In a video posted on social media on Tuesday, Gov. Mike Dunleavy made an overture to federal workers who may have been laid off by the Trump Administration, as the president seeks to downsize the federal government. There are state jobs to apply for, Dunleavy said: “Don’t lose heart.”
Dunleavy acknowledged there are hardworking people in the federal government who may now be looking for work, and he encouraged them to visit https://doa.alaska.gov/dop/ “to explore job openings, training programs, and support services to help navigate this transition.”
There are hundreds of vacant state jobs, including a 25% vacancy rate at the Alaska Marine Highway system.
Roll tape:
I know many federal workers here in Alaska are facing uncertainty right now. These are hardworking people and I want to acknowledge the challenges they’re going through. If you or someone you know is looking for new opportunities, resources are available. Visit… pic.twitter.com/Dpik7Ksljs
At the end of a Senate majority press conference today, Sen. Cathy Giessel of south Anchorage answered a reporter’s question about her call for a new tax.
Must Read Alaska was the first to report that Giessel had stated in her constituent newsletter that an income tax on Alaskans is unavoidable.
“I’ve lived here since before statehood,” Giessel said on Tuesday. “We’ve lived since 1982 with a cash handout from the state of Alaska. And I think it’s pretty obvious that the time for that is ending.”
Then she blamed President Donald Trump.
“President Trump wants to lower the cost of fuel, lower the cost of oil. That’s what we’ve been depending on. But now, nearly 50% of our income is coming from the federal government. Somehow we’re going to have to make some corrections here,” she said.
“So what I’m basically hoping to prepare people for is the fact that the gravy train is over,” she continued. “And we’re going to have to make some serious decisions. We’ve got some revenue suggestions on the table. We’re going to get a huge amount of pushback on that. I know who will say ‘wait, you’re going to reduce the production of oil, you’re going to cost these companies more.’ These are very big national or international companies. We’re a small state. No other regime has given away cash credits before as we did in Cook Inlet, right? And to some degree that we still do on the North Slope. So I think citizens need to have a very serious look at this concept of receiving a dividend every year.”
She said she gets a lot of emails from people that say they want the Legislature to increasing funding for education with half of their Permanent Fund dividends.
“That’s what that dividend money should be used for,” she said. “We all benefit from a solid education so that people don’t end up in corrections, needing more police officers, or committing suicide.”
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s education bill proposes several major changes to the state’s education system, including expanding school choice, regulating mobile device use, offering reading proficiency grants, reforming charter school approvals, adjusting school funding formulas, and providing teacher retention bonuses.
Education Commissioner Deena Bishop briefed the Senate Education Committee on the bill on Feb. 24.
Key highlights of the bill include:
School Choice Expansion – Allows students to attend schools outside their district with specific conditions. Establishes regulations for school capacity, enrollment applications, and appeals.
Mobile Device Restrictions – Schools must adopt policies limiting student use of personal mobile devices, with exceptions for emergencies, educational purposes, or health needs.
Reading Proficiency Grants – Schools receive $450 per student (K-6) demonstrating grade-level proficiency or improvement in reading.
Charter Schools – Creates a streamlined application process, allowing charter school proposals to be submitted directly to the state board instead of local school boards.
Student Transportation Funding – Increases per-student transportation grants by 20% and adjusts for inflation.
School Construction Debt Moratorium – Extends a freeze on new school bond debt reimbursement until 2030.
Vocational & Technical Education – Adjusts funding formulas to increase support for technical education and require reporting on program expenditures.
Teacher Retention Bonuses – Introduces a temporary three-year program offering lump sum payments ($5,000–$15,000) to eligible full-time teachers as an incentive for retention.
Legislative Report Requirement – Directs the legislature to evaluate the education system and recommend changes, including new accountability metrics beyond standardized testing.
Overall, the bill seeks to increase school choice, improve literacy, support vocational education, and address teacher retention while maintaining a temporary moratorium on school construction debt reimbursement.
Alaska State Sen. Loki Tobin’s newsletter for her constituents is published with tax dollars. But the Democrat from the urban core of Anchorage (Seat I) uses that newsletter to illegally link to messages where she implores Alaskans to register as Democrats and run for office as Democrats because their party is the better party.
Tobin’s newsletter suggests following her on BlueSky, a new-ish social media site used almost exclusively by Democrats. Here’s what she says:
Senator Tobin’s newsletter directs people to her BlueSky account.
When you click from her official government-funded newsletter to her BlueSky page, she is found to be responding to a message from New York Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Tobin asks people to run for office as a Democrat. That’s a campaign activity, specifically prohibited by the Alaska Legislature’s own ethics rules.
Loki Tobin’s BlueSky account is partisan communications.
That partisan election message is mixed in with state business, such as an announcement about a public comment opportunity and a survey she is conducting — as a sitting senator:
The Legislature’s own rules state that lawmakers may not use a social media account for legislative matters unless they administrate it as an official legislative account.
To mitigate the risk that a personal account would be interpreted as an official account, the rules state:
Do not make the personal account available to the public; keep your account private.
Do not designate the personal account as an official or public legislative page.
Do not make the personal account resemble an official account, or one related to your legislative office by adding images or graphics, such as the State seal.
Do not include links to legislative email accounts or legislative or caucus websites.
Do not announce or solicit feedback about legislative matters. Legislative matters may include announcing a bill’s passage, noticing a constituent or legislative meeting time and place, and/or discussing sponsored legislation or caucus priorities, for example.
Do not allow a legislative employee to manage the personal account.
Do not use links to your personal social media in any official legislative communications, including newsletters or a legislative email signature block. If a legislator maintains a personal account, follows the mitigation strategies listed above, and uses it for purely personal reasons, blocking a person, or imposing any other access restriction is highly unlikely to result in a successful First Amendment challenge.
Tobin is using her social media accounts for both election and campaign information and legislative information and is clearly in violation of the legislative rules. But there will be no consequence, because the rules do not appear to apply to Democrats in the Alaska Legislature.
The Alaska’s Senate Finance Committee has proposed amending an existing law that the Legislature hasn’t followed in years for determining the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend.
In 2018-2019, the Legislature adopted by statute a mechanism called the “percent of market value,” in which the Permanent Fund earnings are used not just to pay dividends, but to also contribute to state government under a split set by formula.
But that calculation, called POMV for short, conflicts with a prior law that gave Alaskans 50% of the oil wealth in the way of dividends. The two laws have been in conflict, and the matter was never resolved.
The dividend is calculated by taking the average net income of the Permanent Fund over the past five years, applying the most recent statutory percentage to that amount, then dividing it by the number of eligible applicants in the state. The exact formula also includes things like past year obligations and the expenses of running the program.
Senate Bill 109, proposed by Sen. Lyman Hoffman of Bethel, gives Alaskans 25% rather than the 50% of the earlier statute, which hasn’t been followed since Gov. Bill Walker vetoed half of the dividend in 2015.
The new bill modifies the management and distribution of the Alaska Permanent Fund, including changes to how income is calculated, appropriated, and used for dividend payments.
Key provisions include:
Fund Income Calculation: The bill updates the method for determining the Permanent Fund’s net income, basing it on generally accepted accounting principles while excluding unrealized gains and losses.
Appropriation Limits: The annual amount available for appropriation is set at 5% of the fund’s average market value over the past five years, ensuring withdrawals do not exceed available reserves.
Dividend Formula Adjustment: The allocation to the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) is reduced from 50% to 25% of the income available for appropriation.
Inflation Protection: The legislature may appropriate funds from the earnings reserve account to offset inflation’s impact on the fund’s principal.
Amerada Hess Settlement Funds: Income from the settlement remains in the fund but cannot be appropriated for general use, dividends, or inflation-proofing, instead going to the Alaska Capital Income Fund.
Mental Health Trust Fund Exclusion: Earnings from this trust fund are not included in the Permanent Fund’s available income calculations.
Repealed Provisions: Sections AS 37.13.145(e) and (f), which contained previous rules on fund transfers and allocations, are repealed.
Although the Legislature has been taking 75% for government, this year the Democrat-led majorities in the House and Senate want to add hundreds of millions of dollars in spending for education and pensions.
Even with 75% going to the state, there isn’t enough left. The current delta between spending demands and available revenues is estimated to be $500 million or more, according to the Legislative Finance Division.
The Yundt Tax may allay some of that deficit. Sen. Rob Yundt has proposed taxing Hilcorp, the company that manages the fields on the North Slope.
The Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend program began in 1983, when the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation started distributing a portion of the fund’s earnings to Alaska residents. The PFD is paid out annually to all qualifying Alaska residents.
The Anchorage Assembly is set on Tuesday night to approve another grant to the Alaska Black Caucus.
This one is a $65,000 grant agreement with the Alaska Black Caucus for renovations at the new Equity Center. This funding, included in the 2025 municipal operating budget, aims to enhance the facility’s commercial kitchen and other infrastructure to support culinary training, small business development, and community gatherings. All of this is intended to compete with other existing businesses in Anchorage.
According to Mayor Suzanne LaFrance’s office, the grant is intended to strengthen the capacity of the Equity Center to provide resources for aspiring culinary professionals and local entrepreneurs. The renovations will create a functional space for training programs, meetings, and food industry initiatives that contribute to the city’s economic and social development.
The Equity Center is part a building that the Assembly bought for the Alaska Black Caucus with taxpayer dollars. The work was supposed to be done last year and the grand opening was to be in the summer. But it was delayed, and so a rough ribbon cutting was performed in the November in the unfinished space, in order to meet grant requirements. But the Equity Center was not finished.
“The event marked the completion of the final phase of renovations for the center,” the Alaska Black Caucus said at the time.
The new funding proposal has drawn attention due to the history of municipal and federal grants awarded to the Alaska Black Caucus in recent years.
Since 2021, the organization has received over $1.3 million in noncompetitive grants from the Anchorage Assembly, in addition to other competitive funding sources, all taxpayer money. These grants have been used for various projects, including purchasing the building that now houses the Equity Center.
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that states no federal money can be spent on programs that promote one race or gender identity over another. But the City of Anchorage is evidently ignoring the order.
Critics have concerns about the continued allocation of taxpayer funds to the organization without competitive bidding. Additionally, questions have surfaced regarding the long-term sustainability of the Equity Center, given its reliance on government grants.
Securing future federal funding may be challenging, especially under the shift in federal policies regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The Anchorage Assembly meets Feb. 25 on the ground floor of the Loussac Library on 36th Ave. The meeting starts at 5 p.m. and usually runs until 11 p.m. Agenda and details are here.
DOGE Alaska is a project that is exposing waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars in Alaska.
See the previous DOGE Alaska story that details all the noncompetitive taxpayer-funded grants the group has received over the past few years, awarded by the Assembly, at this link:
While serving on the Anchorage Assembly, Meg Zaletel has kept a day job running the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness. She has been able to get millions of dollars in public money, all the while the homelessness in Anchorage has only increased.
Zaletel has served on the Assembly since 2019, and was named interim executive director of ACEH in 2021 and then became the formal director shortly after winning reelection in April 2022. She has had major successes steering tax dollars toward her organization.
Since 2021, the money that has poured into her nonprofit through noncompetitive, sole-source grants has gone from $55,000 in 2021 to $1.5 million in 2024. The total for past six years is $2,576,127 of taxpayer dollars in noncompetitive awards to the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness.
By the end of 2024, the coalition reported there were 3,070 homeless people in Anchorage, an increase from November, 2023, when the group reported 2,822 homeless individual in the city. The word “homelessness” encompasses people who are temporarily living with friends or family, not just on the street.
The homelessness problem has only grown with the money. Between January 2019 and January 2024, people sleeping out of doors (tents, cars, under City Hall) has climbed 256.7%, from 97 people in 2019 to 346 in 2024.
Zaletel is paid over $100,000 annually from the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness and earns another $65,000 a year as an Assembly member, where she uses her influence with the other members of the Assembly to steer noncompetitive grants to her organization.
DOGE Alaska is a project to identify waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars in Alaska.
Alaska U.S. Sen.Dan Sullivan, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, cosponsored a resolution recognizing the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima, which began Feb. 19, 1945, and lasted until March 26, 1945.
“Eighty years ago, the brave Marines who stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima turned the tide of the Pacific Theater in one of the greatest displays of valor and sacrifice in our military’s history,” Sullivan said. “It is an honor to introduce this resolution with my colleagues to recognize the members of the U.S. military who fought in Iwo Jima and inspired enduring peace and allyship between the United States and Japan. The United States, and our military members in particular, has done more to liberate humankind from tyranny and oppression than literally any other force in history. Hundreds of millions of people have been liberated because of our military and our country—and Iwo Jima was a proud part of that legacy.”
Specifically, the resolution:
Honors the Marines, Sailors, Soldiers, Army Air Crew, and Coast Guardsmen who fought bravely on Iwo Jima;
Remembers the brave servicemembers who lost their lives in the battle;
Commemorates the iconic and historic raising of the United States flag on Mount Suribachi that occurred on Feb. 23, 1945;
Encourages Americans to honor the veterans of Iwo Jima; and
Reaffirms the bonds of friendship and shared values that have developed between the United States and Japan over the last 80 years.
The resolution was cosponsored by Senators Todd Young (R-Ind.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Chris Coons (D-Conn.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Angus King (I-Maine), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
In 1994, Alaskans passed an amendment to our state constitution that guaranteed crime victims the right to “a timely disposition” of the criminal case. Recent news reporting revealed the Anchorage court system has ignored that right for years.
TwoAnchorage Daily Newsarticles in January documented extensive felony case delays—enabled by judges “rubber stamping” continuances. Judges were granting 50-70 continuances and enabling 7 to 10 years of delay. Victims were dying before cases went to trial. The reported toll on victims and their families was and continues to be heartbreaking.
Valerie Van Brocklin
This travesty long pre-dated January’s revelations. A 2018 Annual Report to the legislature by the Office of Victims’ Rights (OVR) said delays were the “most prevalent frustration and complaint by crime victims” but they had “become the way of doing business.”
OVR’s Director attended 181 pretrial conferences in Anchorage. Of those, 161 were continued: 140 without any reason given and judges didn’t ask; in only one case did the prosecution mention the victim’s position; no judge inquired about the victims’ position in any other case.
Days after the news articles, I documented in a commentary that this problem existed as far back as 2008. That year the court system issued a “call to arms” about the nearly quadrupling of felony case delays in the preceding years.
In response, judges and court personnel attended training. In early 2009 a consultant from the National Council on State Courts (NCSC) provided a lengthy report on causes and solutions. The then Presiding Judge issued an order intended as a remedy, but it required no accountability from judges. The problem worsened.
Given the failure of those efforts, I recommended two things that would get judges’ attention: their budget and retention elections.
First, make the court system report the cost of all those continuances when it came before the legislature asking for more money. Second, when the Alaska Judicial Council evaluated judges and recommended to voters whether to retain them (or not), have it include judges’ records of continuances, and whether they considered victims’ rights. The Council publicizes surveys of court personnel, lawyers, and law enforcement about individual judges. Victims deserve no less consideration.
After my commentary, the current Presiding Judge responded with his own. His Honor minimized the problem, suggesting it began in 2019 and ignoring the 2008 history. He shifted blame to police, prosecutor, and public defender staff shortages, while ignoring that the courts’ rubber stamping of continuances enabled inadequate staff funding to go unchecked.
His Honor contended the court was working on solutions (another court order), but they “can’t do it alone.” Actually, they can. The judiciary is a co-equal, independent branch. It’s their duty to protect citizens’ constitutional rights against legislative and executive lapses. Alaska courts have done that repeatedly. Overcrowded jails are just one example.
The Presiding Judge’s commentary didn’t even mention victims’ rights to a speedy trial. This disregard was compounded by the Alaska Supreme Court’s Chief Justice in her Feb. 12 State of the Judiciary Address to the Alaska Legislature. Discussing the delays, Her Honor also failed to acknowledge victims’ speedy trial rights. Instead, she emphasized recent training on reducing delays. Her Honor didn’t mention this training was provided by the same organization that trained judges in 2008, without success.
Her Honor also contended the courts “could only do so much,” noting understaffed prosecutor and public defender offices. Just two days later she would author a state supreme court opinion holding public defender shortages could not be allowed to infringe on a defendant’s constitutional rights. Why should it be allowed to infringe on victims’ constitutional rights? The opinion emphasized the key role of judges in safeguarding constitutional rights from lapses by the legislative and executive branches.
The Chief Justice told the Legislature that new court orders had been issued to address continuances and delays. Like the Presiding Judge, Her Honor didn’t explain how the repeated training and orders that had failed in the past would succeed this time.
We now know from the recent reporting that Anchorage trial judges have long ignored crime victims’ constitutional right to a timely disposition. The Presiding Judge and Chief Justice doing the same provides insight into the root of the problem. Sadly, it gives little reason to think repeated ineffective gestures will remedy the “most prevalent frustration and complaint by crime victims.” Worse still is how victims must feel at being ignored not just by trial judges but by two of Anchorage’s leading jurists.
Which brings us back to what will get judges’ attention: their budget and retention elections. After the Presiding Judge’s and Chief Justice’s public statements, it’s clearer than ever that such actions are necessary. The public and crime victims can afford no more “rubber stamping” business as usual, enabled by a lack of accountability and the silence of judicial leaders.
Val Van Brocklin was a senior trial attorney with the Anchorage District Attorney’s Office before she was asked to join the state’s Office of Special Prosecution and Appeals, where she had statewide responsibility for cases so complex they required specialized investigative and prosecution efforts. She was then recruited by the U.S. Attorney’s Office to prosecute complex white collar crime, for which she received the FBI’s commendation. Now she is an author, international speaker, and trainer whose work has been featured on ABC and Discovery. More about Val at this link.
