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Support for Alaska Public Media on Demand comes from Siri, an Alaska Native corporation with operations and investments spanning five continents, 45 states and two U.S. territories.
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We've got the time to do it. We've got the smarts to do it. You just have to have the desire to do it.
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The governor makes his pitch to lawmakers in his final State of the State address from Alaska Public Media. This is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Friday, January 23rd. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, Senator Murkowski warns of repercussions from President Trump's Greenland threats.
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What we have seen is a loss of faith and trust in the United States.
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Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly.
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I'm Shelby Herbert, a reporter with the Alaska Desk. That's a joint reporting effort from Alaska Public Media and kuac, where I work in Fairbanks and other public radio stations in Anchorage Haines and the Allusions it allows us to connect to the issues happening in communities all across the state. You can hear our stories during the Morning News Alaska News Nightly or online@alaskapublic.org the Alaska Desk is only possible with the support of grants and listeners like you. Thank you.
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Governor Mike Dunleavy outlined his agenda for his final year in office in his annual State of the State address on Thursday.
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I believe the people in this room can accomplish big things, whether it's in public education, public safety or stabilizing our fiscal situation. We've got the time to do it. We've got the smarts to do it. We just have to have the desire to do it.
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Dunleavy spent much of his 79 minute speech reviewing a long list of accomplishments from his first seven years in office. He highlighted the state's recovery from an economic downturn after emerging from a recession in early 2018. Dunleavy said his administration had enabled six consecutive years of job growth. The governor also used the speech to highlight progress on the Alaska LNG project, which would bring natural gas from the North Slope to south central Alaska. He applauded an announcement from project developer Glenn Farn, saying it had secured additional gas suppliers and was moving closer to construction. But the company stopped short Thursday of saying definitively that the project would be built.
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We are on the cusp of realizing a decades old dream of delivering abundant, affordable energy that will benefit all Alaskans today. Unlike seven years ago, oil production is increasing, reading scores are improving, and the permanent fund has reached record highs thanks to steady and strong leadership.
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Dunleavy also pitched a forthcoming fiscal plan that he said would stabilize the state's turbulent budget. He introduced two elements of that plan today. Those include a cap on government spending and a constitutional amendment that would combine the permanent fund into a single account and set up a new formula for dividends. But lawmakers in both the House and Senate said a comprehensive solution to the state's budget issues could take years to get done. Senator Lisa Murkowski says the bond between America and other NATO nations is weaker now after President Trump's aggressive talk about acquiring Greenland and threats to impose tariffs.
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This lack of stability and reliability, I think, is causing what were traditionally reliable trade partners to be saying to other countries, hey, maybe you and I should talk because I'm not sure about what's going on with the United States.
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Murkowski spoke to reporters by zoom from Washington after returning from a congressional trip to Europe. In Copenhagen and Davos, she and other lawmakers tried to repair alliances and reassure foreign leaders that Congress would not allow Trump to seize Greenland. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump himself pledged not to take Greenland by force. Murkowski says that promise only went so.
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Far with the military action off the table. That is good, but what we have seen is a loss of faith and trust in the United States from so many of our friends and allies. In so many of the conversations that I was part of, it kept coming back to the issue of trust.
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At Davos, Trump spoke of Greenland dismissively as a piece of ice that Denmark should be willing to give to the United States. Murkowski, who has traveled to Greenland many times for international Arctic meetings, says that was hard to hear.
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Never once was referenced. The people who live there, particularly the indigenous people who have lived there for generations and generations, she says the big.
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Beneficiary from Trump's fraying of European alliances is Russian President Vladimir Putin, who sees NATO as a threat to his ambitions in Ukraine and beyond. Well, school districts across Alaska are forced to build budgets based on numbers that could change. That's because state education funding relies on student counts that take a long time to process. Juneau Democratic Representative Andy Story wants to change the process through a bill that could help stabilize the budgeting process for school districts. KTOO's Jamie Deep has more Alaska's state.
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Education funding formula is really complicated. It's based on data collected during the school year that takes months to process. That can leave districts building budgets based on projections that might be inaccurate. Representative Andy Story wants to address that through a bill that would change what data is used for funding calculations. Story, who's served for years on Juneau school board says there's a level of uncertainty built into the way students are counted.
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When I was a school board member, when we were asking community members, parents to come and work on our budgets, we were always projecting cuts and not knowing what we were going to do.
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Part of that uncertainty comes from not knowing exactly how many students are enrolled until later in the budgeting process. Right now, school districts count the number of students enrolled in October of their current school year. That count needs to be approved by the Department of Education and Early Development, and it determines how much state funding a school district will get for the following school year. Districts typically don't receive the approved numbers until months later in January. That lag means districts begin planning their budgets based on projections instead of actual data. Storey's bill, House Bill 261, would change how students are counted when determining state education funding. One of the main things her bill would do, Story says, is to base student counts on the previous school year or an average of the three previous years, numbers that would have already been processed by deed and wouldn't change throughout a school district's budgeting process. The way things are currently is like living on a roller coaster, she says.
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It does not build confidence in our public schools, and so we need to get on a more stable plan.
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Smart plan this isn't a new idea. Story is on the Legislature's task Force on Education Funding. She says this part of the bill came from a recommendation made by an education consulting agency more than 10 years ago. The idea came up again last November during a task force meeting. There are a couple of other pieces in this bill as well. One addresses how the state counts students that qualify for intensive services. Students with disabilities that receive Those services receive 13 times the amount of funding that's typically allocated for a student. If the state determines there are fewer of those students than what the district counted, that can create serious shortfalls in its budget. The new bill would offer four different options for how students are counted to ensure districts are receiving all the necessary funding to support them. Story says this method would account for students who might move to other districts.
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Sometimes students move after the count date. They might move to another community, and all of a sudden that community is going to have to hire another staff person. But they've already budgeted, so where do they pull that money? Because by law we need to meet that student's needs.
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Lon Garrison is the executive director of the Alaska association of School Boards, a nonprofit organization that advocates for Alaskan students. He says the bill would provide a lot of stability as school districts build out their budgets. But he said the issue of adequate education funding remains.
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That's the piece that we have to be focused on. What are we going to do to ensure that we're getting the student outcomes and what resources do we need?
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It's unclear if this bill will make its way through the Legislature. Story expects the House Education Committee, which she co chairs, to take it up in a couple of weeks. In Juneau, I'm Jamie Deep.
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Still to come on Alaska News Nightly, eight Alaska Nordic skiers are heading to the Olympics in Italy next month, including Gus Schumacher.
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It's exciting, it's a little daunting, but you just gotta go there and realize how lucky we are to, to be.
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Able to do this.
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That's ahead. Stay with us. I'm Theo Greenlee, a reporter with the Alaska Desk. That's a joint reporting effort from Alaska Public Media and kucb, where I work in Unalaska and other public radio stations in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Haines and the Aleutians. It allows us to connect you with the issues happening in communities all across the state. You can hear our stories during the morning news, Alaska News Nightly or online at Alaska Public. The Alaska Desk is only possible with the support of grants and listeners like you. Thank you. Former Alaska Revenue Commissioner Adam Crumb deviated from state policy and failed to perform the necessary due diligence before committing millions in state savings to a private equity fund. That's the conclusion of an outside review ordered by Governor Mike Dunleavy's administration after Crumb's decision came to light last summer. The D.C. based law firm Wilmer Hale says its investigation raises, quote, significant concerns about whether Crummy met his fiduciary duties under state law. The State invested some $50 million from its primary rainy day fund, the constitutional budget reserve, with the private equity firm Digital Bridge. Asked about the report, Sitka Republican Senator Burt Stedman was unequivocal. Clearly this was an unsuitable investment for the cpr. No question about it. The ex commissioner broke his fiduciary duty to execute it. The state ultimately sold the investment to an Israeli insurance company and lost roughly $850,000. The report, which cost the state an additional $350,000, found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing or self dealing. And it said Crum had the authority as revenue commissioner to commit money to the private equity fund. But that's only if he had done the requisite due diligence. And the report says there's no reason to believe he did not. For his part Crum says the private equity investment was an effort to simultaneously boost the returns of the savings account and spur investment in Alaska. But according to the investigation, he chose not to inform the governor's budget office, the legislative auditor or members of the Legislature as state policy requires. Crum casts the issue the investigation raises as procedural. He says details weren't his mandate as revenue commissioner. It's not about being technically proficient on all that stuff. It's knowing the overall concepts and so making sure that you actually are the expert on the actual delivery of that thing. No, that is not the case. That's why you have staff. Otherwise, why do you have staff? Crum resigned as revenue commissioner last summer and is now running for governor. The report included four recommendations aimed at ensuring a similar issue wouldn't happen again. As it was released, governor Dunleavy issued an administrative order placing additional checks on the revenue commissioner's authority to invest in unconventional assets in the order. He said he hoped the changes would make the state's investment decisions more transparent. Alaska's education commissioner wants the state Board of Education and Early Development to form an ad hoc committee for Mount Edgecumbe High School. Commissioner Dina Bishop was tasked with researching the idea in December after former staff and alumni voiced concerns about mental health and student safety at the school and urged the board to take action. At the State Board of Education meeting on Thursday, Bishop shared her recommendation.
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I do believe that having an ad hoc committee to bring back information to you, the good, the struggles, the things that are considered bad by some should be included of parents and students and staff other, you know, if you want information from other boarding schools about how they operate, but providing that to you is a benefit, bishop said.
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Following the December meeting, her department sent staff to the school to look into complaints, Bishop said most tied back to last year's staffing and funding cuts, as well as the shift to a new contractor, NANA Corporation, to manage the school's food services and dormitories.
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So I don't want to give this board or anyone in the public that we don't care that we're not going. We are working through those growing pains or lack thereof.
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While Bishop said the school was in crisis mode last year, she said she hopes that the committee would be able to help students, staff and parents move forward.
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You know, we had to plug holes with funding from other sources because there was, you know, a delta in that that work. So there are great changes, but there's nothing better than bringing a group of people together to lead through changes, and I hope to do that. While listening and especially listening to the feedback of the folks that care deeply.
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About Mount Itchcomb, Bishop said the ad hoc committee would focus on academics and student experience, and safety was added as a third category at a board member's recommendation. Several board members signaled support for forming the committee, but it was unclear at the meeting whether they needed a formal vote to establish it. Bishop said she would seek legal consultation and either call a special meeting for a vote or move forward with creating the committee as soon as possible, ideally before the board's next regular meeting in March. Alaska's cruise industry is booming, and American Cruise Lines wants in on the action. The US Based company offers passengers high end voyages on small boats, and it plans to expand in Alaska in the years to come. But that plan doesn't come without hurdles. That's because it requires prized mooring space in harbors that are tight to begin with. In Haines, the company said it would pitch in to rebuild a public dock to solve that problem and then backed out amid community pushback. The Alaska Desk's Avery Elfeld reports American.
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Cruise Lines rescinded its offer late last week to pitch in $4 million to help build a new dock in Latnikoff Cove in Haines that would have been in exchange for at least two decades of priority docking. The move came amid fierce opposition from some in the community looking out over the area on a recent blustery day, longtime fisherman Brian O'Reilly said the concerns revolved around the company taking up steam space on the dock and in the COVID that's busy to begin with.
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Stay out of our way. We don't want them cruising around through all our nets and all of our crab pots and shrimp pots and everybody doing their thing. Leave us alone. Go someplace where we're not.
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Fishermen and other boaters used to tie up and tuck in here amid dangerous weather, but that changed when the dock failed in 2024. The Haynesboro has since explored options to replace it, and the closest it came to a solution was the American Cruise Line's offer. The deal would have nearly covered the local match requirement for a state grant. It also would have reserved a large chunk of the dock for cruises on certain days, but allowed public access otherwise. Haines harbour master Henry Pollan says the company did not provide a reason for dropping its offer, but ultimately, he says, the deal would have been the quickest way forward.
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We never really stopped looking at our funding options, but the funding landscape is pretty grim right now, with the state and federal government reeling in a lot of their expenditures.
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The about face comes as communities across Alaska struggle to maintain, fix and replace aging marine infrastructure. That's particularly the case given that doing so often requires government grants, which are increasingly hard to come by. Robert Venables is the director of Southeast Conference, a Juneau based nonprofit. He says many of those grants require local matching funds, which can be a heavy lift for small communities.
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Having an outside partner that can provide those funds can really accelerate progress and infrastructure development and also leave behind something that is more useful for the local communities, which makes it a win win.
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American Cruise Lines has made that pitch in at least three different Southeast communities, including Haines, as it works to expand its Alaska business. The company brought its second ship to the state last season and it plans to bring a third in 2028, after which point it aims to introduce about one ship per year. The company's president, Charlie Robertson, said during a recent Wrangle assembly meeting, in order.
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To do this, we've identified the need to invest in our port infrastructure.
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In Petersburg, for instance, the borough is still negotiating with the cruise line over what a potential infrastructure deal might entail, but it's poised look pretty different from the Haines proposal. Petersburg harbor master Glorian Woollen says it seems American Cruise Lines may propose leasing waterfront from the borough and building its own private dock. She says so far, locals have focused on ensuring they have a say over details, including the size of ships that visit and how often they come.
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The community doesn't want to give over control and American Cruise Line has seemed pretty responsive to that.
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The borough considered building a public dock and then leasing it to the cruise line, but Woolen says the idea came with a big price tag and concerns over whether the investment would pay off for locals.
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At that point it became, well, you know, what's in it for us?
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Ultimately, she says she appreciates the company's interest in establishing roots in Petersburg and, quote, putting their money where their mouth is. Rangel is further along in the process. Earlier this month, the assembly unanimously approved a 40 year tides lands lease with the company. Per the agreement, the company would build a floating dock that would be open for public use when ships are not in port. Back on the water in Haines, O'Reilly says he has no problem with American Cruise Lines itself. He thinks its small ships with fewer than 200 passengers are better than the gargantuan floating cities that bring thousands of people in one day. O'Reilly just doesn't want the company's 26070 foot ships in a cove or tied up to a dock that's long been reserved for locals.
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I mean, I'd rather have no dock.
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Than have those guys in my face.
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And then take as to the $4 million offer, O'Reilly says that's quote, chump change. With reporting from Colette, Czarnicki and Wrangel, I'm Avery Elfeld in Hanes.
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A semi tractor truck pulling a fully loaded tanker trailer wrecked Monday on a curvy stretch of the dalton highway about 250 miles north of Fairbanks. KUAC's Tim Ellis reports the tanker contained.
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14,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas from an LNG plant near Deadhorse. It was headed for the Interior Gas Utility's massive tank storage and vaporization facility on the south side of Fairbanks. The public utility is owned by the Fairbanks North Star Borough and is part of a partnership formed three years ago to truck gas down from the North Slope. Fairbanks based Middle Fork Logistics holds the trucking contract. Alaska State Troopers say they got a report of the wreck at milepost 126 of the Dalton on Monday morning. A trooper dispatch said the truck driver wasn't injured, but officers cited him for failure to exercise due care. To avoid the collision. The state Department of Transportation then closed the highway for several hours. The tanker was punctured in the rollover and released its entire load of lng, says Kimberly Marr. She's an on site coordinator with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, and she says the LNG was released as a vapor and dissipated.
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The big concern was ensuring traffic in the area was safe and so DOT did need to shut down the road and monitored that and once the LNG was released it, you know, was a gas and was able to dissipate.
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Marr said the DEC's immediate concern was to ensure fluids like the coolant and engine oil that leaked from the truck were cleaned up.
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We don't usually handle LNG or natural gas releases because what we're looking at typically is petroleum based liquids that hit.
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The ground, marr said. The Interior Gas Utility, or igu, reported the incident to dec. IGU General Manager Elena Suttath said in an email today that the UTIL facilities insurance will cover the costs incurred by the wreck. She said Igu has 18 remaining trailers that are capable of hauling LNG over the Dalton highway and two others that could be used if needed. Sudath said IGU gets from four to seven tanker loads of LNG daily from the North Slope, and she added that the utility has three trailers on order that'll be ready for pickup in July or August. The IGU got its first four tanker loads of LNG from its new supplier, Harvest Alaska. LNG in Harvest is an affiliate of Hill Corp. The Texas based company that operates the Prudhoe bay oil fields. IGU's previous supplier was its Titan plant at Port Mackenzie near Anchorage. From there, tankers brought the LNG to Fairbanks over the Parks highway in Delta Junction. I'm Tim Ellis.
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Alaska is known for cross country skiing. Even so, it's notable that half of the US Cross country ski team heading to the Olympics in Italy next month call the state home and all eight athletes ski for the same club based in Anchorage. Alaska Public Media's Hannah Flor talked to three members of the team who all had very different journeys to the Games.
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Middle schoolers on skis are making a celebratory video in Anchorage's Kincaid Park. They're cheering for their coach. Coach and Olympian Haley Swervle was named to the US Olympic team Thursday and is headed to Italy in February.
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There's something so inspiring and powerful about getting to be part of this group that's really going for something big and trying to move the needle on American skiing.
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Swervill is one of eight cross country skiers from Alaska going to the 2026 Olympics next month. All of them ski for Alaska Pacific University's team in Anchorage. The three other skiers on the women's team are Rosie Brennan, Kendall Kramer and Novi McCabe. On the men's team, J.C. schoonmaker, Hunter Wonders, Xanden McMullen and Gus Schumacher. It's Schumacher's second Olympics. He says the skiers themselves already knew who'd made it, since the criteria is pretty clear. But he's glad the news is out.
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Fun to share with everyone officially, nice to tell people and yeah, just be sure about it.
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And he says he's feeling good because this year he and his teammates really have a chance to help Team USA bring home a men's cross country medal. The only other time the US men's team medaled at the Olympics was 50 years ago in 1976.
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It's exciting, it's a little daunting, but just gotta go there and experience it and realize how lucky we are to, yeah, to be able to do this.
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It's 37 year old Rosie Brennan's third Olympics, but this year is different for her. Brendan has been struggling with what she calls mysterious health issues for over a year now. She'll have what is likely her last chance to compete in the Olympics. It's bittersweet, she says, since she had hoped to contend for medals but that's not her reality anymore. Now she'd just love to have a race where she feels like herself again.
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It's been a long time since I felt like, you know, the Rosie I'm.
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Accustomed to racing with.
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For the last 15 years, she says.
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There were times she wasn't even sure she was going to make it to this year's Olympics. Haley Swervel didn't have a straight path to the Olympics either. She quit skiing in 2023 because she wanted to experience life outside a stressful ski racing career. She was burned out.
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I was ready to leave and figure out how to make life feel full and rich and beautiful for me in a way that had nothing to do with this identity that I had always known.
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Then this summer, she started coaching for apu. She was skiing and feeling strong and thinking about the limited time she has to do the things she loves. The idea of competing at the Olympics bumped around in her head for a few months until eventually she decided, let's do it. But she says she's thinking about the Olympics differently now. Taking a couple years away from competitive racing really changed her perspective.
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Sports are important, but what really matters is the people that you know are there. Through the ups and downs, she's talking.
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About her teammates and friends and family, but also her role coaching at apu. Those ups and downs are why an endurance sport like cross country can be so inspiring, she says, seeing someone dig deep and push through when things are tough. This year, she says her goal at the Olympics is about leading by example.
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I'm going to feel proud if I raced in a way that will inspire the kids I coach.
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She wants those kids to see her work hard. In Anchorage, I'm Hannah Fluor.
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And that's all for this edition of Alaska News Nightly. We had replaced reports tonight from Eric Stone and Jamie Deep in Juneau, Liz Ruskin in Washington, D.C. catherine Rose in Sitka, Avery Elfelt in Hanes, Tim Ellis in Delta Junction and Hannah Floor in Anchorage. Our audio engineer is Crystal Hyde. Kirsten Dobroth produced tonight's show along with Madeline Rose, who is leaving Alaska Public Media after tonight and heading to Colorado Public Radio. Matty has been a most excellent producer, not just on this show, but for Talk of Alaska Line 1, you're Health Connection and others, including various specials we've done. Maddie, we appreciate all your hard work, your steady, skillful hand on the wheel, all the chit chat in the newsroom, and we wish you and your cats all the best. I'm Casey Grove. I'll be back on Monday. Have a great weekend. This is statewide news on Alaska Public Media.