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Former Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola will be in Juneau Friday evening at the Crystal Saloon bar downtown to celebrate her campaign launch for U.S. Senate. 

Last week, she announced she’s running for U.S. Senate against Republican incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan. 

Peltola, a Democrat, served both a partial and full term in the U.S. House until the 2024 election, when she narrowly lost her seat to Republican Nick Begich. She became the first Alaska Native person elected to Congress when she won the 2022 special election.

Peltola has historically seen strong support from Juneau. During the 2024 election, Peltola outpaced Begich in every Juneau precinct – even in the precincts from the Juneau International Airport to Mendenhall Valley that went for Trump, according to the Alaska Division of Elections.

Her bid for the congressional seat, if successful, would give Democrats a shot at winning a majority in the Senate.

Her meet and greet will be at the Crystal Saloon on Front Street, Friday evening from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Alaska’s state education funding formula is really complicated. It’s based on data, collected during the school year, that takes months to process. That can leave districts building budgets based on projections that might be inaccurate. Juneau Democratic Rep. Andi Story wants to address that through a bill that would change what data is used for funding calculations. 

Story, who served for years on Juneau’s school board, said there’s a level of uncertainty built into the way students are counted.

“When I was a school board member, when we were asking community members, parents to come and work on our budgets, we were always projecting cuts and not knowing what we were going to do,” she said.

Part of that uncertainty comes from not knowing exactly how many students are enrolled until later in the budgeting process. Right now, school districts count the number of students enrolled in October of their current school year. That count needs to be approved by the Department of Education and Early Development, and it determines how much state funding a school district will get for the following school year. 

Districts typically don’t receive the approved numbers until months later – in January. That lag means districts begin planning their budgets based on projections instead of actual data.

Story’s bill – House Bill 261 – would make several different changes to which student counts would be used when determining state funding for education.

Story said one of the main things her bill would do is to base student counts either on the previous school year or an average of the previous three years – numbers that would have already been processed by DEED and wouldn’t change throughout the budgeting process.

“I’ve been living in this roller coaster, and seeing how it does not build confidence in our public schools,” Story said. “And so we need to get on a more stable plan, a smart plan.”

This isn’t a new idea. Story is on the Legislature’s Task Force on Education Funding. She said this part of the bill came from a recommendation made by an education consulting agency more than 10 years ago. The idea came up again last November, during a task force meeting.

The bill also seeks to address budgeting for students with disabilities, keeping schools open

There are a couple of other pieces in this bill as well. One addresses how the state counts students that qualify for intensive services. Students with disabilities that require those services receive 13 times the amount of funding that’s typically allocated for a student. If the state determines there are fewer of those students than what the district counted, that can create serious shortfalls in its budget.

The new bill would offer four different options for how to count students who qualify for intensive services, to ensure districts receive the funding needed to support them.

Districts could count students in October or February of the current school year, in October of the previous school year, or take an average of the last three years. They could then use the number that would provide the largest amount of funding.

Story said this method would account for students who might move to other districts.

“Sometimes students move after the count date, they might move to another community, and all of a sudden that community is going to have to hire another staff person, but they’ve already budgeted,” she said. “So where do they pull that money? Because by law, we need to meet that student’s needs.”

Story’s bill also addresses how enrollment counts determine how many schools a district can have. She said small districts can sometimes fall below the threshold that allows for opening another school or keeping an existing school open if enrollment drops by just a couple students in a given year. She said taking an average would help stabilize numbers in situations where the difference of one student could have big financial consequences.

“Those big funding cliffs that really make— that really have communities on edge of, ‘Am I going to get a couple more or a couple less?’” she said.

Lon Garrison is the executive director of the Alaska Association of School Boards, a nonprofit organization that advocates for Alaska students. He said the bill would provide far more stability as school districts build out their budgets. But he said the issue of adequate education funding remains.

“That’s the piece that we have to be focused on,” Garrison said. “What are we going to do to ensure that we’re getting the student outcomes, and what resources do we need?”

It’s unclear if this bill will make its way through the Legislature. Story expects the House Education Committee, which she co-chairs, to take it up in a couple of weeks.

Alaska lawmakers failed Thursday to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a bill that backers said would have modernized Alaska’s corporate income tax system.

The override failed 35-25. It would have required a 45-vote majority to become law.

Senate Bill 113 would have expanded the state’s corporate income tax to capture revenue from so-called “highly digitized businesses” that sell to Alaskans over the internet but may not have a physical presence in the state. Some of the money raised by the tax change would have gone toward reading programs in public schools.

After the vote, House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent, said the debate over the bill illustrated how difficult it would be for lawmakers to agree on ways to raise new revenue as the state deals with a fiscal crunch.

“I’d also say it’s a preview of the debate that we’re going to undergo on a fiscal plan,” he said.

Some Republicans who voted against the override said they were concerned that the bill could increase costs for Alaskans, including Big Lake Republican Rep. Kevin McCabe.

“It’s disingenuous to think that we are not going to pay for this tax one way or the other,” he said.

Supporters of the bill rejected McCabe’s characterization, saying that the bill would simply give Alaska a share of similar taxes companies already pay in other states.

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, an Anchorage Democrat who championed the bill last year, said the idea that the bill would raise consumer costs was “wildly inaccurate.”

“In fact, there’s been research on this,” he said. “The National Bureau of Economic Research did a working paper titled Corporate Taxes and Retail Prices, and found null — zero — effects on prices for firms subject to a single sales factor.”

Gov. Mike Dunleavy said Wednesday that he planned to introduce a temporary sales tax as part of a larger fiscal plan. Wielechowski said the corporate income tax change was a better option.

“How dare we go to Alaskans and say, ‘We want to tax you. We want to take your dividend,’ before we’re going to tax collect revenue from tech billionaires,” he said. “Really? Is that where we’re going with this?”

Some lawmakers who voted against overriding the bill said they supported the law in concept, including Fairbanks Republican Rep. Will Stapp, who voted for the bill when it passed in May.

But he said the complexity of the tax change— and the fact that the bill would take effect immediately if the veto was overridden — gave him pause.

“(If) you vote to override this bill, Mr. Speaker, you’re going to create a new type of corporate tax structure for people that there’s no regulatory guidance on how to pay,” Stapp said. “I would argue we probably shouldn’t do that.”

Wielechowski said he was confident the state would have been able to put out regulations before taxes would be due in 2027.

Even so, Stapp said he planned to introduce a new version of the bill this session addressing that and several more technical objections he raised on the floor.

“There are a lot of questions with the bill that we should probably know the answer to,” he said.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy is set to deliver the annual State of the State address to the Alaska Legislature in Juneau Thursday at 7 p.m.

Starting at 6:30 p.m., KTOO Managing Editor Lisa Phu will host a discussion with Alaska Legislative Digest Publisher Tim Bradner, KNBA News Producer Rhonda McBride, and Alaska Public Media State Government Reporter Eric Stone to provide some context for the speech.

Watch live Gavel Alaska coverage of the discussion and Dunleavy’s speech on KTOO 360TV or listen to your local public radio station.

In this newscast:

• 19-year-old Kake resident Jade Williams was killed at a party in 2017. On Wednesday, more than eight years later, the main suspect in the case was sentenced for causing her death,
• The City and Borough of Juneau is seeking feedback about how the community wants the Assembly to prioritize city funds as it faces a recurring multi-million-dollar budget deficit beginning July 1st,
• Young commercial fishermen from all over the state gathered in Juneau this week to absorb industry knowledge of previous generations,
• The federal government is reviewing the business program that benefits Alaska Native corporations and tribes

The Juneau Assembly is bracing for a tough budget season in the coming months. 

That’s because during last fall’s municipal election, Juneau voters approved municipal tax cuts that created a multimillion-dollar recurring hole in the city’s budget.

The city’s next fiscal year begins on July 1 of this year. Starting then — and every fiscal year moving forward — the city will face an estimated $10 to $12 million in revenue loss in its general fund. That’s due to the tax exemption on food and utilities and a cap on the city’s property tax rate that voters passed. It’s now up to the Juneau Assembly to figure out how to mend that gap. 

Earlier this week, the city released a survey asking residents to help inform the Assembly as it decides in the coming months how to move forward with the budget. Christine Woll is on the Juneau Assembly and is its finance committee chair. During KTOO’s Juneau Afternoon show on Tuesday, she said the survey is meant to be tough. 

“We want people to be a little bit in our shoes in terms of having to make hard decisions about priorities,” she said. 

The survey asks residents to pick what city programs and services are most important to fund and to pick what services to reduce funding for. The list includes programs like libraries and museums, trails and parks, and homeless services. 

The survey also asks what values they want the Assembly to prioritize, like whether to keep taxes low, continue to support local business year-round, or fund affordable housing projects. 

The survey broadly lists programs, services and values. That’s by design, said Phil Huebschen, an engagement specialist with the city’s communications department. He said the survey is meant to simplify the complexities and nuances of the city’s $478 million budget so it is digestible for everyday residents. 

“We’re trying to reposition all of this really complex data and information as really simple values information that people can understand,” he said. 

The survey also includes some budgets that the Assembly doesn’t necessarily have direct control over, like the airport and hospital, which have their own boards and operate like businesses. But, Huebschen said, the information is meant to guide the Assembly as they make decisions during the budget cycle. 

“We’re hoping that they’ll have a compass, so to speak, of what kind of areas in terms of city services, the broad public of Juneau kind of values the most, and where they’re willing to make trade-offs,” he said. 

Assembly member Woll explained that budgetary cuts aren’t the only way to mend the deficit. There are other options too, like increasing revenue using bonds, increasing sales taxes or user fees. The survey asks respondents what option they’d be comfortable seeing implemented. 

“There are lots of different ways to address revenue reductions. You can figure out other ways to increase revenue,” Woll said. 

Along with the survey, the city plans to host three community workshops and two Assembly listening sessions on the budget. The first workshop is at the Filipino Community Hall on Feb. 18, the second at the Valley Library on Feb. 24, and the third at the Douglas Library on March 3. Each workshop starts at 5:30 p.m. The city hasn’t posted details on the listening sessions yet.

The survey is open until mid-February and respondents are eligible for several prizes, like an annual city bus pass or a two-night stay at Hilda Dam Cabin. 

The city manager will release the draft city budget in March. The Assembly must finalize its budget before July 1.