Gov.-elect Mike Dunleavy announced Tamika Ledbetter as his Labor and Workforce Development commissioner.
Ledbetter is an equal opportunity coordinator for the department. She works in the Eagle River and Wasilla offices of Labor.
The announcement was made at the convention of the Alaska Farm Bureau, a nonprofit devoted to increasing the successes of Alaska’s farms. About 40 farmers from around the state were in attendance during the group’s annual banquet in Anchorage.
Ledbetter was named a Top 40 Under 40 by the Alaska Journal of Commerce in 2014. She has a bachelor’s degree in history and political science from Virginia Union University and a master’s degree in adult education and training. She also has her PhD in organizational leadership from the University of Phoenix.
She has been active in housing and homelessness coalitions, women’s ministries, and small business development.
In her current role in DoL, she oversees and coordinates three job center locations, and as many as 30 staff that provide workforce development and services to job seekers, veterans and employers. She began with the department in 2009 as a career development specialist.
Political appointments are, by nature, temporary job holders.
Those hundreds of people appointed by Gov. Bill Walker when he took over in 2014 have now received their letters requesting their resignation. Most of them will go.
The letter requesting their resignation was signed by both the outgoing Chief of Staff Scott Kendall and the incoming Chief of Staff Tuckerman Babcock, and it went out to as many as 300 people who serve at the pleasure of the governor.
Those recipients would include everyone from commissioners to deputy commissioners and legislative liaisons for each department. They’d also include most division directors and other special assistants, as well as those working in state-owned enterprises, such as Alaska Energy Authority, Alaska Gasline Development Agency, and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.
The executive director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute has already resigned earlier this month.
It’s unknown whether the attorneys in the Department of Law are considered in the “exempt” category. They generally enjoy no protections of a union, and therefore would be considered partially exempt, employed at the pleasure of the governor.
The governor-elect has indicated that people who want to continue working for his administration need to apply, like everyone else, through his transition team.
A certain number of people were not asked to resign, Must Read Alaska has learned. But that’s a limited and closely guarded list.
In the final days of an administration, the janitorial crew comes through the offices of those exempt employees who are leaving and go through it thorough to clean it and make sure the next administration walks into a space that they can operate out of.
Gov.-elect Mike Dunleavy’s transition team announced the following schedule of inaugural celebrations.
Sun., Dec. 2, Kotzebue: Pre-inaugural events
Mon., Dec. 3, Noorvik: Swearing-in
Tues., Dec. 4, 6-8:30 p.m., Wasilla: Menard Sports Center
Thurs., Dec. 6, 5-7 p.m., Kenai Peninsula: Soldotna Sports Center
Sat., Dec. 8, 6-8 p.m., Anchorage: Anchorage Christian School
Tues., Dec. 11, 3-6 p.m., Juneau: Governor’s Residence Open House and Inaugural Celebration
Sun., Dec. 16, 4-6 p.m., Fairbanks: Carlson Center
February TBD, Anchorage
Inaugural celebration co-chairs Cynthia Henry and Rina Salazar are working on details, but Alaskans can expect a combination of traditional, formal events, and less formal, family-centered ones.
“Mike Dunleavy is more Carhartt than tuxedo,” said co-chair Cynthia Henry. “These community celebrations will reflect that unique feature of our governor-elect.”
The staid facade to which 67-year-old, millionaire publisher Alice Rogoff has clung through more than a year of off-and-on court appearances in the wake of her bankrupting Alaska’s largest news organization finally cracked on Thursday.
Some tears appeared in her eyes amid questions about the tight bonds that once bound her to Hopfinger and then-wife Amanda Coyne, the founders of the Alaska Dispatch. Rogoff described Coyne as the “guru” of the long gone, online news start-up, and Hopfinger as the cement that held the business together.
Alice Rogoff
Over the course of a few short years from the end of the 2000s into the 2010s, Rogoff invested enough money, and Hopfinger, Coyne and a small group of reporters invested enough sweat energy in the Dispatch to build it from nothing to a respected and steadily growing news organization. The Columbia Journalism Review labeled the Dispatch a “regional reporting powerhouse” in 2010.
The Dispatch was as much a family as a news organization in those days, and though Rogoff only flitted in and out while others labored 60 to 80 hours per week, she was emotionally attached. She was the visiting grandma to a bunch of young reporters being schooled by Hopfinger, Coyne and a cranky old uncle, who worked in a rundown office in an airport hangar with a cupboard always stuffed with snacks and wine, and a refrigerator guaranteed to contain the makings for a late-night sandwich and, of course, a beer.
Rogoff knew how to take care of her people in those days, and though the pay wasn’t that great and the offices were a little grungy, the Dispatch had a lot of the fabled elements of internet start-ups everywhere: free food and a free bar, freedom to innovate, and esprit de corps.
More than once in those days, Rogoff testified, she told people she, Hopfinger and Coyne were in a “three-way marriage. I used to say that all the time publicly. We just all understood each other.”
“In my mind,” she said,”we would be making money.”
The marriage started to come apart after Coyne fell out of love with Hopfinger and in love with a powerful Alaska lobbyist in 2012. That caused all sort of problems. Hopfinger and some others on the Dispatch staff didn’t think it was a good idea for Coyne to be covering politics while in a romance with someone who tended to end up with his fingers in every big political deal in the state.
“(Hopfinger) thought that a little more than I did,” Rogoff admitted. “He thought he couldn’t trust her reporting.”
The cliffhanger election in District 1 Fairbanks continues today, as absentees were counted.
What’s being decided today is the seat that Rep. Scott Kawasaki is vacating as he heads into the Senate. Kawasaki picked up more votes today to increase his lead on Sen. Pete Kelly.
Also, Republican Bart Lebon got 131 absentee votes and Kathryn Dodge got 116, meaning that LeBon seesawed ahead of Dodge by what appears to be 5 votes. More absentees from overseas could come in, and this race will likely head to a recount.
The race tightened on Tuesday when early votes and questioned ballots were counted, and Dodge had pulled ahead of LeBon by 10 votes.
Overseas ballots are due in no later than Nov. 21. There are 17 of those, and no recount can be done until they are accounted for.
Meanwhile, the Senate Seat A race has been all-but-decided for Scott Kawasaki, who was celebrating at the Fairbanks Division of Elections office and on the phone with supporters.
Kawasaki picked up 77 votes in the House District 2 area of Senate Seat A, and Kelly picked up 90, but in the HD 1 area, it went for Kawasaki over Kelly, 137-114.
In the House District 2 race, Rep. Steve Thompson already had a significant lead and picked up even more today, 103-63 over Democrat Van Lawrence.
The former owner of the bankrupt and gone Alaska Dispatch News/ADN.com took the stand in Anchorage Superior Court on Wednesday to testify under oath that the former editor of the 49th state’s by far largest news organization lied about a note promising him $1 million.
Alice Rogoff, the ex-wife of U.S. billionaire tycoon David Rubenstein, said 10 annual payments of $100,000 per year she guaranteed ADN editor Tony Hopfinger in 2014 weren’t for the purchase of his remaining, 5 percent interest in the online-only news organization – AlaskaDispatch.com – he started with ex-wife Amanda Coyne.
Instead, the 67-year-old Rogoff said, the promise was an added “incentive comp” to Hopfinger’s already healthy, new, $190,000 per year salary to encourage him to stay in Alaska for a decade “as president of the company and help me make it work.”
The first witness called by Hopfinger’s attorney in a lawsuit demanding she pay up on a handwritten, signed and dated napkin-promise, Rogoff portrayed the note as nothing more than an effort to buy Hopfinger’s fealty because she needed him to make her newspaper enterprise succeed.
Retreating sea ice notwithstanding, the polar bear population off the western coast of Alaska’s Chukchi Sea appears to be abundant and healthy.
A study by researchers at the University of Washington and federal Fish and Wildlife Agency says about 3,000 polar bears make up the population in the Chukchi. There’s never been a formal study done before the one published Nov. 14 in Scientific Reports.
The authors say that the bears have about one month less time on their sea ice habitats, compared to what they had 25 years ago. And yet the animals are thriving.
Although polar bears were listed in 2008 as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, this study doesn’t support the popular notion that the bears in U.S. habitats are suffering, although other populations of polar bears are struggling due to diminishing sea ice that they use to hunt sea mammals.
Other studies show the Chukchi polar bears are maintaining the same body fat they had 25 years ago; this study shows they have good reproductive rates and cub survival.
At the Resource Development Council conference in Anchorage on Wednesday, Gov.-elect Mike Dunleavy said he is asking Gov. Bill Walker to put a freeze on all new regulations across all departments.
Dunleavy wants his own administration to have a chance to review any regulations before they are promulgated. He takes office on Dec. 3.
In response, the Walker Administration said that it has no plans to implement new regulations that would curtail resource development.
But a review of the regulations in process indicate that there are several regulations being considered that fall under that Dunleavy request. Some of them have to do with marijuana, barbers, or massage therapists.
The state has Medicaid regulations being promulgated that have a fiscal note of $10 million in FY2020.
The Board of Marital and Family Therapy proposes to establish a continuing education course approval fee and continuing education course renewal fee.
The Department of Environmental Conservation has regulations in process dealing with application and contingency plan requirements for non-crude oil tank vessels and barges.
A regulation is proposed to require a licensed marijuana establishment to operate in accordance with “a plan approved by” the Marijuana Control Board.
The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is proposing to increase the minimum bonding amount to more “reflect the costs of abandoning wells by establishing a multi-tiered bonding schedule based on the number of wells an operator has.”
The Alaska State Commission for Human Rights is proposing new regulations to establish categories of service animals and the rules regarding them. The new regulations appear to create a condition where landlords would not be able to prohibit miniature horses or other “service animal” in housing rentals.
In fact, over a dozen proposed regulations are found at the State’s website; they all impact businesses in one fashion or another. Although Dunleavy did not target a specific regulation, he was clear in his remarks:
“This moratorium will allow us to take a closer look at where we are and decide the best course of action moving forward. Our focus will be to reform regulations in a way that frees our citizens and our economy to make progress and grow,” Dunleavy said.
The response from the Walker Administration was noncommittal: According to his spokesperson Austin Baird, Walker “will continue to champion responsible resource development of Alaska’s vast natural resources, from oil and gas to minerals to timber. Because there was never any plan to implement new regulations restricting resource development, the Governor-elect is effectively asking the Walker Administration to continue the work we’ve been doing for the past four years,” Baird wrote in an email.
In other words, Walker will continue to be Walker until noon on Dec. 3, and has no intention of changing course to accommodate the new administration.
The former state director of the Division of Oil and Gas is coming aboard the Dunleavy Administration as the new commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources.
The announcement of the Corri Feige, the first commissioner to be named for the new Dunleavy Administration, was made by incoming Gov. Mike Dunleavy at the annual Resource Development Council convention at the Dena’ina Center on Wednesday. The response from the resource leaders attending the conference from around the state was warm.
Feige, a geophysicist and engineer, left the Walker Administration in October of 2016 after serving for a year and a half. She had been caught between between former DNR commissioner Mark Myers and oil and gas companies BP, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips. On behalf of the Walker Administration, Myers had asked the oil companies to provide details about their ability and interest in selling gas to the Alaska LNG project. Some of those details were construed by the companies to involve trade secrets, because they were using gas injections to force more oil out of the ground. She left to pursue other opportunities.
Feige had also been the general manager for Linc Energy until 2014.
She now runs Castle Mountain Group, a consultancy for oil, gas, mining, and energy projects in Alaska. She has a degree from the Montana School of Mines College of Engineering.
