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- [00:00]
Casey Grove
Support for Alaska Public Media on demand.
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Narrator/Anchor
Comes from Siri, an Alaska Native corporation with operations and investments spanning five continents, 45 states and two US territories. It's vital for Alaskans to know that they're connected to their nation and that what we do in Alaska matters to our nation. Alaska Public Broadcasting enters the spotlight during a Doge hearing on NPR and pbs. From Alaska Public Media, this is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Wednesday, March 26th. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, lawmakers struggle to craft a balanced budget as time ticks away.
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Legislator (possibly Lyman Hoffman or Chuck Kopp)
I've been trying to impress upon my colleagues that the numbers don't change, but if we don't come up with a solution, it can ruin your summers.
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Narrator/Anchor
A federal judge in Anchorage has ruled in favor of Alaska's state owned investment bank in a lawsuit that could clear the way for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Alaska Beacon reports that Judge Sharon Gleason wrote in an order published Tuesday that the U.S. department of the Interior acted illegally when it canceled oil and gas leases held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority on land within the refuge. ADA did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Corey Mills, Alaska's deputy attorney general, called the decision a victory. Tuesday's order was the result of a lawsuit filed by ADA against the federal government last year when the Biden administration canceled oil and gas leases that ADA won in a January 2021 sale. Two other companies also won leases during the sale but later surrendered them to the federal government, leaving ADA as the only company holding leases within the refuge's coastal plain, which is believed to hold significant oil and gas reserves just as nearby state land does. The Biden administration claimed that the sale, conducted under the auspices of the first Trump administration, was flawed and thus illegal. Gleason had upheld the Biden administration's suspension order, but when it came to the cancellation, she ruled in ada's favor. Several environmental and tribal groups sided with the federal government during the course of the lawsuit and had requested the ability to offer alternative solutions if Gleason ruled in favor of ada. In a statement released last week, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said he intends to open the refuge's entire 1.56 million acre coastal plain to development, indicating that ADA will be given a free hand on its leases. U.S. house Republicans put the top executives of NPR and PBS on the hot seat today, and Democrats used the hearing to spotlight Alaska as an example of the value of public broadcasting. The hearing was one of the first of the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government efficiency. The chair of the so called DOGE panel is Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who says the public broadcasting networks are biased and should not receive public funds. We will be calling for the complete and total defund and dismantling of the.
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Expert/Researcher (possibly Michelle Wilber)
Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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Narrator/Anchor
CPB receives more than $500 million a year from the federal government, most of which goes to local stations. The stations produce local news and programs and pay NPR and PBS to air national content. Democrats on the panel invited Alaska Public Media President Ed Ullman to testify. He said that in many parts of Alaska and the country, public media is the only local outlet for broadcast news and provides critical warnings and alerts during emergencies. Ullman also pointed out that Alaska Public Media stations produce audio and video stories about Alaskans that air nationally and because of their affiliation with the national networks. Without pbs, without npr, you wouldn't hear stories, news stories, public affairs stories, community stories from Alaska. You wouldn't see them on the PBS NewsHour. This is vital. It's vital for Alaskans to know that they're connected to their nation and that what we do in Alaska matters to our nation. The hearing was mostly focused on Republican complaints about the national networks. And NPR President Catherine Maher acknowledged the network was wrong to initially dismiss the importance of certain news stories, such as what was on Hunter Biden's laptop and the theory that the COVID pandemic began with a leak from a Chinese virology. State lawmakers are now more than halfway through their four month legislative session, and time is ticking away. The Alaska House and Senate are both controlled by bipartisan caucuses made up of mostly Democrats. Coming into the session, the two caucuses looked like they were aligned on many key issues. They each said they wanted to boost education funding, improve the state's retirement system, and, of course, pass a balanced budget. But the devil is always in the details, and fractures are starting to show as legislators work toward a final budget. Alaska Public Media's Eric Stone is at the Capitol and joins us now to tell us more. Eric, where do things stand in Juneau?
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Casey Grove
Okay, so Casey, we're coming up at the end of March, and that means the complicated, time consuming process of writing the budget is well underway. But looming over all of this is the fact that lower oil prices mean that lawmakers are facing deficits. And you know, unlike the US Congress, the state constitution actually requires the legislature to balance the budget every year. So current estimates for a status quo budget put it hundreds of millions of dollars underwater. So that's basically the same funding as last year. Plus a roughly $1,400 permanent fund dividend. Thing is, though, there is a lot that the majorities want to add. The biggest part of that, of course, is the boost to state education funding the House passed earlier this month. And how to pay for that is not exactly clear.
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Narrator/Anchor
Yeah, so how could lawmakers pay for that funding boost and balance the budget?
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Casey Grove
So there are a few different levers that lawmakers could pull to balance the budget. There are three main ones. I would say. They could raise taxes or, you know, find some other revenue they could draw from a state savings account, or they could cut the permanent fund dividend and to balance the budget, actually, if there is a fourth, they could significantly cut back on state services. But, you know, every single one of those is facing opposition from somewhere. I'll go kind of in reverse order here. Budget cuts are on the table, but, you know, some of the key budgeters say that after years of relative austerity, there isn't a whole lot left to cut. House members are talking about, you know, cutting spending somewhere, maybe some of the governor's increases, but it's unclear. You know, where that will land as I talk to you now. Okay, so next, cutting the pfd. That is never popular. In the last couple of years, it's become something of a tradition to have the quarter of the legislature's annual draw from the permanent fund be set aside for dividends. That is, you know, that sort of results in the $1,400 figure I referenced earlier. Senators have been hesitant to go much lower than that. You know, it's a pretty important part of a lot of people's income. But this week, we did see some softening. In a news conference, some key senators expressed some flexibility on maybe reducing the PFD to about $1,000. They've also floated repeatedly cutting back on that education funding boost. The House passed. They. They're floating. Cutting back on it by about a third. That gets you a lot of the way there to balancing the budget, but not quite.
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Narrator/Anchor
Not quite. But you mentioned two other options. Raising revenue or taking the deficit from savings. What about that?
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Casey Grove
Okay, so those are another two where they're kind of at loggerheads here. Senate President Gary Stevens, he's a Kodiak Republican, he said at the beginning of the session that drawing from savings was off the table. He even chastised the editor of the Juneau Empire for asking him about it repeatedly. Well, so this week, Stevens actually apologized to the editor, and he said the Senate was, after all, looking at drawing from savings to Cover the portion of the deficit that covers the current year. Here's how we put it.
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Narrator/Anchor
Times change, things change and sometimes you.
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Legislator (possibly Lyman Hoffman or Chuck Kopp)
Have to eat crow up here.
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Casey Grove
But Senator Lyman Hoffman, he's the Finance Committee co chair in the Senate, he says he doesn't think senators are interested in drawing from savings for the next year. And that's the real meat of the budget. You know what happens, you know, from July 1st to June 30th. Hoffman and the rest of the Senate majority have been emphasizing revenue bills as a way to pay for, you know, the things that the House and the Senate want to do. There are three major ones in the Senate right now. They're basically changes to oil taxes and corporate income taxes. But again, you know, there is a catch. The house has a one vote majority. It's 2119 over there. And just recently, House Majority Leader Chuck Kopp, he's an Anchorage Republican and he signed on to an op ed opposing oil taxes that included most of the minority Republicans in the House. So that means that even if every member of the majority voted for all these taxes and there's no guarantee that they would, they could not pass without some Republican minority help. Kopp says, you know, for his part, he'd like to balance the budget using some of the other mechanisms we just talked about, like, you know, using savings in the constitutional budget reserve or cbr.
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Narrator/Anchor
Yes, we have to do a CBR draw. Yes, we have to pay the dividend we can afford. No, we don't have to do it.
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Expert/Researcher (possibly Michelle Wilber)
By raising taxes on entities and persons.
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Narrator/Anchor
Not this year.
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Casey Grove
And that is basically where things stand.
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Narrator/Anchor
Okay, well how are they going to resolve this?
- [09:22]
Casey Grove
Well, you know, that's anybody's guess at this point. There is even some special session chatter going around right now. Hoffman though, the Senate finance co chair, he says it's unlikely that any extra time would actually result in some breakthrough.
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Legislator (possibly Lyman Hoffman or Chuck Kopp)
I've been trying to impress upon my colleagues that the numbers don't change. But if we don't come up with a solution, it can ruin your summers. It can.
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Casey Grove
Leaders on the House side, for their part, they say nobody's too dug in at this point. And you know, for that reason they're optimistic too. But of course, we'll have to wait and see.
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Narrator/Anchor
Yes, we will. And we will keep following your coverage of this. That was Alaska Public Media's capital reporter, Eric Stone. Eric, thanks for being here.
- [10:01]
Casey Grove
Thanks for having me.
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Narrator/Anchor
Still to come on Alaska News Nightly, the Kenai Peninsula's online farmers market shuts.
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Legislator (possibly Lyman Hoffman or Chuck Kopp)
Down the biggest value that the food hub added to our business was to be able to reach outlying communities.
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Narrator/Anchor
That's ahead. Stay with us. An Anchorage woman has been sentenced to one year in prison following an investigation into her tax practices. Tina Yee owned and operated Polaris Bar in Nome from 2007 until its closure in 2017 when a fire destroyed the building, killing one residential, according to court documents. Between 2014 and 2018, Yee maintained two sets of financial records for the business. One set accurately recorded the business's income and expenses, while the other understated the income. An investigation by the U.S. department of justice uncovered a tax loss of over $550,000. Yee pleaded guilty to the charges last July. A Bethel man is among three people recently charged in what federal prosecutors say was a conspiracy to traffic quantities of the painkiller tramadol to Alaska and across the country in 2024. Kyuk's Evan Erickson has more.
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Reporter Evan Erickson
In federal court documents, investigators accused 38 year old Ryan Gray Donis of receiving a quote, significant number of packages containing tramadol sent by two other men named in the indictment, 39 year old Adil Hussain and 45 year old Syed Naqvi. Tramadol is an opioid pain medication considered to have fewer adverse effects and less risk of dependency than other prescription PA killers. As a Schedule 4 controlled substance, it also has fewer legal penalties for trafficking and is less regulated than other medications that serve similar functions. The federal charges for Gray Donis stem from a state case in which he was arrested at the Anchorage Airport en route to Bethel in March of 2024. Authorities say he had more than 1500 tramadol pills with him at the time. Graydonis ultimately pleaded guilty to misdemeanor drug possession and was sentenced to two years of probation in that case. But federal prosecutors and investigators say those pills seized in Anchorage had allegedly been sent from Arizona by Hussein and Naqvi, according to court documents. Federal authorities say they identified more packages containing Tramadol sent by the men to Gradonis in Alaska after the 2024 case. The filing does not specify where in Alaska the packages were allegedly sent in 2024 alone. Federal authorities claimed that Hussein and Naqvi sent more than 15,000 packages suspected of containing tramadol to locations across the country. The pair was arrested in early March in California, while Gray Donis was arrested in Bethel on March 16. All three have been charged with one count of felony conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute controlled substances. Gray Donis faces two more similar felony charges. The three counts against Gray Donis each carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Gray Donis was released from federal custody on Monday and was not listed as being in the custody of the state of Alaska as of Wednesday. In Bethel, I'm Evan Erickson.
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Narrator/Anchor
The $44 billion Alaska LNG project picked up a letter of intent last Thursday from Taiwan's state owned CPC Corporation. The letter is non binding, but project officials say it's a first step toward a binding agreement to buy gas from the project if it's built. In a joint press conference with governor Mike Dunleavy, Taiwanese President Lai Chinde said Alaska gas is conveniently located in a source of high quality natural gas. In a press release, CPC Corporation said Alaska would become Taiwan's closest source of natural gas if the project is built.
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Legislator (possibly Lyman Hoffman or Chuck Kopp)
We are very interested in buying Alaskan natural gas because it can meet our needs and ensure our energy is security.
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Narrator/Anchor
Governor Mike Dunleavy called Alaska LNG the state's flagship project and he said it's more than just an energy initiative.
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Casey Grove
It is a bridge connecting the future prosperity of both Alaska and Taiwan.
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Narrator/Anchor
If it's built, the Alaska LNG project would move natural gas from the North Slope to South Central for shipment overseas. The project includes a treatment plant on the slope, an 800 mile pipeline and a liquefaction facility in Nikiski. US President Donald Trump has been a vocal supporter of the project, as reported by the New York Times. Some say recent foreign interest is a result of tariff threats from the White House. To date, no company has signed firm agreements to buy gas from the project, and the state corporation that owns the project declined to provide details about existing letters of intent, including who has signed them and how many there are. Well, the Kenai Peninsula's only online farmers market is no longer in service. The Alaska Food Hub program connected consumers with farmers and distributed locally grown produce to communities across the peninsula. KDLL's Hunter Morrison has more on what that means for the region's food system.
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Reporter Hunter Morrison
Cook Inletkeeper, a Homer based environmental nonprofit, said in January it would sunset the Alaska Food Hub program to shift its focus back to the region's oil and gas industries. That's in part due to President Donald Trump's move to expand drilling in Alaska. The hub was an online platform funded by the U.S. department of Agriculture where local farmers and fishermen could sell their goods. Consumers would order and pick up their food items at one of several distribution points across the peninsula from Soldatna to Seldovia.
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Legislator (possibly Lyman Hoffman or Chuck Kopp)
You know it's really loved by the customers who've used it and by all of the vendors that we've helped produce.
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Reporter Hunter Morrison
That's Lauren Barrett, co executive director of Cook Inlet Keeper. She says in its heyday, about 40 local farmers and fishermen were part of the program. The Food Hub was intended to be a two year pilot program launched in 2016, but blossomed into a nearly decade long food distribution endeavor. For some farmers, it relieved the burden of setting up at in person farmers markets.
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Legislator (possibly Lyman Hoffman or Chuck Kopp)
A lot of them started out like not sure if they were going to be farmers and now they've got huge full fledged operations.
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Reporter Hunter Morrison
For small scale producers like Jubilee Farms in Soldotna, the Alaska Food Hub was a more convenient way to sell eggs and plant starts. Owner Tina Lagatoris says the program helped her avoid potential pitfalls of farmers markets like low sales and vendor fees. Plus, she says it only cost her $40 a year to sell through the program.
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Legislator (possibly Lyman Hoffman or Chuck Kopp)
It was a nice way to do it because it's a lot easier for me personally to sell that than to load everything up and go to a farmer' and have to sit there all day long like on a Saturday or something like that in all kinds of weather to sell my product.
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Reporter Hunter Morrison
Homer based Twitter Creek Gardens has been involved with the Food Hub since its inception. The nine acre farm grows and sells mixed vegetables. Emily Garrity is the farm's owner.
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Legislator (possibly Lyman Hoffman or Chuck Kopp)
The biggest value that the Food Hub added to our business was to be able to reach outlying communities because of their delivery service and also probably just marketing outreach because they that was built into the program.
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Reporter Hunter Morrison
Although the Food Hub was the smallest portion of her farm sales, Garrity says it helped her reach Kenai Peninsula communities not connected to the road system like Nanwalik. The native village of about 250 people gets most of its food from shipments out of Homer. According to Cook Inlet Keeper's website, over $25,000 worth of food Hub products were distributed to community organizations within the last few years. That includes Nanwalek's Elder Tea Program, a once weekly luncheon for the village's elders. Anthony Brewster is a cook for the Elder Tea Program. He says the Food hub fed about 50 people in his community.
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Legislator (possibly Lyman Hoffman or Chuck Kopp)
From my perspective it was really positive. They there was like vegetables I didn't even know grew in Alaska like the green tomatoes and some other ones and I thought that was really neat. I have had like radishes and turnips before, but it was nice to have them from somewhere else.
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Reporter Hunter Morrison
During the pandemic, brewster says. It was difficult for the community to get fresh produce, he says. The Food Hub stepped in in 2023. Now the program will go back to getting its produce from the grocery store. For food producers like Jubilee Farms, the Food Hub Sunset means one less way to sell its products. Barrett, Cook Inlet Keeper's co executive director, says the region's food network has grown in the last decade. And although the Alaska Food Hub has ended, Barrett says the seeds are still there. She says local organizations and farmers are already talking about the next step in the region's food market. In Kenai, I'm Hunter Morrison, A University.
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Narrator/Anchor
Of Alaska Fairbanks researcher says her research team's recent study shows electric vehicles could benefit rural communities around the state that are off the road system, KUAC's Tim Ellis reports.
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Expert/Researcher (possibly Michelle Wilber)
Michelle Wilber is the lead author of the study. She's a research engineer for UAF's Alaska center for Energy and Power. And she concedes that the study's premise contradicts a commonly held notion that Electric vehicles, or EVs, don't do well well during winter in Alaska.
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Researcher Michelle Wilber
We all know that electric vehicles have lower range and use more energy in the winter. So we started out with the question, is this a good idea?
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Expert/Researcher (possibly Michelle Wilber)
EVs use a lot of energy stored in their battery to keep it and the passenger compartment warm during cold winter days. That limits the distance that an EV can travel under those conditions, much more than a gasoline or diesel powered vehicle. That's probably why the researchers got some skeptical feedback about the study, including some from residents of the three communities where it was conducted Bethel, Kotzebue and Galena.
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Researcher Michelle Wilber
We got some fun Facebook posts about people who are very much worried that it's not a good idea.
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Expert/Researcher (possibly Michelle Wilber)
But Wilbur says the data they collected led researchers to conclude that EVs are actually better suited than gasoline or diesel powered vehicles for certain uses in the communities.
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Researcher Michelle Wilber
So we have held a number of community meetings, collected a bunch of data, done a bunch of analysis, and we found out that in most cases that we modeled, it often is a good.
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Expert/Researcher (possibly Michelle Wilber)
Idea, the research showed. That's largely because operating gasoline or diesel powered vehicles in cold weather can be costly, especially for those who leave the engine running for a while in the morning to warm it up or at other times of the day when running errands. And fuel is expensive in rural communities. Diesel costs about $8 a gallon in Kotzebue, about $9 in Galena.
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Researcher Michelle Wilber
Non electric cars are using a lot more energy than we thought, it seems, in daily operation idling to keep them warm. When you keep your car running at the grocery store while you run in and back out because you don't want it to cool down.
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Expert/Researcher (possibly Michelle Wilber)
The researchers also factored in the cost of plugging in vehicles so their block heater will keep the engine warm enough to start more easily. The communities all have their own power plants, and the diesel that fuels those generators also is expensive. And so is the cost of power.
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Researcher Michelle Wilber
Plugging the car in overnight into a block heater, especially if you don't have any timer on that or you're not kind of watching how long it's plugged in for. Those are using a lot of energy too.
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Expert/Researcher (possibly Michelle Wilber)
Wilbur says their analysis accounted for other factors, like the ways people use their vehicles. They found that EVs are less expensive to operate than gasoline or diesel powered vehicles for longer duration uses, like for taxis or deliveries, because the vehicle is on and its battery stays warm.
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Researcher Michelle Wilber
There are a number of factors that we found can make that a switch to electric even more clearly beneficial. One is longer driving times because there is energy used to keep the battery of an EV warm even when it's not being driven.
- [22:33]
Expert/Researcher (possibly Michelle Wilber)
Similarly, the researchers found that EVs work well for people who commute long distances, but that's not common in rural communities. So Wilbur says the study affirms that not every rural resident would benefit by having an ev. That may be why there's only a few of those in the communities they studied, but she says the paper shows that some potentially would benefit.
- [22:55]
Researcher Michelle Wilber
It often is a good idea. It often does save people money.
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Expert/Researcher (possibly Michelle Wilber)
The National Science foundation funded study, compiled by Wilbur and her team, was published last month in the World Electric Vehicle Journal in Delta Junction. I'm Tim Ellis.
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Narrator/Anchor
Last weekend's T Dog Sled dog race brought 39 mushers from across the country to Fairbanks. And as KOM's Wally Rana tells us, mushers say the race's inclusive spirit sets it apart from other events.
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Reporter Wally Rana
Sarah Richards is no stranger to dog mushing. She founded her kennel, Deja Vu sled dogs in 2017 and has competed in sled dog races before. But this year she decided to take on her longest race yet, the T dog 200. Beyond the challenge of a longer race, she says she chose the T dog for its unique vibe.
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Musher (Sarah Richards or Jessica Lemaire)
It kind of encompasses the spirit of mushing and brings back some of that, some of those components that maybe get lost in more competitive races.
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Reporter Wally Rana
A highlight for Richards was interacting with mushers along the trail, mushers she had known through social media but hadn't met.
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Musher (Sarah Richards or Jessica Lemaire)
In person, being able to talk with other mushers and get to know them a little bit more. You know, people that maybe I've been Facebook friends with for years or whatever but haven't ever met. That was really great.
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Reporter Wally Rana
Joining Richards on the trail was Jessica Lemaire, who moved to Nome five years ago and runs Comstock Kennel with her husband. She says she got lost about 70 miles into the race near Old Minto.
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Musher (Sarah Richards or Jessica Lemaire)
Seems funny because Old Minto's not very big, but despite that, I think somehow that is still kind of one of my favorite moments.
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Reporter Wally Rana
Lemaire says the unexpected adventure added tens of miles to her race, prompting her to scratch at the Nana checkpoint.
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Musher (Sarah Richards or Jessica Lemaire)
Dog care is the most important thing, and my dogs being happy and having a good time and having fun is the most important thing to me.
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Reporter Wally Rana
Richard's race had an unexpected twist, too. She says she picked up a knee injury just before crossing the Fairbanks finish line.
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Musher (Sarah Richards or Jessica Lemaire)
Tipped my sled a little bit, put a leg out and my knee just popped. I had to. I wasn't able to stand up. Basically my knee was collapsing on me.
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Reporter Wally Rana
The diagnosis? A full ACL tear. Despite the accident, she says she was proud to receive an award for taking exceptional care of her team.
- [25:08]
Musher (Sarah Richards or Jessica Lemaire)
Winning the Vet Choice award is the biggest honor that I could possibly ask for, even far above, like actually winning a race or anything like that.
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Reporter Wally Rana
Noem's Kami Cab Worland also joined in on the race. She wears two hats. She's an optometrist and a dog musher.
- [25:24]
Legislator (possibly Lyman Hoffman or Chuck Kopp)
It's a lot. It's a lot to work, you know.
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Casey Grove
At least eight hours a day or.
- [25:27]
Legislator (possibly Lyman Hoffman or Chuck Kopp)
Traveling to the villages and then also training for this race was a challenge. In a normal year, just getting the hours in would be tough enough.
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Reporter Wally Rana
Like her fellow residents of Nome, she said she enjoyed the friendly interactions on the trail.
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Legislator (possibly Lyman Hoffman or Chuck Kopp)
It was also a lot of fun spending time in the checkpoints, just kind of hanging out with everybody to talk to them, talk about our dogs. Things mushers usually do.
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Reporter Wally Rana
The T dog had its first official event in 2024. It was created by Trailbreaker Kennel's Tecla Butcher Munson. She's the daughter of four time Iditarod champion Susan Butcher and uconquest champion Dave Munson. For KN and no, I'm Wally Rana.
- [26:05]
Narrator/Anchor
And that's all for this edition of Alaska News Nightly. We had reports tonight from Liz Ruskin in Anchorage, Eric Stone in Juneau, Ben Townsend and Wally Rana in Nomency, Evan Erickson in Bethel, Ashlyn o' Hara and Hunter Morrison in Kenai, and Tim Ellis in Delta Junction. If you want to send us a news tip, question or comment, email us@newsalaskapublic.org Our audio engineer is Chris Hyde. Tim Rockey is our producer. And I'm Casey Grove. Good night. This is statewide news on Alaska Public Media.