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Casey Grove
Support for Alaska Public Media on Demand.
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Narrator/Anchor
Comes from Siri, an Alaska Native corporation.
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Casey Grove
With operations and investments spanning five continents.
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Narrator/Anchor
45 states, and two US territories.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
There are a handful of us that.
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Jamie Hines
Weren'T getting paid while we were sitting.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
In an office watching others get paid.
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Narrator/Anchor
Federal workers expressed frustration with the shutdown process as the federal government reopened. From Alaska Public Media, this is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Monday, November 17th. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, officials say a recent New York Times article on Anchorage's voting system got it wrong.
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Jamie Hines
When it was solely about us and we were moving to mobile voting, I was shocked.
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Narrator/Anchor
Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly. The longest government shutdown in US History came to an end last week that paved the way for federal employees to return to their posts, including many in Alaska's capital city. But as KTOO's Alex Solomon reports, reopening is not necessarily a smooth process. And some agency workers are frustrated after.
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Alex Solomon
43 days without work or pay. Don McDougal heard from his boss Wednesday evening telling him to come back to the office the next morning.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
It was a text message from the.
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Alex Solomon
Supervisor walking out of the federal building downtown on Friday afternoon. He says it felt strange to not work for that long, knowing that eventually he'll get paid for that lost time.
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Hunter Morrison
It seems kind of senseless.
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Alex Solomon
MacDougall is a program coordinator at the U.S. forest Service. He works on projects involving workforce development, volunteers, and recreation in Alaska. And now he says he has hundreds of emails to sift through.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
It's just been a frustrating time.
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Alex Solomon
Eric Antrim says reopening has been disorganized. He manages bridge inspections in Alaska's national forests, and he's involved with his local union. He says some furloughed employees, not knowing how long the shutdown would last, left town and weren't available to return on such short notice.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
People are everywhere. One of my colleagues is in Antarctica right now, and it was just sort of like last minute.
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Alex Solomon
But Antrim says leadership in his office is being flexible as workers come back. He spent part of his unpaid furlough organizing free lunches for federal workers. Now he says he's expecting a paycheck within the next week.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
You know, whenever that comes through, I should get one giant lump sum payment for, you know, three pay periods at the same time, basically.
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Alex Solomon
In 2019, Congress passed a law that guarantees back pay for federal workers as soon as possible after a government shutdown ends. And the bill Congress passed Wednesday affirms that guaranteed. Despite comments that President Trump made last month, back at the federal building as workers return from lunch. Jamie Roundtree says she was mandated to work without pay during the shutdown. But she says that wasn't the case for everyone in her Department at U.S. customs and Border Protection.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
So there are a handful of us that weren't getting paid while we were sitting in an office watching others get paid.
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Hunter Morrison
Yeah.
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Jamie Hines
Humiliating, disrespectful, unfair.
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Alex Solomon
She's an agriculture specialist officer and says that she had to stay at her post because it's considered essential for national security. Rountree processes people coming in on mining barges, cruise ships and aircraft who intend to stay in the U.S. she says she feels unsure about the future.
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Jamie Hines
You just don't know, you know what I mean? I mean, there's things happening nowadays that you never thought would happen in Juneau.
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Alex Solomon
I'm Alex Solomon.
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Narrator/Anchor
Hundreds of evacuees from western Alaska are staying in Anchorage hotels after last month's storms destroyed their homes. Some say they don't know exactly what's next. They hope to move into apartments eventually. Alyona Nydin with the Alaska desk spoke to a few families who are adjusting to their new daily lives so far away from everything they know.
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Jamie Hines
My turn.
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Ilona Knighton
Ellie Schengen is sitting on a bed in an Anchorage hotel room with her two year old daughter on her lap. She puts face paint on her forehead and draws red whiskers on her cheeks.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
I was keeping her busy.
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Ilona Knighton
Their room at the Wingate Hotel is crowded. Schengen's partner sits on the second bed as their three other children play nearby. Toys, clothes and strollers pile up around them.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
We have our own space and everything is just everything around us. Small space.
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Ilona Knighton
Schengen and her family are among 670 evacuees from the Yukonkaska cum Delta region who are staying in Anchorage hotels after being displaced by the storm last month. Many are also staying with friends and family. Shengin says the transition has not been easy.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
Moving here with our family is okay, but it's not okay. I want to go home. My girl's missing her home. My honey misses her home.
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Ilona Knighton
State and federal agencies are working to rebuild the affected villages, but for many, returning before winter is not an option. Officials with the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management say they're also working on a plan to provide temporary housing in Anchorage and in other communities. But first they need to make sure those homes are furnished and close to other services. So they say there is still no timeline for when people will move from hotels into other homes. In the meantime, families like Schengen's are Doing what they can to adjust to life and Anchorage while they wait. For Schengen's nine year old daughter, Katelyn, that means homeschooling, so she can help her parents take care of her siblings. Schengen says the family gets breakfast every day, but the hotel room has no kitchen, so they order fast food for the remaining meals.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
Fast food every day? Not us. They are used to home cooked meals all the time. They're used to the native food and stuff, what we eat.
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Ilona Knighton
Julia Tutuk Stone is Kipnik's police officer and another evacuee. She is staying at the Aspen Hotel in Anchorage along with her two adult sons and young grandsons. Each family in their own room. Stone says she's happy the family stayed together.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
It was gonna be like heartbreaking if they didn't come with me.
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Ilona Knighton
Stone says the hotel provides them with free meals and snacks. She takes buses to go to the store and to play bingo. And her grandsons attend the Yupik immersion program at College Gate Elementary School. Her son, Alexei Ahumkathak Stone says he even brought his boys to Dave and Buster's a few times.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
My kids are having a lot of fun here. They're enjoying their stay here. It's not fun for me, that's for sure, because it's not my kind of life. My life was subsistence.
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Ilona Knighton
Both he and his mother say they cannot stop thinking about home. Julia Stone says she replaced in her head calls from people who were trapped in their houses.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
Everybody is traumatized, especially little kids. It's like a nightmare.
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Ilona Knighton
Alexis Stone remembers watching his house flood.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
It's like a dream, like we're living inside a dream, but at the same time, it really happened. Yeah. Every day we wake up, oh, are we home? No, we're not. We're somewhere else. We're in Anchorage.
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Ilona Knighton
The family takes one step at a time, Julia Stone says. Back at the Wingate, Schengen says her family has been looking at apartments already. They even filled out paperwork to receive assistance for rent and a deposit.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
We're just waiting, but some of us are tired of waiting.
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Ilona Knighton
The family especially liked a two bedroom apartment they looked at. Schengen says it was big enough for the older children to share their own room and hide an open area in the living room so they could just run around.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
My family will be happy. I'll be happy because I'll be able to cook my family food.
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Ilona Knighton
Schengen already knows what their first meal will be. A rice dish baked in an oven with meat and seasonings. She says that will be enough for the whole family. In Anchorage, I am Ilona Knighton.
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Narrator/Anchor
Still to come on Alaska News Nightly, remembering former Olympic skier and avalanche center director Wendy Wagner.
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Jamie Hines
I was in the young part of my career, and she was like a cool big sister.
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Narrator/Anchor
That's ahead. Stay with us. Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance has officially rolled out her proposal for a 3% sales tax. She says the final version includes a list of things that would not be taxed.
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Jamie Hines
Those include housing, medicine and medical services, certain groceries and personal hygiene products, gasoline and diesel fuel, certain personal services including child care, utilities and sales to nonprofit organizations.
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Narrator/Anchor
The proposal has been in the works for weeks. It will be formally introduced at the assembly meeting tomorrow, and the body could decide as early as December 2nd whether to put the proposal to voters on an upcoming ballot. LaFrance's administration has reiterated that Anchorage needs the tax because it needs new revenue. It says the tax could generate between $150 million and $180 million a year, and that money would go toward property tax relief, childcare and housing and public safety and capital projects. But the mayor's tax is not the only one city officials are considering. Assembly members are also looking at a smaller 1% sales tax, as well as a tax on short term rentals and an increased room tax. LaFrance says she believes her tax would address the city's immediate financial needs.
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Jamie Hines
I think that our best way forward is to adopt a sales tax. It generates the amount of revenue we need that will stabilize our finances and provide us the opportunities we need to create the community that we want, LaFrance says.
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Narrator/Anchor
She expects assembly members will amend her proposal during their process.
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Jamie Hines
There will also be conversations around, you know, should it be capped and do we have the right exemptions? And I think those are the right conversations we should have because we really need to figure this out. It is not going to get any easier the longer we wait.
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Narrator/Anchor
Eight assembly members would need to approve the proposal before it's sent to voters. As it is currently written. If approved, the sales tax would take effect no earlier than July 1, 2028. Anchorage officials say a recent New York Times story inaccurately described a new system that allows residents to cast their ballots electronically. As Alaska Public Media's Wesley early reports, officials say they already used the system last election and the goal is to make it easier for residents to vote.
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Wesley Early
The New York Times story is titled Will People Trust Voting by Phone? Alaska is going to Find out, and it spotlights a method city officials are using to allow voters to submit ballots electronically. Municipal Clerk Jamie Hines says she was surprised when she read the piece.
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Jamie Hines
I thought that it was going to be a bigger story about many, many jurisdictions and many different anecdotes. And when it was solely about us and we were moving to mobile voting, I was shocked.
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Wesley Early
In a statement sent out the evening after the story published, Hines wrote, quote, readers of the New York Times have been led to believe the MOA elections team has embarked on some novel unsecure agenda on the bleeding edge of integrity in local elections. Rest assured municipal voters. The article is an egregious misrepresentation of MOA elections and end quote Anchorage election Administrator Liz Edwards says the story was inaccurate in describing the method as a first of its scale experiment the city was about to conduct.
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Jamie Hines
We started it back this past April, so we've already rolled it out. It's not an experiment. It worked. We had great feedback from voters and so it's something that we're going to continue moving forward.
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Wesley Early
In fact, Hines says over 2,500 jurisdictions across 36 other states use the software of the more than 60,000 ballots cast in April. Edwards says 136 voters cast their ballots electronically using the system, which is called the Secure Document Portal. Voters must voluntarily apply to use the system, and Edwards says it is very secure and works similarly to the city's vote by email method, which has been around for years.
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Jamie Hines
We verify their identifier signature, we give them a special pin, they again have to provide identifiers and sign and they the system itself, you have to have special permissions to even access, even on the back end, so it's all secured at every single level of the journey of their ballot.
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Wesley Early
Hines says the Anchorage assembly approved the voting method in December 2024. She says the time it took to implement the system ahead of last April's election prevented officials from being able to do an outreach campaign to teach residents about the software. She says they had planned to do that ahead of next April's election before the Times piece was published.
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Jamie Hines
We did have plans to do outreach and education on this and this is an unfortunate situation, but we've definitely got the ears of all of the local reporters now.
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Wesley Early
Ultimately, Edwards says the goal is to make it easier for residents to vote.
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Jamie Hines
We have a lot of people who are snowbirds or we have the large military population, so we're trying to make it as easy as we can so that people are engaged in the process, that they have their voices heard, that they can participate in their community.
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Wesley Early
Edwards says the city plans to allow voters to use the secure Document Portal for next April city election, but it won't be used for statewide and federal elections. Residents will still be able to vote in other ways, like by mail, by fax, or the good old fashioned in person way. In Anchorage, I'm Wesley Early.
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Narrator/Anchor
A Fairbanks Superior Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit Monroe Catholic High School filed last year on behalf of its boys basketball team. The suit aimed to get Alaska sports regulators to reanalyze the team's record in hopes they'd move to a less competitive division. KUAC's Patrick Gilchrist reports.
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Casey Grove
The Fairbanks private school claims the Alaska School Activities association, or asaa, misapplied its own classification system for boys basketball. But late last month, Superior Court Judge Earl Peterson dismissed the case, granting a motion filed by the state sports regulators. In his order, Peterson wrote that Monroe has failed to provide a scintilla of evidence to support that ASAA applied the wrong guidance or used improper data in its analysis. The dispute dates back to November 2020, when the ASAA board adopted the new classification system. It assesses basketball programs within 25 miles of Fairbanks, as well as programs around Anchorage, Wasilla and Soldotna. The system set up a two step procedure to analyze those teams rosters and performance levels instead of school size to decide their division. The adopted guidelines also established a review process that allows a team to return to a lower division if their record shows they aren't competitive enough when first applied. The new protocol saw Monroe shift from 3A to 4A, where Alaska's largest schools play. Monroe won a State Championship in 3A in 2021, which was their final year in that division before moving up a couple years later in 2023. Monroe became eligible for the review, but the sports regulator's analysis determined the boys team at the roughly 100 student private high school should stay at the top level. It's that review that the Monroe lawsuit had been challenging. Fleur Roberts, an attorney for Monroe, says she thinks the court got it wrong and she filed a motion requesting that Peterson reconsider. She says being in the same division as the state's biggest schools is tough on the players and that the classification system targeted the private school.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
It's like saying, oh, you know, little Johnny comes to you and he says, oh, we can't beat Monroe. What are we going to do about these Catholic schools? We can't beat them. Okay, just slice them out, you know, okay, don't worry about it, you know, we'll just slice out. You rise to the top and they slice, slice you off, you know, that's it. Rise to the top, slice you off. That's what's going on.
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Casey Grove
Roberts claims the court's recent decision doesn't account for a central part of her argument. She says that in 2023 the ASA board added language to the classification system and then retroactively applied it to the review of Monroe. She says that made a difference in the outcome.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
So that's retroactive and you can't do it. You can't change the speed limit, you can't change the three point line in the middle of the game.
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Casey Grove
The additional language says that for part of the review procedure, teams will be analyzed based on the classification they were prior to being moved to the higher classification level. Citing the reconsideration request, Billy Strickland, the executive director for the activities association, declined to comment for this story. Petersen's recent decision follows a partial preliminary injunction that the judge granted earlier this year. That ruling forced the activities association to redo the 2023 review to determine Monroe's division under the guidelines as they existed in November 2020. The court ordered analysis, which was backed up by Peterson's own review of the data, still said the team was properly classified as 4A, according to court records. In an August brief supporting the motion to dismiss, asaa's attorney wrote that the defendants unambiguously complied with the court order. The brief argued that it's time for Monroe Catholics basketball team to battle on the basketball court instead of the courtroom. End quote Peterson's October order granting the request to dismiss the case concluded that stepping the team down a division would violate ASAA guidelines, and he wrote that doing so would also risk undermining the efforts of Monroe's student athletes and may be reasonably viewed as diminishing the merit of their accomplishments. End quote For KUAC News, I'm Patrick Gilchrist.
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Narrator/Anchor
Alaska snow enthusiasts are mourning the loss of one of the state's top snow safety professionals. Chugach National Forest Avalanche Information Center Director Wendy Wagner passed away in her sleep November 6th and after battling ovarian cancer for a year and a half. Wagner was a two time Olympic cross country skier with a master's degree in atmospheric science. She joined the center as an avalanche forecaster in 2010 and became its director in 2014. Graham Prediger, now the Avalanche Center's interim director, started working with Wagner in 2011. Prediger said she shaped the center by overseeing its growth into the professional organization it is today. During a time when outdoor off piste snow sports were exploding in popularity, the.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
Avalanche center now compared to what it was and what it looked like in 2011 is really unrecognizable. Thanks in large part to Wendy's energy.
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Narrator/Anchor
And efforts, Wagner also covered a lot of ground quickly in the backcountry while gathering observations for avalanche forecasts, both on foot with climbing skins on her skis but also ripping on a snow machine, as Prediger put it.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
My first season working with Wendy, we were doing a lot of ski touring, and it was intimidating keeping up with an Olympic athlete on the skin track. And my solution was, let's teach Wendy how to snow machine. And then I was able to keep up with her in the backcountry a little bit better.
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Narrator/Anchor
Wagner competed in two Winter Olympic Games in 2002 in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2006 in Turin, Italy, Olympic gold medalist Keegan Randall said she roomed often with Wagner as they overlapped as skiers in the Olympics and while chasing World cup championship.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
I was in the young part of my career, and she was like a cool big sister, you know, a veteran athlete who I looked up to quite a bit.
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Narrator/Anchor
Andrew Schauer, lead avalanche specialist at the Chugach National Forest Avalanche Information center, says Wagner's personability helped maintain a focus on serving the public.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
She also had a really strong, genuine concern for other people, both for the people that she was close with, you know, for all of our staff at the Avalanche center, and also for the.
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Narrator/Anchor
Community at large, schauer and Prediger said Wagner's death presents a huge loss for her family and friends, the Avalanche center and the larger snow community, as messages of condolence have been pouring in from around the world. According to her obituary, Wagner left behind a husband, John, two stepsons, Gus and Sam, and a loving extended family. If you visited Ketchikan's Totem Heritage center this fall, you might have noticed something missing from one of its outside walls. That's because three carved posts, which were made by students and master carvers, were temporarily removed for much needed restoration work. As KRBD's Hunter Morrison reports, it's just one way the museum is gearing up for its 50th anniversary.
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Hunter Morrison
Inside a workshop at Ketchikan's National Guard Armory. Tlingit master carver Tommy Joseph is hard at work. He's slowly shaving a block of wood into the shape of a dorsal fin with an oddly shaped knife. And the tool that you're using, does that have a particular name or Charlie? He then trades Charlie, the reverse bent knife, for a tool that looks like a sickle but works like a hammer. Large wood shavings fall to the floor. The new dorsal fin will later be affixed to the Heritage Center's killer whale house post, which is like a small totem pole. This one has overlooked the museum's parking lot for about 40 years. It's a small piece of a larger project to restore three of the museum's house posts. Historically, house posts were an interior architectural feature that support the roof of a clan house in southern southeast Alaska. They're carved to honor events, clans or tribes. These three are the eagle, the raven, and the killer whale. Joseph says they were cracked on the outside due to decades of wear. He cut out their cores to prevent further cracking and future rotting. He also painted and resurfaced them.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
It's time to take care of them, treat them a bit and clean them. Clean them, then treat them, and hopefully give them lots and lots of life in the Future here.
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Hunter Morrison
The three posts were carved in the mid-1980s as part of the Heritage Center's native art studies program. Students worked for six months alongside indigenous master carvers to create five posts for the museum's exterior. But like totem poles, house posts traditionally aren't restored. They're meant to last the lifespan of a person about 80 years, then returned to the earth for decomposition. But these house posts have only been around for about half of that time, and museum staff say they still have life in them.
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Jamie Hines
They tell the story of the totem Heritage center in a way that is not just about the totem poles inside of it.
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Hunter Morrison
That's museum director Samantha Forsco, who says the house posts document the museum's history and relationships between students and instructors.
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Jamie Hines
So that's why I think they're so important and so important. That we're restoring right now for the 50th is kind of a way to. To show that, you know, this isn't just a place where there's old totem poles.
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Hunter Morrison
Forsco says that's not all that's in store for the museum's 50th anniversary. Next year, they're getting a new sign as part of restoration work on the building. And next October, they'll open a new exhibit that'll partially highlight those who have taught classes at the Heritage center. And that's kind of full circle for master carver Joseph. As he's taught numerous classes at the museum. He says he learned from some of the best wood conservators in the country who have worked on the Liberty Bell and the Martha Washington log cabin in Philadelphia. This is one of a handful of totem restoration projects Joseph has been a part of in southeast Alaska, he says each one is different from the last.
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Federal Worker/Interviewee
I could see that there was there was vegetation things growing on these, but not knowing what the inside was so going to be like. So once they're down, then I always describe every one of these jobs. It's like a puzzle. You got to take it all apart in order to figure out how to put it all back together again.
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Hunter Morrison
The house posts were officially reinstalled at the Totem Heritage center this month. Reporting at Ketchikan, I'm Hunter Morrison.
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Narrator/Anchor
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 Alex Solomon and Juno, Alyona Nydin and Wesley early in Anchorage, Patrick Gilchrist in Fairbanks and Hunter Morrison in Catchikan. If you want to send us a news tip, question or comment, email us@newslaskapublic.org Our audio engineer is Crystal Hyde. Madeline Rose is our producer. And I'm Casey Grove. Good night. This is statewide news on Alaska Public Media.