Tuesday, April 28, 2026
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MRAK Almanac: Testify, eat pie, drink coffee edition

SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR
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The MRAK Almanac is your place for political, cultural, and civic events, events where you’ll meet political leaders or, if you are interested in getting to know your state, these are great places to meet conservative- and moderate-leaning Alaskans.

Alaska Fact Book:

Question: How much land in Alaska is owned by the state, the federal government, Native corporations, and private citizens?

Answer: While most Alaskans could tell you that Alaska is by far the largest state in the U.S., few know how much of our roughly 370 million acres of prime real estate is owned by those three aforementioned parties.

The State of Alaska owns about 28% of the total land area, and still has not received all of the land it was promised after statehood. The Trump administration granted the state an additional 1.3 million acres earlier this summer.

The federal government owns around 60% of land in Alaska today. Note that the federal government owns around twice the land owned by the state.

Native corporations own about 12% of Alaska land under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971.

Less than 1% of Alaska’s land is in private hands.

 7/17: House Finance Committee hearing at Fairbanks Legislative Information Office. Public testimony will run from 2 pm to 7 pm. Come share your thoughts about the committee’s recent proposal to reverse all of the Governor’s vetoes and pay a $929 PFD. Read more here.

7/17: Golden Days Old Tyme Games at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks. Registration begins at 5:30 pm and the event is set to start at 6 pm. There will be a pie-eating contest, a water bucket brigade, and so much more. Open to all ages, learn more here.

7/17: Want to support APD? Attend the Coffee with a Cop event at Town Square Park beginning at 10:30 am, free Kaladi Brothers Coffee will be provided. This is a great opportunity to say thank you and to get to know your local law enforcement. Learn more here.

7/17: The Anchorage Assembly’s committee on homelessness will meet for a regular meeting at 11 am. The committee will discuss a proposed ordinance addressing homeless shelter overflow as well as discuss wildfire dangers. Read the agenda here.

7/17: Joint luncheon of the Kenai and Soldotna chambers. Registration is required. They will be joined at lunch by Alaska Chamber CEO Kati Capozii. More details here.

7/17: The Alaska Department of Fish and Game will hold an Alaska Hunting Regulations 2019-2020 “breakdown” and information session in Anchorage at 6 pm. Registration is required and the event is free, most of the seats are still open. Register and learn more here.

7/17: Special meeting of the Ketchikan City Council at 7 pm. The council will hear a report on the city’s 2019 Compensation Study. Read more here.

7/17: Music in the Park at Peratrovich Park in Anchorage. Free to attend, begins at noon. Enjoy live music and local food options—fun for the whole family.

7/17: New member networking lunch hosted by the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce at 11:30 am. Learn how to get the most out of your Anchorage chamber membership. Facebook link here.

7/17: Drag Test & Tune Night at the Alaska Raceway Park in Palmer. Gates open at 4 pm with cars on the track by 6 pm. Free to children 10 and under, and $10 for adults. Read more at this link.

7/17: Regular meeting of the Mat-Su Farm Bureau at 6 pm. There will be a meet and greet with the Mat-Su Experimental Farm director as well as discussion of events for the coming months. More information here.

7/17: Discover Alaska lecture at the UAF Murie Auditorium, starting at 7 pm. Two NPS officials will speak about landslides and science education in Denali National Park.

7/17: Wasilla Farmers Market at Iditapark starting at 10 am. Come support a local farmer and keep agriculture alive in the Mat-Su Valley.

7/18: Mat-Su Telephone Association streaming entertainment showcase in Palmer. Registration required. Read more here.

7/18: Alaska State Bond Reimbursement and Grant Review Committee meeting via teleconference at 2 pm. Further details and call-in information here.

7/18: Regular meeting of the Haines Borough Assembly, set to gavel in at 6:30 pm. The agenda for tomorrow includes consideration of a new 3% sales tax on alcohol and marijuana products in the Haines Borough. There will be time for public testimony. Read the agenda here.

7/18: Muffins with FNSB Mayor Bryce Ward, starting at 10 am. This event is free, and no registration is required. A great opportunity to share your concerns and opinions with Mayor Ward. Facebook link here.

7/18: DYNO Shootout and Bike Night at House of Harley-Davidson in Anchorage, beginning at 5 pm. Cost is $20 to enter your bike into the shootout competition, and first prize winners will be handsomely rewarded. Read more at this link.

7/18: Last Frontier Motorcycle Ride at 6 pm. This weekly event will be recurring all summer long. Interested riders meet behind Serrano’s Mexican Grill on Northern Lights Blvd. Open to all.

7/18: Alaska Veterans Affairs community town hall in Fairbanks. All veterans and their families are invited to share their concerns and experiences with Alaska VA officials. Begins at 5 pm, visit this link for more details.

7/18: Regular meeting of the Craig City Council beginning at 7 pm. There will be an opportunity for public comment as well as consideration of the FY19 supplemental budget. Find the full agenda here.

7/17-7/20: The World Eskimo Indian Olympics (WEIO) will take place at the Carlson Center in Fairbanks. Dating back to 1961, this annual event features many traditional Native games such as the seal hop, the ear pull, and the one-foot high kick. Read more here.

Alaska History Archive:

July 17, 1897—122 years ago: A steamship named Portland arrived in Seattle’s port just after dawn. Aboard were around 70 miners and over a ton of gold mined from tributaries of the Yukon River in Canada’s Klondike region. Word quickly spread around the country and the world—the Klondike Gold Rush had officially begun.

July 19, 1873—146 years ago: Ernest Collins, the oldest delegate to the Alaska Constitutional Convention, was born in Indiana. When the convention began in Fairbanks in 1955, Collins was 82. Having moved to Alaska in 1904, he had also lived in Alaska longer than nearly all other delegates, second only to Frank Peratrovich who was born in Klawock in 1895. Collins was also elected as the speaker of the 1st Territorial House starting in 1913.

Education funds will flow while lawsuit proceeds

Suzanne Downing
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Education funds will flow while lawsuit proceeds

Attorney General Kevin Clarkson entered into a legal agreement with the Alaska Legislature on Tuesday to ensure funds for public education will be disbursed even while a lawsuit over the 2018 “forward appropriation” of fiscal year 2020 funding proceeds.

The agreement was filed today with the court, the Department of Law wrote. It occurred after a planned non-payment of general funds to schools, which triggered a lawsuit by the Legislature.

The lawsuit was expected, and both the Legislature and governor are prepared to defend their interpretations of the law and the constitutional underpinnings in what both sides hope is an expedited process.

The governor says that the funding mechanism developed last year under Gov. Bill Walker provided funding for the next fiscal year, without having the money to appropriate.

“We have a clear constitutional disagreement between the executive and legislative branches,” said Attorney General Clarkson. “But that should not impact our schools. Both the governor and the legislature agree funding should continue, even if we disagree on whether there is a valid appropriation to fund schools. The stipulation ensures that funding continues while the courts review the legal arguments.”

The issue being addressed in court is whether the Legislature can commit future revenues that are not on hand in the State Treasury. This is how the Legislature has said it was “forward funding” education this fiscal year.

Attorney General Clarkson issued a formal opinion on May 8, when he said that the appropriation is unconstitutional and a new appropriation is needed.

The Legislature disagreed and decided not to pass a new appropriation, which left education without a constitutional source of funding, according to the Dunleavy Administration.

A day in Wasilla for House Finance

Suzanne Downing
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A day in Wasilla for House Finance

The testimony before the House Finance Committee meeting in Wasilla on Tuesday showed the stark differences in how Alaskans view the role of the Permanent Fund dividend and the Rule of Law.

In Wasilla, the heart of conservative values, dozens of working class and retired Alaskans showed up at the Legislative Information Office to give their testimony about why the Legislature should follow the Rule of Law when it comes to the Permanent Fund dividend.

They came on walkers, in knee braces, with oxygen tanks, and on canes. They spoke about how Alaska Statute addresses how dividends are to be calculated, and they asked House Finance Committee to follow the law.

There were also Alaskans who testified that they really need the Permanent Fund dividend. They feel like it’s being stolen. One man said he was moving out of the state because he had really needed his dividend to live these past few years, and he can’t afford Alaska any longer. His house is now under contract.

Others showed up, too. They were the professionals. Some educators, some medical professionals in crisp shirts, some grant administrators for nonprofits. They were the people who were seeing their budgets cut, and they testified that the vetoes made by the Dunleavy Administration would do irreparable harm to the state’s economy and send Alaska into a spiral.

These were the two Alaskas in the room, with two different interpretations of laws and constitutional underpinnings.

Gunnar Knapp, retired director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research at University of Alaska, provided a blistering testimony about how the dividend formula is no longer working for Alaska. The formula needs to change to adapt to the growing needs of government. His remarks drew a large applause and from then on, each side applauded its own speakers as if to outdo the other side.

In addition to most House Finance Committee members, Senate President Cathy Giessel and House Speaker Bryce Edgmon made appearances, as did Senate Majority Leader Lyman Hoffman.

But the oddest appearance of all was that of former Walker-Mallott campaign manager John-Henry Heckendorn, who took notes for hours during the event. Who he is working for is a mystery but with campaign season warming up, and lawsuits now being threatened by former Attorney General Jahna Lindemuth, it looks like the Democrats called 1-800-JOHN-HENRY, campaign strategist to the stars.

None of the anarchists who had interrupted legislative meetings last week showed up at the meeting today, and police presence was heavy both inside the building and in the adjacent parking lot.

The House Finance Committee moves on to Fairbanks on Wednesday, where it will hear from a tsunami of university employees and related workers who are outraged at the 17 percent cut to the University of Alaska budget.

Camp Berkowitz grows downtown

Suzanne Downing
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Camp Berkowitz grows downtown

The protesters are still squatting at Delaney Park Strip on Tuesday evening, where they have been for nearly a week.

According to city ordinance, city parks open at 6 am and close at 11 pm. But rules are different for opponents of the state’s budget in Alaska’s largest city. Especially when the mayor gives his nod.

Mayor Ethan Berkowitz has verbalized his approval for this encampment, which is starting to fill with homeless people as well as protesters. The organizers say it’s a drug-free and crime-free community.

While there were 14 tents last week, and 24 on Sunday, the number of park squatters keeps growing, with 30 tents counted on Tuesday. Although the squatters have been given notice to vacate Tuesday night by 11 pm, they say they’re not going anywhere until Gov. Michael Dunleavy restores cuts to the budget.

Justina Beagnyam, who identifies as spokesperson with the Alaska Poor People’s Campaign, is one of the leaders of the occupation.

Beagnyam also took part in the disruption of a meeting of legislators in Wasilla last week, where protesters took over the desks of the legislators and shrieked through the prayer, pledge of allegiance, and legislative announcements.

The group had a handshake agreement with the city to clear out on Sunday night, but has reneged on the agreement and is now settling in for the long haul. Protesters say they won’t leave until more funding for homelessness is included in the State budget.

BLM moving HQ west to Colorado

Suzanne Downing
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Grand Junction, Colorado may be the new home of the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that owns and manages much of the Western United States.

Sen. Cory Gardner made the announcement on Monday, but it has not yet been posted on the BLM website.

Although the site has been chosen by the agency, which is part of the Department of Interior, it still needs to go through an administrative process that involves the transfer of an as-of-yet unannounced number of employees.

The BLM manages one in every 10 acres of land in the U.S., and approximately 30 percent of the nation’s minerals. 

The Grand Junction BLM Field Office manages more than one million acres of public lands.

In Alaska, the agency manages more surface and subsurface acres than in any other state, including 70 million surface acres and 220 million subsurface acres (Federal mineral estate) in a state with a landmass equivalent to about one-fifth of the entire contiguous United States.

The BLM has not yet announced how many jobs will be moving out of Washington, D.C. but more details are expected this week.

Anchorage attorneys sue over Dunleavy’s Wasilla Special Session

Suzanne Downing
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Anchorage attorneys sue over Dunleavy’s Wasilla Special Session

Two attorneys in Anchorage say Gov. Michael Dunleavy was not authorized by the Alaska Constitution to call the Special Session in Wasilla.

They filed a lawsuit in Anchorage Superior Court on Monday. It was assigned to Judge Herman Walker. [Update: Judge Walker has recused himself and it has been assigned to Judge Josie Warton.]

Dunleavy called the Legislature into Special Session starting July 8, and set the location as Wasilla, as allowed by Alaska Statute.

But attorneys Kevin McCoy and Mary Geddes say that because most of the lawmakers didn’t go to Wasilla, the governor’s call is unconstitutional as the Wasilla group does not have a quorum, while the lawmakers who decided to meet in Juneau do have a quorum.

They say the governor has deprived Alaskans of a functioning legislature.

The lawyers, who are a married couple, asked for an expedited hearing. Geddes, a registered Democrat, was a project attorney at Alaska Criminal Justice Commission. McCoy is a retired U.S. magistrate judge and a registered nonpartisan voter.

Their lawsuit appears to rest on the argument that if something is not specifically addressed in the Constitution, then it is unconstitutional.

If the couple wins, then governors in the future will be forced to call Special Sessions in Juneau.

Occupy Anchorage continues as more tents go up downtown

Suzanne Downing
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Occupy Anchorage continues as more tents go up downtown

The bedraggled posse of anarchists who have occupied the Delaney Park Strip in Anchorage to drive home their objection to budget cuts?

They’ve decided to stay.

Sources tell Must Read Alaska that the group has never had a permit to camp on the park area, which is used by families, kite fliers, and soccer teams. They had a handshake deal with the municipality and promised to clear out by 4 pm Sunday.

So much for handshake deals with the radical Left. By 5 pm Monday, more tents were showing up, and going up. The organizers have invited the homeless to move in with them. While there were 14 tents on Saturday, there were 24 tents Monday.

A few weeks ago, the House representative for the downtown district, Zack Fields, penned a letter to Mayor Ethan Berkowitz telling him to clean up the homeless problem because it was causing a dangerous situation in Anchorage.

[Read: Anchorage parks so dangerous even Democrats have had enough]

Fields convinced several legislators to sign his letter, which suggested that the homeless could move to the Chugach National Forest, where there’s plenty of room.

Since then, they’ve moved into the most visible park in Fields’ district, and show no signs of leaving.

Locals who live along the park strip say that noise continues night and day as partying and drumming disrupts the liberal-mellow neighborhood vibe.

The protesters have also been sleeping on the Veterans Memorial, to the irritation of some veterans.

Police are now trying to figure out how to evict the protesters, most of whom have new-looking tents and equipment and who are there under an expensive banner that set them back several hundred dollars.

Meanwhile, this afternoon a lawn bowling league tried to find a place to play alongside the growing tent city, which is now an eyesore, and a political problem for Mayor Ethan Berkowitz.

House Finance adds $444 million in spending, strips Permanent Fund dividend by 2/3

Suzanne Downing
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47
House Finance adds $444 million in spending, strips Permanent Fund dividend by 2/3

The House Finance Committee took House Bill 2001, which was written by the Rules Committee specifically to pay $1,600 Permanent Fund dividends to Alaskans…

"An Act making a special appropriation from the earnings reserve                                                           
     account for the payment of permanent fund dividends; and                                                                   
     providing for an effective date."

…and the committee hoisted a substitute amendment that stuffed $444 million in spending into it, every cent of spending that Gov. Michael Dunleavy had vetoed out of the operating budget for the fiscal year that began July 1.

[Read the House Finance substitute that reverses the vetoes]

The dividend amount remaining would be about $929 per eligible Alaskan.

All in a day’s work.

A problem exists for the House and Senate Majorities, both of which are operating as bipartisan coalitions: Even the Legislature’s own attorney is hinting that the stuffing of the unrelated spending into the Permanent Fund appropriation is “outside the call” of the Special Session.

Because the session was called by the governor, he sets the agenda, just as he sets the location.

If the Legislature wants to restore those cuts, they need to call themselves into Special Session. They don’t have the votes to do that.

But the stuffing of the spending today served a purpose. Should it ever get to the floor of the House, and should the Juneau Special Session be deemed legal by the courts, such a spending spree only requires a simple majority vote, rather than the three-quarters vote needed to access the Constitutional Budget Reserve. The majorities have that vote, it appears.

Perhaps that is why the Board of Regents of the University of Alaska system took no action today to start the reorganization of the universities. They are hoping for one last miracle to restore higher education’s $130 million veto.

The governor would likely veto this spending a second time, and the Legislature still doesn’t have the votes to override his vetoes. He might even veto the $929 or $1,600 Permanent Fund dividend and send lawmakers back to the drawing board.

Today’s action was a clear message that spending comes first for the House and Senate Majority, and anything else left over will be used to pay Permanent Fund dividends.

That wasn’t the intent of Senate Bill 26 last year, when the Legislature agreed on a structured draw of the Earnings Reserve Account to pay for state operations. Nor was it the intent of those who created the Permanent Fund dividend program.

Critics of SB 26 predicted that this would be the result of an incomplete SB 26, however. The Legislature could not agree on how to restructure the formula for paying dividends, and punted the problem to this year.

In a Journal of Commerce article by Elwood Brehmer in May, 2018, Sen. Bill Wielechowski warned that “leaving the existing formula in place … means the Legislature will continue to bypass the PFD in law in favor of providing more cash to government agencies.”

“One statute will inevitably be violated and my prediction is it will probably be that statute that provides for a full dividend,” Wielechowski told the Journal. “In fact, that’s what’s happening this year, in this budget [2019 fiscal year]. That’s what’s happened the last two years.”

Also in the report by Brehmer, Rep. David Eastman, R-Wasilla, argued that SB 26 reversed the Legislature’s historic priorities by putting government funding ahead of the dividend and ahead of inflation-proofing the fund. Both Wielechowski and Eastman were prescient, as the first year after SB 26 was passed into law, the Legislature is still arguing over the Permanent Fund Dividend well into the second Special Session.

[Read: Legislature approves draw from Permanent Fund]

The Legislature first gaveled into session on Jan. 15, some 181 days ago and has yet to pass the funding of the dividend or a funded capital budget.

By existing statute, which the Legislature could change if it wants, the dividend payout is about $3,000 for every man, woman and child who qualifies.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Art Chance
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Where have all the flowers gone?

By ART CHANCE

If we define “the Left” as the anti-establishment or anti-government factions in America, they’ve been singing songs, carrying signs, and sometimes breaking or blowing up things since the Seneca Falls convention in 1849.

 America has been constantly beset by various “isms.”   In the early days it was simply threat and intimidation followed by violence; police truncheons were met by brass knuckles.   

By the late 19th Century, makeshift bombs were popular on the left.  The occasional assassination was thrown in. Much of it centered on labor strife; sometimes it was company security versus strikers, sometimes police or National Guard v. strikers.   

Usually the company or the government won because they had the guns.   By the late 19th Century, the line between labor and communism/socialism was very blurred.  The conflict between the government/establishment simmered but never subsided during the Spanish-American War and World War I.  It rose to a boil in the 1920s and in the early days of the Great Depression.  John Dos Passos’ works give a good view of the times.

To move to a Marxist vocabulary, FDR achieved an Historic Compromise with The New Deal.  Most of the New Deal was essentially Marxist and served to placate the Left to some degree; enough to keep them sullen but not mutinous. I could write a couple thousand words on the communist Left and WWII, but I have word limits.   

Suffice it to say that the Left largely made common cause with the US during the Great Patriotic War until the defeat of Germany. After that there is a good argument that the Hiroshima bomb was dropped on Tokyo and the Nagasaki bomb was dropped on Moscow. We don’t want to think about what would have happened had the US not been able to end WWII quickly.

This is turning into too much of a History class, so let’s rush through the Fifties and Sixties.  The U.S. got really tired of Soviet interference in the U.S. government and its institutions and ran them to ground.

The communists of the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties became the liberals of the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties. Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh and others so damaged the liberal brand that by the ‘00s they decided to return to their old brand: Progressives.  They thought they had damaged US education enough that nobody would remember that Progressive was just a term for a communist whose position wouldn’t allow them to be a party member.

The Civil Rights movement and the anti-war movement built modern leftism. Those of you old enough to have had any history in school remember the notions of the Old Left and the New Left.

 The Old Left was the left of Stalin and the Comintern. The New Left was the world of the Trotskyites and ultimately Saul Alinsky.  The Old Left believed in statism, in bureaucratic communism; that was the Soviet model.  The New Left, the Trotskyites believed in the continuous revolution; there’s a reason Stalin had an ice axe put in Trotsky’s head.

Most of the U.S. Left adopted the Trotsky view and its primary apostle Saul Alinsky.  I was still in the throes of a college education, so I read “Rules for Radicals” when it first came out in 1971.  Ten or fifteen semesters of Life 101 got me over most of that and I consigned Alinsky to the dustbin of history.

I became reacquainted with Trotsky in the late 1980s when the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees – AFL-CIO came to Alaska.  

 I dealt with our supervisors being mau-maued, our buildings being occupied and picketed.  We dealt with it pretty well here in Alaska even with a Democrat Administration. I watched the attack on Scott Walker in Wisconsin as they mobbed the Wisconsin capitol. 

Sane people believe public facilities are public. The problem is that the “public” shouldn’t include violent criminals.

So, here’s the problem for sane people: Should you give them their Saul Alinsky moment?  People I like and trust are saying that the legislators out it Wasilla should have had the protestors hauled out in handcuffs. Why would you give them that opportunity?

Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon. 

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