Health

People who rely on food assistance from SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, could have their electronic benefits cards refilled as soon as this week. Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a state disaster declaration Monday in an effort to free up state funds to make up for federal money delayed by the Trump administration amid the government shutdown.

“The interruption of these benefits would create an immediate threat of food insecurity and hardship, jeopardize the health and well-being of a substantial population within the state, and a direct threat to public health,” Dunleavy wrote in the disaster declaration.

The roughly 66,000 Alaskans who participate in the federally funded, state-run SNAP program did not have their cards refilled on Saturday as scheduled. Until this weekend, the Trump administration said that funding for the program would run out Nov. 1.

On Friday, two federal judges ordered the administration to tap a contingency fund to at least partially fund SNAP benefits. But the Trump administration says it’ll take time for that money to be distributed, and the administration says it only has enough money to fund half of SNAP recipients’ typical benefits.

Dunleavy’s disaster declaration allows the state to refill benefit cards with state funds quickly and offer money to food banks around the state already stressed by the response to ex-Typhoon Halong and the federal government shutdown.

State House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, an Independent from Dillingham, said in a phone interview it was clear the state needed to act to help Alaskans struggling to put food on the table.

“Compelling stories all around the state of single families and elderly people and others not being able to get food because their cards had run out, you know, were already beginning to come to light, so we knew we had to act quickly,” he said. “I’m really pleased working with the governor and Senate President (Gary) Stevens, that we were able to put our heads together and make this happen.”

Dunleavy previously said it would likely take weeks for any state money to flow to beneficiaries. But on Sunday, Edgmon said, the contractor that handles SNAP cards told the state that recipients’ debit cards could be reloaded much sooner.

As of Monday afternoon, a Department of Health spokesperson, Shirley Sakaye, estimated cards could be refilled by Friday, Nov. 7.

Edgmon said the disaster declaration eliminates the need for a special legislative session to address the issue. Lawmakers and the governor had floated a special session as a possibility as they considered ways to ensure food assistance continued to flow.

Stevens, the Senate president, said the money would likely come from already-appropriated but unused funds in the Division of Public Assistance. Stevens said lawmakers would seek to replace the money with a new appropriation when lawmakers return to Juneau in January. He said he hoped the federal government would reimburse the state at a later date.

The solution is temporary, Stevens said, and likely not sustainable in the long term if the federal government remains closed. The program costs around $8 million per week, he said.

“It would be problematic for us to fill that amount of money on an ongoing basis,” Stevens said.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress have yet to come to an agreement to restore funding for the federal government in a dispute over expiring federal health insurance subsidies. How long the shutdown will last remains an open question.

The government shutdown is delaying funding for a federal heating assistance program that helps thousands of low-income Alaska families to offset their heating costs and weatherize homes for winter, state health officials said Thursday.

The Alaska Department of Health said in a statement that the government shutdown has delayed the release of money for the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program for the year of 2026. The program subsidizes energy bills for about 50,000 Alaskans, many of whom live in rural and tribal communities.

“It definitely benefits a lot of rural and tribal communities,” said Jennifer Hyde, a federal infrastructure coordinator at the Alaska Center, a nonprofit that advocates for the continuation of the program. “Disproportionately, those communities are often low income or have different economic struggles.”

The shutdown began on Oct. 1. Funding for the heating assistance program usually comes in on Nov. 1.

State health officials said they expect that money to run out by mid-November. For now, they are operating the program using the remaining money from the previous year.

The department said it usually takes four-to-six weeks for the heating assistance funds to be released to states. So if Congress acts in late November, Alaska would receive funding after mid-December, according to the state health department.

Alaska tribal organizations are looking closely at the issue.

The Tanana Chiefs Conference administers heating assistance for over 1,200 households. Amber Vaska, the executive director of tribal government and client services at the organization, said by email that the federal program is “a lifeline across the Interior.”

“In our remote Interior villages, this support means the difference between families keeping their homes heated and pipes from freezing—or being forced to go without heat entirely, ” Vaska said.

Vaska added that Tanana Chiefs Conference can use carryover funds from prior years, which allows the organization to continue serving residents even during funding interruptions or government shutdowns.

The government shutdown is also affecting other programs crucial for Alaska Native communities, like food assistance and tribal Head Start.

Hyde, with the Alaska Center, said families who rely on heating assistance are the same vulnerable residents who will be affected by the loss of food benefits.

“It’s going to just be a really tough winter, unless something can give,” she said.

In the meantime, the state Department of Health said its staff is prioritizing applications by focusing on households in a heating emergency or at immediate risk of losing heat. It’s also processing regular applications in the order they were received.

If the federal money runs out, the department said it plans to continue processing new applications, though payments will be delayed until the new funds arrive.

Thousands of Juneau residents will be in limbo as of Saturday, when SNAP benefits officially become a victim of the political battle between Congress, the Trump administration and the federal courts. 

As the government shutdown continues, the Trump administration announced earlier this month that it would not use contingency funds to allow Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments to continue. On Friday, federal judges ruled that the administration must continue the payments either partially or in full.

But benefits are unlikely to be distributed on Saturday as scheduled, and it remains unclear when and how much of the expected funds will go out to American families. That leaves as many as 2,000 SNAP recipients in Juneau without the means to buy food. 

Former Juneau Assembly Member Michelle Hale wrote an op-ed for the Juneau Independent about the SNAP cutoff last week. She told KTOO that even a week’s delay makes a difference for families. 

“People are going to start going hungry tomorrow,” she said Friday.

Hale said the federal back-and-forth takes an emotional toll on the people she knows who use food stamps. 

“What for me is really unforgivable is my elderly friends or this woman that I met yesterday, how frightening this is for them and how unnecessary it is to put them through this fear,” she said. “It’s really, really scary.”

Dan Parks leads the Southeast Alaska Food Bank. He said that even before SNAP was threatened, the demand for food support grew a lot this year. It nearly doubled. 

He said the food bank is as prepared as it can be to help meet the gap in food services, but it’s not possible to fully meet it. Feeding America, the national food bank network, says that for every meal food banks provide, SNAP provides nine. 

“We can’t increase that much, that fast,” Parks said. “Nobody can. No food bank is going to be prepared to meet that kind of gap.” 

Normally, the demand is greater at the end of the month, when people run out of SNAP benefits, and then it eases up again in the next month. But Parks said he’s expecting the need will only keep increasing until people receive their payments. 

But there are ways community members can help in the meantime. 

“In order to prepare, we are watching. We are responding,” Parks said. “We aren’t panicking, but we are trying to make it known to everybody that wants to help, that there’s lots of things that you can do. You can donate time, you can donate food, you can donate money.”

Parks said people who want to help should reach out to local groups to see what is being done and how they can help. He also said they can contact the food bank’s member organizations, like St. Vincent de Paul and several local churches, that distribute food throughout the week and often need more volunteers. 

Parks said until benefits are restored, Juneau’s food support network will keep doing whatever it can to put food on tables.

On Wednesday, the Alaska Supreme Court heard arguments in a legal case that will determine whether or not the state of Alaska may restrict abortion care to licensed physicians.

Since 2019, attorneys representing Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana and Kentucky, have been challenging a state law setting out that restriction. They argue that advanced practice clinicians should be permitted to provide abortion care, even though they are not licensed physicians.

The law, enacted in 1970, has been partially suspended since 2021, which has allowed advanced practice clinicians to perform abortions. In 2024, Alaska Superior Court judge ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood, continuing the suspension.

The state of Alaska, which opposes Planned Parenthood’s interpretation of the law, appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court in hopes of restoring the law’s effectiveness.

The deciding issue may be whether strict scrutiny applies in the case. Under strict scrutiny, the government bears the burden of proving that a law is constitutional.

In 2024, Alaska Superior Court Judge Josie Garton ruled that strict scrutiny does apply, which contributed to her determination that limiting abortion services to state-licensed physicians violates the Alaska Constitution.

In written briefs to the Supreme Court this year, attorneys representing the state have argued that Garton’s ruling was mistaken; attorneys representing Planned Parenthood have argued in favor of the strict scrutiny determination.

If Garton’s decision on strict scrutiny is overturned, the rest of her decision could follow, and advanced practice clinicians would no longer be legally able to provide abortion care in Alaska.

In Alaska, abortion rights have generally been protected since 1997 by the Alaska Supreme Court’s interpretation of the state’s constitutional right to privacy.

Since then, subsequent editions of the court have repeatedly held that abortion care is health care and thus protected by the right of Alaskans to keep medical decisions private.

Attorney Laura Wolff, representing the Alaska Department of Law, argued Wednesday that the physician-only abortion law doesn’t violate the constitutional right to privacy because few people have been affected.

“The privacy clause analysis requires a significant impairment,” she told the justices. “Not a modest, not a medium, a moderate, a significant impairment, in order to even trigger the privacy clause.”

Attorney Camila Vega, arguing for Planned Parenthood, said some of the group’s clients have been able to access care more often because they no longer have to wait for a doctor to be available.

She said that it would be a mistake for the Supreme Court to require that a minimum number of patients be affected in order to violate the constitution.

“This court has never before required evidence about a threshold number of individual patients to strike down a law, and we would urge the court not to do so here,” she said. “The evidence … shows that since the injunction in this case, patients have been better able to access medication and aspiration abortion. They’ve been doing so for the last four years, and so we respectfully request that the court affirm the order.”

National and local groups filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of Planned Parenthood. Standing Together Against Rape, an Alaska group, argued that restricting access to abortion care would harm abuse victims and survivors of sexual assault.

The national groups argued that advanced practice clinicians are able to provide safe and effective abortion care, and there’s no difference in outcomes between their care and care provided by doctors.

Planned Parenthood has also argued that even if the Alaska Constitution’s privacy amendment does not apply in this case, the abortion-doctor law would violate the constitution’s equal protection clause.

That clause states “that all persons are equal and entitled to equal rights.”

Restricting abortion patients to doctor treatment alone deters them from getting treatment, Vega said.

“For example, if the state offered marriage appointments twice a week, but it said that for same-sex couples, you could only get a marriage appointment once a month, that is a clear equal protection violation,” she said.

The state argued in writing that it has a valid interest “in ensuring that these procedures ending fetal life are performed ethically, professionally, and under a uniform standard,” and because of that reason, the Alaska Legislature intended abortion to be regulated to a higher standard.

At the end of Wednesday’s arguments, Chief Justice Susan Carney said the case will be taken under consideration, with a written order to be published at a future date.

This is the second story in a four-part series from the Alaska Desk called Shelf Life, which looks at food security in Alaska.

In the very back corner of Skagway’s only grocery store, a laminated sign boasts: “LOCAL GROWN.” Above it sits a container with bundles of radishes. Next to them, a few boxes of greens.

But that’s all there is. Everything else in the store is shipped in from very far away – and it shows. While walking the aisles of the AC Fairway Market earlier this month, resident Katie Auer picked up a bag of partially wilted and bruised mini peppers.

“You’re telling me I’m going to pay 9 dollars and 29 cents for a bag of peppers, that I’d have to throw away over half of them?” she said, shrugging.

Grocery chain Alaska Commercial Company bought the store in 2021 from long-time local owners. And Auer is among those who contend that the store is expensive, the shelves aren’t well stocked and the produce rots quickly.

Locals say that’s particularly true during summer – and that things are better in Haines, Skagway’s closest neighbor.

“Why is our produce so much more expensive?” Auer asked. “Why is our food in general so much more expensive than Haines, when it’s 13 extra nautical miles to get here? Why is it so much more rotten?”

A few factors drive those challenges, including shipping costs and the drastic seasonal population swings that come with hosting cruise ships in the summer.

Both make it harder to keep the store well stocked and profitable.

In response, some residents seem to be doing what they can to avoid the store entirely – including getting same-day grocery deliveries by small planes.

A catch-22 

Skagway’s supermarket woes are not unique in Alaska, where communities across the state struggle to access affordable, fresh food.

But Skagway has some advantages other remote communities don’t. For starters, it’s connected to an international highway. And like much of Southeast, it’s on the barge route, which is perhaps the most efficient way to transport food.

“Certainly, within the data I see, as Southeast compares to the rest of the state and off-road Alaska, it’s a significantly lower quantity of food that actually spoils in transit to a store,” said Mike Jones, a food systems economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

But different communities face different challenges. In Skagway, they largely revolve around one main issue. The town’s wintertime population hovers around 900 people. Then, in the warmer months, it booms amid an influx of tourism workers and, on some days, more than 10,000 cruise ship passengers.

That sets the store up for a complicated guessing game: ordering, storing and stocking enough food to last through the week without shipping in so much that products rot in storage or on the shelves.

“In the summer, I don’t have enough space to maintain all the produce I could sell,” Lee McKinney, the Fairway manager, said. “But the other side of the coin is, if I do, a larger portion of that produce is going to go bad and have to be thrown out before I do sell it. It’s a catch-22.”

During the off-season, meanwhile, people complain that store shelves appear empty and that there are plenty of products the store doesn’t offer at all. Auer noted she prefers to drink skim milk, but that the store doesn’t carry it.

Brooke Jasky-Zuber, another local, said the store has limited organic products and few meat substitutes for her partner, who is vegetarian.

McKinney said he does what he can to meet folks’ needs, including ordering entire cases of certain products if a customer says they’ll buy all of it. But he added that he has to order specialty and more popular products based on what will actually sell.

“If I bring in that full shelf load, 90% of it’s going to date out before it sells and means I’ve got to write it off and throw it away,” he said.

“We got to make sure to make money with that space,” he added.

Quality and cost concerns

It’s less clear why the quality of food in Skagway would be worse than in Haines or Juneau. Jones, the food systems economist, said there could be a few factors at play.

He said stores could use different quality distributors. But they don’t. The Fairway in Skagway and the two Haines stores all use Rhode Island-based United Natural Foods Inc. for general grocery items. For produce, both the Fairway in Skagway and Olerud’s Market Center in Haines use a Seattle-based distributor called Charlie’s Produce.

Another factor could be the length of time food sits on the barge. But it doesn’t take that much longer for food to get to Skagway than it does to Haines or Juneau.

Product turnover could also help explain the problem. Consider a minimum shipment of lemons. It would likely take longer to sell those lemons in Skagway than in larger communities like Juneau or Haines.

“The big challenge is maintaining your product and not seeing everything date out on you because you don’t turn it fast enough,” McKinney said.

Then there’s the issue of prices, which fluctuate frequently and are determined by factors including freight costs, corporate pricing structures and more.

KHNS compared eight products at one store in Skagway to the same products at Howsers IGA Supermarket in Haines, including milk, various greens, and shelf-stable groceries. Everything was cheaper in Haines except spinach.

Jones, the economist, said that checks out.

“Skagway is on the high end within Southeast in terms of the prices that I can see for a couple products that happen to be right in front of me,” he said. “That’s not necessarily unreasonable, because they are farther up the barge away from Seattle.”

Grocery shopping by small plane

The challenges in Skagway underscore that even in communities with better access and infrastructure, struggles abound. And for some, the situation has reached a tipping point.

Auer, the Skagway local, said she hasn’t shopped at the Fairway in more than a year. Instead, she hits stores in Canada, Juneau and Haines when she can.

And she ships a lot of her food from out of town, including via Instacart — from Juneau.

Instacart is a service that allows people to order their groceries online and have someone pick them up at the store and deliver them to their doorstep.

In rural Alaska, it looks a little different. Customers can place their weekly orders from Skagway. Then, a driver in Juneau heads to Costco or Fred Meyer, shops, and delivers the food to the airport. From there, it’s loaded onto a flight and flown in – typically the same day.

“You can get two dozen free range organic eggs for $8 from Costco,” Auer said. “And they are $10.50 including shipping, including paying Instacart, tipping my driver and $1 per pound shipped here from Juneau.”

That day at the Fairway, there were two options for eggs: one cost $12 a dozen, the other about $9.

Flying food around southeast Alaska is far from new. But reliance on Instacart seems to be. Data provided by the company indicates that annual Instacart deliveries to the Juneau airport have more than doubled since 2019.

Jasky-Zuber is among those who said that relying on the local store to fill her fridge and pantry just doesn’t make sense any more. For the last four years, she’s managed the local tribe’s farm, which is where the locally grown radishes and greens in the store came from.

Jasky-Zuber said she sources most of her produce from the farm in the summertime. But otherwise, she stocks up on bulk items in Whitehorse, Canada – and ships plenty in from Juneau.

“Not because I don’t want to support our grocery store. I do,” Jasky-Zuber said. But ultimately, she added, “I find mostly other ways to get the bulk of what I need.”

Listen here:

The Alaska Office of Children’s Services has struggled with staffing for years, from high vacancies and turnover to high caseloads. And data shows caseworker demographics also don’t line up with the state’s, or the system’s children.

According to the 2023 progress report on the state’s child welfare system, 8.7% of caseworkers are Alaska Native or American Indian, and more than 71.9% are white. As for supervisors, all but 2 of the agency’s 13 supervisors are white. The agency is turning to training and partnering with tribes to address the gap.

Indigenous children have been overrepresented in Alaska’s child welfare system for years. State population estimates from last year show that 23.8% people under the age of 18 are Alaska Native or American Indian. But data from the Office of Children’s Services shows they consistently make up around two-thirds of the children who are in out-of-home care such as a foster home. It’s been as high as 69% in the past.

Mary Johnson is the senior director of family services at the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, and worked as a caseworker for a tribal organization earlier in her career. She said the racial disparity concerns her.

“How do we connect with this, these 69% of our families?” she said. “If they are from one population, it would make sense that we would want to identify people to work with the population who are like them.”

Kate Paskievitch is a public information officer with the Alaska Department of Family and Community Services, which runs OCS. In an email, she wrote that “OCS does not view this as a ‘concern’ in the sense of a problem to be fixed, but it does guide our efforts to provide culturally responsive care.”

She wrote that care includes partnering with local tribes in the state on cases, prioritizing hiring local staff in the communities they serve, and providing ongoing training on cultural responsiveness.

Tlingit and Haida is one of the tribes that partners with the state on cases that apply to the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA. That federal law lays out minimum requirements when taking on a case involving Indigenous children. The state must try to place children with their family members or in their local communities first.

Johnson herself is Yup’ik. She said it’s important to have tribal representation when working on these child welfare cases.

“It makes sense that if you’re not able to recruit and hire Alaska Native people, at least partner with tribes, at least have tribal partners be a part of the decision making process when making decisions about how our children and families are being cared for and treated,” she said.

Johnson said the tribe largely employs Alaska Native people in its family services office. She said it’s important to have Alaska Native people working on cases, either as a caseworker or as a tribal partner.

“I do think in the field of child welfare, when it’s something so serious and so personal, that the people making the decisions for the group of people that are involved really should have knowledge on how this other group exists in this world, right, and how we parent,” she said.

Trevor Storrs is the president of Alaska Children’s Trust, a nonprofit that advocates and works toward ending child abuse and neglect in the state. He said hiring people whose racial demographics line up with the people they serve is important, but it’s hard to focus on that when the entire system is strained.

“They’re doing really important work, and their hearts are out to protect kids, but they’re also challenged,” he said. “There have been audits. They have high caseloads. They can’t keep staff. There’s just all these challenges.”

Storrs said training on cultural responsiveness is part of social work programs, which is why he said it’s important for the state to hire credentialed workers. That also isn’t always happening.

An audit performed this year on OCS shows many people hired do not have a degree in social work. The state even hired case workers with only a high school diploma.

Storrs said the state should be looking for ways to improve the system as a whole. He said he wants to see a focus on supporting children and families and preventing the problems that lead to OCS intervening.

“It’s less kids that are not going to school, less kids and families addicted to substances, and for us and for OCS, it would be less cases of child abuse and neglect,” he said.

Research from Casey Family Programs shows some children benefit from the system, but they often leave state custody with lasting negative effects on their education, mental health and employment.

A change to the system might be on the horizon. A federal class action lawsuit against the state aiming to reform the system is awaiting a judge’s decision.