Alaska Public Media

An Alaska foster youth advocacy organization is suing the state Office of Children’s Services for allegedly failing to provide food and necessities for older youth in their care.

The lawsuit by Facing Foster Care in Alaska claims foster youth placed in shelters or college dormitories don’t receive enough money for food or basic needs like they would if they were in a home placement with a family.

Facing Foster Care director Amanda Metivier said for years, she’s heard complaints from foster youth that they cannot afford to buy enough food or other necessities.

“For a young person in the dorm who needs transportation to a therapy appointment, the state has a duty to cover that cost,” she said. “When the [college] commons close during winter break and there’s no meal plan, we hear from those youth who say, ‘I don’t know how I’m gonna eat during winter break.'”

Alaska foster youth 16 years and older get a small stipend to help with transitioning to adulthood, for things like getting a driver’s license.

But Metivier said the stipend amounts to a small fraction of the more than $1,000 a month that foster families get to provide food and necessities for children in their care. Facing Foster Care has provided gift cards to cover transportation and food outside of meal plans and shelter meals, according to the lawsuit.

The Office of Children’s Services declined an interview for this story, but an official with OCS wrote in an email that they routinely offer food and clothing vouchers, bus passes and other transportation assistance, and that young adults have access to the same funding streams as younger children.

Metivier said her organization’s youth board works with OCS and has brought up the issue multiple times without resolution. She said some other states have better systems to provide stipends to youth living independently as they transition out of foster care.

“As a state, we’ve continued to see a decline in foster homes,” Metivier said. “We’ve continued to see challenges with workforce in the child welfare system, and those things are not going to improve overnight. And these youth have needs right now, and this would be a pretty simple way to solve that, right?”

Facing Foster Care in Alaska filed the lawsuit Jan. 6 in Alaska Superior Court.

Related: Alaska’s foster care system is among the worst in the nation. Can a lawsuit force real reform?

The Alaska Legislature is back in session. Lawmakers in the House and Senate gaveled in this afternoon.

At the Capitol Tuesday, the atmosphere was a bit like the first day of school — lots of smiles and hugs, some what-did-you-do-this-summers. Blue delphiniums and yellow roses adorned the dais in the House chamber.

Despite the sunny mood, though, there’s a cloud over this year’s session.

“We know we’re facing even tighter revenue constraints than before. We know that demands will continue to rise, as they always have,” said Senate President Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican.

Lawmakers have the next four months to act on a multitude of issues facing the state, from energy prices and the possibility of a gas pipeline to the perennial question of how the state will pay its bills.

For years, Alaska has had a structural deficit: the state treasury takes in less money than it pays out. Last year, lawmakers approved a Permanent Fund dividend of just $1,000, an all-time low when adjusted for inflation.

So this year, members of the bipartisan majority leading the state Senate say raising revenue is their top priority. Sen. Lyman Hoffman, a Democrat from Bethel who co-chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said at a news conference Tuesday that even a $1,000 dividend would present a challenge this year with oil prices persistently low.

“One way or another, if we are going to continue to provide the services that people of Alaska have been accustomed to, that is the million dollar question,” he said. “Can we come up with revenue measures this session?”

Lawmakers and Gov. Mike Dunleavy have repeatedly butted heads on the best ways to raise money for state government and, of course, how to spend it.

Last year, Dunleavy vetoed the sole significant revenue-raising bill to reach his desk, saying he wanted lawmakers to make fiscal reforms part of a larger package. The bill would have tweaked the state’s corporate income tax structure to capture more revenue from out-of-state businesses. It wouldn’t have solved the revenue shortfall, though it would have eased the pressure a bit.

The state House and Senate plan to consider overriding that veto Thursday morning after a two-day delay at Dunleavy’s request, but it’s unclear whether lawmakers will be able to muster the necessary supermajority.

Palmer Republican Rep. DeLena Johnson, who leads the all-Republican House minority, says she’d like to see lawmakers consider something more comprehensive.

“I think we need to take up things as a whole, not as just individual items,” Johnson said.

And they may have a chance this year. Dunleavy told reporters in December that he’s planning to roll out a fiscal plan that would serve as a bridge to brighter days ahead. Growth in the Permanent Fund and a potential gas pipeline will eventually ease the pressure, but the coming years could prove a challenge, he said.

“I think the next five years, we’re going to have to be real careful, and we’re going to have to have in place things that will pay for government,” Dunleavy said at his holiday open house in December.

Dunleavy may provide some clues in his final State of the State address on Thursday.

But it’s not just fiscal issues facing the state this year. The possibility of a natural gas pipeline connecting the North Slope and Southcentral Alaska moving forward will also be a topic of interest, lawmakers say. The developer of the project, which has been a dream for decades and is now a priority for the Trump administration, has said it plans to make a final investment decision early this year.

That’ll be the top issue in the Senate Resources Committee this year, said committee chair Sen. Cathy Giessel, an Anchorage Republican.

“The Resources Committee will be looking at the resource itself and its impact and the project’s impact,” she said. “Then, we’ll be sending it on to the Finance Committee that will dig even deeper into the finances.”

And more urgently, lawmakers say they’d like to craft a funding package for a variety of infrastructure projects Dunleavy vetoed from last year’s budget. Trade groups recently sounded the alarm and asked lawmakers to quickly approve $70 million in construction funding, saying the vetoes risked as much as $700 million in federally backed construction projects.

House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent, said lawmakers plan to dig into the issue promptly.

“I think there’s a lot riding on that decision, and I expect us to spend an ample amount of time, right from the opening moments, looking at it closely and figuring out what and how we’re going to approach it,” Edgmon said.

And that’s still not all — there’s education, health care, elections, a state pension plan, all priorities for various legislators in the coming session.

What will get done, though, is an open question. Sitka Republican Sen. Bert Stedman says lawmakers likely won’t be able to address everything.

“We’ll have to prioritize that list,” Stedman said. “There’s only so much bandwidth in the Legislature.”

They have until May 20 to get it done.

WASHINGTON — National Democrats cheered when former Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola announced on Monday that she’s challenging U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan.

Peltola, they said, gives Democrats a shot at winning a majority in the Senate.

But much more often than not, Alaska votes Republican in statewide races. Is it just wishful Democratic thinking that this race might be different?

“Alaska might be a state that has traditionally voted for Republicans, but it’s far more of an independent state than it is a hard Republican state,” said Lauren French, a senior political advisor with Senate Majority PAC, affiliated with Democrat Chuck Schumer from New York, the Senate Minority Leader. “You have people there who cross parties just looking for someone who will fight for them and represent them well in the U.S. Congress and in the U.S. Senate.”

French talked up Peltola’s attributes as a candidate and said she has a winning message, which is in part an Alaska version of “affordability,” a case Democrats are making nationwide. French cited the conventional wisdom that the president’s party tends to lose seats in Congress in midterm elections.

“You’re likely to see an election that, just by historical standards, is a little bit tougher for Republicans,” she said.

Analyst Kyle Kondik at the University of Virginia Center for Politics said 2026 is shaping up to be a good one for Democrats but that it would take a very big blue wave for Peltola to win.

“The Alaska Senate race is probably a lot more competitive now than it was before Mary Peltola got in,” he said. “I do still think that Dan Sullivan is favored.”

Kondik is managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which rates congressional races. When Peltola announced her run, he moved the rating for the Alaska Senate seat two categories to the left, from “safe Republican” to “leans Republican.” So did The Cook Political Report. That’s one category away from “toss-up.”

Peltola proved in 2022 – twice – that she can win a statewide election in Alaska, Kondik said, despite losing her U.S. House race in 2024.

“I think even in losing, she performed fairly impressively,” he said. “Donald Trump won Alaska by 13 (percentage) points. She lost in the final ranked choice voting allocation to now-Rep. Nick Begich by about two and a half points.”

(Peltola ultimately lost ground in the rankings. With just first choices counted, Peltola lagged Begich by about only two percentage points).

Peltola’s 2024 “overperformance” – meaning she got more votes in Alaska than the Democrat at the top of the ticket, presidential candidate and then-Vice President Kamala Harris – is important, Kondik said. It shows a significant number of Alaskans who voted for Trump also voted for Peltola.

Peltola will need that crossover appeal to succeed this year, Kondik said.

“And I do think Peltola has a fighting chance to win, even though I think you’d generally rather be the Republican nominee in a state like Alaska,” he said.

As Kondik sees it, Sullivan is a mainstream Republican without baggage, and in Alaska, that gives him a leg up.

Alaska pollster Ivan Moore, who’s worked for Democrats, points to a different metric he finds significant.

“Seven percent more Alaskans like Mary than like Dan,” he said.

Moore’s firm, Alaska Survey Research, asks Alaskans four times a year whether they have a positive or negative view of various political figures, including Peltola and Sullivan. Since Peltola became known statewide in 2022, Moore has found her “positives” to be consistently higher than Sullivan’s. Moore said it’s a simple measure that matters.

“It’s about who you like,” he said. “You generally tend not to vote for people that you don’t like.”

But likeability is not the whole story. Moore also found that 10% of people who said they didn’t like Sullivan also said they’d vote for him. That could be because they prefer Republicans or because they like Trump, and Sullivan aligns himself with the president.

How Alaskans feel about Trump, Moore said, is tied to how they feel about Sullivan.

“And so his numbers will rise and fall based on Trump’s fortunes,” he said.

Sullivan’s campaign spokesman, Nate Adams, said Team Sullivan remains confident of the senator’s re-election. Adams, who has access to internal polling that hasn’t been made public, doesn’t think much of the idea that the election is a referendum on Trump, or that Sullivan’s fate is linked to Trump’s popularity.

“I think Alaska is still very much a state that is a lot more complex than ‘red team and blue team,'” he said.

Amid the substantial national attention Peltola generated with her launch, Sullivan’s campaign has been highlighting prominent Alaskans endorsing the Republican incumbent.

“You know, Alaska Native leaders, trades, unions,” Adams said. “There are more of these forthcoming, but these are groups and coalitions that have traditionally backed Mary in her previous races, who, on Day 1 – if not before and certainly in the days after – have decided to support Sen. Sullivan.”

One thing everyone is certain of: National groups on both sides will raise and spend boatloads of money trying to win Alaska’s U.S. Senate seat.

Lawmakers return to the Alaska State Capitol on Tuesday and, as always, they’ve got a long agenda to tackle, from health care and energy to the state’s persistent budget struggles.

Alaska Public Media’s state government reporter, Eric Stone, will be tracking the session in Juneau. He joined Wesley Early on Alaska News Nightly to give a sense of what the session will bring.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Wesley Early: So, Eric — lots to do, only four months to do it. What are lawmakers prioritizing ahead of the session?

Eric Stone: Well, Wesley, as you said, there’s a lot to do. And there will always be some surprises. But what’s not a surprise is how difficult the budget will be this year. We heard a lot last year about how this might be a painful year.

Maybe this will set the tone — last year, we had a $1,000 Permanent Fund dividend, the smallest ever when you adjust for inflation. And this year, what I keep hearing is that even a $1,000 dividend will be a challenge. Here’s Fairbanks Republican Rep. Will Stapp — he sits on the House Finance Committee.

Rep. Will Stapp, R-Fairbanks: At the current level of spending and revenue, I don’t see how that’s possible without large savings draws, and I don’t know how people are going to feel about that.

ES: This has been an issue for years, of course. Lawmakers and the governor have worked to cut state spending in a variety of areas, though there’s some dispute about how much there is left to cut.

Stapp says he’d like lawmakers to take a closer look at department budgets with something known as zero-based budgeting. Basically, rather than starting from a baseline of “what did we spend last year,” this would be starting at zero and building the budget from scratch. Stapp included an amendment in last year’s budget asking the governor’s office to try that for one department of their choice, but he says as far as he can tell, that didn’t happen.

So he says he’s renewing his efforts this year.

Stapp: Because you don’t really want to tell people the state needs a lot more money in terms of taxes … when you can’t really articulate where the money goes initially and what the money does.

ES: Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s budget, as usual, contains what he calls a statutory PFD, $3,800 or so. But that, and the expenses they have to catch up on from this current year, mean that the governor’s budget would require spending more than half of what the state has in savings.

But it’s a bit incomplete. The governor has said he plans to introduce a fiscal plan. Last we heard, when he released his budget in December, it was still a work in progress. But the governor has his last State of the State speech this session — usually those come pretty early in the session, so a fiscal plan would be something to watch for there. Then again, a few years ago, Dunleavy said he was planning to introduce a sales tax and never did.

Democratic Anchorage Rep. Andrew Gray says he hopes Dunleavy does propose some kind of tax.

Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage: He’s not running for reelection, so he can afford to take that risk …. He could, going forward into the future, have established a reliable source of revenue to fund our state. I mean, there could be no more worthy legacy for him. It would be monumental.

ES: Gray says he’d prefer an income tax — he says that would be fairer to low-income Alaskans — but if the governor proposes a sales tax, Gray says he thinks lawmakers would have to find a way to get it passed. He says he thinks lawmakers on both sides would be willing to discuss just about any solution to secure the state’s financial future.

But it’s an election year, and a fiscal plan requires some hard votes, so it’ll take some gumption for lawmakers and the governor to actually come together rather than kick the can down the road yet again.

WE: Alright, so we have the perennial budget debate with a bit more urgency this year. That’ll be something to watch. What else is on your radar?

ES: This one came up recently — health care. You might have heard of this Rural Health Transformation Program. That’ll send more than a billion dollars to the state over the next five years to, essentially, improve health care. There are a bunch of restrictions on how it can be spent, and most of that decision-making will happen inside the executive branch in the Department of Health.

But Health Commissioner Heidi Hedberg said on a call with reporters recently that there is a role for the Legislature to play. To make Alaska’s grant application more competitive, the state said it would do a bunch of things by the end of 2027. Those include expanding what pharmacists are allowed to do, and joining a variety of “license compacts” for EMS workers, nurses and a few others. The deal is, if you’re licensed in some states, you can also practice in Alaska without a need for retraining.

That’s an issue the Legislature has not made a focus in past years, though there are some pending bills. And Gray says he could see those scrambling caucus lines.

Gray: In terms of where people land and what they support, I think that it’s not going to be clear-cut. It’s not going to be a majority-versus-minority. I think that that it’s going to be all over the place.

ES: But Gray, who is also a physician assistant, says he supports the policy changes.

Stapp, for his part, says he’s on board — he says he’s still reviewing what all is needed, but he says from what he’s seen so far, he doesn’t see why those policy changes will be a problem.

WE: Finally, Eric, what about the Alaska LNG project? Are you expecting movement on that front?

ES: That one is interesting. The gas pipeline developer, Glenfarne, has yet to announce what’s known as a final investment decision — a green light to move forward. Lawmakers heard last year from its consultants about a variety of changes they could make to ensure the project is profitable enough and stable enough to go forward. We could see some movement on that — for instance, Gov. Dunleavy says he’d like to see lawmakers offer some property tax relief to the gas line project to help it pencil out. And a lot of lawmakers say they support efforts to help the gas line move forward — but I think they’ll approach that question with some caution. They don’t want their home communities to get taken to the cleaners, so to speak.

Stomping through stubborn, crunchy January snow, Dr. Jennifer Pierce made her way recently to a new Anchorage Fire Department vehicle. It might look like a simple SUV, but it’s equipped as a new mobile unit that – for the first time – will allow emergency responders to administer buprenorphine on-site, which can help get patients on the road to recovery.

“We want people to see us as a beacon of help,” Pierce said.

Pierce is on a mission: to treat Anchorage residents who overdose and connect them with care afterwards. After being treated for an overdose, many patients don’t agree to further treatment at the hospital or emergency room. Working out of mobile units allows the team to meet those Alaskans where they are.

“We don’t want people to fall through the cracks,” she said.

Narcan, or naloxone, is used to reverse overdoses. But it puts people into immediate and uncomfortable withdrawal. Research shows that in similar mobile programs, offering that second medication, buprenorphine, makes it more likely patients will enter long-term recovery. Even if people don’t continue treatment, Pierce said, the medication can help them make it through a critical window when overdose survivors are at high risk of dying.

“Even if it’s just one life,” she said. “We’re saving lives out there and preventing individuals, maybe from overdosing the next day or overdosing again later and dying.”

Pierce visited successful programs in Texas and Washington state for ideas and best practices to replicate in Alaska.

The Anchorage team can get dispatched by 9-1-1 when someone is experiencing an overdose. During slower parts of their shift, they’ll be able to do treatment outreach with people who are at higher risk of overdose, Pierce said.

Offering patients buprenorphine has several benefits, said Seth Workentine, an addiction medicine specialist in Juneau who consulted for the pilot program there.

Buprenorphine lasts much longer than Narcan, at least 24 hours, protecting people from re-entering overdose. It also reduces withdrawal symptoms, which can push people back to opioid use, Workentine said.

“Withdrawal is an extremely uncomfortable experience hated by almost everyone who’s ever experienced it and is often a barrier to people seeking treatment,” he said. “Now they just feel normal and have a much bigger leg up into entering recovery.”

But buprenorphine is an opioid, and Workentine said he’s heard critics of similar programs argue that it’s just swapping one drug for another. That’s not the case, he said, because buprenorphine is different and, over time, it actually helps reverse the brain changes that happen with addiction.

“So it’s not replacing one for the other, even though they’re in the same category,” Workentine said. “It is actually part of healing you.”

And that, he said, is integral to the recovery process.

Dr. Quigley Peterson, an emergency room physician heading Juneau’s pilot program, said he’s also seen the healing benefits of buprenorphine. He’s confident the pilot will do well partly because he’s seen how helpful the medication can be in a different setting: the emergency room.

“We have something that can help engage people, that’s super safe and it’s cheap, and it works,” Peterson said.

The pilot programs will collect data over the year to see what happens to patients after they’re given buprenorphine for an overdose, Peterson said. His hope is that it reduces emergency room visits and calls for emergency medical care. That would be good for the mental health of emergency responders, too, who get burnt out responding to the same patients over and over, he said.

If you can get patients into long-term care, Peterson said, “you won’t need to see them in the future. You won’t have these recurrent EMS calls.”

If the pilot programs are successful, Peterson’s goal is to inspire similar programs in more communities across Alaska.

Hundreds of health care workers and government officials descended on Anchorage this week for the kickoff of a five-year, $1.3 billion program aimed at reimagining medical care across Alaska.

The money comes from the Rural Health Transformation Program created by President Trump’s signature tax- and spending-cut legislation passed last summer — the same legislation that pares back Medicaid.

The problem the funding seeks to solve is no secret, the state’s former chief medical officer, Dr. Anne Zink, said on a call with reporters and state officials. Zink is working with the state Department of Health on the program, she said.

“We consistently see that people who live in rural areas — Alaska and beyond — have worse health outcomes with increased cost,” she said. “This is an opportunity to rethink the way that care is delivered to make sure, no matter where you live, you have access to quality, timely, effective care.”

States across the country are racing to develop plans to spend the influx of cash. They have until October to obligate the first tranche of cash and another year to spend it.

Alaska is building its version of the program around six goals, from improving maternal health, preventive care and access to healthcare to strengthening the workforce and rethinking how doctors and hospitals charge for care.

That last point — what the state is calling “pay for value” — is a big one. Most medical care is what’s known as “fee for service,” for example, when a patient goes to a doctor and pays the doctor for their time, whether they get healthy or not.

With pay for value, the idea is to pay for results.

But given the fragmented nature of health care in Alaska, where many patients have to travel hundreds of miles from home for care, “the realities of making that transition take time,” said Deputy Health Commissioner Emily Ricci.

“It’s very challenging, and it will look different for every community and every provider and the provider types,” Ricci said.

Another example: Say you have a rash. You go to the doctor. The doctor sends you to the dermatologist, who sends you to the pharmacy for a medicated lotion.

Does your primary care provider know what your dermatologist prescribed? Does your dermatologist know your regular doctor tried that same medication with the hard-to-pronounce name six months ago?

And does anyone know if you eventually get better?

Maybe not. And that’s an issue standing in the way of a transition to value-based care that the state would like to address, Ricci said.

“How can we use this funding to begin now, over the next five years, building out the infrastructure, the concepts, the protocols, the data that providers need in order to kind of make that transition?” Ricci said.

So technology is one focus for the first of what the Department of Health said will be a series of workshops in Anchorage.

The meetings — known as “convenings” — are an effort to get as many stakeholders involved as possible, from cities and tribes to hospitals, medical providers and vendors, Health Commissioner Heidi Hedberg said.

“This funding is really to support what the community and region need,” Hedberg said. “Every community, and every region, needs something different.”

Alaska will receive roughly $273 million per year for five years as part of the $50 billion nationwide program. Hedberg calls it “generational.”

But the elephant in the room, of course, is that the same tax cut legislation that created the program could also push many Alaskans away from the health care system, said Alaska Hospital and Healthcare Association head Jared Kosin.

“I see the bright side and the good things looking ahead,” Kosin said. “I talk about coverage disruptions with these enhanced premium tax credits expiring. We talk about coverage disruptions with the tightening of Medicaid eligibility right around the corner.”

State officials have downplayed the spending law’s impact on Alaskans on Medicaid. But Kosin is worried the changes will push health care costs up, he said, because when people can’t pay, hospitals have no choice but to shift those costs onto those who can.

Kosin said he’s also concerned that the transition to a new administration after Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s term ends in December could throw a wrench in the state’s plans.

State officials, though, say they’re building sustainability into their plans. Ricci, the deputy health commissioner, said that the state Health Department was “acutely aware” of the challenges involved in standing up a program that will span at least two governors’ administrations over half a decade.

“The key to that, I think, is bringing in the communities and the partners and the healthcare entities into the discussion from the beginning and into that structure,” Ricci said.

Put more simply, “this is a project for Alaskans by Alaskans,” said Zink, the state’s former chief medical officer.

“The sustainability will be dependent on Alaskans,” she said.

Alaska Public Media’s Rachel Cassandra contributed reporting.