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Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in Greenland Monday that she feels terrible for the anxiety her country inflicted on the Danish territory.

“In just a few sentences and words, trust that has been built since World War II has been eroded and degraded,” she told reporters in Nuuk. “We need to work to rebuild that trust.”

Murkowski was the sole Republican among four senators who took the trip to try to repair the relationship with Greenland after President Trump’s repeated threats to acquire the island.

The trip was part of her initiative to bolster what she calls a trans-Arctic alliance. She was part of another congressional trip to Denmark a few weeks ago.

The Greenland crisis seemed to abate last month, when Trump backed off threats to take the Danish territory by military force. But the visiting senators were asked if they could guarantee the president wouldn’t change his mind.

“The answer is no,” said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who led the delegation. “We can only exert our role as a separate and co-equal branch of government. But we can’t guarantee what the president may or may not do tomorrow, let alone two months from now.”

Murkowski said Congress will stand up for Greenland, if necessary.

“But I will also speak to the fact that there are some members of my party who don’t want to be seen as engaging in anything that might be viewed as contrary to President Trump’s initiative or desire, and so who may not be speaking out publicly,” she said.

In private conversations, she said, Republican colleagues have assured her they won’t allow Trump to seize or control Greenland.

“I’m going to encourage them that they need to be more vocal in reinforcing that, because this should not be a partisan issue,” she said. “Respect for the sovereignty of another nation, respect for our NATO allies — that should not be Democrat (or) Republican. It should be just pro-democracy”

Support for grant-funded positions and teacher contracts became the main issue during the Juneau School Board’s budget public forum on Thursday. 

Most of the 28 parents, elders, teachers, students and community members at the forum testified in support of funding positions in the Tlingit Culture, Language and Literacy program, as well as reaching a new union contract for teachers.

Jodie Gatti is the parent of a kindergartener at TCLL and said the program has allowed her son to bring the Lingít language home with him.

“I never imagined I would witness a child, let alone my own child, teaching my mother the language that was once denied to her,” she said. “That moment is deeply emotional for our family and shows how powerful this work truly is.”

Three positions at TCLL are funded through a federal grant, and that funding will end in September. The school district’s preliminary budget doesn’t include these three positions. But the school board last month directed administrators to include one of the three grant-funded positions in its budget. That leaves the program’s principal and biliteracy specialist positions without funding.

Jamie Shanley is the director of Sealaska Heritage Institute’s language and education departments. She oversees the grant for the district’s positions and testified in support of the district funding the positions while the nonprofit works on securing long-term funding.

She said the district’s Lingít culture and language program is growing.

“They are teaching their language, they’re writing curriculum, they’re creating resources,” Shanley said. “They’re writing Lingít language proficiency assessment. That’s a standardized assessment tool that people use in their classrooms. And they’re doing it all, really at little cost to the school district.”

Shanley said the program has doubled in size since the grant began in 2023, with 121 students currently enrolled.

In addition to grappling with grant-funded positions, the school board is working through contract negotiations with the district’s teaching and support staff unions. Both unions have not yet reached a new contract.

Deborah Rakos has taught for the district for more than 25 years. She testified before the board last year and testified again last week about contract negotiations. She said what teachers are asking for is not beyond contracts other districts have with teachers.

“Look at the salary schedules in the state – please look at Ketchikan, look at Fairbanks, look at Anchorage,” she said. “I urge you to do that, because we’re not out of our tree in what we’re asking. We’re not.”

The board will also consider an over $5.3 million dollar deficit in next year’s budget. That can either be filled through dipping into the district’s savings or by making cuts to services.

The district plans to release a budgeting tool this week that will allow community members to build their own school budget and provide feedback. There are also several meetings over the next month where the public can testify about the budget. The next opportunity is during Tuesday’s school board meeting. The board expects to approve a final budget by March 12.

In this newscast:

• The Juneau Assembly will vote Monday night on whether to approve $2.3 million worth of city funding to support five proposed affordable housing projects.
• Support for grant-funded positions and teacher contracts became the main issue during the Juneau School Board’s budget public forum last week.
• Alaska’s state government remains in search of a solution to its long-running budget problems.
• Kipnuk was one of the Yukon-Kuskokwim villages hit hardest by the remnants of Typhoon Halong in October. This week, residents are starting to vote on whether they want to rebuild their community, or relocate to higher ground.

The Juneau Assembly will vote Monday night on whether to approve $2.3 million worth of city funding to support five proposed affordable housing projects. 

The money comes from the city’s Affordable Housing Fund. The city created the fund five years ago to address its housing shortage — specifically, the lack of low- and middle-income rentals. Since then, the city has awarded nearly $13 million in grants or loans from the fund. This round, $2.5 million is available.

The city uses criteria like proximity to public transportation and long-term affordability to decide which projects get funding and how much. The projects proposed this year would help create more than 40 units of housing, comprising both single-family homes and apartment complexes, all across the borough.

The city uses a formula based on Juneau’s income data to determine eligibility for affordable housing programs. People qualify as “low-income” if their household or individual income is at or below 80% of the Area Median Income. In Juneau in 2025, 80% AMI for a single person is $72,080 and $102,960 for a four-person household.

The Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority is up for two grants. One is for $800,000 to help fund the construction of 16 single-family homes in the Pederson Hill subdivision. The other grant is for $250,000 to help pay for building five single-family homes on North Douglas.

Another applicant, Dave D’Amato with Brave Enterprises, LLC, is up for a $900,000 loan to help fund the renovation of the shuttered Bergmann Hotel in downtown Juneau. The project would turn the historic 46-room hotel into an 18-unit apartment complex.

Shawn Kantola with Southeast Endeavors, LLC, is asking for a $200,000 loan to construct a fourplex on Lee Street in Auke Bay. And the Society of St. Vincent de Paul requested a $150,00 grant to help pay for long-term maintenance of its Teal Street facilities. 

Juneau residents have the chance to testify on ordinances on Monday’s agenda – as well as on non-agenda items – in person or online before the Assembly votes. People who want to testify online must notify the city clerk by 4 p.m. before the meeting. The meeting begins at 6 p.m. at City Hall. 

Leading members of the Alaska House of Representatives said Friday that Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s ambitious long-term state fiscal plan has almost no support among legislators and is almost certainly dead on arrival.

House leaders spoke with reporters Friday morning, a day after members of the House Finance Committee heard two hours of public testimony on the governor’s proposed statewide sales tax, the cornerstone of his multi-part proposal to bring state expenses and revenue into line over the next five years.

Every Alaskan who testified — almost 30 in total — was against the tax.

“This is just pure speculation on my part, but what you hear folks in the hall say is, if there’s a vote today on the sales tax, it could be a zero to 60 vote,” said Rep. Neal Foster, D-Nome and co-chair of the House Finance Committee.

House Minority Leader DeLena Johnson, R-Palmer, said there might be a handful of legislators who would still support the governor’s plan, but it’s pretty clear that it lacks the support it needs to become law.

“From the testimony that was taken last night in House Finance — when everyone who called in spoke in opposition — it certainly makes it hard to think there’s a lot of people that aren’t very cautious about saying they’re for the governor’s plan,” she said.

The governor’s plan calls for a seasonal statewide sales tax, changes to the state’s oil and corporate taxes, a constitutionally guaranteed Permanent Fund dividend formula, changes to the structure of the Alaska Permanent Fund and a tighter spending cap in state law.

Those changes are being proposed because oil and investment revenue can’t keep up with demand for services and dividends, and lawmakers are unwilling to cut services any more than they already have.

Since 2015, legislators and governors have cut state agencies’ budgets by 16.6%, after accounting for inflation. The state’s capital budget, which pays for new construction and maintenance, has been cut by more than 80%.

Every year since 2016, the Permanent Fund dividend has been cut below the amount called for in state law.

With so much deferred maintenance, public schools — particularly in rural Alaska — are decaying and literally collapsing. The state is now facing a lawsuit alleging that school funding is so low that it violates the Alaska Constitution.

Dunleavy’s proposal would be a way to stanch the fiscal bleeding. The new taxes are intended to be temporary because the Dunleavy administration expects North Slope oil production to rise, boosting state revenue, and it expects that a proposed trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline will be built and generate more money for the state.

Even before this week’s presentations and public testimony, many legislators were skeptical of the plan, and saw the new taxes as merely a way to pay a larger Permanent Fund dividend.

“I’m a logic person,” said Senate Minority Leader Mike Cronk, R-Tok, on Jan. 28, one day after the governor debuted his plan.“We’re going to tax those people that are productive so everybody gets a check? That don’t work for me. … That’s just not logical to me,” he said.

Lawmakers analyzed the sales tax first, in a series of hearings this week, but because it received such a negative reaction in public testimony, legislators are now wondering if it’s worth considering any other part of the governor’s fiscal plan, given that they are all viewed as one package.

Foster said it doesn’t look like the governor’s proposal could be amended and improved enough to get sufficient support in the Capitol.

“Sometimes, you could say, ‘We’re kind of close on things, and there’s a lot of great areas that we can work on,’ but this one just seems to be — folks are just really, really unhappy,” he said.

There are costs to inaction as well. The Institute of Social and Economic Research recently estimated that the state has missed out on 2-3% of its gross domestic product over the past 10 years because of the lack of a fiscal plan. Without a long-term structure, legislators have gotten dragged into annual debates over the size of the Permanent Fund dividend, which has prevented them from discussing other pressing issues.

Some lawmakers have concerns beyond the sales tax. Johnson thinks the governor’s proposal for a revised fiscal cap is inadequate. Because it would be in state law, rather than in the constitution, future legislators could ignore it just as they do the current Permanent Fund dividend formula.

That’s why she calls it a “spending beanie,” instead of a spending cap.

“I personally think it’s rather small, and it would be easily overcome,” she said. “And for that reason, I think of it as a spending beanie.”

Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, said he’s skeptical of this proposal’s chances after years of other attempts to enact a fiscal plan.

“I won’t regale you with tales from years past, but on the Finance Committee, we have spent weeks and weeks going through a lot of this stuff, and it never got a compromise when it came to the floor. So that’s the issue at hand here,” he said.

Rep. Calvin Schrage, I-Anchorage and another Finance co-chair, said that after hearing Thursday’s public testimony, he’s not sure the governor’s proposal can be successful either. “There is so much education that still needs to take place and studying that needs to be done for us to be able to move it forward in a way that would get broad support,” he said.

“I think folks are just kind of waiting until next year before we, you know, really take a serious stab at some of those things, like the income tax,” Foster said.

“I have higher hopes for next year than I do this year. You know, a new executive leadership branch and the leadership there,” he said.

Later in the day, in a one-on-one interview with the Alaska Beacon, Dunleavy said lawmakers are going to be disappointed if they think that negotiating with a new governor will be any easier.

Dunleavy is term-limited and leaves office in December.

“A governor who goes in there and puts out a plan like this in their first or second year, they’re going to get the same thing we’re getting now,” Dunleavy said. “And that doesn’t work.”

When an Alaskan flies to Seattle and looks out the airplane window, they’ll see construction cranes dotting the skyline, Dunleavy said.

“Washington is a state that does not have an income tax. It’s a sales tax. Washington’s economy is actually pretty good,” he said.

He referred to a fiscal analysis performed by the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage, which found that a seasonal sales tax with large exemptions would fall more on nonresidents than an income tax would.

“The sales tax is the best thing we could come up with,” he said, referring to that analysis.

Reducing the PFD to balance the budget — the Legislature’s preferred policy since 2016 — is the most regressive option, harming poor Alaskans more than rich ones, ISER found.

“Taking the PFD is the worst thing you can do for the average person,” Dunleavy said.

He appeared frustrated by legislators’ actions and the lack of an alternative plan coming from the House or Senate.

“I’ve never seen a fiscal plan introduced,” Dunleavy said. “The closest I’ve ever seen was the first fiscal working group just a couple years ago.”

In 2017, the Alaska House of Representatives approved a state income tax as part of a three-part fiscal plan, but it did not become law.

The state Senate, including Dunleavy, voted down the income tax, killing the House’s plan.

“A tax is not a fiscal plan,” Dunleavy said when asked about that history.

He said that with 120 days in the legislative session, lawmakers have time to work on the issue and figure things out.

“Here you go: My last year, there’s no political skin in the game. I’m not going to lose anything because I’m not running for anything. And here’s an opportunity for these guys, and out of the gate, they said, ‘There’s not enough time.’ So if there’s not enough time for this,” Dunleavy said, “What are they spending their time on?”

The family of one of the victims who died in a Bering Air plane crash last year is suing the regional airline. The news came a day before the anniversary of the crash, which killed all 10 people on board and shook communities in Northwest Alaska.

Bering Air Flight 445 was on its regularly scheduled route from Unalakleet to Nome when it crashed about 30 miles southeast of Nome.

The family of JaDee Moncur, one of the passengers, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Nome Superior Court on Thursday.

“It’s a hard week one year the same week after the accident,” said Casey DuBose, an attorney with Aviation Law Group, which is based in Seattle and represents the family. “But as we’ve done our investigation, we have enough evidence, and we decided it’s time to get moving forward with this litigation so that their family can get answers and some justice out of this terrible incident.”

Bering Air did not respond to a request for comment as of Thursday.

The federal National Transportation Safety Board has not released its full investigation into the crash. However, a preliminary report found that the Cessna Caravan was almost a thousand pounds overweight when it flew into icing conditions.

The plaintiffs argue that led to the crash.

“This aircraft flew into an area of known ice, and we think that that’s ultimately the cause of what had the aircraft lose control,” DuBose said. “As you fly into icing conditions, that ice, as it accumulates on the airframe, adds an incredible amount of weight, very rapidly.”

The court complaint also alleges that the plane flew without adequate safeguards for the conditions, though that has not been confirmed by federal investigators. DuBose said the allegations are based on the NTSB’s preliminary report and an independent investigation by the law group.

The crash victims included a mentor to new teachers, a school counselor and two employees with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium who were traveling to service a local water plant. Moncur, 52, was one of six victims from Southcentral Alaska.

Moncur was born in Wyoming and moved to Alaska in 2008, his family had said in an obituary. An avid outdoorsman and church volunteer, Moncur worked as a project engineer and lived in Eagle River. He is survived by his wife and three adult children.

The family said in a written statement that they appreciate the outpouring of support they have received throughout the year.

“In the wake of this tragedy, we have taken legal action to seek answers and accountability regarding the circumstances of the crash,” the family said. “We hope that through this process, we can contribute to greater aviation safety so that others do not have to endure what we have.”

NTSB officials said they anticipate the final investigation into the crash to be released in early summer.