State Government

Monday, March 31, marks Alaskans’ final opportunity to apply for a 2025 Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend check.

If you’re filing online, you have until 11:59 p.m. Monday. Mailed applications must be postmarked March 31 to be processed.

If you want to apply in-person, lobbies at Alaska PFD Division offices in Anchorage and Fairbanks will be open to receive applications from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, which is also Seward’s Day. Juneau’s division office is closed for the day, but PFD applications can be dropped off on the eighth floor of the State Office Building near its security desk.

No phone support is available due to the holiday.

According to the division’s website, about 600,000 of Alaska’s roughly 740,000 people have applied for dividends as of Monday morning.

The amount of this year’s dividend has yet to be finalized during the legislative session, with Gov. Mike Dunleavy proposing about $3,900 – an amount unlikely to be approved by lawmakers. If they again use an informal formula that has calculated previous dividends, checks would be about $1,400.

Last year’s dividend, including a one-time energy relief payment, was about $1,702.

Too many of the weather buoys floating in the waters off Alaska are out of service and the federal government should devote more resources to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the interest of marine safety, according to a resolution pending in the Legislature.

The measure, Senate Joint Resolution 12, calls for Congress to “take actions necessary to restore the full functionality,” of the NOAA’s National Data Buoy Center meteorological sites in Alaska, which relay real-time weather information important to mariners.

The resolution calls for the state’s three-member congressional delegation to work to secure federal funding for that NOAA program, even as the Trump administration is slashing NOAA’s workforce and operations. And it points to Alaska’s vast size, harsh weather and heavy reliance on maritime operations.

Sen. Forrest Dunbar, D-Anchorage, the resolution’s sponsor, said Alaskans depend on the weather buoys and the information they provide to a degree that policymakers in the Lower 48 might not appreciate.

“These are serious life safety issues,” he said.

But the resolution is about more than buoys, Dunbar said. It is a defense of a federal agency and federal scientists currently enduring an onslaught of mass firings and budget cuts, he said.

“This is a good argument for preserving National Weather Service and NOAA funding,” Dunbar said, listing one of NOAA’s best-known divisions.

Of the 27 National Data Buoy Center meteorological/ocean stations deployed in Alaska, seven are currently out of service, according to the center.

There is particular concern about outages at a Prince William Sound site called Seal Rocks. The buoy there is supposed to be transmitting critical information about winds, wave heights and other conditions that affect the safety of oil tankers using the Trans Alaska Pipeline System terminal in Valdez.

That Seal Rocks buoy, an important source of weather data for marine-safety studies, has had intermittent outages for several years and is currently out of service.

It is at Hinchinbrook Entrance, the passageway between islands that connects Prince William Sound to the wider Gulf of Alaska. The area from Hinchinbrook Entrance to the Valdez terminal – which includes Blight Reef, site of the1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, is of special concern for tanker safety.  Under post-Exxon Valdez rules, oil tankers are escorted there by safety tugs, and shipments by loaded tankers are stopped when winds exceed 45 knots or waves are above 15 feet at Hinchinbrook Entrance.

The Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council, a marine safety watchdog created by Congress after the Exxon Valdez spill, raised concerns about the outages as early as 2018.

Those outages continue.

John Guthrie, the council’s maritime operations project manager, told lawmakers at a recent hearing that the buoy has been operating for only about 35 days during the past year and a half. That hampers the U.S. Coast Guard, he said, because it has to make decisions about tanker traffic based on less-reliable information from more distant buoys, weather forecasts or chance observations by other mariners, he said.

While subsistence fishers, commercial fishers and others on the water depend on the real-time weather information relayed by the buoys, “the Seal Rocks buoy, in particular, is a key component of the oil spill prevention system in Prince William Sound. The risk of another oil spill increases whenever it is not working,” Guthrie said at a March 20 hearing of the Senate Transportation Committee.

Dunbar said the Seal Rocks buoy situation should be compelling.

“Here’s a concrete example where National Weather Service and NOAA funding is absolutely essential to the safety of the environment in Prince William Sound but also to the economy in the state and, frankly, the nation,” he said.

Legislative resolutions do not create laws, but they express lawmakers’ sentiments. Resolutions directed at federal agencies or at Congress, such as the pending resolution on NOAA buoys, are intended to persuade federal policymakers and influence their actions.

The sentiment expressed in SJR 12, however, conflicts with Trump administration policies concerning NOAA and its divisions.

Already, the Trump administration has fired hundreds of NOAA employees around the nation, including many in Alaska. The National Weather Service has lost about 10% of its workforce. Another 1,000 NOAA employees may be fired next. The agency is among those targeted by the administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, which is led by billionaire Elon Musk.

The Trump administration’s objections to NOAA appear to be related to the agency’s work on climate change.

Project 2025, a preelection blueprint for a second Trump administration produced prior to the 2024 election by the conservative Heritage Foundation, cited that work in its conclusion that NOAA “should be broken up and downsized.”

NOAA’s divisions, including the National Weather Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, “form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity,” the Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership” document said.

Though Trump attempted to distance himself from Project 2025 before the November election, many of the plan’s authors have high-level positions in his administration. Those include Russell Vought, director of the Office of Budget and Management, who was Project 2025’s lead author.

Impacts to NOAA of the DOGE-imposed cuts and restrictions go beyond lost jobs and workers.

NOAA just canceled a scientific conference that has been held annually for half a century. The 2025 Global Monitoring Annual Conference would have focused on information about greenhouse gas emissions, carbon cycle feedbacks and other atmospheric science subjects. The 2024 conference was the 52nd held by NOAA.

Senate Joint Resolution 12 was pending in the Senate Rules Committee as of Friday.

Senate Bill 93 would boost funding for school districts that are currently enrolled in early education programs under the Alaska Reads Act. The bill would increase per-student funding from half funding to the full amount for other students within the state’s public education funding formula.

The Alaska Reads Act program supports early literacy for pre-K through grade 3 with the aim of improving reading.

“The concept isn’t new,” said Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage, the bill’s sponsor, citing a body of research supporting improved lifelong learning outcomes following pre-K programs. “For every dollar we invest in high quality early learning, we see a $32 return on investment in increased earning potential, higher graduation rates, higher engagement and post-secondary opportunities.”

She explained with the outmigration of families and children from Alaska, funding early learning programs would encourage young student enrollment. “Last year, the Legislative Finance Division indicated about 3,700 kids left our public education system in total,” she said. “So what our hope is, is not only to provide districts with full funding to maintain their pre-elementary programs, but also to help balance out that outmigration with incoming students.”

School districts can choose to offer prekindergarten in Alaska, and districts’ enrollment in early learning programs under the Alaska Reads Act is also voluntary. Currently the participating districts are Anchorage, Skagway and Valdez.

The Department of Education estimates the funding increase would cost roughly $7.6 million, already requested in Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s budget proposal for next year, going towards funding the Alaska Reads Act, according to a fiscal note to the bill. 

State Education Commissioner Deena Bishop said that the governor’s budget includes roughly $4.7 million to sustain funding for existing early education programs and $3 million to expand the number of districts with these programs. The Alaska Reads Act planned for annual increases in funding and programs, Bishop said in a text statement through a spokesperson.

“We look forward to all Alaska school districts who desire to serve their communities with pre-schools, can do so,” she said. “The Alaska Reads Act was a transformational piece of legislation. The present bill builds on its success.”

Tobin said the increased funding could also help alleviate child care costs for families. “We know those pre-K kids are in their communities, their parents might be struggling to braid together support for child care, or for babysitting,” she said. “And by not only providing stability for districts to offer these programs, we also are helping them in stabilizing their school population, and also helping families that are looking for child care options that are high quality and available.”

The bill now is set to be heard in the Senate Finance Committee, where Tobin hopes lawmakers support the education investment. “We know it’s not going to have an impact on our budget. And we do know the fiscal notes of the Alaska Reads Act were adopted when the bill was passed in 2022, so it’s not going to have a discernible impact on our current budget projections.”

Correction: The ages affected by the legislation were incorrect in the headline and first paragraph in the initial version of this article. The legislation would affect 4- and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds.

The Alaska Legislature passed a bill Friday that would, if signed by the governor, designate March as Women’s History Month in state law.

Backers say it’s an effort to recognize the important contributions women have made to Alaska and the nation as a whole.

The main sponsor in the House, Rep. Carolyn Hall, D-Anchorage, introduced the bill by reading the names of more than 50 notable Alaska women, starting with Gail Phillips, Vera Alexander, Carol Beery, Ellen Paneok, Nellie Cashman, Elizabeth Peratrovich and Tina DeLapp.

“How many names mentioned have everyday Alaskans heard of before? How many of us know their accomplishments, their leadership, or their fortitude?” she said.

Establishing a particular month in state law to honor their contributions would help Alaskans better appreciate the female leaders who came before them, she said.

“This is why it’s so important for Alaska to honor and preserve Women’s History Month,” she said. “The purpose is to lift up, recognize and integrate women’s experiences into our state’s narrative.”

This year, for the first time, women outnumber men in the Alaska House of Representatives, a fact Hall noted in her speech supporting the bill.

Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson, an Anchorage Democrat, wrote the bill and carried it through the Senate.

“Alaska is a land of resilience, where survival depends on strength, adaptability and community, and for generations, women have been at the heart of it all — leaders, trailblazers and defenders of culture and justice,” Gray-Jackson said during debate on the bill on March 3. “Too often, their contributions have been overlooked.”

Gray-Jackson said she hoped the observance would help inspire the next generation of female leaders.

The bill passed 19-0 in the Senate and 33-2 in the House with broad, bipartisan support in both chambers.

Republican Reps. Julie Coulombe of Anchorage and Mike Prax of North Pole were the only lawmakers voting no. Prax and Coulombe said after the vote they thought women should be recognized for their accomplishments rather than their gender. Coulombe said designating a month for women’s history wouldn’t make a meaningful difference in women’s lives.

“This isn’t going to help women. I want policies that actually help women, and us just passing resolutions and days doesn’t do anything,” she said. “We keep hearing that we have a majority of women in the Legislature, and I take offense that I’m a ‘woman legislator.’ I’m just a legislator.”

Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s communications director, Jeff Turner, declined to say whether the governor would sign the bill.

The Alaska Board of Game on Thursday approved state officials’ request to continue a controversial predator control program in Western Alaska, even though a judge ruled two weeks ago that the bear-killing program violated the state constitution.

The board granted an Alaska Department of Fish and Game petition for emergency action to carry out a third season of shooting bears and wolves to keep them from preying on the ailing Mulchatna Caribou Herd. In the past two years, the predator control program — carried out in late spring and early summer within the herd’s range — killed 175 brown bears, five black bears and 19 wolves, according to the department.

The emergency finding is warranted to help a herd that fell from a peak of about 200,000 in the late 1990s to about 13,000 now, too low to allow any hunting, board members said on the final day of a weeklong meeting in Anchorage.

“Right now, we have a herd that has shut down where a large number of people in Western Alaska can’t put caribou in their freezer right now. And it’s not going to grow if they don’t have calf survival,” said Stosh Hoffman, a board member from Bethel.

People in the region need to be able to hunt caribou because other food sources are uncertain, Hoffman said.

“We’re in tough times out here. A lot of things are changing. The salmon is in big decline. Our moose population, everyone knows it’s going to tip over real soon, like new moose populations tend to do. When they crash, they crash hard,” he said. He noted that the Alaska Federation of Natives, at its last convention, unanimously supported a resolution in favor of Mulchatna predator control.

But Nicole Schmitt, executive director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, said she was “shocked” at what the department and the board did.

“We just think it was a complete betrayal of the public process,” Schmitt said. Emergency regulations in the past have closed hunting, not opened or reopened predator control, she said. “This says to me if the board wants something done, they will manufacture an emergency to that end.”

The Alaska Wildlife Alliance is considering how to respond, she said. We’re looking at something that includes a legal response, as well as other options,” she said.

The Department of Fish and Game submitted the petition for emergency action last Friday, on the first day of the regularly scheduled Anchorage meeting.

While department officials say the predator removals done to date have resulted in increased calf births that help the herd, opponents say factors like habitat change rather than predation are behind the herd’s population decline.

Opponents also say that the program threatens populations of bears, including those that frequent the well-known bear-viewing areas in Katmai National Park and Preserve.

The Alaska Wildlife Alliance filed a lawsuit in 2023 that resulted in the ruling against the program.

Superior Court Judge Andrew Guidi ruled on March 14 that it was carried out in violation of public-notice and public-comment requirements and that it violated the state constitution’s sustained-yield mandate by failing to adequately evaluate impacts to bear populations.

At the Board of Game meeting, there was debate among members about whether adequate public notice and opportunities for public comment had been given this time. Some members argued for a separate meeting. But the majority, by a 5-2 vote, decided to deal with the matter Thursday, the last day of the weeklong meeting.

The vote to authorize the program’s resumption passed by a 6-1 margin. Member John Wood, who agreed with others that the matter qualified as an emergency but had expressed some concerns about proper public notice, was the lone dissenter.

Ryan Scott, director of the department’s Division of Wildlife, said the program can start imminently. To be effective, it has to be carried out in the late spring and early summer, during the calving season, he said.

The department is poised to start its third season of the Mulchatna predator control, he told Board of Game members.

“It’s not about beginning to gear up. We are full tilt. We have contracts in place, we got fuel moving,” he told the board. Though the court ruling has implications for proper processes to follow, the department is treating the matter as having some urgency, he said. “I mean, 30 days from now, we’ll probably be putting people in the field,” he said.

The Alaska LNG Project took a step forward Thursday. That’s when the board of the state-run Alaska Gasline Development Corp. authorized an agreement with Houston- and New York-based pipeline developer Glenfarne Group to shepherd the project to a final investment decision.

“We’ve been burning the midnight oil to move forward and work on these definitive agreements with Glenfarne,” said AGDC President Frank Richards.

He called into Thursday’s special board meeting from Tokyo – the latest stop on his East Asian tour he’s on with Gov. Mike Dunleavy to promote the project.

Under the agreement, Glenfarne will own three-quarters of the $44 billion project. The state of Alaska will own the other quarter. That’s the same equity share the state had when the project was being led by ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips. A corporation spokesperson said AGDC is staying a part-owner to uphold its statutory obligations.

If it’s built, the Alaska LNG Project would move natural gas between the North Slope and Southcentral. The full project includes a gas treatment plant on the Slope, an 800-mile pipeline and a liquefaction and export facility in Nikiski.

As the new owner, Glenfarne’s first task will be to update the project’s existing cost estimate to 2025 dollars. AGDC estimates that work will cost around $150 million. A small piece – $4 million – is covered by an existing federal grant secured by U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2023.

If the project ultimately doesn’t move forward, Glenfarne will be able to recoup as much as $50 million from a backstop OK’d by Alaska’s state-run development agency, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.

The agreement also says Glenfarne will prioritize the pipeline piece of the project before moving to later phases. That would let Alaska customers access gas before it’s available for export.

The Arctic treatment plant would likely be necessary to allow gas to start flowing from established fields like Prudhoe Bay and Point Thompson. But state officials say they’re optimistic gas from a forthcoming field developed by Great Bear Pantheon won’t require treatment before it’s sent south. The developer signed an agreement with the state last year, but the field has not yet started production.

“This really is a tremendous opportunity for the state, for the United States, for our allies, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to see the board vote in favor of this transaction,” Glenfarne CEO Brendan Duval told the AGDC board.

On a Thursday evening call with reporters, Dunleavy said Alaska is closer than ever to getting the pipeline project off the ground. But he says he understands if people still have doubts about its prospects.

“I was very skeptical for years on this project, and I’m not going to have a final celebration,” he said. “I’ll get excited when these guys go to (final investment decision). I’ll get excited when pipe is ordered. I’ll get excited when it’s welded. I’ll get excited when gas is going through it. I’ll really get excited when we flick on the switch and we’re guaranteed that Alaska gas. So I would just say, stay tuned.”

While in Asia, Richards and Dunleavy picked up a nonbinding letter of support for the project from Taiwan’s state-owned CPC Corporation. And though the letter is nonbinding, Richards says it’s a big step towards making the project a reality.

“Six million tons represents one train of the Alaska LNG,” he said. “So it’s significant for us, and that has then drawn significant interest in review by the other countries that we’re talking to.”

Richards said he and Dunleavy had also met with officials and energy companies in South Korea, Japan and Thailand.

But some have questioned the extent to which foreign interest is the result of tariff threats from the White House. Dunleavy says there are concerns about international trade. But he says there’s also demand for natural gas.

“Asian countries are needing gas,” he said. “The question is, where are they’re going to get it from? And Alaska, in many cases, is closer to them, and we believe it could be delivered at a price that works better than other locales.”

Though Thursday’s decision is a step forward, it’s still unclear whether enough investors will sign on for the project to be built.