Government

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?

With the second regular session of the 34th Alaska Legislature just kicking off, it’s a good time to check in with members of Juneau’s delegation to talk priorities and plans for the session. Rep. Sara Hannan (D-Juneau) spoke with KTOO’s Mike Lane last week just before the session started. 

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Mike Lane: How you are feeling about going into the second regular session of the 34th Alaska legislature?

Rep. Hannan: Well, you know, I came out of a education background, so I always like to say the start of session feels like returning to school and, you know, seeing friends you haven’t seen for a while. It’s always a good pace, of course. As a junior representative, this is my year-round office. I’m in the Capitol Building 12 months a year. But it gets kind of quiet in the fall, you know. The summer, we have all those summer visitors, but the pace has picked up. The building’s alive with new people, bright eyes, all the college interns who are, you know, here to to change the world in 120 days. And that’s always really good energy.  

Mike Lane: Is there anything that you are particularly looking forward to for this session? And is there anything that you’re not looking forward to for this session?

Rep. Hannan: Well, we have got to address our big fiscal issues in this state and we have got to figure out a path to pay for the things we need. Things haven’t gotten cheaper and our disasters have continued to grow in cost and scope, and keeping the lights on will be a struggle, but we have got to keep the state functional and the roads plowed and the ferries running and schools operational and public safety people eligible to respond and get people working in Alaska, keep people working in Alaska. So there are a lot of tough political discussions to have, and it’s the second half of a two-year session, so it makes it a challenge to get complex policy addressed, and then it’s a big political election year. You know, as a member of the House, every two years is an election year, but this is one of those where it’s gubernatorial and, you know, a high profile U.S. Senate seat, as well as every member of the House of Representatives.

Mike Lane: When it comes to the budget, where do you believe cuts are necessary?

Rep. Hannan: I don’t see a lot of areas for cuts. We have squeezed and cut the budget for over a decade, and so when we start talking about cuts, we are talking about basic services not being able to be delivered that people have an expectation of. You know, we can’t put more equipment on the road to keep our roads plowed without paying workers to drive them. And we compete with private sector. You know, operators and engineers, they can go to the private sector and make more money, and in variety of places, we can’t keep up with the services we need, so I don’t see a lot of places to cut.

Mike Lane: And what does a successful session look like for you? 

Rep. Hannan: Well, when it comes to personal legislation, you always want to see improvements on that. If I could get House Bill 242 passed, that would be good. I see this as a bill with very little policy dispute because it’s very narrow in scope. We’re modernizing the sexual assault consent in this from knowing to unknowing being irrelevant. I think that in the 21st century, we understand the dynamics about how people respond in sexual assault cases and make it prosecutable, because it’s pretty horrific that medical providers could assault someone and not be prosecuted. I have a couple pieces of personal legislation that I think we can get passed. Tax on vape tobacco – that’s a bill I’ve been sponsoring since I first got in, but the Senate version of it is sponsored by Senate President Gary Stevens; that’s Senate Bill 24. It’s all the way over in House Finance. I believe that we are positioned to get that because, right now, vaped nicotine in Alaska is not taxed by the state. Our tax state statutes on tobacco specified type, so cigars, cigarettes, chew, snuff, et cetera, and the last time we amended that statute, vaping wasn’t a thing, so it’s not listed. Then there’s a little bill of just sort of local interest on charitable gaming, a snow classic, that we’ve gotten out of the house and is in the senate. We have charitable gaming in Alaska, classics being, you know, the Nenana Ice Classic is the one that people most know about. A fiscal plan would be helpful; that would be that would be a real success. But that’s pretty optimistic for 120 days.

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.

Alaska lost about a third of its U.S. Forest Service employees in the past year due to federal staffing cuts led by the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Before that, the agency had around 700 Alaska-based staff. This month, the agency told KTOO that 467 remain. 

Leading this workforce in flux is Jerry Ingersoll, the U.S. Forest Service’s acting regional forester for Alaska, covering both the Chugach and the Tongass National Forests. Ingersoll has worked for the Forest Service for 40 years and took on the role in November 2025. 

In this interview with KTOO’s Alix Soliman, Ingersoll talks about changes he’s leading Alaska Forest Service staff through, including the impending consolidation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Tongass National Forest plan revision.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Listen to this conversation:

Alix Soliman: What is your vision for this role?

Jerry Ingersoll: This is a period of change, and it is my job, I think, to keep the boat upright and the passengers in. There’s changes in national policy associated with changes in political leadership, and it’s my job as a professional civil servant, not only to implement those changes, but also to take care of the people in the communities involved.

Alix Soliman: Over the summer, USDA Secretary Rollins announced the consolidation and restructuring of the USDA, and the USDA made statements to the press that several Alaska forest offices will close. What is the timeline for that reorganization? Do you know what’s going to happen?

Jerry Ingersoll: I don’t, and that’s probably the largest piece of that answer is that I don’t know. The announcement of the Secretary’s decision and of moving forward with the reorganization has not yet come and I’ll hear about it when the rest of you do. And I’m in an Acting Regional Forester position because that’s part of this interim organization. I’m filling in until this larger reorganization takes place. Many employees left the agency over the last year, more in Alaska, even as a percentage of our organization, than in some other parts of the country. And so we’ve got people stepping up, covering for their departed colleagues.

Alix Soliman: Let’s talk about the Tongass Forest plan revision, which has been underway for a while now. Can you just go ahead and share where we are at now with the revision and what the next steps are?

Jerry Ingersoll: We expect within the next few months, maybe less than that, to publish a notice of intent to begin revision of the Tongass land management plan. As you say, that’s been anticipated for a while. So I would anticipate, after the notice of intent gets published, that we will host public meetings and engagement sessions around the Tongass — around Southeast Alaska — this spring. I’d expect that we will engage federally recognized tribal governments in government-to-government consultation. We’ve already begun that process, but we’ll do so even more as we officially launch the revision, and then we are hoping to complete the process and revise the forest plan over the next couple of years.

Alix Soliman: Some federal comment periods have been expedited. Do you expect a shorter public comment period than has happened in the past for this revision?

Jerry Ingersoll: You know, I think it’s too early to know for sure. We want to — we want to fully engage people in the development of their plan for their forest, and we don’t want to spend all of our lives on planning and not on doing. 

After the dissolution of the state’s third-largest political party, the Alaska Division of Elections is sending out notices to the 19,117 members of the former Alaskan Independence Party, warning them to update their voter information.

“In the coming weeks, the DOE will inform the voters registered as affiliated with the AIP that the party is no longer recognized,” the department said in a notice published Wednesday. “These voters will have the option to select a new party or group affiliation if they wish. If they do not update their registration — by phone, email, in person, or through the online form — within 30 days of receipt, the Division plans to change their registration status to ‘undeclared.'”

The Alaskan Independence Party’s leadership formally dissolved the organization in a vote on Dec. 7, then released a statement at the end of the year about the decision.

That statement said the party elected a new board of directors in April 2024, and that board analyzed the state of the party.

“The board carried out its work and found that the current party membership is either apathetic to the goals of the party, believes that the party is a branch of the Republican party, or is registered to the AIP by mistake,” the statement said in part.

“The party has for some time been legally alive yet spiritually dead,” the statement said.

The AIP’s origins date to the early 1970s, when interior Alaska gold miner Joe Vogler attempted to rally opposition to federal land control after statehood.

Vogler ran for governor as an independent in 1974, and the AIP developed out of his Libertarian-like vision for the state — local control, limited government, and a new statewide referendum on whether Alaska should be a state, commonwealth, territory or fully independent.

For decades, AIP members contended that Alaska’s 1958 statehood vote was not valid because it did not present Alaskans with a full set of options.

The party peaked in 1990, when conservative Republicans abandoned their support of Sen. Arliss Sturgulewski for governor, who they deemed too moderate on abortion and environmental issues.

Former Republican Gov. Wally Hickel replaced John Lindauer on the AIP’s gubernatorial ticket, and Sturgulewski’s lieutenant governor candidate, Jack Coghill, defected to serve as Hickel’s lieutenant governor candidate.

Hickel and Coghill won the three-way election with just under 39% of the vote, marking the AIP’s sole statewide electoral win.

That was the party’s high-water mark; Hickel governed as a Republican in all but name and rejoined the Republican party before his term ended.

Vogler was murdered in 1993, and the party became an annual also-ran in statewide races. In 2024, when John Wayne Howe ran as the party’s candidate for U.S. House, he received just 4% of Alaskans’ first-choice votes.

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.