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- [00:00]
Eric Stone
Support for Alaska Public Media on Demand comes from Alaska Pipeline Service Co.
- [00:05]
Casey Grove
Proud of its ties to Alaska communities since 1977.
- [00:09]
Eric Stone
More at Alyescapipeline.com.
- [00:18]
Bill Wielechowski
I'm not prepared to tell Alaskans, sorry, you'll have to wait another year. It's just too hard.
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Casey Grove
The Alaska Legislature fails to override Governor Dunleavy's veto of an election reform bill From Alaska Public Media. This is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Monday, May 4th. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, an Anchorage food truck opens a brick and mortar location despite economic uncertainty.
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Tyler Howey
If we survive the recession, then we have a great concept because it can survive the worst. We're going to do great during the best.
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Casey Grove
Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Night. The Alaska Legislature failed to override Governor Mike Dunleavy's veto of a closely watched election reform bill this afternoon. The override failed by two votes after two southeast Alaska lawmakers who had previously supported the bill voted no. As Alaska Public Media's Eric Stone reports, backers said they had hoped the bill would make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.
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Eric Stone
Sometimes in the Alaska Legislature, just as in life, timing is everything. Timing is what Governor Dunleavy cited in his message to lawmakers announcing his veto. With the November election election just six months away, he says there just isn't time to implement a system allowing voters to track and correct minor errors on their absentee ballots. The lawmakers who flipped Sitka, Senator Burt Steadman and Ketchikan Representative Jeremy Bynum, both Republicans, say they agree with Dunleavy's assessment. Here's Bynum.
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Bill Wielechowski
From the time that the bill was passed to the time that the governor actually got it, there was delay and then when the governor got it, there was delay.
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Eric Stone
But Senator Bill Wielechowski, an Anchorage Democrat, says there was plenty of time to implement the bill. He pointed to the all mail special primary election following the death of Congressman Don in 2022.
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Bill Wielechowski
Just five, six weeks later, the governor's Division of Elections announced that ballot tracking would be available by the company Ballot tracks for the June 11, 2022 election. Six weeks. They got a ballot tracking system set up in six weeks just four years ago.
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Eric Stone
One caveat on that it's the lieutenant governor, not the governor, who heads the Division of Elections. And four years later, there's a different lieutenant governor and a different director of the division of that new Division of Elections. Director, though, said in March that implementing a tracking system would be, quote, challenging. Not notably that it couldn't be done. And Wielecowski says he wishes the administration was up for the challenge.
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Bill Wielechowski
I'm not prepared to tell Alaskans, sorry, you'll have to wait another year. It's just too hard.
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Eric Stone
Wielechowski and co sponsor Representative Sarah Vance, a conservative Homer Republican, say they tried to strike a bipartisan balance.
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Sarah Vance
Right now our system is broken where
- [03:06]
Julia O'Malley
not every vote is being counted.
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Sarah Vance
Our roles have not been tightened up to the level that builds confidence, that ensures people that they have a legal vote.
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Eric Stone
The bill included prepaid postage on absentee ballots, an elections liaison for rural communities and better pay for election workers in villages where it's often difficult to find people to staff the polls. And there was a requirement that voters be notified of a data breach, a quicker timeline for reporting results and provisions aimed at keeping the state's voter rolls correct. Despite Alaska's transient population, supporters ranged from the most liberal Democrats to the most conservative Republicans. Big Lake Republican Representative Kevin McCabe, who voted to override the governor, offered an apology.
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Tyler Howey
Not for my vote. I stand by my vote on this bill. I'm apologizing to Alaskans who will bear the cost of this veto.
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Eric Stone
He apologized to members of the military, people living in rural Alaska and people in southwest Alaska who were sent the wrong ballots for the 2024 election, among others. Strikingly, neither advocates nor opponents in the legislature claimed the bill would help one party more than another. Timing was the issue. Dunleavy encouraged lawmakers to try again with another bill. Bynum, who flipped from yes to no, said he would vote for a future bill without such a tight timeline. But with just two and a half weeks to go in the legislative session, that appears unlikely. There just isn't time. Reporting on Juneau, I'm Eric Stone.
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Casey Grove
The restaurant industry is famously tough and expensive to get into. A decade ago, one Anchorage chef decided to minimize risk and start out with a food truck. Now owners of the beloved El Gringo's Taco truck have finally opened a sit down restaurant. But as Alaska Public Media's Hannah Flor reports, economically it couldn't come at a worse time.
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Tyler Howey
Probably going to be the street taco with pork in it.
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Hannah Flor
Crystal and Tyler Howey are trying to decide what they'll eat the day their restaurant opens.
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Sarah Vance
Am I getting the huevos rancheros, the nachos?
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Hannah Flor
They've been serving and eating the same things for 10 years.
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Tyler Howey
I always get my extra guacamole in
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Hannah Flor
there, but their enthusiasm is still strong.
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Sarah Vance
Black bean coconut queso is like so good. And then you get the nacho sauce
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Hannah Flor
and it's just Like Tyler, Howey didn't plan to open a food truck. It just came down to financing. He couldn't get a loan to start a restaurant despite years in the industry and a thorough business plan. So when he got the chance to buy a gutted trailer, he jumped. At that point, Crystal was his brand new girlfriend.
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Sarah Vance
Tyler was like, hey, I have this food truck. The first festival is coming up. Like, do you mind helping me out? I'm like, yeah, I guess you're cute. I can help you out.
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Hannah Flor
What she didn't know was she was signing up for an all nighter that involved wrestling a 150 pound pig carcass in a windstorm.
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Tyler Howey
That first event was a test to our relationship. We'd only been together for about three months at that point.
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Sarah Vance
That is true.
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Hannah Flor
For the last decade, the pair have served what Crystal calls really fun tacos and burritos from the El Gringo's food truck in downtown Anchorage. Now they're opening a second restaurant, a sit down version. But they say starting off with a food truck was key. It's lower risk, Tyler says, and helped them figure out their concept. It also built a following of loyal customers. But it's a tough time to start a restaurant or make the move to a brick and mortar. The global economy is shaky, food prices are unstable, tariffs are unpredictable. Julia o' Malley says it's always a gamble to start a restaurant. O' Malley has been writing about the food scene in Anchorage for over a decade.
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Julia O'Malley
Making this step, even though you know you have a market and you know you have a good product, is a risk, especially in this very unprecedented, unstable economic moment in the United States, she
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Hannah Flor
says Restaurants never make a ton of money, margins are tight. And it's even harder to have a restaurant in Alaska where customers are limited, the labor pool is limited, getting ingredients can be complicated and expensive. The whole operation is risky. So El Gringo's move makes a lot of sense.
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Julia O'Malley
Having a food truck makes you a little bit more nimble, especially if you're trying to kind of like edge your way into the business.
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Hannah Flor
Tyler says starting out with a food truck was the right way to go, but it wasn't easy.
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Tyler Howey
20 years of experience in a restaurant didn't help as much in a food truck because it was so different with the storage and not having an office to get all the paperwork done. So again, you got to go home and get everything done. And we were closed on Sundays. That was invoice day.
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Hannah Flor
That lack of storage meant daily Costco trips, hours spent shopping for ingredients. After a full day of work. Now they have so much storage. Their walk in cooler is the size of their entire food truck. Tyler says they've been thinking about opening a restaurant for years, but they never found just the right spot. He says their new place makes sense. It's not too big and it was already partly built out.
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Tyler Howey
This business is profit on pennies, not profit on dollars. So if you're losing the pennies, you're not going to make it.
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Hannah Flor
While the US Isn't technically in a recession, experts say pockets of the economy are and overall there's a real risk of a downturn. Tyler and Crystal Howey say the shaky economy is definitely affecting Anchorage. From talking with friends in the food industry, Tyler says it seems to be the same all over the city. Restaurant sales are down 30, 40%. They admit it's not the best time to open a restaurant, but Tyler says it'll force them to be lean and efficient.
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Tyler Howey
If we survive the recession, then we have a great concept because it can survive the worst. We're going to do great during the best.
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Hannah Flor
They'll do that partly by following their own advice.
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Sarah Vance
Just keep it simple. When you overcomplicate things, that's when you're probably going to fail.
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Tyler Howey
Yeah, it's called Kiss. Keep it simple, stupid.
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Hannah Flor
El Gringo's restaurant opened on April 20th. Tyler says mostly business has been great. And for their first meals, Crystal decided on the Mexi plate with brisket. Tyler had the one new item on the menu, a Cubano sandwich made with a panini press that would have been way too big for their food truck. In Anchorage, I'm Hannah Fluor.
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Casey Grove
Still to come on Alaska News Nightly, a program in Petersburg gives hands on experience to the next generation of teachers.
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Sarah Vance
Districts want to grow their own teachers. They understand these sort of more isolated rural communities in Alaska.
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Casey Grove
That's ahead. Stay with us. The Norton Sound community of Shaktulik said goodbye to Kelly Hunt at a memorial service Saturday. She was the 19 year old whose remains were found in a ravine in Anchorage's Spenard neighborhood two weeks ago. Following her disappearance in January, friends and family gathered in the school gym for a simple but emotional service. With arms held open and voices raised in song, Prayers to bring Kelly Hunt home were finally answered, though not in the way the community had hoped. She was last seen visiting friends in Anchorage on her way to attend the Alaska Christian College in Soldotna. During the service, the lingering question of what happened to Hunt was set aside to grieve and remember her as a young person full of life and potential, qualities that Linda Bacolik says she cherishes. In her more than two decades as a teacher in Shacktulik, she remembers Hunt as one of the community's most promising students.
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Linda Bacolik
She was always positive and willing to jump in and help no matter where. She was very diligent in school. She never gave up. She played sports, of course, basketball and volleyball, and when she was younger she did wrestling. She always had a smile on her face, bucolic says.
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Casey Grove
Everyone at the school encouraged Hunt to go to college. The community even raised money to help her with expenses because they were proud of how she had overcome so many challenges at an early age.
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Linda Bacolik
Her mom died several years ago in Nome, and then her dad died just a couple years ago, and she also lost both of her grandparents within about a year and a half, two years.
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Casey Grove
Bucolick says Hunt was raised by her brothers and was happy to cook and
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Linda Bacolik
clean for them because she had all brothers. She was the light of their lives, of everybody's life in that family, pacolic said.
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Casey Grove
Hunt's dog was the love of her life. She would often catch glimpses of them walking near the shore. There was a picture of Hunt giving her dog a big bear hug in the slideshow that closed her memorial service, along with photos of her high school graduation dribbling down the court having fun with friends and loved ones, all set to the tune of I'll Fly Away. Anchorage police continue to investigate her case, with no word yet on how she died. No suspects have been arrested. A Superior Court judge has temporarily paused the closure of Campbell STEM elementary in Anchorage after advocates sued the school district and school board. The Campbell STEM Education and Preservation Foundation's lawsuit claims the Anchorage school district did not give enough notice when it recommended closing the school. The suit also claims the Anchorage school board voted to close the school arbitrarily. The decision to close Campbell STEM was aimed at helping address the district's roughly $90 million budget deficit. In a ruling Friday, Judge Oona Gondabeer wrote that the advocates were likely to succeed in arguing that the school board acted arbitrarily in closing Campbell stem. Gondabeer ordered the district to hold a public hearing no later than May 15 to address the decision to close the school. Gondabeer wrote in the order that the district and school board were barred from taking any further steps toward closure, consolidation, reassignment of students or staff, repurposing of the facility or administrative transition of Campbell STEM elementary. End quote. The school district's lawyers say officials considered a number of factors in their decision to close the school, including enrollment, facility use, academic programs and transportation considerations. Gandabeer says other factors like funding sources, should also have been considered. While Campbell STEM advocates described the ruling as a significant victory, Gandhibeer wrote that they were not likely to succeed in their argument that the district did not provide enough notice before closing the school. A school district spokesperson said in a statement that the district was reviewing the order with its lawyers and considering how to proceed. The next court hearing in the suit is scheduled for May 14th. Well intensifying storms, warming ocean and air temperatures, rapid glacier loss. You've probably heard it all before, but an ongoing tribal project in the Chilkat Valley has something new to offer data and projections about how climate change will manifest at the hyperlocal level. That information will inform a climate adaptation plan. Avery Elfelt with the Alaska Desk sat in on the tribe's latest update and has this story.
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Julia O'Malley
Jake Bell works for the Chilkoot Indian Association. He says the tribe has a lot of climate related projects, but that this one is unique.
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Casey Grove
Pretty cool. It's like if you ever had a question, what does that mean Here, this is the data as far down, drilled down as it gets.
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Julia O'Malley
Bel is part of a small team working on a new effort to write a climate adaptation plan for the tribe. A key element is gathering data and projections to better understand the implications of the global phenomenon and Haines specifically, and respond accordingly, Bell says. An interesting theme that emerged during community workshops last week was the importance of
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Casey Grove
reevaluating what tribal stewardship looks like, these resources and what the cultural traditions teach about valuing a resource, respecting a resource and treating it well.
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Julia O'Malley
Trevor Evan, a consultant with Adaptation International, ran Bell and others through some of his findings. He says that as the Chilkat Valley's younger generations age, they will experience a multitude of shifts as the climate warms.
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Bill Wielechowski
That means they'll see different plants in different areas. They'll see rivers acting and changing in different ways. They'll see the freshwater boundary maybe changing as the river moves into the bay.
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Julia O'Malley
That's some pretty life changing stuff.
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Bill Wielechowski
Things like this will be a big part of of what it means to grow up Here is watching this change and figuring out ways to live and thrive even amidst it.
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Julia O'Malley
The Chilkoot Indian association hired the climate resilience consulting firm that Evan works for for its expertise. A 2024 grant from the Bureau of Indian affairs is covering the cost. The goal is to identify and respond to potential climate impacts on traditional life and infrastructure in the area. Meredith Pockhart who works in the Tlingit tribe's environmental department, says they held community meetings last fall which helped identify four main focused areas, and those are sock
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Sarah Vance
fuligin got sockeye berries and extreme weather events. She adds, this time, this workshop, we are again kind of going over those four different areas of the community and also working on developing adaptation strategies.
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Julia O'Malley
One of the first phases of the project entailed gathering information about how climate change is already manifesting in the local area and what could come in the future. Evan projects that average air temperatures will increase by more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit by mid century and 8 degrees by late century. He also says marine heat waves and atmospheric rivers will intensify, which can lead to landslides. Evan says earlier snow melt, more rain, and longer growing seasons, meanwhile, mean mismatches between species and their environment are becoming more likely.
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Bill Wielechowski
This means that species you normally only see in the transitional forest are moving up into the glaciated areas where there's soils to do so. But it'll definitely mean that the glaciated areas will be retreated.
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Julia O'Malley
He says that future isn't necessarily locked
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Bill Wielechowski
in place, but this is our best guess now.
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Julia O'Malley
Beyond gathering that data, the end goal is to come up with an action plan with strategies for how the tribe will respond to looming climate impacts that should happen by this fall. Cindy Price Hagwood participated in this week's workshop and community conversation.
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Hannah Flor
She says, it was really interesting to me to see what could happen in our valley, what has happened in our valley and what. And like I had asked him tonight, what in my lifetime, what changes have happened?
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Julia O'Malley
Price Hagwood works for the Chilkoot Indian association and its traditional food program. She says she's most concerned about how rising temperatures will affect the foods she's enjoyed since childhood.
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Hannah Flor
Growing up with it, it was really wonderful. You know, I have a lot of really good memories of picking berries in this valley and going fishing with my dad and my family and getting, you know, living the subsistence life.
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Julia O'Malley
She says she hopes the tribe can keep those traditions going far into the future. Reporting in Haines, I'm Avery Elphelt.
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Casey Grove
Alaskans between the ages of 12 and 15 had the highest rate of ATV crash injuries compared to other age groups. That's according to data from emergency department visits from 2019 to 2024. In a bulletin released by the state Public Health Division. Riley Fitting is an injury epidemiologist for the state. He says it's a good reminder that even if a kid isn't driving an atv, it's important for them to wear protective gear.
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Bill Wielechowski
We saw very frequent injuries like the specific injuries associated with ATV related visits were lacerations, traumatic brain injuries, bone fractures and those ED visits being common among youth, he says.
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Casey Grove
Riders should wear helmets, boots and long pants and sleeves. Fittings says the north and southwest regions of the state had the highest rates of injury from ATV crashes. He says that's likely because more Alaskans ride ATVs for transportation in those areas. Alaskans also die from ATV injuries at about four times the rate as people in the lower 48. Fittings says that's also likely a reflection of how much Alaskans use ATVs for transportation.
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Bill Wielechowski
Not all places in Alaska have roads that we can drive on. So often we have to rely on these machines to go over uneven terrain, snow, terrain that has water maybe running over it that's shallow enough. That's all. In essence, we rely on these machines.
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Casey Grove
ATV passengers suffered about 40% of ATV injuries in the state, Fitting says. For that reason, it's important that Alaskans don't overload an ATV with more people than capacity. As researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks cut open the bellies of northern pike, they found them packed full of juvenile salmon and other native species of fish. Scientists have known for a long time that this invasive species has wreaked havoc since they were introduced illegally into rivers and lakes in south central Alaska in the 1950s. The Alaska Beacon reports on the recent findings that warmer waters not only appear to speed up the pike's metabolism and food consumption, but also sharpen their predation skills. The UAF study site was the Deshka River, a waterway in the Matsu Borough, where researchers found that over the past decade, northern pike of all age groups ate more. As waters warmed, they saw the most dramatic increase in year old pike, which upped their intake by about 63%. An analysis of the pike's stomach contents showed that they appear to be eating less salmon and turning to other fish such as rainbow trout and whitefish, possibly because king salmon numbers have dropped by 42% over the last decade. The Deshka, a tributary of the Susitna river, is particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures. It flows through a flat area and is not glacier fed. Known to be one of the warmest river systems in the region, it's no secret that communities across Alaska have been struggling to retain teachers and childcare professionals. In Petersburg, a high school program hopes to address that need while giving students hands on experience in their community. KFSK's Taylor Heckert reports.
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Taylor Heckert
On a Friday afternoon in Jill Lenhard's class. There are a lot of crying babies, crying robot babies, that is right now. They're hungry, The babies are new, and everyone's still figuring out how to use them, including Lenhard.
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Sarah Vance
I took one baby home to see how it all worked and I took it home in a grocery sack because I didn't want to walk down the street carrying a baby. But then when I got home and I laid it on a counter mat,
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Taylor Heckert
my husband was like, what is this? These babies are a part of a dual enrollment child development class Lenhard is teaching this semester. Over the course of four classes, students can earn up to 12 credits. At the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This semester's class is about kids up to age 4. Lenhard does a lot of hands on activities. Each Wednesday, the high schoolers spend about half an hour observing classrooms and at the elementary school and a nearby preschool. At this point in the semester, the students are pros walking up to Good Beginnings Preschool. Sophomore Brody Whitethorn already knows exactly what the kids will be doing.
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Brody Whitethorn
Today is usually the music day. And so we'll have our music lady there and they will like come sit in your lap sometimes. But sometimes they just like run at you and just hop right in your lap and it's so cute.
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Taylor Heckert
Daddy's taking us to the zoo tomorrow. Brody and her partner sit down in a circle with the preschoolers and their teachers. One kid immediately crawls into Brody's lap. They join in on the preschool's music time. Afterward, the high schoolers reflect on what they've seen. Brody says one of the big things she's noticed that is how preschoolers start to figure out their own emotions.
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Brody Whitethorn
It's sharing and then like having like a kid wants something and asks like, hey, can you hand me that? And the kid kind of ignores them or doesn't hand it to them. And then they kind of get upset. But that's like just another thing that they're learning.
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Taylor Heckert
She says the preschool is exactly the kind of place she wants to work one day.
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Brody Whitethorn
It's really. I feel like working with kids is like one of my favorite things. Cause I have soon to have six siblings and it's just Lynhard.
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Taylor Heckert
Their teacher says this course helps students find careers working with children. That's what most of her students want to do when they get older.
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Sarah Vance
Districts want to grow their own teachers. People who are they understand these sort of more isolated rural communities in Alaska because they've grown up here and they really care about them. If we can for our own teachers. Students who want to go off and get a teaching degree and then come back and teach here. That's a really successful way to keep the population of teachers high, and the
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Taylor Heckert
students may have a chance to work in schools before they even graduate. The district's still working out the details, but students who have completed two of Lenhart's classes may be able to work as paraprofessionals while earning high school credit. Lenhart hopes that by the end of her classes, the students she works with will have a stronger sense of confidence.
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Sarah Vance
I would love for them to just be very comfortable around kids, be able to just jump in and know how to help when they're with a group of kids, have a sense of accomplishment. Like this is a path that I could take if I decide I want to be a teacher. I know what I'm getting into.
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Taylor Heckert
Lenhart modeled this program after one in Ketchikan. She says she's been a part of discussions with the University of Alaska Fairbanks to see if there's a way to expand the program beyond the two communities. In petersburg. I'm taylor heckert,
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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 and Juno Hannah Flor, Rhonda McBride, Wesley early and Rachel Cassandra in Anchorage, Avery Elfelt in Haynes and Taylor Heckert in Petersburg. Our audio engineer is Crystal Hyde, Kirsten Dobroth is our producer and I'm Casey Grove. Good night. This is statewide news on Alaska Public Media.