 48, how many of those communities don’t have cemeteries?” he said.

Like Girdwood, Eagle River and Chugiak are separate towns that are part of the Municipality of Anchorage. Looney said a big reason he began thinking about establishing a cemetery was to help uphold the towns’ histories, independent of the big city.

“Some of our community leaders, when they pass away, they end up shipping the body to the Lower 48 or Palmer or whatever,” Looney said. “We have no identity as a community, of who our founders were.”

Like the Girdwood project, the Eagle River cemetery would’ve received $1.75 million from the bond. The location for that cemetery would be on Wolf Den Drive, across from Eagle River High School. 

Unlike the Girdwood project, Looney said the bond money would’ve likely covered the full cost of the Eagle River project, including a small maintenance shelter and a small roofed area for inclement weather.

“Bad weather, people would be able to stand under a shelter, as they were having a ceremony out there,” Looney said. “Really no frills for the Chugiak-Eagle River cemetery. It was pretty bare bones.”

The remaining half a million dollars in the bond would’ve gone towards maintenance at the Anchorage Memorial Cemetery. Cemetery director Rob Jones said the city got a large donation of 2,000 grave markers about 20 years ago, but they were installed directly into the ground, instead of into concrete like the city does now. 

“So out of the 2,000 markers that we got donated, 80% of them are overgrown and functionally not marking graves anymore,” Jones said.

He said most of the bond money, about $350,000, would’ve gone to fixing those markers. The rest would’ve been for upgrades to make the cemetery more ADA compliant and to build a new columbarium for urns.

Supporters say it’s unclear why so many voters rejected the bond, but Jones said lumping the three projects together may have turned people off. 

“I wasn’t confident that it would pass,” Jones said. “It had such a big price tag on it.”

While the bond didn’t directly address capacity in the Anchorage cemetery, Jones said it’s a looming issue. He anticipates the cemetery will run out of plots for the public by July. 

“Yeah, we’re down to like 20,” Jones said.

Jones, Looney and O’Malley said they still plan on pursuing the funding to get their projects done, whether it’s through donations, grants or trying to get another bond together.

The Biden administration is making two big decisions this week that block resource extraction in Alaska and the state’s U.S. senators are fuming.

They, along with a flock of other Republican senators, said President Biden is boosting the mineral-rich countries like Russia and Venezuela while driving down American industry. 

“He is destabilizing our security as a nation in a way that most didn’t think possible in such a short time period,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski told reporters at a press conference Thursday.

The decisions are expected to be announced Friday, but the New York Times and Bloomberg have already spilled the beans: The administration intends not to allow a road in Northwest Alaska that’s crucial to the development of mining in the Ambler area. And it will adopt a rule that will add environmental protections to sensitive areas of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, to the west of Prudhoe Bay.

Both Ambler and the NPR-A have massive tracts of undeveloped land that are important to migrating birds, wildlife and subsistence harvests. Environmental groups and indigenous opponents of drilling and mining are preparing their responses to celebrate the expected news. But the GOP senators aren’t waiting for the official announcements.

Murkowski said shutting down oil and mineral extraction in the U.S. will just drive the business overseas.

“We’d rather take it from Iran, from Russia, and all the other places where they really don’t care about us. And they love the fact that we’re being crippled by our own administration,” she said.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, who organized the Senate press conference, said he wants to get the word out, because he thinks the American voters won’t tolerate the assaults on Alaska mining and drilling.

“The most important thing we can do is retake the Senate, retake the White House,” he said. “That’s going to be the ultimate revenge here.”

Congress could pass a resolution to overturn the environmental rule in the National Petroleum Reserve, Sullivan said. President Biden would certainly veto that resolution, but Sullivan said if the rule is delayed a bit, the decision could be left to a Republican president.

In a 17th-floor conference room with a dominating view of downtown Anchorage, Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor laid out what he sees as the impact of a recent court ruling that threw out two laws underpinning the state’s homeschool system.

“In light of the vague broad nature of the court’s reasoning, it is very difficult to determine what type of program would actually be permitted under this decision,” Taylor told reporters on Wednesday. “In fact, it draws into question spending that has taken place in public schools for decades,” including public schools’ textbook purchases, cafeteria contracts and music lessons, he said.

One of the laws Anchorage Superior Court judge Adolf Zeman found unconstitutional creates the framework for homeschool curriculum called individual learning plans. The other statute provides cash payments known as “allotments” to homeschool parents, who use them for things like textbooks and materials. 

Plaintiffs told the judge that parents were using their allotments on private school classes. They argued that’s a violation of the Alaska Constitution, which forbids using public money “for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

Taylor and Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy say they’re planning to appeal the ruling on an expedited basis to the Alaska Supreme Court. 

And Dunleavy said the ruling, if it stands, will have far-reaching consequences.

“Part of the interpretation of the ruling that just occurred is that the homeschooling correspondence laws are thrown out. In other words, the programs are gone, potentially,” Dunleavy said.

Others say it’s not so clear.

“That is one million percent false,” said Scott Kendall, an attorney representing the four plaintiffs who challenged the correspondence school allotment program after noting an uptick in private schools advertising that parents could pay tuition with the state-funded allotments.

Kendall said he was frustrated watching the governor’s news conference.

“They kept repeating, ‘The judge said correspondence schools are unconstitutional. We can’t have this anymore.’ And that is fundamentally incorrect,” Kendall said. “The judge said, ‘You have constructed the correspondence school statute in a way that’s blatantly unconstitutional. I can’t fix it. I’m not a legislator. I’m the court. The Legislature can fix it.'”

And that’s basically what the judge said in the final words of his ruling: “If the legislature believes these expenditures are necessary—then it is up to them to craft constitutional legislation to serve that purpose—that is not this Court’s role.”

Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage and chair of the Senate Education Committee, said correspondence schools existed before the 2014 law that Judge Zeman’s ruling invalidates. 

“The rest of the authorizing regulation continues to exist even without those particular statutes,” Tobin said in a video on social media. “There may need to be some propagation of emergency regulation or there may need to be some tweaks to some of our regulation, but we still have the ability to continue to operate correspondence programs for our homeschool parents.”

Dunleavy, on the other hand, argues a favorable court decision or constitutional amendment is necessary to make sure the correspondence program continues.

The House Judiciary Committee chaired by Republican Rep.  Sarah Vance of Homer came out with their own proposed solution on Thursday: a constitutional amendment that would remove the language about private and religious schools. 

The measure would need a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate to advance to a public vote, though it’s not clear that even a simple majority of the House would support it. And Senate leaders say they don’t support spending on private or religious school classes.

The judge’s decision is likely to be put on hold at least through the end of June, and perhaps longer. An appeal could take months or years to resolve.