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- [00:00]
Wesley Early
Support for Alaska Public Media on demand.
- [00:03]
Robert Woolsey
Comes from Siri, an Alaska Native corporation with operations and investments spanning five continents, 45 states and two US territories.
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Chris Clinton
We are wasting tons of money on keeping a child in the most expensive possible placement.
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Wesley Early
The state House passes a bill that would limit time for foster youth in psychiatric facilities. From Alaska Public Media, this is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Monday, March 31st. Good evening. I'm Wesley Early. Also tonight, rural advocates in Alaska worry about an executive order aimed at reshaping federal elections.
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Chris Clinton
It's just not fair, right? I mean, to exclude an entire population because of where they live in the country.
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Wesley Early
Those stories and more tonight on on Alaska News Nightly. The state House passed a bill last week that would help protect foster kids from unnecessary stays in acute psychiatric care facilities. If it becomes law, a court hearing will be required within seven days of entering a facility to determine if the placement is necessary instead of 30 days. Currently, kids in foster care worked on the legislation and say it's long overdue. Alaska Public Media's Rachel Cassandra has more.
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Andrew Gray
Tali Stone was nine years old when her foster mother brought her to Northstar, an acute psychiatric facility in Anchorage. Stone says she'd been refusing to go to bed and got in a fight with her foster mom. She says her foster mom had talked about North Star before as a threat sometimes if one of her nine foster kids wasn't behaving. She always described it to me as a prison. She said that they'll lock you up. She said that it was like moldy inside the building, like an actual prison. But this time it wasn't an empty threat. Typically, to be admitted to a psychiatric facility, someone needs to be at risk of suicide or violence, experiencing psychosis, or unable to care for themselves. Stone says during the intake, her foster mom exaggerated her behavior and lied that that she was seeing ghosts. Even the staff said themselves, I'm not sure why you're here. And I was like, I'm not sure either. Stone was at Northstar for four weeks, according to her psychiatric records, and over the next two years, she was admitted to Northstar a total of four times, each of them several weeks at a time. Stone is one of the thousands of kids under the care of the Office of Children's Services in Alaska, or ocs, who have spent time, sometimes unnecessarily, in acute psychiatric facilities. OCS is under resourced with a high staff turnover rate and a serious shortage of foster families. The Department of Justice reprimanded the state in 2022 for over reliance on psychiatric hospitals. And residential treatment. The office has notably improved since then. OCS officials did not agree to an interview for this story, but Commissioner Kim Covell from the department that oversees ocs, wrote over email that there is a lack of appropriate placements nationwide for youth with serious behavioral and emotional challenges. She wrote that they will continue to use, quote, all existing services to the greatest extent possible and work towards the least restrictive care settings. But Amanda Matibie, who runs the nonprofit facing foster care, says says that lack of placements means foster kids stay in psychiatric facilities for too long. So they do an intake at a hospital, they get a diagnosis and then they linger there used to be for months on end, but because of court cases it's now weeks. Right now kids have the right to a court hearing within 30 days of admittance. But the bill passed by the State House would reduce that timeline to seven days. That's still much longer than in many states. Some require a hearing within 72 hours, according to the bill. At the hearing in Alaska, all people invested in the kids care would have to be there birth parents, foster families, tribes, behavioral health providers and OCs. Every kid over 10 would also have their own lawyer who could advocate for them being in the least restrictive setting appropriate. State Representative Andrew Gray sponsored the bill. He says there's a lot at stake.
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Chris Clinton
The absolute human rights violation of having your freedoms completely taken away and no one coming to help you. That alone is enough that we have to fix it. But if you want to just look at it from a fiscal perspective, we are wasting tons of money on keeping a child in the most expensive possible placement.
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Andrew Gray
He says inpatient care can cost more than $1,000 a night per kid. The legislation didn't pass last session when it included a shorter 72 hour time period before a required hearing, but Gray is optimistic it will pass this year. He says it's important kids don't get stuck in these places. Metivier worked with kids in foster care to help draft the bill. She says it would add a sense of urgency to the process of assessing the care. We need to act quickly on either identifying a higher level of care, a different therapeutic intervention or or releasing them. Tally Stone, who entered Northstar at age 9, didn't get that kind of grace. She says she never got a hearing at all to assess whether she should be there. And she says her experience at Northstar, totaling about four months, changed her from an outgoing kid to one who was reserved and numb. Because I didn't have anyone else to tell me that you're just a kid, you're just dealing with stuff that's natural. If you're going through this situation just telling me that I'm not a bad person, that I'm loved, just sorry, you know, stuff like that, she Sundays. At age 19 now, about nine years after her last day, she still feels the effects. She struggles with self esteem and self hatred, but she recently got a job she loves with co workers she looks up to. She says she really hopes this bill passes. It now heads to the Senate. She wants foster kids in institutions to know they're not forgotten and there are people out here looking out for them. In Anchorage, I'm Rachel Cassandra.
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Wesley Early
Alaska's U.S. senators have co sponsored a resolution to keep the U.S. postal Service an independent agency and not privatize it. Senator Lisa Murkowski says the Postal Service helps bind the nation together and is vital in a state as vast as Alaska. She said weeks ago that she's worried about what changes to the Postal Service could mean for Alaska's bypass mail subsidy.
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Chris Clinton
It is unique to Alaska, and when people are looking for efficiencies, sometimes they just look and say, well, there's not.
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Andrew Gray
A lot of people there and it.
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Chris Clinton
Costs a lot of money. And so this can go. This is where you need a very strong and united delegation to defend the programs, defend the purposes and defend the people.
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Wesley Early
Bypass mail is a Postal Service program that makes it cheaper to transport pallets of goods from Anchorage and Fairbanks to rural Alaska. The program costs the Postal service more than $130 million a year. U.S. senator Dan Sullivan cited bypass mail as a key reason he's co sponsoring the postal resolution. While he's in favor of subsidies for Alaska, Sullivan has also voiced support for the Trump administration's government slashing initiative, known as doge, or Department of Government Efficiency, and he's a member of the Senate Doge Caucus. President Trump last Tuesday issued an executive order to reshape US Elections. The order, among other things, mandates absentee and mail in ballots to be received by Election Day. It also requires proof of citizenship for registering to vote in federal elections. As the Alaska Desk's Alyona Neidson reports, there's some concern that the changes might disenfranchise voters in rural Alaska Native communities.
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Alyona Neidson
Denise Lisik is a poll worker in Dillingham who who oversaw early absentee voting there for the last two presidential elections in 2020. She says it took 10 days after election Day for the last batch of early voting ballots to get from Dillingham to Anchorage and from Anchorage to the election office in nome that's exactly the time that's allowed by state law. She says the new federal voting timeline would be tight for Dillingham and even tighter for smaller villages that need to get their ballots to their hub community first.
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Chris Clinton
It will definitely disenfranchise smaller rural communities.
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Alyona Neidson
Lisak says she saw the majority of absentee ballots cast in the week before the election. If early absentee voting goes until the Monday before Election Day, she says, it would be impossible to deliver ballots to the election office by the next day. And an earlier cutoff would mean that some residents have less voting time and less time to decide who to vote for. Jackie Ahonachak boyer is from McCoryuk and works for Rural and Indigenous Outreach Program, which focuses on civic engagement. She says the new regulations might lead to a drop in voter turnout for Alaska Native residents. That number has already been declining over the last few decades.
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Andrew Gray
I think it would be pretty devastating.
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Chris Clinton
To vote in Alaska.
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Alyona Neidson
Mailed ballots can be received within 10 days after election Day if they are postmarked before that date. The timeline is helpful because hundreds of communities, predominantly Alaska Native, are accessible only by air. Rural Alaska Native villages regularly experience challenges during elections. Storms can prevent planes from coming in and out of the villages for days or weeks, and ballots often arrive late first to villages and then to an election office. With a lack of volunteers, training and outreach to residents, Polaris polling places sometimes open late or don't open at all and mail in votes get rejected. Roya Glowing is the president of the First Alaskans Institute. He says the combination of challenges makes it difficult to count votes from the rural Native communities.
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Chris Clinton
It's just not fair, right? I mean, to exclude an entire population because of where they live in the country and to make it difficult for them to participate in this really important process that is a part of our civil liberties.
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Alyona Neidson
The executive order also mandates people to show proof of their citizenship, such as a passport or state id, to register to vote in federal elections. In Alaska, eligible residents are automatically registered to vote when they apply for the PFD. Oglovin says that many Native Alaskans use tribal IDs because there is nowhere in their village or region to get a passport or state id. While the state Division of Elections does not track how many Residents use tribal IDs to register to vote, Aglowin says even a small number matters.
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Chris Clinton
Any number of voters that you miss in a community makes a big difference.
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Alyona Neidson
Last week, state Rep. Robin Burke, who represents much of the North Slope and Northwest Arctic boroughs, reached out to the House Majority Council to ask about the legality of the new rules. Alaska Division of Elections spokesperson Stephen Kirch said in an email last week that the division is reviewing the new executive order and will work with the state Department of Law on any potential changes to policies, although Kirch said that at this time, division staff don't know if there will be any impact in Alaska. In Anchorage, I am Alena Nydin.
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Wesley Early
Still to come on Alaska News Nightly, a retiring vet in Sitka recalls the time he delivered 13 puppies from a very pregnant dog and I look at.
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Chris Clinton
This thing and it looks like the Hindenburg. I cut to the chase and I said, we're going to do a C section here.
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Wesley Early
That's ahead. Stay with us. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is imposing what it calls unprecedented conservation measures to address declines of Gulf of Alaska chinook salmon, which is currently under review for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act. The department said in an announcement earlier this month that it will be restricting western Alaska king salmon fisheries, including Kodiak, Chignik and Sandpoint. Matt Keys is an area management biologist at Fish and Games Sandpoint office. He says this is the first time the department has used data from one region to trigger management action in another.
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Chris Clinton
And that is unprecedented, from managing a fishery based on fish that are not found locally to the systems in the in the area in which we're harvesting fish.
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Wesley Early
Sandpoint, off the Alaska Peninsula is in the middle of the management region known as Area M, and although it doesn't have its own king runs, fishermen intercept salmon that migrate through the region. In recent years, Area M's harvest levels have drawn criticism from stakeholders in western Alaska, who argue the fishery reduces local salmon returns. Keyes says genetic sampling shows much of the chinook harvested in the South Peninsula fishery actually come from the Pacific Northwest. He added that the new management approach reflects a broader effort to distribute conservation burdens more evenly across the regions that encounter Gulf of Alaska chinook. Recent chinook related closures have also taken place elsewhere in the state. Last year, the fleet in the federally managed central Gulf pollock fishery, which is mostly based out of Kodiak, voluntarily ended its season when chinook bycatch reached a specified threshold. Keyes says the department is looking at ways to try to boost chinook stocks throughout the Gulf and additional measures that could affect other fisheries.
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Chris Clinton
Everyone that's catching fish is going to bear a little bit of that burden, at least in the westward region.
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Wesley Early
The current planned restrictions apply only to purse sers and are limited to July, but Key says the management plan could evolve based on inseason harvest numbers Juneau's mayor selected 11 residents to serve on a short term rental task force. The group's goal is to assess the benefits and downsides of short term rentals in the housing market and recommend whether they need to be regulated. But all but one member of the task force are homeowners, and as KTO's Clarice Larson reports, a member of the group is concerned that the lack of perspective from renters could skew its recommendations.
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Clarice Larson
For some people in Juneau, short term rentals are an opportunity to bring in some extra cash or to make ends meet. But as the number of Airbnbs and VRBOs increases, others feel they're taking away housing desperately needed in the community. City data and different analyses suggest there are likely around 300 to 400 short term rentals in Juneau, but that number could be even higher. Short term rentals are largely unregulated in Juneau, but a new city task force is meeting regularly to decide whether there should be some firmer rules in place. But there's a problem with that group, says Assemblymember Alicia Hugh Scandes. She's the only member out of 11 who rents.
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Andrew Gray
We need to have people affected by the industry, and that would be renters, and that's just, I guess, a demographic that sometimes is not represented, she says.
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Clarice Larson
The makeup of the task force doesn't fully represent the diversity of Juneau's housing needs. According to the U.S. census Bureau, about a third of residents are renters in Juneau. That's a starkly different makeup from the task force.
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Andrew Gray
I don't want to suggest that people can't make, you know, really good civic contributions to a place they care about, but it is not marked by that sense of urgency because they're not affected in the same way.
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Clarice Larson
Both renting and owning in Juneau are expensive. The average single family home costs more in Juneau than anywhere else in the state, and Juneau ranks fifth in the state for the highest average rental cost for a two bedroom. The task force's goal is to assess the short term rental market and make recommendations that improve housing availability. Mary Beth Weldon hand picked the members of the group. She says despite the lack of renters, she believes the group can still make decisions that represent the various viewpoints of short term rentals in town. Are we missing the people that are.
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Andrew Gray
Going to come and say I can't find rental places?
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Wesley Early
Yes, but are we still counting for.
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Andrew Gray
People there that want to regulate? I think that that's already represented.
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Clarice Larson
She noted that she did ask a handful of people who were renters to join the task force, but they declined.
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Chris Clinton
It's just, you know, quite honestly, when you do task force, it's hard to get all the voices, but keep the group a manageable group.
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Clarice Larson
The task force has been meeting bi weekly since January. They plan to host two public meetings in the coming months to get feedback from residents on what kind of regulations they'd like to see. Hugh Scandes says it's important that people, specifically long term renters, go to these meetings and make sure their voices are heard.
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Andrew Gray
That is a real opportunity to be heard and we would love to hear your thoughts on what you think we should do, how you think we should do it, you know, and if people have strong thoughts about the process, then we would love to learn from that.
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Clarice Larson
Once the task force makes its recommendations, it will ultimately be up to the assembly to decide on how to implement them. If they pass regulations, Juneau wouldn't be the first community in Alaska to do so. Communities around the state have already taken steps to curb the increase in their markets. In Sitka, short term rental owners are required to live on the property for half the year and Wasilla only offers 75 short term rental permits per year. Vacation destinations in states like Colorado have also put into place similar laws in Juneau. I'm Clarice Larson.
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Wesley Early
Just hours remain today for Alaskans to apply for a 2025 permanent fund dividend. Check the deadline to apply at the state's website pfd.alaska.gov is 11:59pm tonight. No foreign support is available due to the Seward's Day holiday. Mailed applications need to be postmarked by today, March 31, to be processed. More than 600,000 Alaskans have already applied for a dividend, according to the state. The amount of this year's divide still up in the air as legislators craft a budget. Last year's dividend, including a one time energy relief payment, was about $1,700. Sitka's oldest veterinary practice has closed its doors. Dr. Burgess Bouder retired on January 1st after 51 years serving Sitkins and their pets. That Bouder's practice was unusual is an understatement. In the first place, no one called him Dr. Ever. He was a commercial cucumber diver and inspired thinker who built one of Sitka's most iconic landmarks, the Rockwell Lighthouse. He's regarded as a brilliant diagnostician who helped pet owners understand how illness developed and how to prevent it. Perhaps most unusual of all, his practice from the very beginning was free. KCAW's Robert Woolsey reports.
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Robert Woolsey
I've been taking my dogs to Burgess for 35 years. He knows I'm not a cat man and he's relishing this tete a tete we are having in his pet filled living room.
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Chris Clinton
I'm sorry about the cat. For those out there in a radio audience, Rob is tactfully trying to push away a cat that's trying to rub up against his face and now she's going for the throat.
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Robert Woolsey
Burgess. And I should mention that Bouder is universally known simply as Burgess. Like Cher or Zendaya, Burgess is sitting in a recliner with one of his rescued greyhounds curled in a dog bed nearby. The greyhound doesn't even lift his head when I come in. He must sense that Burgess is winding up to reminisce about his five decade old decision to undergo years of advanced medical training in veterinary school at the University of Washington and then give it away for free. It began in childhood.
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Chris Clinton
I had a cat, Susie Bell, and I wanted to get her spayed. And I can remember the conversation with my dad when, you know, she kept having kittens. I had her from the time I was like 5 years old until I was in college. I had her almost 20 years and she kept having kittens the whole damn time. And I said, dad, can we get her spade? And he said, purchase. We can't afford it. It was 20 bucks back in the 50s by the time you pay the rent, pay this, pay that, buy the food. My mom was a nurse, but she, you know, she's paid employee and doesn't make that much. My dad was a truck driver and I remember this. I said, when I'm a vet, I'm gonna make it so people can afford it.
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Robert Woolsey
This is not Burgess's biography that's already been written. It's called Animal Nature by John Straley, one of Alaska's most prolific novelists. I'll point you there for details about Burgess early life, his career in collegiate football and his life in veterinary medicine. Nor is this his obituary. We nearly had to write that in the mid-90s when Burgess lost a weight belt when diving for geoducks became inverted and more or less drowned in his diving helmet. His partner, Larry Traney, found him unconscious on the surface, resuscitated him, and a Coast Guard helicopter medevaced him to Juneau to recover in a hyperbaric chamber, which repressurizes divers who come to the surface too quickly. Burgess claims to hold the local medevac record six times, which I See, no need to dispute. But I digress. Burgess now is a hale and hearty 80 year old suffering from a slew of cardiac related complaints common in this demographic. What he misses most are his regular dog walks. As far as regrets, there are none except those that haunt every medical professional in a life and death situation. Difficult surgeries without the support of a vet tech or anesthetist are at the top of the list.
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Chris Clinton
Anesthesia is months of boredom interspersed with moments of stark terror. And if you look at the statistic for veterinary medicine, it's close to human medicine in that this is the downside. You ask for all of the warm fuzzies, but the downside is, you know, having an outcome that's something less than optimal. And the worst of that metric is death on the table. And it happens.
- [22:50]
Robert Woolsey
I've produced two previous news stories about Burgess. The first was 22 years ago when he was treed by a brown bear on Sitka's newly built cross trail. The bear, it turned out, had killed his old yellow lab signet and cached the carcass near the trail. The second was some years later when Burgess castrated a pair of nearly grown brown bear cubs at Sitka's fortress of the Bear visitor attraction. Whether this was revenge and whether it was sweet or merely served cold, Burgess did not say. Burgess is a living repository of stories of Sitka and its people. When prompted for just one story, he doesn't hesitate.
- [23:32]
Chris Clinton
Christmas Eve and the phone rings about 10:30 at night and hi, this is Mrs. Such and Such calling. And she said, my doggie's trying to have babies in camp. And I said, okay. I said, is there anything coming out? No. Oh, she's laying down and she's straining. I said, go to the clinic. And I said, bring along some troops. So she arrives at the clinic and. And she's got two daughters, herself and her dog. And I look at this thing and it looks like the Hindenburg. I couldn't believe it. I cut to the chase and I said, we're going to do a C section here. And so this poor doggie could barely move, and I'm hoping it's not going to die. And we roll it up on the table and I delivered 13 C section puppies, the biggest C section I've ever done in my life. Every one lived. And I'm handing these things out as I'm pulling them out of this. Can I use the word on the radio? Good. All right. And I'm handing these out and we got all these screaming puppies. That is the sound of angels singing. This little lady, she has one of these little clasper wallets like that, you know, with the little thing where you click it like that and keep dollar bills stuffed in there and coinage. And she pulls this thing out unrehearsed, pops it open. She said, I don't have much, but I'd like to pay you for what you've done. And I said, it's Christmas Eve. It's yours. Take good care of them. And that was it. Oh, God, I love that story.
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Robert Woolsey
I can picture the grateful woman opening the coin purse. It evokes an era when coins were more dear than they seem. Now the woman found good homes for all 13 puppies. And Burgess remembers not long ago putting one of the now elderly dogs down, a service he provided like everything else, at no Charge. Reporting in Sitka, I'm Robert Woolsey.
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Wesley Early
Foreign 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 Rachel Cassandra, Liz Ruskin, Alona Knen and Chris Clinton, Anchorage, Theo Greenli. And on Alaska, Clarice Larson in Juneau and Robert Woolsey in Sitka. If you want to send us a news tip, question or comment, email us at news or@alaskapublic.org Our audio engineers, Chris Hyde, Annie Feit helped produce tonight's program. And I'm Wesley Early.
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Chris Clinton
Good night.
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Andrew Gray
This is statewide news on Alaska Public Media.