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- [00:00]
Noelle Picard
Support for Alaska Public Media on demand comes from Alaska Pipeline Service Co. Marking nearly 50 years of commitment to operating the Trans Alaska Pipeline system. More@alyeskapipeline.com.
- [00:18]
Neil Foster
Why are we forcing low and middle income Alaskans to take a financial hit? And yet we don't ask anything of high income earners or oil companies.
- [00:26]
Casey Grove
A Democrat in the state House breaks ranks to include a massive PFD in a draft of the state budget from Alaska Public Media. This is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Monday, April 6th. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, Fairbanks renters navigate a complicated housing market. Even with the highest vacancy rates in
- [00:45]
Nadine Winters
the state, housing is easy to find. There's, it's plentiful. That's what that rate says. I don't think that's what the reality is.
- [00:54]
Casey Grove
Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly. Ahead of the Easter weekend, an Alaska House committee inserted a massive permanent fund dividend into its latest draft of the state budget. It would be in line with the formula used to calculate the dividend until the mid 2010s, what's called a statutory dividend, and it would send about $3,800 to each eligible Alaska resident. Supporters say Alaskans are facing higher costs than ever, especially with the jump in oil prices since the US And Israel attacked Iran. Detractors say it's irresponsible, way too expensive for the state to manage even with high oil prices. Here to break it all down for us is Alaska Public Media's capital correspondent, Eric Stone. So, Eric, should I book my vacation now? It sounds like we could all be a lot richer come October.
- [01:43]
Eric Stone
You know, Casey, as much as I love to get out of Juneau and escape our wonderful fall storms full of sideways rain, I wouldn't buy those plane tickets quite yet. The legislative session is more than halfway over, but it's still relatively early in the budget process. There's a long way to go. What passed last week was an amendment to the House Finance Committee's version of the budget. And don't get me wrong, it's important. A lot of what the committee changes actually does make it through to the final budget, but it is not final by a long shot.
- [02:09]
Casey Grove
You don't like the sideways reign, huh? Okay, so how did we wind up with a $3,800 PFD in the draft of the budget anyway?
- [02:17]
Eric Stone
To put it simply, one member of the Democrat heavy bipartisan majority broke ranks and voted with Republicans to put it in. That was Nome Democratic Representative Neil Foster, who co chairs the committee he's long been a full PFD guy. Foster represents a number of R communities in western Alaska and he says inflation is taking a bite out of Alaskans budgets. You mentioned fuel prices earlier but also health care, food and so on. He says balancing the budget on the back of the PFD isn't fair.
- [02:41]
Neil Foster
My folks back home ask why are we forcing low and middle income Alaskans to take financial hit and yet we don't ask anything of high income earners or oil companies. And I have to agree with them when they say it's not fair. I want to help Alaskans put food on the table to pay for health care, to heat their homes and keep the lights on.
- [03:03]
Eric Stone
Republicans said a lot of the same things as far as costs being high though of course they're not exactly clamoring for taxes on Alaskans or oil companies. Here's Fairbanks Representative Will Stapp.
- [03:13]
Will Stapp
I just don't think that you can look at people who are going to be paying seven, eight dollars a gallon gas. Hopefully that drops but this October and we can tell them with a straight face that we decided to spend all their money on government programs when they can barely afford to heat their house.
- [03:29]
Eric Stone
Of course the immediate question is how the heck do you pay for this? That's a $2.4 billion expense in a state budget. That's usually around 6 billion or 7 billion dollars of unrestricted funds. And before the session there was a lot of talk of belt tightening, small PFDs and so on. Of course the Iran war has changed things significantly, but lawmakers are still only banking on about half a billion dollars more next year than they originally thought. And that's of course well short of what a statutory PFD would cost.
- [03:58]
Casey Grove
Well Eric, as you probably know, the state can't print money, not legally anyway. So where would this money come from?
- [04:04]
Eric Stone
So it requires a $1.4 billion draw from the state's constitutional budget reserve. That's the primary rainy day fund. And that's the result of a plan from Representative Jeremy Bynum, a Republican from Ketchikan. The twist here though is that it takes a three quarter super majority to access that savings account. So the full $3,800 would only be paid if 3/4 of the house and 3/4 of the Senate each agree to it. If it doesn't pass, there'd be dividend 1500 dollars or so under binance plan. Though as I've been saying this whole time, that is not even close to being finalized. Now the rainy day fund has about $3 billion. So a $3,800 PFD would drain about half of it. And given that oil prices are high, it's not exactly raining. So Representative Calvin Shragi, an Anchorage independent, says he doesn't think it'll wind up passing, and he says he's worried lawmakers are just giving Alaskans the wrong impression.
- [04:54]
Casey Grove
It puts a full PFD into the budget in concept, but the votes would not be there to fund it. And so it would give people false hope just for the rug to be pulled out from under them. And I just don't think that that's right.
- [05:07]
Eric Stone
Anchorage Democratic Representative Andy Josephson, though, says he's not so sure. He says it very well could pass
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Bob Anderson
if folks feel like, well, this is
- [05:15]
Casey Grove
a temptation, but it won't come to fruition. You should have seen 2022.
- [05:20]
Eric Stone
As folks may remember, in 2022, there was a pretty conservative Senate. They sent over to the House a version of the budget with a $5,500 dividend. Oil prices were high in the wake of Russia' Ukraine. Ultimately, Alaskans got something closer to $3,200, and Josephson says even that was probably more than the state could afford. In retrospect, he offered an amendment earlier in the process that would have provided the same $1,000 dividend this year as last year, but it did not have enough support to pass, at least at this point.
- [05:48]
Casey Grove
Gotcha. Kind of a long ways to go still, and we don't know which direction things will go. But where do things go from here with the draft budget?
- [05:58]
Eric Stone
Well, the House Finance Committee finalized its latest draft of the budget last week, and that means its next stop is the House floor. We can expect that in the coming days or weeks there will be tons more amendments, and we could see that PFD figure change again. But since the majority is so Slim at 21 out of 40, and Foster, a member of the majority, supports this concept, that PFD figure could conceivably pass the House. From there, though, it'll go to the Senate, which will develop its own draft, and then they'll work the final figure out in the closing days of the session in May. So, Casey, if you do buy plane tickets, I would just make sure that they are refundable. All right.
- [06:33]
Casey Grove
Will do. That was Alaska Public Media's Capital correspondent, Eric Stone. Eric, thanks for being here.
- [06:38]
Eric Stone
Thank you for having me.
- [06:46]
Casey Grove
Last week's Showdown in the U.S. supreme Court over the 14th Amendment put native Americans in the spotlight. Justices sharply questioned the Trump administration's solicitor for Citing their history to justify his case that children of immigrants born in the United States are not guaranteed citizenship. The exchanges were confusing, and as KNBA's Rhonda McBride reports, that left some tribal members uneasy about where this case might lead.
- [07:11]
Rhonda McBride
In defending President Trump's executive order against birthright citizenship, solicitor John Sauer compared the treatment of Indian tribes to that of foreign governments. He argued that the U.S. constitution recognizes tribes as sovereign nations and that when the country was founded, tribal members and their children were not considered citizens, much like the children of foreign diplomats, a standard that he says should be applied to immigrants.
- [07:39]
Nadine Winters
You're using some pretty obscure sources to get to this concept.
- [07:44]
Rhonda McBride
Just as Sonia Sotomayor sounded skeptical about where Sauer's argument was headed, the Indian
- [07:50]
Nadine Winters
tribes were analogized to foreign diplomats. So what do we do with that?
- [07:56]
John Sauer
I'd say two things. First, as the Indian tribes, we think that's a case that strongly supports us.
- [08:01]
Bob Anderson
The Indian law case just doesn't fit with anything that they're trying to do in this situation. And they were really stretching to make it apply, and I think they failed.
- [08:11]
Rhonda McBride
Bob Anderson, a longtime Alaska attorney, now teaches Indian law at Harvard. He says doubt seemed to cross ideological lines.
- [08:20]
Bob Anderson
It seemed to me that the conservative members of the court recognized that. I was surprised that they seem to be so much in alignment with the opponents of the Trump administration.
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Rhonda McBride
Justice Neil Gorsuch, considered an expert on Indian law, posed some pointed questions to Sauer about the status of Native Americans.
- [08:40]
Nadine Winters
Do you think Native Americans today are birthright citizens under your test and under your friend's test?
- [08:46]
John Sauer
I think so. I mean, obviously they've been granted citizenship by statute.
- [08:50]
Nadine Winters
Put aside the statute. You think they're birth control, right? Citizens?
- [08:53]
John Sauer
No, I think the, the clear understanding that everybody agrees in the congressional debates is that the children of tribal Indians are not birthright citizens.
- [08:59]
Nadine Winters
I understand that's what they said, but your test is the domicile of the parents, and that would be the test you'd have us apply today, right?
- [09:08]
John Sauer
Yes.
- [09:09]
Rhonda McBride
Justice Gorsuch wasn't satisfied with that answer and continued to push on.
- [09:14]
John Sauer
A tribal Indian, for example, gives up
- [09:17]
Nadine Winters
allegiance to born today birthright citizens?
- [09:22]
John Sauer
I think so on our test, yeah, they're lawfully domiciled here. And then I have to think that through.
- [09:28]
Rhonda McBride
Based on the Trump solicitors arguments, should Native Americans worry about their citizenship status? Anderson says no.
- [09:35]
Bob Anderson
There's no way that this case could affect the citizenship of Indian tribes because Congress passed a separate law in 1924 automatically making all tribal members in the United States citizens as well as their children.
- [09:48]
Rhonda McBride
While the birthright case won't change the law, it has raised new questions about how history is being used to define citizenship Today in anchorage, I'm Rhonda McBride.
- [10:05]
Casey Grove
Still to come on Alaska News Nightly, the Inuit soul group Bamua returns to Bethel's Chamai stage 30 years after its debut at the festival.
- [10:12]
Will Stapp
It is the most memorable moment I've ever had in 32 years of performing.
- [10:18]
Casey Grove
That's ahead. Stay with us. Staff at the University of Alaska have voted to form a union. The group calls itself the Coalition of Alaska University Employees for Equity. The union covers permanent staff, including people who work in financial aid, advising, communications and other areas. It will be the largest at the University. More than 60% of staff who voted approved forming the union during a two week long election held last month. Charlie Banks is an academic advisor at the University of Alaska Anchorage and an organizing committee member with the union.
- [10:52]
Charlie Banks
I am just so incredibly proud of the work that, you know, not only our organizing committee has done this past year, but also the, you know, hundreds of people who had conversations with their co workers and the, you know, over 1100 people who voted yes for our union.
- [11:12]
Casey Grove
Organizing efforts have taken place for more than a year. Once the results are certified by the Alaska Labor Relations Agency, the union will join five others at the university. Jonathan Taylor, the university's director of public affairs, says the university respects the election results because a union has formed. Taylor says the roughly 2,300 employees it covers will not be included in a 3% wage increase the university has budgeted.
- [11:37]
Charlie Banks
We don't have a contract in place, so we'll be reflecting the dynamic status quo during this period, which means existing wages, hours, working conditions will remain in place until the first contract is negotiated and agreed to.
- [11:51]
Casey Grove
But that might change. The university's budget is appropriated by the Alaska Legislature. During a House Finance Committee meeting last week, Representative Andy Josephson, an Anchorage Democrat, brought forth an amendment to the House's latest version of the state's operating budget. It allows University of Alaska staff to receive the raise if it's approved by the union and University Board of Regents. Josephson's amendment passed, but it could be discarded before the state budget is finalized. The election results are expected to be certified on Wednesday. After that, Banks says the union will work to understand members priorities for a contract and form a bargaining team. A high vacancy rate should mean good things for renters, more options, lower costs. You get the picture. And the Fairbanks North Star Borough has the highest rate in Alaska, according to state Department of labor Data. But as KUAC's Patrick Gilchrist reports, the Fairbanks rental market shows how a single data point can fail to tell the whole story.
- [12:59]
Noelle Picard
Last summer, Noel Picard's landlord gave her and her roommate one month to move out. But she says, really, she had half that time.
- [13:07]
Kellen Spillman
I was in the field when this happened, so it was a huge disaster.
- [13:11]
Noelle Picard
Picard, a graduate student studying marine biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, returned to town during a short window between fieldwork gigs. She says she scrambled to send out feelers and set up tours, completely sidelining graduate school to focus on the search. But when she visited places, most of what she saw was underwhelming.
- [13:34]
Kellen Spillman
They'd be pretty dirty and have, like, you know, smells to them, or then I'd learn about previous water damage or mold issues. And it kind of just was difficult because it didn't really match up with the price that we were being asked to pay.
- [13:50]
Noelle Picard
The hunt plunked Picard into a market that might look pretty favorable to renters, at least at first glance. A state Labor Department survey found nearly one in seven rental units in Fairbanks were sitting vacant, more than twice the rate in Anchorage and more than three times Juneau's.
- [14:08]
Nadine Winters
I mean, that says that there's housing is easy to find. There's. It's plentiful. That's what that. That's what that rate says. I don't think that's what the reality is.
- [14:18]
Noelle Picard
Nadine Winters is the executive director of Fairbanks Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit that aims to provide and promote safe, affordable housing.
- [14:27]
Nadine Winters
A lot of people that we hear from seem to be at their wit's end.
- [14:31]
Noelle Picard
There are a number of reasons the vacancy rate alone might not correspond to lived experience, according to state and borough officials. Rob Krager, a senior economist with the state Labor Department, says it's worth keeping in mind that their survey captures a point in time. It goes out once per year during a week in the spring.
- [14:51]
Charlie Banks
From our survey, anyway, the rental vacancy rate taken by itself doesn't mean it means absolutely nothing.
- [14:58]
Noelle Picard
Kreger says historical and seasonal population shifts connected to tourism, the university and the two military bases in the area can cause dramatic swings in vacancy that tighten availability. But he says there are also just other important factors that make up a community's rental market, like what type of units are available, as well as their price point and quality. Despite high vacancy average rental costs in the Fairbanks area remain comparable to even slightly higher than in Anchorage and Juneau, according to the 2025 state survey. And quality is something the available data doesn't pick up well, says borough community planning Director Kellen Spillman. But he says they still hear about it.
- [15:44]
Nadine Winters
We are getting a lot of comments, particularly with working closely with the Air Force, that the quality of housing unit in Fairbanks isn't necessarily what they're finding in other communities or what they would expect on a housing or on a military base.
- [16:03]
Noelle Picard
Spilman's department also administers a survey to landlords, except it's just focused on the borough and goes out four times per year. The data is published in a quarterly report that captures more local nuance, like seasonal dips in the vacancy rate and an apparent shortage of larger units. And he says leveraging what data they do have is key.
- [16:25]
Nadine Winters
We have to be able to have the housing options to attract folks.
- [16:28]
Noelle Picard
The problem's not lost on local officials, and the borough assembly recently approved significant tax breaks to try to encourage new residential construction. But Noelle Picard probably won't be sticking around to see whether those incentives work. She plans to leave Fairbanks after graduate school because the cost of living is just too high. But for now, following those few frantic weeks last summer, Picard and her roommate are renting a place downtown. She says they got lucky.
- [16:58]
Kellen Spillman
There's some issues with like break ins and stuff, but I find that the landlords take it pretty seriously, picard says.
- [17:06]
Noelle Picard
It's spacious, plus it doesn't even have water damage in Fairbanks. I'm Patrick Gilchrist.
- [17:14]
Casey Grove
Fishermen in southeast Alaska will be able to harvest about 70,000 more king salmon this season than last year. The state Department of Fish and Game announced the harvest goal for all gear groups last week. Danny Evanson is a biologist with Fish and Game.
- [17:28]
Danny Evanson
It's not, you know, a great catch limit, but it's a decent catch limit, even though it's sort of an average catch limit. It came as welcome news because last year was the lowest ever.
- [17:42]
Casey Grove
How many king salmon Southeast Alaskans can catch each year is determined by the Pacific Salmon Commission. The group oversees a treaty between the U.S. and Canada that ensures both countries can harvest the fish. Alaska's take this year is just over 207,000 king salmon. That's in line with recent years, except last year when regional harvest goals plummeted because of lower salmon forecasts in other regions. King salmon, also known as chinook, are highly migratory, traveling thousands of miles in their years long journey to return to
- [18:12]
Danny Evanson
their spawning grounds, some originating as far away as the Oregon coast, the Columbia river, the Washington coast and British Columbia. They all swim up into our waters, into the Gulf of Alaska to take advantage of our nutrient rich waters to feed and grow.
- [18:30]
Casey Grove
Evanson coordinates the Salmon Treaty for Fish and Game in Alaska. She says because of the king salmon's migrations, there are many stakeholders.
- [18:38]
Danny Evanson
Southeast Alaska Chinook is one of the most complex, if not the most complex, fishery management structures in the state of Alaska. These fisheries are managed in accordance with a large suite of international, national and domestic policies and regulations.
- [18:59]
Casey Grove
The Pacific Salmon Treaty is renegotiated every 10 years. The state is already working on the details of its agreement for 2028. Three young mountain goats with a highly contagious viral skin infection have been found this winter on popular Juneau hiking trails. The infection, which can transfer to humans and pets, is called contagious eczema. Skin lesions form around the mouth, eyes and nose. It can't kill humans, but it's typically more severe and deadly in lambs and goat kids. Carl Koch is the Juneau area biologist at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He says a hiker found the third mountain goat kid dead on Perseverance Trail in mid March.
- [19:39]
Charlie Banks
It was on the trail in a steep area and the hiker used sticks or something so that they didn't touch it and kind of shoved it over the edge so that nobody else's dog would run into it.
- [19:54]
Casey Grove
In January, Fish and Game euthanized a mountain goat kid with advanced stages of eczema that a hiker found and had taken from the same trail and the month prior another was found dead on the nearby Flume Trail. In people, the infection is called ORF and is typically mild. If a person is infected, a lesion usually appears within a week of exposure. It's not fatal to humans or dogs, and skin lesions typically go away on their own after several weeks. Juneau's Parks and Recreation Department is working with Fish and Game to post signs about eczema, where infected goats have been seen on highly trafficked trails, and to educate the public. Here's director Mark Wheeler. We just really want people to know
- [20:34]
Charlie Banks
how contagious this stuff is and primarily keep their dogs away from these goats because the goats can transmit the dogs and the dogs can transmit it to humans and there's no real cure for this stuff as far as I know.
- [20:48]
Casey Grove
Wheeler says signs are already up on the Flume trailheads and the Mount Roberts trailhead, and the department is putting up more at the Perseverance, Ship Creek and West Peak trailheads this week. He recommends hikers keep dogs on leash. Fish and Game requests that people report eczema cases to the Wildlife Disease surveillance hotline at 90732 or by calling the local fish and game office. Well, Inuit soul group Bamua recently returned to the Chamai stage 30 years after its debut at the festival. Back then, the group was young and experimental, bridging traditional music and modern music styles. As Kyuk's Samantha Watson reports today, the group's sound is iconic and beloved by the home audience in Bethel.
- [21:34]
Samantha Watson
In archival Kyuk video of Chamai 1996, four young and smiley 20 somethings settle on stage in the pixelated Bethel High School gym. Asanok Kahayuk, Karina Mohler and brothers Philip and Kachung Blanchett are clad in cussbucks. They are the newly formed group.
- [21:56]
Noelle Picard
We're sing Jayakanafa.
- [21:58]
Casey Grove
Okay.
- [21:59]
Charlie Banks
All right.
- [22:00]
Casey Grove
Often it's a joke later.
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Noelle Picard
Okay, you can start us off. Okay.
- [22:05]
Samantha Watson
Today, Kachung Blanchet remembers the moment vividly.
- [22:09]
Will Stapp
We started singing and when we, we hit a note, you know, we hit. Everybody stood up onto their feet and started clapping and, and cheering. It was probably, it is the most memorable moment I've ever had in 32 years of performing. And all of us were just not
- [22:41]
Kellen Spillman
expecting that, he said.
- [22:43]
Samantha Watson
It was a defining moment for the fledgling group. They had just begun experimenting bridging elements of soul with traditional yuppik songs. And they had just started working with vocalist Karina Moeller.
- [22:55]
Kellen Spillman
I was blown away, I mean, I think of course, because I know that traditionally you don't harmonize the songs. So of course there was nervousness about how especially elders would take it and they loved it.
- [23:12]
Samantha Watson
Mohler is originally from Greenland, where drumming was forbidden under colonial rule.
- [23:17]
Kellen Spillman
So we lost our drum dances in the west coast where I'm from. So I was so deeply moved to see this, how strong the drum dancing, how it survived here.
- [23:29]
Samantha Watson
In the years since Bamiwa's Chamay debut, the band's career has unfolded. Five full albums, four singles and EPs and performances across the globe. Today the group is renowned for bringing traditional sounds from western Alaska into the music mainstream. And back home on the Yukon, Kuskokwim Delta, Bamiwa is a household name. The group has composed music for TV shows and is featured in the Library of Congress Music Archive. And as their musical vision and careers fanned out before them, so have their families, their parents and new grandparents. Now the band's 30 year anniversary of its first Chamai performance felt like a moment to bring everyone together.
- [24:20]
Will Stapp
It was important for us to mark this moment with our family. So we brought all our kids that could be here, not all of our kids could be here, but we brought our family as much as possible.
- [24:35]
Samantha Watson
Keyboardist and percussionist Christopher Jule Rieberg began working with the group shortly after the 1996 Chamay. This is his first time at the festival.
- [24:45]
Casey Grove
Very happy to be here. It feels like coming to the origin of the of the epicenter of what we've been doing for all these years.
- [24:58]
Samantha Watson
On the final night of the 2026 festival, FAMUA is the closing act. Thirty years ago, the then four member group held the spotlight alone as they introduced their music to the broader YK Delta community. Today, its stage is full of companies
- [25:16]
Kellen Spillman
and anybody who knows to dance, you
- [25:18]
John Sauer
can come up and dance.
- [25:20]
Samantha Watson
As the group sings, the stage fills behind them with family and audience members of all ages. Their hands make the familiar Gerhawk gestures to a dance they know by heart. In Bethel, I'm Samantha Watson.
- [25:56]
Casey Grove
And that's all for this edition of Alaska News Nightly. If you missed any of tonight's stories, we're online@alaskapublic.org and wherever you get your podcasts. We had reports tonight from Eric Stone, Jamie Deep and Alex Solomon in Juneau, Rhonda McBride in Anchorage, Patrick Gilchrist in Fairbanks, Angela Denning in Petersburg and Samantha Watson in Bethel. If you want to send us a news tip, question or comment, email us the end@newsalaskapublic.org Our audio engineer tonight is Dave Waldron, Kirsten Dobroth is our producer and I'm Casey Grove. Good night.