State Government

Alaska’s organized borough governments would be encouraged to make long-term plans for housing projects under a bill passed Monday by the Alaska Senate.

Senate Bill 50, from Sen. Forrest Dunbar, D-Anchorage, would change state law to say that boroughs’ comprehensive plans — long-term planning documents — may include a housing development plan.

The bill passed the Senate 17-0 with three excused absences and advances to the House for further consideration.

Alaska housing prices have risen by nearly 50% over the past 10 years. The National Association of Realtors estimates that Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough alone have a shortage of 5,066 homes.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Dunbar said the bill is part of a larger effort to encourage new housing construction.

The bill doesn’t require boroughs to create new comprehensive plans for their land, and it doesn’t require them to include housing as part of those plans, but it does encourage them, he said.

“In the process, boroughs will assess how their regulations impact housing supply, engage and inform the public, and recommend reforms,” Dunbar said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski says President Trump is testing the limits of his power.

In a speech to the Legislature Tuesday, Alaska’s senior senator, a Republican, said the president has gone too far during his first two months back in office.

Trump has frozen funding that Congress approved. He’s moved to shutter agencies created by law. He’s fired thousands of federal workers across dozens of government offices, from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Energy to the U.S. Forest Service and the National Weather Service.

Murkowski said she’s “disturbed” by the cuts to the federal workforce.

“These terminations are indiscriminate, and many we’re now learning are unlawful. And they’re being made regardless of performance, and with little understanding of the function and the value of each position,” she said. “At any human level, they’re traumatizing people, and they’re leaving holes in our communities.”

Federal courts have reversed many of Trump’s moves, though it’s not always clear how faithfully the administration abides by those court orders.

Just this weekend, Trump administration officials refused to stop a flight deporting alleged members of a Venezuelan gang without an opportunity to present their case to a court. Trump officials argue the judge’s order came too late, though flight records reviewed by news organizations indicate that’s not true.

Murkowski told state lawmakers that legislators have a duty to assert their and the courts’ authority under the Constitution. And she said there are plenty of reasons to deport gang members — but she said the government still has to give the accused due process guaranteed to everyone in the United States, citizen or not, by the Constitution.

“We’ve got to stand up, and we have to make sure that it is understood that we are all separate but equal branches of government. When the court’s orders are defied, that weakens our courts,” she said. “When the people no longer believe that the system of justice is there for them, what do we have in this country?”

Some commentators have described the administration’s apparent defiance of a federal court order as a constitutional crisis.

Murkowski said that’s not how she sees it. In her speech, she said the Trump administration was “testing the court to see how far they might be able to go.”

“No, we’re not in a constitutional crisis,” she said in an interview after the speech.

Murkowski said there’s “a lot of debate” over the timing of the order and whether the administration intentionally ignored it. But she said she’s “worried” the country could approach a crisis “if we don’t work to maintain and enforce the rule of law that we, as Americans, have come to expect and to rely on.”

“But then the real question is, so, what do we do about it? What do we in Congress do about it?” she said. “I would suggest to you that if we fail to do anything, if we say it’s all OK, because I happen to like what the President was moving towards … but yet we allow our preference for that policy to override our own respect for the institutions of democracy, that’s when you may get closer to a constitutional crisis.”

Murkowski said she’s worried her Republican colleagues in Congress, who lead both the House and Senate, might not stand up even if Trump openly and clearly ignores a court order.

Rep. Dan Saddler, R-Eagle River, asked Murkowski during a question-and-answer session after her speech if there was any prospect that Congress might modify laws giving the president broad authority to use emergency powers.

Trump has used such powers to justify tariffs on imports and invoked an 18th century wartime law never before used in peacetime to speed deportations.

Murkowski said she’s not holding her breath.

“Is it possible for the legislative branch to act on this? Yes. Do I see that happening with the current construct? No,” she said.

She said at a news conference after the speech that she’s been criticized harshly for standing up to the president, who has vowed retribution against his enemies — and that’s why others in her party are staying silent.

Alaskans ages 16 and 17 would be able to consent to talk therapy under a bill introduced in the state Senate in February that would lower the age of consent from 18.

A parent or guardian would still need to consent to any medications.

Anchorage Republican Sen. Cathy Giessel, an advanced practice registered nurse, sponsored Senate Bill 90. She screens Anchorage children and teens for mental health issues and said only a third of parents typically consent when their kid requests therapy.

“I believe that students have a real understanding of their need for assistance, their need for counseling, their desire to talk to someone about the struggles they’re having,” Giessel said.

Typically, she said, major mental health challenges start around age 14, and when kids are struggling, they sometimes turn to harmful coping strategies like using nicotine, alcohol or drugs.

“By helping them early, we can head off more advanced issues later in their teen years, or even adult years,” Giessel said.

Most states allow minors to consent to mental health care. Several allow kids to consent at age 14, and two states at age 12.

Critics of the bill worry that therapists working with younger children will encourage them to identify as transgender, without parental knowledge. But peer-reviewed research has shown that kids do not identify as transgender because of so-called “social contagion.”

Meanwhile, experts say the United States is in the midst of a youth mental health crisis. Giessel said she sees that in her work, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Prior to COVID, I rarely had a student share significant anxiety, depression or even suicidal ideation,” she said. “During and after COVID, it has increased significantly more, and I think it’s a reflection, really, of what’s going on in our society. But I also think that parents are becoming less and less engaged with their kids.”

Parents and guardians are still the best people to talk to their kids about mental health struggles, and the bill is designed to include them, Giessel said. As written in the bill, therapists would be required to notify parents and guardians of the therapy after five sessions, unless the therapist and youth decide it’s unsafe or will threaten their care.

The bill is expected to head to the Senate Health and Social Services Committee within the next two weeks, where there will be an opportunity for public comment, Giessel said.

For decades, dozens of rural school districts have been asking the state for money to fix a range of serious health and safety problems. Only a small percentage of that money has come through.

Southeast Island School District Superintendent Rod Morrison got a chance to be heard. He was in Juneau to testify before the powerful Alaska Senate Finance Committee when he lifted a large lightbulb from a plastic shopping bag and showed it to committee members.

“You’ll see it almost caught on fire,” Morrison said, pointing out black marks on the top of the lightbulb. “This happened with six of our gymnasium lights and it’s obvious our fire suppression system was inoperable.”

Morrison’s district has made at least 17 funding requests to the state for financial assistance to replace the fire suppression system in the school at Thorne Bay, a small community northwest of Ketchikan.

“I would assume that we are on the brink of another Kasayulie 2.0 coming to us that may be more costly to the state than if we came forward and tried to do something about the condition of these schools,” said Alaska Senate Finance Committee co-chair Lyman Hoffman, a Democrat from Bethel.

Hoffman was referring to a successful lawsuit brought by a group of Alaska Native parents in 1997. They argued that Alaska’s education funding system violated its constitution and the federal Civil Rights Act. In 2011, a judge agreed and ruled that the Alaska Legislature had to find a more equitable way to fund infrastructure in rural school districts.

KYUK and ProPublica have spent the last year visiting rural schools and found the same kinds of conditions that spurred the case: leaking roofs, failing heating systems, and broken sewer lines.

“I would say that schools throughout the state, regardless of whether they are rural or urban, are likely not in a properly maintained state,” said Alaska Department of Education and Early Development Finance Manager Lori Weed during a presentation to lawmakers. In 2025, rural and urban schools have requested nearly $800 million for construction and maintenance from the state.

Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy has requested $6.5 million for a plane that he says will be used for emergency response and for the executive branch, but the governor’s budget does not include any capital investment for schools. That stands out to senator and Alaska Senate Finance Committee co-chair Bert Stedman, a Republican from Sitka. “My concern is the priorities of the requests to the Legislature are questionable,” he said.

“We’ve crossed the Rubicon of sanity here when it comes to school maintenance, Mr. Chairman,” said Sen. Jesse Kiehl. The Democrat from Juneau said that he was frustrated by the state’s lack of capital investment. “It sounds like the efficient frontier is fires and insurance claims, Mr. Chair, when I look at the financial incentives I see,” he said.

Senators did not make any final financing decisions on Friday. Several committee members noted the absence of Alaska Department of Education and Early Development Commissioner Deena Bishop, and noted that they were unable to ask follow-up questions of her staff; they left the meeting immediately following their presentation.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s decision to kill almost 200 brown bears in order to boost a struggling caribou herd violated due process and was unconstitutional, an Anchorage Superior Court judge ruled Friday.

Judge Andrew Guidi’s 10-page decision means at least a temporary end to the state’s controversial bear-killing program, which was intended to aid the struggling Mulchatna caribou herd.

“Unless they want to seek a stay of this decision, they’ve got to stop killing bears,” said attorney Joe Geldhof, who represented the Alaska Wildlife Alliance in a lawsuit that prompted Friday’s decision.

The Alliance sued the state in 2023 to challenge the application of Alaska’s “intensive management” project in Southwest Alaska.

Originally designed to kill wolves in order to boost the populations of prey species that hunters pursue, the program was expanded in 2022 to cover bears that have been preying on the Mulchatna caribou herd.

That herd, which contained 200,000 animals at its peak in 1997, has declined to about 13,000 animals and is closed to hunting.

Anchorage attorney Michelle Bittner filed a separate lawsuit, also challenging the state’s bear-killing program.

Both lawsuits argued that the state’s Board of Game failed to follow adequate due process standards before beginning the program.

Before a judge could consider the merits of either case, state attorneys argued that Bittner did not have the standing to bring a lawsuit on the issue. That argument went all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court, which ruled in February that Bittner could bring her case.

That cleared the way for the Alaska Wildlife Alliance’s lawsuit to advance as well, with oral arguments taking place in March.

Ruling Friday on the merits, Guidi concluded that the Board of Game violated due process and did not provide adequate public notice when it began its bear-killing program.

“The notice provided by the BOG contemplating extension of an existing wolf control program to lands managed by the federal government that was altered to include a bear removal program on state lands substantially changed the subject matter of the proposal,” Guidi wrote. “These changes went far beyond varying, clarifying or altering the specific matter of the proposal addressed in the original notice. As a result, the BOG failed to adhere to mandatory due process standards.”

Guidi also found that the Board of Game violated the Alaska Constitution’s principle of sustained yield because it valued the sustainability of caribou herds but didn’t adequately study what would happen to bear populations.

“The issue of the bear population and distribution is an obvious salient issue touching on sustainability,” he wrote. “Addressing the sustainability of a constitutionally protected resource like bears almost certainly requires the BOG to engage in more than a rudimentary discussion about a bear population or engage in conclusionary opinions when considering a proposal to initiate a program calling for the unrestricted killing of bears.”

A spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Law, which represented the Board of Game in the lawsuit, said the state is reviewing the order and considering its options for how to proceed.

Alaska’s state development agency says it’s in talks with the operator of the Ketchikan Shipyard to resolve a dispute that threatens the future of the key local employer.

The announcement comes about two weeks after the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority told shipyard operator Vigor it would not renew its contract to run the multimillion-dollar state facility. AIDEA said Vigor had not supported enough jobs, made enough money for the state or adequately contributed to repairs and maintenance. The agency said the operator’s time at the yard would end Nov. 30.

Now, though, tensions appear to be easing. A joint statement from AIDEA and Vigor dated March 13 commends the operator’s “stewardship” of the Ketchikan Shipyard.

“AIDEA and Vigor are united in their commitment to preserving this essential shipyard as a cornerstone of opportunity for the community and the state,” the statement said. “Both organizations are working together on potential opportunities to extend our working relationship by exploring new opportunities and partnerships to improve the shipyard’s ability to serve Alaska’s maritime needs.”

Neither side offered any details on what had changed in the meantime.

Previously, AIDEA said it was willing to discuss extending the end of the contract to March of next year. But there’s no mention of the March deadline in Thursday’s statement, indicating the pair may be negotiating a longer-term deal.

“Looking ahead, AIDEA and Vigor remain optimistic about the Ketchikan Shipyard’s future and its enduring role in the region,” Vigor and AIDEA said. “Further updates will be provided as negotiations advance, and we anticipate sharing additional developments in the near future.”

Vigor is a significant employer in Ketchikan, with roughly nearly 100 direct employees and dozens of additional contractors. It’s also the only major shipyard in Southeast Alaska, and it’s where many of the state’s Marine Highway System ferries, among other government vessels, go for maintenance and overhaul work.