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Alaska Public Media
Take a trip across Alaska without leaving your car, office, home or iPod. AK explores the people and places that make Alaska unique. Visit us online at AKRADIO.ORG for a complete archive or to sign up for e-mail updates.
As Alaskans prepare to vote in November on whether to hold a constitutional convention, the privacy clause is a major focus.
In a ranked-choice election, the two progressive gubernatorial candidates are relying on each other’s second-place votes to win.
The election of Yup'ik Mary Peltola brought unexpected tears to some Alaska Native people.
When a massive, unexpected landslide blocked the only road to Lowell Point, Tom Miller knew his water taxi service was the only way to move residents, school children, and tourists back and forth to the nearby town of Seward.
Jacob Twork and Eddy Carolina Cruz both signed plea deals filed in federal court Tuesday in which they admitted to one felony count each of conspiracy to commit marriage fraud.
Windy was a gray female who came to the zoo in Anchorage in 2006, one of a half-dozen pups the Alaska Department of Fish and Game took from a predator control zone, where wolves were being hunted and trapped.
Jonathon Sawden normally works in HR, but sees an importance to tell the world that his people, the Sugpiaq (Sookh-pee-ahk) and other Native peoples are still here. Here, Jonathon and another young apprentice artist are working together with a Master Kayak builder to learn the techniques to build traditional boats and be the next generation to keep the craft and culture alive.
Billionaire hedge fund founder gave $1.5 million to Alaskans for L.I.S.A., an independent PAC.
Bri “Snap1” Pritchard is a b-girl from Anchorage who has competed and won breaking competitions across the country. She may be one of the first Olympic breakdancers.
“We absolutely do feel safer,” one plant manager said about having overdose prevention resources on hand.
The number of Alaskans with memory loss is set to nearly double by 2030. Resources to help are limited, but navigators help caregivers find them.
Wildlife officials say the animals were most likely feeding on birds that had died from the H5N1 avian influenza.
It's the step Bristol Bay fishermen and tribes have for years begged the agency to take.
For Alaskans looking to get something to eat, it’s as easy as walking up and taking it.
Twelve people from Ukraine arrived over the weekend, and hundreds more are expected in the coming weeks thanks to the local non-profit and a new federal program.
“One of the most important things is to identify an eating disorder early before you get the complications,” said Dr. Rachel Lescher.
Caring for someone with memory loss can be exhausting both physically and emotionally. The number of people with Alzheimer’s or dementia in Alaska is set to almost double by 2030. Given the growing need, reporters Anne Hillman and Jeff Chen spoke with people who are trying to support elders with memory loss.
Roughly 200 people attended the rush hour reproductive rights rally Tuesday in the wake of the release of a draft U.S. Supreme Court opinion that suggests justices are poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Talking about mental health is hard, but it’s important for anyone who is struggling to know that they’re not alone. Alaska Public Media’s Adam Nicely brings us this story of an Anchorage community project with that goal, called Mental Health Mosaics.
Karen Hobart said her main goal as a school counselor is to help kids graduate, and that means looking at a lot more than just their grades or the number of credits they’ve earned. She also connects them to resources like food, safe transportation, or different types of mental health care.
Alaska experienced a nearly 70% increase in the number of drug overdose deaths between 2020 and 2021, according to preliminary data from the state health department. That means 245 Alaskans died from an overdose in 2021, including Anchorage resident Bruce Snodgrass. Alaska Public Media’s Jeff Chen brings us a story of his mother who wants to make sure her son is more than a statistic.
Through podcasting, music and story sharing, Ralph Sara is working to make people see that recovery from addiction is possible.
Anchorage-based avalanche expert Doug Fesler says more should be done to avoid building in avalanche paths.
Helen Lane says the space’s twin purpose fills a void in Anchorage, where many Native women don’t have access to elders’ knowledge about crafts and where many struggle with drug addiction and alcoholism.
An Anchorage teenager made major shifts in his approach to life and is about to graduate high school. He never saw a therapist, never thought about mental health. But mental health is tied to all of it.
A new project called Black in Alaska seeks to present a more complete picture of the lives and professions of Black Alaskans, with the aim of creating a more equitable future. Lori Townsend speaks with advisory committee member Bernard Gatewood and André Horton, one of the series subjects.
Veteran Iditarod musher Aaron Burmeister talked to Alaska Public Media’s Jeff Chen at the Nome radio station, KNOM, roughly a day after Burmeister finished his 21st Iditarod. Burmeister talks about stepping away from the Iditarod, about how his race went this year, and how much dog mushing has changed over the many years he’s been a competitive musher.
In this hour-long interview, we hear more from 2022 Iditarod champion Brent Sass about how he’s forged a unique bond with his dog team, how he draws inspiration from his idols like Susan Butcher, and how his life in his remote homestead has made him the musher he is. Alaska Public Media’s Lex Treinen sat down with Sass, along with a group of other reporters, and Sass’s dad Mark at the Nome Nugget newspaper in downtown Nome.
Since the Iditapod left off, after Brent Sass's epic first Iditarod victory, teams have continued to arrive in Nome, including a fun race for 3rd and 4th place, two Yukon-Kuskokwim mushers in 5th and 6th, an impressive 7th place finish for a second-year musher and a Nome local coming home to finish in 8th before stepping away. We're also going to step away, but not before we answer another listener question and bring you one last Dog of the Day.
Iditapod goes on a deep dive talking about "old school" Eureka musher Brent Sass, who won his first Iditarod championship early Tuesday in Nome. That was despite howling wind that almost caused him to stop in the final miles, with five-time champ Dallas Seavey still in pursuit, just about an hour behind. We'll take you to the finish line, plus Sass's Golden Harness dogs Slater and Morello are the subject of our listener question AND the Dog(s) of the Day.
“Nice to be in Eskimo country!” said Iñupiaq musher Ryan Redington. He said his mother was born and raised in Unalakleet, and it’s been nice to visit with the community.
Alaska Public Media's Lex Treinen caught up - just in the nick of time - with Brent Sass, who mushed into White Mountain and a mandatory eight-hour rest in the lead, in a great position to win his first Iditarod.
The Iditarod - and Iditapod - are heading into the Nome stretch, as Eureka's Brent Sass has maintained his lead, aiming for his first win, with five-time champ Dallas Seavey still on his tail. We’ll have more about the race at the front, as well as more about musher mistakes, how things are going for the top rookie - Hanna Lyrek - and the speedy team of Dan Kaduce. Plus… more pizza? Yep, and another peppy dog of the day, a listener question and an answer from the trail.
In this extended interview from before the 2022 Iditarod, 22-year-old Norwegian musher Hanna Lyrek told Alaska Public Media's Lex Treinen about competing in Norway's biggest sled dog race, the Finnmarksløpet, how she got her dog team to Alaska, her goals for the Iditarod and... about her dogs, of course!
Well, we’ve got a race, folks. Obviously, with 45 mushers out on the Iditarod Trail vying for positions, we’ve got a race. But at the very front, it’s looking like a real battle setting up between Brent Sass and Dallas Seavey for first place. As the frontrunners head for the Bering Sea coast, we’ll have a look at the teams reaching the Yukon River, we’ll talk about a pretty big scratch, women mushers, a bit about superstition, and of course we have a dog profile and a listener question.
With the northern lights dancing above, we talked to Iditarod leader Brent Sass as he danced through the Ruby checkpoint and onto the Yukon River, skipping a gourmet five-course meal in favor of more comfortable cold temperatures for his dogs. We'll also hear more from Sass and his fellow competitors on their 24-hour layover earlier, and from the back of the pack, a trio of women, who banded together in a snow storm. Plus we have a dog profile and THREE listeners asking the same question, with an answer straight from the musher in question and a separate listener... answer?
Iditarod mushers and their dog teams are now either in the middle of their mandatory 24-hour layovers or back out on the trail, if they opted to do that earlier. We've got the frontrunners at the Cripple checkpoint, as well as a chat with the folks who 24ed in McGrath, now making up the chase pack. There's also an old-timer for our Dog of the Day, a couple listener questions about how to get into dog mushing and, related, what it means to be a handler.
Kaktovik dog musher Apayauq Reitan, the first out trans woman to compete in the Iditarod, talks to Iditapod colleague and Alaska Public Media contributor Shady Grove Oliver - originally for a piece in the Guardian newspaper - about Reitan's goals for this year's race, what it's like to mush dogs, her Alaska Native culture, coming out as trans and a lot more.
One musher has regrets. Another is focused on canine appetite. And a third is relieved to have survived the "spiciest" trail.
Our Iditapod crew gets caught up - to get you caught up - as sled dog teams in the 2022 Iditarod race through the third full day of mushing the 1,000-mile trail. We'll hear about some of the most technically difficult sections and get an update on who is where... for now. We'll also hear from mushers Aaron Burmeister and Apayauq Reitan, among others, and we also have a bully of a Dog of the Day and a listener question about how to find the trail (because sometimes it's not so obvious).
Hugh Neff said his 54-year-old arms were exhausted by the constant bumping. “I’ve taken a few Tylenols, let’s say,” he said.
Editor's note: This extended interview discusses a violent encounter with a moose and might not be suitable for all listeners. Alaska Public Media's Lex Treinen gets all the details of rookie Iditarod musher Bridgett Watkins' run-in with a moose while on a training run near Salcha, in Interior Alaska, in early February.
As Alaska Public Media reporters Jeff Chen and Lex Treinen head out on the trail, Iditapod host Casey Grove updates some of the early Iditarod standings. Plus, we have a story of an ER nurse whose training for the Iditarod helped him cope with the trauma of working on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. Lex also brings us a report on the Sunday restart in Willow, as well as another dog profile, and we have a couple questions with a couple different answers (watch out: one involves some math).
The 2022 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race kicked off Saturday in Anchorage with its usual fanfare, after not holding a ceremonial start in 2021. Alaska Public Media reporters Casey Grove, Tegan Hanlon, Lex Treinen and Jeff Chen were out in the snow with the mushers, dogs and race fans, including plenty of kids and other trailgaters.
The five-decade history of the Iditarod is a story filled with adventure, skill, triumph and lots of change, and it's best told by those who have experienced it, firsthand.
Iditapod is back for the 50th running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Host Casey Grove and fellow Alaska Public Media reporters Tegan Hanlon, Lex Treinen and Jeff Chen discuss last year's pandemic-altered Iditarod, some of the mid-distance sled dog races this season, as well as COVID-19 protocols (and already a scratch/switcheroo), scary moose encounters and the heartwarming story of an unlikely Iditarod dog.
Self-harm is a coping mechanism and a call for help. It can also be extremely hard to talk about.
On this episode of Alaska Insight, hear from your neighbors about why they chose to get vaccinated or not.
Overcrowding is a perennial problem in rural Alaska, but the Covid-19 pandemic has made living with it harder. Cramped conditions offer little space to work from home, conduct virtual schooling, or quarantine, and put many multigenerational households at increased risk of infection. Tackling the problem isn’t easy, but, as Erin McKinstry reports for Alaska Public Media, federal COVID funds are offering some relief in the Bering Straits Region.
Tribes in the pilot program would be able to try and sentence anyone who commits domestic violence, rape or related crimes in their villages, even if the offender is non-Native.
Recent attacks and vandalism targeting Jewish people have highlighted concerns over a rise in bigotry in our country. This week marks Holocaust Remembrance Day, a time to reflect on the terrible legacy of antisemitism. Lori Townsend examines that legacy with Rabbi Abram Goodstein of Congregation Beth Sholom in Anchorage and Anti-Defamation League advisory board member Robin Dern.
The Northern Hope Center is a free, member-driven drop-in center for adults with serious mental illnesses that gives people a social safety net free from judgment.
The payments to lawmakers from outside of Juneau supplement their salaries and cover their living expenses during the session. They receive $293 per day.
The post appeared to be supportive of Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany, but the former officer says it was a reference to a comedy film that was taken out of context.
As Lawmakers prepare for this year’s session, Alaska Public Media’s Adelyn Baxter looks back and reports that, despite the lengthy process, lawmakers didn’t make much progress in 2021.
Despite pressure from health experts who advocated for adding a testing requirement, the agency is standing by its original guidance that a negative test is not needed for people who are fever-free and whose symptoms have improved.
A camouflaged Santa whirled into Buckland on a funny-looking sleigh this year. As part of its annual Operation Santa Claus, the Alaska National Guard delivered 261 presents to the community in northwest Alaska on December 14. Santa says he'll drop off 360 gifts to Chevak after the holidays and once weather conditions allow.
The city’s Mobile Crisis Team started two months ago and is bringing mental health services directly to people in crisis.
ivision managers and medical officers have all left or been fired from the health department, which has largely stopped communicating with news media.
Some Assembly members said the revenue forecasts that the administration presented to a major credit rating agency before the agency downgraded Anchorage’s score intentionally downplayed the city’s forecasts to score points in an ongoing budget debate.
Alaska was one of five states picked to pass out the rapid tests based on COVID-19 rates and previous partnerships with the federal health department. The pilot program is part of a major push by the Biden administration to expand access to the over-the-counter, at-home tests as a way to curb the spread of COVID-19 this winter.
Peer mentors can now receive certification in Alaska to provide support for people in recovery from substance use and mental health issues.
About 50 speakers shared stories of losing jobs because of COVID-19 vaccine mandates or having loved ones die from COVID while being denied unproven treatments.
Next year, Alaska voters will decide whether to hold a new constitutional convention. They’ve rejected similar questions over the past 50 years. But anger over the permanent fund dividend is fueling talk of overhauling the Alaska Constitution.
A chain link fence was set up on part of the perimeter of the Sullivan Arena on Nov. 17, 2021 (Lex Treinen/Alaska Public Media) Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration has seen a half dozen or so resignations or firings over the past several weeks among officials working on the city’s response to homelessness.
That comes at a time when temperatures have dropped below zero degrees in some parts of town and advocates have raised concerns about overcrowding in the city’s largest shelter at the Sullivan Arena.
Alaska Public Media’s Lex Treinen has been following the city’s recent efforts on homelessness.
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This transcript has been edited for clarity and additional information has been added.
Casey Grove: Remind us where we’re at with the city’s response to homelessness right now?
Lex Treinen: The city has a big housing shortage right now, and during the pandemic, a lot of energy has been focused on making sure people have a roof over their heads. The Sullivan Arena, the massive emergency shelter in Midtown has been sleeping hundreds of people each night since the pandemic began. That’s still sort of the center of the city’s efforts right now, even as it works on a plan to move people out of the shelter.
CG: How have things been going at the Sullivan? Have there been any big changes under the new operator?
RELATED: Tight rental market in Alaska hampers progress on homelessness
LT: From what I can tell, none of the changes have been giant. In general people say there’s less of a militaristic feel under the new operator, that’s the private company 99 Plus 1. Staff there say they’re going for a more humane approach and treating people like adults.
Not everyone thinks that’s a good thing, I’ve heard complaints from clients who say they feel less secure because of lax rules and fewer security guards.
But it’s been really hard to get information about what is happening. Part of that is the sheer number of people working on homelessness leaving, which has disrupted the normal flow of information.
There are also policy changes that have made getting information more difficult. Reporters aren’t allowed to talk to clients inside the shelter any more. It’s been harder to arrange tours of the arena, and managers were banned from speaking to reporters without permission.
CG: Should we be concerned about the conditions in the Sullivan?
I have been able to talk to a few officials and guests of the shelter, and they say while things aren’t great, they’re adequate. Recent cold weather has pushed the shelter to over capacity, so the sheer number of people in there is a challenge. A couple days in the last week there were over 500 people sleeping there, and the shelter was set up for a maximum of 420. They’re not turning people away though, especially in this cold weather.
The operator said it’s hiring more staff, and working on tightening staff training requirements. They’re also trying to get the toilets operational again — the entire population there has been relying on portapotties for a couple of months now. Clients say it hasn’t been great, as you can imagine.
There are some things going on outside the shelter that have raised some eyebrows.
CG: Like what? What do you mean?
Just yesterday workers set up a chain link fence around part of the perimeter of the Sullivan. Shelter operators told me they weren’t told that it was going up, though a city spokesperson said the operator was told. A spokesperson wrote in an email that clients and neighbors requested the fence for security.
There was also a warming tent that finally went up earlier this week, but so far it doesn’t have a heater or a floor. An official said it should be ready to use by Friday so that people who come in after curfew or those who don’t want to be in the Sullivan have a place to go. Some sources told me the tent was supposed to go up a month ago, and it’s not clear why there was such a big delay.
The Sullivan has still been letting people inside, even though they’re already over capacity. But advocates told me they’re worried that campers might stay outside if they don’t know they’re allowed into the building after curfew. A spokesperson said that its working with providers to let homeless people know that they’re welcome in the Sullivan.
CG: Who’s supposed to be in charge of this? It seems like there’s a communication breakdown going on in the city?
I think the recent staff losses are really a big piece of this story. There’s been about a half dozen city officials involved with homelessnes who’ve been fired or stepped down recently. Several told me they left after raising concerns about what’s going on with homelessness. All the job vacancies make it really hard to know where to direct questions.
Yesterday, we learned of a new hire who’s set to take charge of the city’s response to homelessness, so hopefully that will clear up some of the communication issues.
There’s also still a working group made up of Assembly members and administration officials working out a way to move people out of the Sullivan into smaller shelters, but the recent resignations have slowed those talks down. Assembly members on the group say they’re still making progress, but they also have to rebuild trust with the new members. All that just slows down the city’s progress towards its goal of getting people out of shelters and into housing.
CG: Who’s the new hire?
LT: His name is Dave D’amato. He’s worked at a few housing nonprofits over the past decade, like United Way and the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness. Robert McNeily, a spokesperson for the health department, said D’Amato will lead a new division focused on housing and homelessness that will be created next year.
A few people in that nonprofit world said they have concerns about D’amato’s views on homelessness. D’amato and the city declined an interview request, but he testified to the Assembly last year against a plan that is really similar to one that the administration and the Assembly have tentatively agreed to. That plan is to move people out of the Sullivan Arena into smaller shelters dispersed around town. So far Assembly members working on that plan say they’re withholding judgement about D’amato, but I think it’s something to watch in the coming weeks.
Natasha Aġnaŋuluuraq Gamache. (Natasha Aġnaŋuluuraq Gamache photo) Natasha Aġnaŋuluuraq Gamache is a 40-year-old mother of four. In September, her landlord told her he was raising her rent.
“I thought, ‘Crap, I’m gonna have to move,’” she said.
It wasn’t a huge increase — a few hundred bucks, she said — but her federal housing assistance limited what she could afford. Anything over her voucher, and she’d be paying out of pocket. With a fixed income from federal disability benefits, there wasn’t much she could do. And when she tried to find a new place, she said, she realized her options were limited.
“You go on Facebook marketplace, try and find a place that meets that housing payment standard where you’re paying all your rent and your utilities at $1,850 a month for a three bedroom in Anchorage,” she said. “You can find them but you’re gonna run into some issues.”
Data suggests that Gamache’s experience is becoming more common. Vacancy rates across the state declined sharply during the pandemic, according to a state report from September.
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Rob Kreiger, an economist who wrote the report, said the drop in vacancy rates could be because fewer people are moving from place to place due to an eviction moratorium that was in effect until September.
“Normally, you’d have people constantly coming and going and moving from one place to the next and you have more units becoming available than normal,” he said. “But I think in the case of the pandemic, you had a lot less people moving around.”
The Alaska Housing Finance Corporation also gave out nearly $175 million in federal rental relief since the pandemic started, though the program required that applicants show they were impacted by the pandemic. The corporation says it’s helped keep 57,000 people housed.
But for people who have lost housing, the low vacancy rate means there are few options.
“If there’s not that much available, it’s gonna be that much harder to find a place,” said Kreiger.
Gamache said she and her family bounced around AirBnBs, relying on donated money for a few weeks before settling into a shelter. This week, they finally moved into housing thanks to a tribal voucher. She said she had to give up her federal voucher to participate in the tribal program.
Before moving into housing, Gamache and her family spent weeks at Safe Harbor, a family shelter run by RuralCAP. Shelter providers say the housing market means that their efforts to move people into permanent housing are slowing down.
At a Wednesday Anchorage Assembly committee meeting, Terria Ware, an administrator at the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, testified that vacancy rates are likely to force clients to stay in shelters longer than in previous months despite a massive rehousing effort.
“If you’re someone on Social Security or disability benefits, you’re getting about $1,100 a month. If your apartment is $950, and you still have to pay electric, how can you afford that unit?,” she said in a phone interview on Wednesday.
That means the city’s shelters, which are already over capacity, could keep filling up. Ware said the only solution is the slowest and most difficult one.
“If we want to truly solve homelessness in Anchorage we need more units,” she said. “We need more affordable units.”
There is some good news, she said: During the pandemic, the state was able to keep some renters in their homes thanks to quick disbursement of federal rental relief money. But not all renters qualified. Gamache said she didn’t apply for the money because her rent increase wasn’t directly tied to the pandemic.
The federal eviction moratorium kept tenants from getting kicked out until September, when it was struck down by a federal court.
“We all expected an eviction tsunami when the moratorium ended, and it hasn’t really happened,” said Helen Renfrew, who studies evictions for the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness.
She said avoiding a surge of evictions is a good thing, but there’s a dark side to it.
“The reason that eviction filings didn’t explode is because evictions have been occurring this whole time. They never stopped,” she said. “We had eviction filings every single week, all across the state throughout the entire moratorium.”
Renfrew said there’s not good data on it, but she suspects it’s because landlords and tenants weren’t aware of the protections.
Gamache said all of the uncertainty in the rental market exhausted her family, which has had to move six times in the last five years. After researching costs of rentals and mortgages, she decided the only way she could find housing security was to buy a house.
Gamache (left) with her children and adopted Aaka (grandmother), Eva during Gamache’s daughter’s graduation in May. (Natasha Gamache photo) Her 14-year-old daughter set up a GoFundMe to raise money for a down payment on a house. So far she’s raised more than $13,000.
“It’s hard on me because I just want to be a kid,” Denali Gamache wrote on the fundraiser page. “I don’t want to feel unsafe in a shelter where people fight and get drunk and beat on doors all night.”
For Natasha Gamache, it’s a bittersweet feeling. She’s thankful for the support but also said it’s a sad statement on the state’s priorities.
“I felt I had so much shame and guilt. But at the same time, I’m so very grateful. Because, sadly, that is where we’re at,” said Gamache. “This is where we’re at.”
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Fifty years ago this December, Alaska Native leaders joined forces with national lawmakers to create legislation that ensured certain native land rights in our state. How has that legislation evolved over the decades? What does the next generation of Alaska Native leaders want to see moving forward?
Host, Lori Townsend discusses the milestone anniversary with Megan Alvanna-Stimpfle, Self-Governance Liason, Norton Sound Health Corporation; Alex Cleghorn, Senior Legal and Policy Director, Alaska Native Justice Center; Rosita Worl, president, Sealaska Heritage Institute.
RELATED: Click here for more news and coverage of the 50th Anniversary of ANCSA
To qualify as an original shareholder in an Alaska Native Corporation, you had to be born before December 18, 1971. That date — when the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was signed into law — divided Alaska Native generations and even families. The corporations formed under ANCSA are slowly opening up to new generations of shareholders though, allowing younger Alaska Native people to have a voice in shaping the future.
Indian Country Today’s Meghan Sullivan has more.
This story is part of a reporting collaboration between Alaska Public Media, Indian Country Today and the Anchorage Daily News on the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Funding for the ANCSA project was provided by the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism. Read more here.
Aaron Tolen has tribal and ANCSA regional corporation affiliations across the state. He aims to balance a modern education with the values and traditions of his people, so he can continue to feel grounded in his culture and also experience success in a contemporary way. Reporter James Gaddis has more.
This story is part of a reporting collaboration between Alaska Public Media, Indian Country Today and the Anchorage Daily News on the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Funding for the ANCSA project was provided by the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism. Read more here.
Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson at an Assembly meeting on Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021. (Jeff Chen/Alaska Public Media) Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson on Tuesday vetoed two ordinances that were passed by the Anchorage Assembly Wednesday. The ordinances were aimed at asserting the Assembly’s authority over the chamber and the city’s mayoral appointee confirmation process.
RELATED: After Anchorage Assembly passes rules to assert authority, Mayor Bronson accuses it of a ‘power grab’
The first ordinance gave the Assembly control over security, safety, occupancy and other aspects of the Assembly chamber. It includes allowing the body to enforce health mandates, like the masking requirements the Assembly passed last month.
In recent months, Bronson has battled with the Assembly over who ultimately has authority over the Assembly chambers.
“While the Assembly has the power to determine rules and the order of business for meetings, it cannot create for itself the ability to manage, or otherwise exercise custody of, real or personal property,” Bronson said in a statement after issuing the vetoes.
The mayor and his staff have argued that the ordinance wasn’t legal and state statute gives him the authority over all municipal buildings that don’t belong to the school district. Assembly leadership has countered by pointing to the decades of precedent where the body held authority over its chambers.
The second ordinance Bronson vetoed changed how mayoral appointees can be confirmed by the Assembly. It would have required the mayor to request a confirmation hearing within 60 days of appointing someone to a position that requires Assembly approval. If the request was not submitted within 60 days, the Assembly chair could schedule a confirmation hearing.
“By placing limitations on the administration’s right to delegate for longer than 60 days the responsibilities of a position subject to confirmation, the Assembly is making its own determination of when a mayor intends to appoint someone to a position subject to confirmation,” Bronson said in a statement.
To override the mayor’s vetoes, the Assembly would need a supermajority of eight members. Both ordinances had passed with at least eight votes. The Assembly has scheduled a meeting on Friday at 3:30 p.m. to vote to override the vetoes.
The Alaska Supreme Court hears arguments in 2019. (Elizabeth Harball/Alaska’s Energy Desk) If the Alaska Legislature wants to reject a governor’s appointees, it will have to take a vote on them, the state Supreme Court said in an opinion issued on Friday.
The court had ruled in April that Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s appointees had remained in office despite the Legislature’s failure to meet to confirm them last year during the pandemic. It reversed a Superior Court judge’s ruling against the governor.
But the court hadn’t released its full reasoning until Friday.
Justice Peter Maassen wrote that the record from Alaska’s constitutional convention in 1955 showed the importance the delegates placed on holding a joint session for votes on the governor’s appointments.
The Legislative Council had maintained that the positions had been vacated. It pointed to a 1964 state law that said that failure to hold a vote is tantamount to declining an appointment.
But the Supreme Court found that the language of that law was contrary to the plain language of the state constitution that the governor’s appointments are “subject to confirmation by a majority of the members of the legislature in joint session.”
The Legislative Council argued that the constitution only required joint sessions for the Legislature to confirm appointments, not for rejecting them. But the Supreme Court said that the word “confirmation” referred to the entire process of voting on appointments.
Normally, the Legislature holds a joint session once each year to vote on all of the appointments over the previous year. In May, the Legislature confirmed 174 appointments and rejected three. The Legislature has confirmed all of the governor’s cabinet appointments since he took office. The joint session is usually held toward the end of the regular session.
Alaska’s Arctic region is opening to increased vessel traffic and global interest. What are the American military’s plans to ensure security?
Lori Townsend speaks to Troy Bouffard, director of the Center for Arctic Security and Resilience at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Michael Sfraga, chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission.
Sophie Griffith, 5, gets a kiss from her dad, Scott Griffith, after getting her COVID-19 vaccine during a pediatric clinic on Thursday, at Riverbend Elementary School in Juneau. (Photo by Rashah McChesney/KTOO)
Hundreds of young kids in Juneau are getting vaccinated for COVID-19 this week at clinics put on by local health officials.
A lot of kids barely notice the jab. For others, it’s really scary, but they have advice for anyone else who’s nervous about getting a shot.
At Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School, nurse Aisha Hill tells third grader Nehir Caf to take a big, deep breath. She gives her a quick poke with a needle to give her the vaccine.
“And let it out. All done,” Hill said.
It hardly registers on Nehir’s face. Mom and dad tell her good job.
Erin Felke-Caf comforts her daughter, Nehir Caf, as nurse Aisha Hill gives her a COVID-19 vaccine shot at Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School on Nov. 9, 2021 in Juneau. Nehir said it felt like her little sister pinching her. (Photo by Jeremy Hsieh/KTOO) “That hurted like my sister pinching me, a little,” Nehir said. “I could get thousands of those in one day!”
She said she’s happy she got it.
“Because if everybody gets it, and then we might not have to wear masks in school,” she said.
She said COVID is like the villain from Harry Potter.
“I don’t know why, but COVID reminds me of Voldemort,” Nehir said.
Her little sister Feray goes next. No problem.
Giuli Russell had a tougher appointment. She was really quiet, right up until the needle was ready. Then she started whimpering.
“I don’t wanna get it!” she said between alarmed breaths.
Giuli holds onto her mom’s hand, who’s pouring praise on her. A volunteer nurse keeps Giuli’s exposed arm still. Giuli bawls through the shot.
“You did amazing!” her mom said. “Come here, monkey butt. Oh, you did awesome.”
Carolina Russell takes a selfie with her daughter, Giuli Russell, as volunteer nurse Sue Webb looks on during a youth COVID-19 vaccine clinic at Mendenhall River Community School on Nov. 9, 2021, in Juneau. (Photo by Jeremy Hsieh/KTOO) Mom gives her a big hug. Her next shot for the flu goes about the same.
A few minutes later, Giuli’s eyes are dry, and she said she feels good.
She and her mom hang out in the gym of Mendenhall River Community School, just in case there’s a bad reaction. For the other kids that need to get shots, Giuli said, “Be brave.”
Giuli’s mom, Carolina Russell, promises her some treats, too.
“Uh, I did say McDonald’s and froyo after,” she said. “And then we found out she gets to go to Coppa this weekend, so she’s got a pretty good deal out of this one. But I said, ‘If you’re gonna do that, you’ve got to get a flu shot, too.’ So pretty good negotiation, right?”
Giuil’s not so sure.
Coppa is offering a free scoop of ice cream to young kids with their vaccine cards.
Icee Delgado, 9, gets a flu shot after getting her COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, at Riverbend Elementary School in Juneau. (Photo by Rashah McChesney/KTOO) Carolina is eager to get her daughter vaccinated. Her parents live in Sweden, and she said the family had to cancel two trips to see them because of the pandemic.
“I’m trying to get to some sort of normalcy, as much as possible,” Carolina said. “So, I mean, that is one of many things, of course, but I feel like it’s important to be part of the solution in whatever way we can.”
Trey Powers is in sixth grade. He’s a few minutes away from getting his shot, and he’s nervous and upset.
“I didn’t have a choice! They forced me to get a shot,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me not get it.”
His parents walk him through some downsides of not getting the shot.
“What reasons do you not want to get a shot?” his dad asks.
He’s oozing with petulance. “Uh, I’ve done well without getting COVID for two years!”
Then mom: “And why is that?”
“Because I’ve been wearing a mask,” Trey said.
“And, staying at home all the time,” dad adds.
“That and –”
“– Not doing a lot of stuff because you’re not vaccinated?” dad continues.
Trey’s a little deflated. “Technically it’s only been a year,” he grumbles.
Once he’s in the hot seat, he asks to see the needle.
Geo Abad, 10 and his sister Bea Abad, 9, wait around in the gym at Riverbend Elementary School after getting their COVID-19 vaccines on Thursday, in Juneau. (Photo by Rashah McChesney/KTOO) Nurse Aisha Hill shows him. “See how small that is? … So that’s what we’re going to put in, it’s .2 milliliters, so it’s that much fluid in there. OK?”
“OK. I’m like, gonna get a spot ready to pinch, so I can not deal with that,” he said, eyeing the needle.
And that’s his suggestion for other kids: Distract yourself with a pinch somewhere else.
A moment later, it’s over. Trey’s protests shift to how soon he can get free ice cream.
Nurse Aisha Hill answers questions for Trey Powers about the COVID-19 vaccine he’s about to get at a clinic at Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School in Juneau on Nov. 9, 2021. Powers said he pinched himself as he got the shot to distract himself from the sting. (Photo by Jeremy Hsieh/KTOO) Through Tuesday’s clinics, about 450 young children in Juneau got their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. So far, none have had a bad reaction. At least, not in the medical sense.
These clinics are a big step for the school system.
“We have seen the highest percentage of our cases in schools being our elementary, unvaccinated population,” Superintendent Bridget Weiss told the Juneau Board of Education on Tuesday.
Among all school system employees, Weiss said at least 93% are vaccinated.
Appointments are still available for upcoming free, youth vaccine clinics in Juneau. You can sign up at Juneau.org/vaccine or by calling 907-586-6000.
A jar of marijuana buds is seen at the Stoney Moose in Ketchikan. (KRBD photo by Leila Kheiry) Alaska’s cannabis industry generates tens of millions of dollars in sales each year. After all, the state has the most retail cannabis shops per capita in the country.
So it might seem like there’s plenty of cannabis consumers’ cash to go around. But insiders say the industry is very competitive and cannabis entrepreneurs have to be shrewd to keep their businesses alive.
A recent story in the Anchorage Daily News looked into that competitiveness.
And ADN reporter Zachariah Hughes says some factors impacting Alaska’s cannabis industry are unique to the state.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Zachariah Hughes: One of them is just purely historical. And that’s that Alaska didn’t have a medical cannabis industry prior to legalization and the recreational industry standing up in 2016. So some other states, you know, notably California and some other West Coast states, did have a medical apparatus. And when legalization happened, decriminalization happened, the medical cannabis businesses sort of transitioned or there was at least some infrastructure in place. We didn’t have that in Alaska. So the industry here was built from the ground up. But some of the other nuances that we have, there’s no cap on licenses in Alaska. In other states, there are caps, and that makes the price of a permit a lot more valuable, since there’s a ceiling on how many people can get involved. I talked to one attorney who handles a number of cannabis clients who mentioned Arizona, where there’s a really firm cap in place and permits to cultivate and sell cannabis can go into the eight digit figures, which I was blown away by but is true. The other thing that we have that not a lot of other states have is a very firm residency requirement in the form of you have to be a PFD recipient in order to be out of business license and be part of the cannabis business. And so there’s not a lot of out-of-state money that can come in legally and prop up businesses. In other states, there’s a couple of very large multi-state business entities that have gotten involved in the cannabis sector and growing and selling. And we don’t have that.
Casey Grove: How are some of those things that are unique about Alaska affecting the industry now?
ZH: Well, according to a report in Politico, we have the highest number of cannabis retail shops per capita of any state that they looked at. They were looking mostly at Western states where the market really is kind of the biggest, but we have a, you know, we have more pot shops per resident than anywhere else. There’s a number of cultivators, there’s a number of manufacturers, but we have you know, upwards of, it’s in the neighborhood of 140 or 150 retail shops. I would almost call it like a Wildcat type industry patchwork here, you know, there’s a lot of independent small operators, and they’re working together, and they’re competing for market share. But there’s just a lot of small companies, very small companies, some of them are literally mom and pop or a family run businesses, and not too many of them are that big, there’s only a couple of businesses that have, you know, multiple sites for retail.
CG: And I guess there’s some thinking that to stay profitable in the future that some of those businesses need to get bigger, right? And to vertically integrate, I think is what you said in your story, huh?
ZH: Yeah. And that was a trend that I’d heard about from the beginning that, you know, there is this kind of race, when businesses started opening, to vertically integrate. That basically means you’re controlling all of the different steps involved from seed to sale. So you have a business that might have started out, you know, growing cannabis products, and then it gets into manufacturing, and then it gets into retailing, and plenty of them did this in different orders. But you’d basically be able to grow your product, refine it, manufacture it, and things like edibles or concentrates or flower products that you’d then sell at your retail location. And that was always seen as a way of giving businesses more flexibility. The thing is, it’s quite expensive to vertically integrate. Cannabis businesses are pricey to operate anywhere in the country, and that’s certainly true in Alaska. And one of the byproducts of the costliness is that you need a lot of cash to open new businesses, because cannabis is still federally illicit or illegal or kind of this shady gray zone. Banks won’t lend to these people. So to start new businesses, you need to have your own cash. It’s a very cash-intensive business, particularly because there are so few financing options for people like you would get, you know, in other sectors. The other thing is, it’s a very regulated business. And what I have heard from a lot of people is that a lot of businesses are not making it. They are operating on razor-thin margins, there’s intense competition among growers and retailers over price points. And I think we’re probably going to see more businesses go under, and that’s a long process. That’s a, you know, a year minimum to get a license to cultivate, manufacture or sell cannabis. It’s very costly. And we’ve seen dozens of businesses that in the five years since the industry got off the ground have already folded because it’s just not a very profitable business at this point, given how open the market is.
Snow piled high on top of a bird feeder after a storm in Anchorage dropped over a foot of snow in some areas on November 11, 2021. (Julia O’Malley/Alaska Public Media) Anchorage residents went to bed Wednesday night expecting some snow in the morning. When they woke up, though, it was more than double what had been forecast.
National Weather Service climate researcher Brian Brettschneider — back for our Ask a Climatologist segment — says there are a couple reasons for that.
The snow was very fluffy, due to some very specific atmospheric conditions, Brettschneider says, so being less dense, it made a thicker carpeting on the ground, and everything else.
And, he says, forecasters suspected there’d be a narrow band of heavy snow, but predicting where it would end up is extra tricky.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Brian Brettschneider: So the heavy snow was always on the table, although I think the maximum amounts have surprised pretty much everyone. But the the potential for heavy snow had actually been there for a while, it was a low-probability event at any given location.
Casey Grove: We went to bed last night, where my house is it was pretty bare on the ground, and woke up with almost a foot of snow. What were the totals around town?
BB: Well, as we’re talking, most places in town east of, say Minnesota drive have had 10 or more inches, and almost every place east of Seward Highway has had over 12 inches. And a handful of places have had 16, 17 inches. So it’s really been a big snow bonanza. As of about 1 o’clock, the official measurement was 5.6 inches. So the spot that has the lowest of any place in town, is our official total. So that’s kind of unfortunate.
CG: Yeah, not a bonanza for them. So something my editor asked me as I was coming in here, she said, “I’m very interested in the fluffiness factor.” And I wondered if there was a way of getting at that. Is it champagne powder? I described it as flufftastic. But I don’t know if that’s a technical term.
BB: Well, we, in the science community, we absolutely use the term “fluffy.” We’ll talk about how fluffy the snow is. Now, there are ways to quantify that. And really, what we talk about is what’s called the “snow-to-liquid ratio.” And so if you take the snow, and you melt it, and you end up with liquid, if you divide the snow divided by the liquid, you get your snow-to-liquid ratio. So for example, if you have 12 inches of snow that falls, and you melt it, and you end up with 1 inch of water, you take 12 divided by one and you get 12. So 12-to-1 is your snow ratio. If you have 24 inches of snow, and you melt it, and you end up also with 1 inch of water, we would call that 24-to-1 ratio snow. And in this case, this is a very low density snow. I’m estimating, you know, probably in the 20-, 25-, even in some cases 30-to-1 ratio in general. Here in Anchorage, we average about 15-to-1. So we’re kind of close to doubling that. So this is kind of double the fluffiness.
As the Arctic warms, it increasingly has the potential to become an arena where world powers compete for dominance. While Russia and China are beefing up their Arctic presence, the Pentagon has been slow to make the Arctic a priority. Alaska Public Media’s Liz Ruskin reports that may be changing.
Supporters of the Alaskans Choose Respect campaign listen to speakers during a 2014 rally at the state Capitol. (Skip Gray/Gavel Alaska) Last week a woman in Anchorage went public on social media with an allegation of sexual assault, prompting other people to share their stories.
By the end of the week, a group of Twitter accounts published a spreadsheet of names accused of being abusers. It grew fast — from a few hundred to more than 500 people before the list came down three days later.
The list — first called The Alaska Abuser List and later changed to Questionable People of Alaska — is anonymous and crowdsourced.
Listen to the story here: In most cases, there are no specific allegations backing up the claim that a person is an abuser. In rare cases, organizers linked to a person’s name in the sex offender registry or noted court case numbers. But the vast majority are just listed by name.
The list’s organizers did not want to be interviewed, but they said in social media posts that by publishing the list, they’re trying to bring some accountability to abusers in Alaska.
Advocates and law enforcement say this type of vigilante justice may not be the best way to do that. There’s the risk of being sued for defamation, among other considerations.
A similar national spreadsheet, called the Sh**ty Media Men list, gained attention when it was published during the height of the #MeToo movement in 2017. At least one person named on it filed a $1.5 million defamation lawsuit after the list’s creator revealed her identity.
In Alaska, more than half of women will experience intimate partner violence, sexual violence or both in their lifetimes, but most perpetrators will not get prosecuted.
Mandy Cole, the executive director of Juneau’s domestic and sexual violence shelter, AWARE, said a list like this can be a way for victims to take back control.
“I think it goes back to that feeling of just, like, powerlessness and hopelessness that you get when someone takes advantage of your body in that way and, for many of us, it doesn’t feel like there’s recourse,” Cole said.
She said going through the legal channels of filing a report and getting a medical examination is an emotionally costly prospect.
“The idea of then subjecting yourself to more trauma in order to get a result of just being believed and heard is hard,” she said.
Cole said she understands the motivation behind wanting to say “this happened to me” without having to do all of the things that go along with making an official report to law enforcement.
She said she doesn’t know who made Alaska’s list, but thinks it’s more about catharsis for survivors of abuse than it is about punishment for people named on it.
People sometimes rely on a whisper network in situations where they can’t get justice — sharing information between friends and colleagues, warning people away from abusers.
Cole said the power of a whisper network lies in the trust people have in the people they’re sharing with and getting information from. The people in a whisper network know each other, and they know the people they’re whispering about.
“And so, that is the information that I need — not necessarily like, you know, forensic evidence,” she said.
But Cole said these networks also lose some of the power of trusted secrets shared among friends when they go public. The bar gets higher, and people want proof and evidence.
“I mean, I think that’s how our culture decided to solve this issue. Once it’s in the public sphere, it has to be about things that you can prove,” she said.
Cole and others said this spreadsheet is a symptom of a much larger problem in Alaska.
The majority of sexual assaults are never reported to the police, and every year hundreds of thousands of instances of domestic violence nationwide go unreported.
And, Juneau Police Department Lt. Krag Campbell said, just a fraction of what is reported will be prosecuted successfully. Still, he said, he probably would have encouraged the list’s organizers to find another way to tackle the problem.
“I would say they just have to use a lot of caution. Because, they’re throwing out a lot of information that could be damaging to people — it might not be justifiable, because they’re not vetting the source of information,” he said.
He looked at the list when it was published and said it was difficult to figure out who was being accused of what. The list had just two categories, sexual assault and domestic violence, but many of the names were not categorized in either.
Campbell is looking for more specificity, in part because the list names a Juneau police officer. Like so many of the names on the list, the claims are unsubstantiated. But Campbell said he takes the allegations seriously.
He said the officer went through a background check to get a job on the force, and Campbell didn’t hear of any allegations or even rumors that came up in that investigation.
“Could it still be [that] things are out there? You know, there’s always the chance,” he said. “But we just don’t have any information to go off of, and our plan is to at least look into it.”
Campbell wouldn’t say if he talked directly to the officer about the list; he called it a personnel matter.
“It would be good, if somebody does have an allegation that they believe is true and accurate, to make a report,” Campbell said.
And if that person doesn’t want to go to Juneau police with an accusation, he suggests making it to another agency like the Alaska State Troopers or a sexual assault and domestic violence advocate.
Campbell said he’s cautious about an unsubstantiated list of allegations because he’s dealt with instances of false reporting throughout his career — not just confined to rape and sexual assault.
Data show that it’s unusual for people to falsely report rape or sexual violence. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center estimates the rate of false reporting at somewhere between 2% and 10% of cases.
Isaac Weber says he’s one of those rare cases. He found out his name was on the list from an ex-girlfriend.
“It was just really a stomach-dropping moment. I couldn’t believe it. I went through the list and saw that it was, in fact, there — my name along with a bunch of other people that I knew all in a row,” he said. “I couldn’t think of what I could have possibly done to deserve a place on this list next to all of these disgusting people. Just being roped in with that made me feel very small in the moment.”
His mom, Sarah Weber, works in addiction and mental health services. She describes her professional and personal lives as trauma-informed. She said it was surreal and difficult to talk to her son about what may have led up to someone putting his name on the list.
“I absolutely grilled him,” she said.
Isaac had similar conversations with his current girlfriend and older sister, and he said he felt hopeless.
“Every part of me tells me that they trust me completely and that they know that I would never do this. But that irrational anxiety that just keeps nipping away at my head tells me that everybody kind of believes it, and that’s really scary,” he said.
Setting that fear aside, Isaac and his mother say their family is intimately familiar with sexual violence and the toll it takes on people. He said that being falsely accused of something is hard, but it doesn’t compare to the experience victims of violence and sexual assault go through every day.
They believe they know who put his name on the list. They shared a screenshot of a text-thread appearing to corroborate their account that his name was included as a cruel joke. But they know that’s probably not enough to prove Isaac’s innocence to people who have never met him.
Sarah Webber fears the allegation will follow her son throughout his life. But there’s also the problem of pushing back against an effort they both believe is valid. She said the unfortunate thing about the list is that there’s a need for it.
“It feels like for some of the women that were posting names on there, it’s like their only way to get any sort of justice. And for lack of better words, that sucks,” she said. “That sucks to know that … an anonymous Twitter feed is the best that some of these women can get. It is really disheartening.”
Both said if they had seen the list and Isaac’s name hadn’t been on it, they’d assume everyone on it had committed a crime.
This is the tough spot the family is in. They say they’re concerned that the inclusion of names of people who don’t belong on the list lessens its impact.
Sarah Webber feels her own discomfort and sees her son’s discomfort, but she thinks there are probably people on that list who deserve to be there.
“Having the discomfort of their names put on the list versus the discomfort and pain they’ve caused real victims is like small potatoes. It’s nothing,” she said.
“Drops in a pond,” Isaac added.
If you’re a survivor of sexual assault, ProPublica and the Anchorage Daily News compiled this Alaska Sexual Assault Survivor Guide.
Denali Pass is the V-shaped notch in the upper left quadrant, at18,200 feet. The flat plateau below it to the right is where the high camp sits. Adam Rawski was traversing from the notch to that flat section when he fell, according to park officials. (NPS Photo/Jeff Pflueger) A man climbing Denali in May made a false report of hypothermia in an attempt to get a helicopter rescue after his failed summit attempt on North America’s highest peak, according to federal charges.
Dr. Jason Lance is an Ogden, Utah-based radiologist who now faces charges of interfering with a government employee, violating a lawful order and making a false report.
According to the charges filed Tuesday, here’s what happened:
Lance was climbing with another man, named only as “A.R.” in the charges but identified as Adam Rawski by the National Park Service in a May news release, because of what happened next.
Lance and Rawski were ascending Denali’s popular West Buttress route. They weren’t registered as climbing partners, and the charges say they had just teamed up that day at a camp at 14,200 feet.
Higher up, somewhere between 18,600 and 19,200 feet, Rawski started to show signs of altitude sickness. At some point, Lance took Rawski’s Garmin InReach satellite communication device.
Lance left Rawski with another two-person team of climbers and continued up the mountain. The other team decided to abandon their own summit attempt to help Rawski back down.
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Later, Lance also turned around and met up with Rawski and the other two climbers. As the four were descending together, with Lance and Rawski unroped, Rawski fell about 1,000 feet down a slope called the Autobahn and lay motionless at the bottom.
Lance hit the S.O.S. button on Rawski’s device. A Park Service helicopter picked up a mountaineering ranger already on the mountain, and they rescued Rawski, who was unresponsive and later listed in critical condition.
Lance still had Rawski’s device, and in subsequent messages with Park Service personnel, he said he didn’t have the right gear to descend on his own. The Park Service continued to tell Lance he needed to get down the mountain and refused to send a helicopter.
The other two-person team, apparently in the same location as Lance, sent a message saying there had been an accident but that they were OK.
According to the charges, Lance sent another message requesting a helicopter evacuation, apparently for the other climbers: “Cant decend safely. Patients in shock. Early hypothermia..”
Later, the other two climbers said they were never hypothermic or in any form of medical shock and that they had tried for hours to convince Lance to descend.
Lance insisted they stay put and said the Park Service was obligated to rescue them because, “We’ve paid our fee,” according to the charges.
Because of his message about hypothermia, the Park Service did launch a helicopter. But before the helicopter reached them, Lance and the other two climbers had finally started to head down.
Once they were all safe farther down the mountain, a mountaineering ranger with law enforcement credentials tried to talk to Lance about what had happened. Lance said he was a medical professional and could recognize hypothermia, even if the climbers he said were suffering from it disagreed.
Then, in what sounded like a tense exchange, the ranger stood outside Lance’s tent, asking for the Garmin InReach while Lance appeared to be deleting messages from the device. He eventually handed it over, the charges say.
Lance did not immediately respond to a message left at his Ogden, Utah radiology practice. It remains unclear what happened to Rawski.
The incident at the heart of the charges appears to be just one that irked Denali mountaineering rangers during the 2021 climbing season, enough so that they wrote a terse statement about inexperienced, over-eager climbers without the proper gear and the dangers of climbing with unfamiliar, last-minute partners.
A man ice fishes in northwest Alaska. (Kristen Green) It’s no secret that climate change has affected how — and when — Alaskans harvest subsistence foods.
But what are the biggest impacts? How much has the warming climate changed things? And how are subsistence harvesters dealing with that change?
Well, a new study in the journal Ecology and Society aims to answer those questions, specifically as they pertain to the Northwest Alaska communities of Kotzebue and Kivalina.
Kristen Green is a co-author on the study and an Alaska-based Ph.D. student in environment and resources at Stanford University. She says a lot of research on subsistence adaptations due to climate change has been theoretical, so she and her fellow researchers went to interview the harvesters themselves.
Listen here:
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The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Kristen Green: Well, since we were working with Alaska Native communities, it was really important to us to partner with them through every step of the research project. So, as we were first coming up with the idea, we started conversations with the Native Village of Kotzebue first and then later Kivalina, and trying to understand what questions might be meaningful to the community. From there, we started to focus on this idea of access and harvest, and developed a research protocol where we decided that we would interview expert harvesters throughout the region and ask them about what was most impacting the ways that they got to where they hunted and harvested. We asked them what changes they were seeing with respect to animal availability. And we also asked them how they’re responding to those changes and what their ideas were going forward.
Casey Grove: Just to be clear, what animals are we talking about?
KG: We asked people what was most important to them with respect to harvesting and caribou. The people there often refer to themselves as caribou people. It’s a symbolic animal for cultural and nutritional sustenance. So that was a of course a very important species. Ice seals, especially bearded seal, beluga whale are also really important. And as you get out to Kivalina, marine species become even more important based on their location. So marine mammals and fishes as well, particularly things like chum salmon and sheefish.
CG: So a pretty big range of things it sounds like.
KG: That’s right. Harvesters in the region definitely have a range of food sources that they rely on because they do harvest seasonally throughout the year. And when you look at the seasonal harvest, you do see in every month of the year, people are harvesting things. And that’s actually one thing that we found: some of those harvesting seasons are shifting a little bit relative to the past. And we believe that’s correlated with sea ice retreats.
CG: The season is changing and how much?
KG: We saw changes in three key species. For bearded seal, harvest is now beginning in early May instead of late May. For chum salmon, harvest is now starting sometime in June, mid-June, when it used to start in early July. And for beluga whale, it’s now beginning in mid- to late May. Anywhere from two to three weeks earlier for all those species. And the total window of harvest is also often more narrow and more unpredictable with some of the changes in the weather.
CG: Is the quantity of pounds of food is changing too?
KG: We didn’t specifically ask about pounds of food harvested in our study, it was outside the scope of our work. But we did hear from the two years that we asked people questions about this, that there were some years where it was much harder for them to get bearded seal. And we suspect that people are relying on other things to fill in for food that they’re not able to get — sometimes relying more on fish in a year where they can’t get seals or they’re trading more with other communities or other families.
CG: And it kind of stands to reason if you have to spend more energy, more time, more money trying to harvest the same amount of food that that’s just an overall greater difficulty than in the past.
KG: Absolutely. And that’s one of the things that we found is the amount of time you have to harvest, the amount of financial resources you have — whether it’s gasoline to be able to travel farther to find animals, or whether it’s access to multiple types of transportation. So having a snowmachine and boat and a four-wheeler, if you have access to all those, you may be able to harvest more than someone who can’t.
CG: This study, it strikes me as very intensive on the talking, almost in a journalistic sort of way, that you’re getting a lot of information by talking to people. And I wonder, what was that like? I mean, it sounds like a lot of interviews and a lot of direct communication with folks?
KG: It was a really meaningful aspect of this study that people in Kivalina and in Kotzebue were so willing to share their stories with us and we spent time at people’s houses and in fish camps, having coffee with folks and really hearing the stories of change that they’d experienced and also some of their optimism for the future. We also did look at some of the quantitative environmental trends to see how they compare to what the harvesters’ stories were and they both had similar stories about climate change. But I think the nuances, that when you’re talking to people, you’re able to gather a much broader context for climate change and potential ways to adapt than when you just are looking at the numbers.
Better internet access is coming to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, but other regions of the state are still waiting to bridge the digital divide. How will new technology and funding resources help?
Lori Townsend speaks with Hallie Bissett, Chair of the Governor’s Task Force on Broadband, and Akiak Technology CEO & President Kevin Hamer.
Rural Alaska communities have largely been left behind in the digital revolution — until now. Akiak will be the first community in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta to bring high-speed broadband internet to all its residents later this month on November 15. New satellite technology and huge federal investments are making that possible. KYUK’s Greg Kim has the story.
Cars line up for drive-through Covid-19 testing on the Alaska Native Medical Campus on Aug. 24, 2021. (Jeff Chen/Alaska Public Media) State health officials are hopeful that the worst of Alaska’s fall COVID-19 surge has passed.
Daily cases, hospitalizations and the percent of positive tests have all been declining for the last several weeks, according to data from the state’s COVID-19 dashboard. Weekly case totals have also gone down in each of the last four weeks.
The declines follow a stubborn plateau of high numbers that lasted from the end of September through mid-October, which strained hospitals and medical workers.
While Alaska’s case rate remains the highest in the country at about four times the national average, according to data compiled by The New York Times, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink said the new downward trend is “relieving.”
“We still have a lot of cases, we’re still in that high zone, there’s a lot of chances people can still get infected, but it’s a much better trend,” she said.
State data shows hospitalizations are down about 30% from their highs last month. As of Thursday afternoon, 157 people in Alaska were in the hospital with COVID-19, according to Jared Kosin, president and CEO of the Alaska Hospital and Nursing Home Association.
“We definitely are feeling consistent softening volumes,” said Kosin.
RELATED: Anchorage kids ages 5-11 get first shots of COVID vaccine at school district clinic
Kosin said the statewide declines in COVID-19 patients are driven by steep drops of people with the virus in Anchorage’s three main hospitals. Hospitals on the Kenai Peninsula and Mat-Su Borough have also started to see some declines, Kosin said. But he pointed out that levels are still above the highs set during last winter’s surge.
“We’ve been operating at such an extreme level that now that we’re close to our prior peak we’re able to kind of let out a sigh of relief for the moment,” he said.
Weekly cases have dropped by about a third over the last month, though hundreds of positive cases are still being reported each day.
COVID-19 continues to infect unvaccinated Alaskans at a much higher rate than vaccinated Alaskans. A report from the Department of Health and Social Services shows that unvaccinated residents are 11 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID than those who’ve gotten a vaccine.
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University of Alaska Anchorage Bachelor of Social Work student Amber Shields (right) takes notes as Cook Inlet Tribal Council’s suicide intervention coordinator Kris Green (left) and youth prevention coordinator Colleen Newcity (center) teach a 16-hour suicide intervention training course in Anchorage on Monday. (Jeff Chen/Alaska Public Media) The statistics around suicide in Alaska are staggering. It’s not just that it’s the sixth leading cause of death in the state or that 184 people died by suicide in 2020. It’s also that so many people seriously consider killing themselves every year.
In 2018, before the pandemic, researchers estimated around 32,000 Alaskans age 18 and older, or 5.85% of the population, seriously considered suicide. For high schoolers, it was closer to 25% in 2019, according to the Alaska Youth Behavior Risk Survey. That’s about 9,600 students.
“People are so desperate, they are so profoundly overwhelmed, that they cannot live life and that they want the pain to go away,” said Kris Green, who teaches suicide intervention courses with Cook Inlet Tribal Council. “They want relief from the pain. They don’t necessarily want to die. They just don’t want to keep feeling this bad.”
Most people in the United States want to be able to support loved ones who are dealing with thoughts of suicide, but many feel like they lack the right words or the right knowledge to talk about the topic, according to a national poll conducted in 2020. That’s where free programs, including Cook Inlet’s, are stepping in. They’re trying to teach people how to safely and confidently talk about suicide.
“People need to be heard,” said Green. “They need their stories to be heard. They need the pain to be elevated. They need to know they are not alone.”
Listen to this story:
Cook Inlet Tribal Council’s suicide intervention coordinator Kris Green (left) and youth prevention coordinator Colleen Newcity. (Jeff Chen/Alaska Public Media) Green teaches a class called Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training, or ASIST, in Anchorage. The training gives people steps to use when having conversations about suicide and developing a safety plan with a person. The idea is to keep the person safe for now. You can’t solve all their problems, said Green, but you can help them realize that resources and options exist.
The two-day-long, in-person training combines conversations, videos, powerpoints and roleplaying to teach the stages of the model. It’s a global model developed by LivingWorks 35 years ago in Canada.
As part of reporting this story and because I wanted to develop the skills myself, I attended the training in late summer along with about eight other people, including Michelle Martin. She’s a community member who took the class because she was concerned about a friend.
She said the program’s acknowledgement that suicide is a choice resonated with her and with the training she received as a victim advocate and support line volunteer.
“When a person feels disempowered, it’s really, really critical for them to know that they actually do have power over their own life,” she said.
During the training we did a role-playing exercise together to simulate what it’s like to talk directly about suicide. In the exercise, Martin played a teacher who was concerned about her student, and I played a person about to graduate from high school. We chatted a bit, I said some concerning things about life being pointless, then she asked directly: “So you sometimes think about suicide? About ending your life?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I answered.
“That’s heavy stuff. I’m here with you. Can we talk more about that?” she asked, gently but directly.
In the scenario, Martin listened to what I was saying and highlighted the small things that gave my character hope. She didn’t try to fix my problems, but we talked about easy things to do right now to stay safe, like calling a relative and avoiding alcohol.
That’s the training’s model. Martin walked through it step by step, even pulling out a pocket guide to help her remember.
“It felt good to have a model to follow,” she said.
ASIST is just one of many suicide intervention training options, but most research shows it is effective. One of the largest studies, with about 1,400 participants, showed that suicide prevention lifeline counselors who received the training helped callers feel less depressed, less suicidal and more hopeful. A significantly smaller study with about 60 people from Indigenous groups in Manitoba, Canada, showed that people who participated in ASIST did not develop better suicide intervention skills than a control group who attended a two-day culture-based resilience retreat.
One aspect of ASIST that makes it unique is its focus on attitudes around suicide. It teaches that if you come into a conversation about suicide projecting that it’s a shameful thing to consider, it will shut the conversation down and isolate the person further. If you approach the conversation with the idea that it’s a choice among many choices, people feel heard. They know you are listening to them.
A poster outlining a process called Pathway for Assisting Life is taped to the wall during the training course. (Jeff Chen/Alaska Public Media) Instructor Green said seeing suicide as a personal choice is also a way to keep yourself safe when entering these conversations.
“Everybody needs to understand that concept,” she said. “That suicide is a choice by an individual, not one we ever want them to make and never encourage somebody to make, but it also relieves us of the guilt and the burden of the what ifs. I should’ve, I could’ve, what did I do wrong?”
Green said we just need to be willing to sit with someone and listen.
If you or someone you know needs help, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK. CITC is offering ASIST training and half-day SafeTalk classes for free for anyone through May. You can email Kris Green at kkgreen@citci.org to find out dates and sign up. If you want tips on how to start the conversation, you can find tips from the Indian Health Service and NAMI. The Suicide Prevention Resource Center can help you find other programs to attend or teach as well.
This story is part of an ongoing solutions journalism project at Alaska Public Media about destigmatizing mental health. The project is funded by the Alaska Mental Health Trust.
The Anchorage Assembly chambers at the Z. J. Loussac Public Library in Anchorage. (Staff photo) Monday night’s Anchorage Assembly meeting managed to be what months’ worth of meetings weren’t: pretty much business as usual.
After weeks of combative meetings marked by bitter conflicts, raucous behavior and even a few arrests, discussion returned to more mundane topics like liquor licenses, utility rate increases and whether to charge for single-use plastic bags.
The Assembly ultimately voted 7-3 to not have businesses charge for the bags — at least for now. It’s temporarily suspending its plastic bag ban until Jan. 1. The bag ban originally took effect in September 2019, but then was suspended for about a year and a half due to concerns about reusable bags and the spread of COVID-19.
RELATED: Former Anchorage chief equity officer is suing the Bronson administration for wrongful termination
Also among the topics that generated the most discussion Monday night: changing the land use designation for a section of West Anchorage so a snow dumping facility can be built. The Assembly approved the new designation.
The Assembly was also unanimous in its support of a resolution to work with the Bronson administration to close the mass shelter at the Sullivan Arena and move toward a more community-oriented approach to homelessness. The resolution doesn’t specify any final choices for new, smaller shelters.
And on Monday, the Assembly voted to increase rates for trash collection and disposal as well as water treatment.
The Assembly did not get to everything on its agenda. An ordinance that would change how the mayor appoints department heads and how long a person may serve as a “acting” department head, was bumped to the next Assembly meeting on Nov. 9.
While the Assembly was mostly back to its usual routine this week, the meeting was not totally without disruption. Two men — who have a history of getting escorted out of public meetings — were removed by security after yelling and being repeatedly asked by Assembly leadership to stay on topic.
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Redistricting is a lengthy process that takes place every ten years. Various draft proposals have already come under fire. Will the redistricting board be able to avoid litigation this time around?
Lori Townsend speaks with Sen. Tom Begich (D-Anchorage) and Randy Ruedrich from Alaskans for Fair and Equitable Redistricting to learn more about the process.
Every ten years, a state board redraws the boundaries of Alaska’s legislative districts. The process is long and technical, but there’s a lot at stake. It can determine which party controls the state Legislature. Alaska Public Media’s Annie Feidt explains.
Dr. John Morris, who leads mayor-elect Dave Bronson administration’s homelessness response, speaks with the media after an Anchorage Assembly’s Committee on Housing and Homelessness meeting in June 2021. (Jeff Chen/Alaska Public Media) A routine Anchorage Assembly work session on the city’s shelter operations was thrown into disarray on Thursday when news surfaced that a key player in Mayor Dave Bronson’s response to homelessness had resigned.
John Morris, an anesthesiologist who has served as the city’s homeless coordinator since July, confirmed in a text message to Alaska Public Media Thursday afternoon that he had resigned on Monday. He declined to comment any further and would not say why he quit.
Morris was scheduled to give an update at Thursday’s work session on the Sullivan Arena, the city’s main homeless shelter. The meeting was held by videoconference. About 15 minutes in, Assembly Chair Suzanne LaFrance directed a question to Morris. He did not answer.
Eagle River/Chugiak Assembly member Jamie Allard interjected to say that Morris had resigned.
The news seemed to take administration officials by surprise, including Bronson’s chief of staff Sami Graham and the city’s acting health director Joe Gerace.
“I emailed Dr. Morris this morning,” said Gerace at the meeting. “I was not aware that that had occurred. So I’m shocked to hear that.”
Morris is the latest member of Bronson’s administration involved with homelessness to leave, less than four months into Bronson’s tenure as mayor.
Bronson’s office announced in a statement later Thursday afternoon that it had accepted Morris’s resignation. Bronson thanked him for his work and said his administration will work with the Assembly on homelessness issues.
“The focus and mission remains the same in helping our city’s most vulnerable get the compassionate care and resources they need,” said the statement from Bronson.
Morris’s departure comes amid concern and questions from Assembly members and homelessness experts about conditions at the Sullivan shelter, which recently underwent a management change.
Jasmine Boyle, director of the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, told Assembly members during Thursday’s work session that she’s heard an increasing number of complaints about conditions at the Sullivan, including issues with rule changes, violence and cleanliness.
Gerace acknowledged that there had been recent problems at the Sullivan because of lax behavioral policies. He said security guards had been assaulted with a knife last week.
“Bean’s had a very strong behavioral policy. I will admit that the current vendor hasn’t,” he said. “We can only ask very strongly through a contract compliance tool that they use the same rules that Bean’s did, because that was what the people were used to.”
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Gerace said the administration is working to ensure that 99 Plus 1 is complying with its contract. 99 Plus 1 is the private company that took over operations of the Sullivan shelter from Bean’s Cafe in September. Its contract ends on Sunday, but it can be extended for up to six months.
Assembly members on Thursday also had questions about the status of the city moving out of the Sullivan Arena with Morris and others leaving their jobs.
Morris was part of a six-member group of administration representatives and Assembly members working on a plan to transition out of the Sullivan. Larry Baker is the only remaining member of the group representing Bronson’s administration. Craig Campbell, a senior advisor, announced he was leaving last week.
“With two-thirds of that team gone, who is spearheading implementation of the facilitated process so that we can move out of the Sullivan as soon as possible?” Assembly member Forrest Dunbar asked Gerace during the meeting.
“I don’t know who’s going to sit in the chair,” said Gerace. “But it’s definitely something we need to look at.”
Morris was a proponent of building a large temporary shelter in East Anchorage that couldn’t win Assembly approval in part because of unclear costs and concerns about earthquakes and snow load. A smaller version of that shelter is in the most recent proposal by the city’s working group, along with several other smaller shelter sites.
RELATED: Anchorage working group proposes building large Midtown shelter and buying 3 smaller sites
Other city staff that have recently left their jobs include Bob Doehl, director of development services who was integral in setting up the Sullivan shelter last March. He announced he will resign in November.
Shawn Hays, the mass care lead who oversaw operations at the Sullivan and other non-congregate shelters, was fired last week. Hays said she is “considering options” related to her dismissal. She previously told Alaska Public Media that she had not been told of any performance issues before she was fired.
Correction: This story previously misspelled the name of Assembly Chair Suzanne LaFrance.
Mourners including Dustin Darden and Michael Chambers gather around William Topel’s coffin on Monday, Oct. 25, 2021. (Lex Treinen/Alaska Public Media) About a dozen friends gathered around a wooden casket on a cold Monday in October for conservative activist William Topel’s burial at the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery.
In attendance were friends, state Sen. Roger Holland, R-Anchorage, and the city’s chief medical officer, Michael Savitt. Mourners placed their hands on Topel’s casket and wiped tears as his body was lowered into the earth. Topel died on Oct. 13 at age 68.
Friends remembered Topel for his kindness, generosity and love of chocolate cake from Leroy’s Family Restaurant.
William Topel (Michael Chambers photo) They also said they saw Topel’s death as a call to action to oppose mask mandates and COVID-19 vaccines, and to promote the use of ivermectin to treat the virus, even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns against it. Topel was a longtime attendee and testifier at Anchorage Assembly meetings and was deeply involved in a recent string of contentious meetings on a proposed mask mandate. He attended the meetings unmasked until he was hospitalized with COVID-19.
“God’s going to use this as a fulcrum to propel us into victory,” friend and fellow activist Dustin Darden told the crowd after Topel’s burial. “We’re going to take every square inch of Anchorage, everything that Bill stood for every time he was out there, it’s just been amplified 1,000 times.”
RELATED: Fight over required health precautions in Anchorage Assembly chamber ends meeting early
For other people who observed Topel in public life, there’s a different lesson to take from his death.
“It’s just heartbreaking,” said Downtown Assembly member Chris Constant, who supported the mask mandate and knew Topel through his frequent and lengthy public testimony. “It just punches you straight to the heart of your core mission.”
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For supporters of health measures like COVID-19 vaccines and mask mandates, Topel’s story is one of a man who was misled by misinformation. Constant said he voted for the mandate in order to save lives, but he also predicted that it could cost some people their lives after seeing the packed Assembly meeting room during the weeks-long public testimony.
“I looked to the chair [Suzanne LeFrance] and I said to her, and this is a grim thing, but you know, ‘When we see this crowd here, it’s very likely some of these people aren’t going to make it,’” he said. “Why? Because it’s predictable, simply science, virology.”
Last week, Suzanne Straub, an Eagle River nurse practitioner, also warned about the potential spread of COVID-19 at the meetings. In a letter to the Assembly, she said she had a patient who attended the meetings without a mask, had been infected with COVID and was gravely ill. The patient, according to the email, refused to wear a mask in the medical clinic.
“That’s the sickness we have going on right now where someone who believes it’s their right and freedom not to take a vaccine or not to put a mask on believes they have the right to spread disease,” Constant said.
It’s unclear how Topel contracted COVID-19, but many suspect it may have been at those crowded Assembly hearings. Several people, including members of Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration, were recently infected.
Michael Chambers, a friend of Topel’s for the last 15 years, said after Topel was hospitalized, he demanded ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug not approved for COVID treatment. Doctors denied his requests, he said, which some friends blame for his death. They see the problem as the medical establishment’s refusal to treat COVID patients with drugs like ivermectin, a drug used mostly to treat conditions caused by parasitic worms. The drug generally has few side effects, but the FDA has warned of illness caused by taking high doses usually from the drug in its form designed for animals.
“We’re not talking about drinking battery acid, we’re talking about benign medical things that he wanted, that he requested,” said Chambers. “And they denied him that … And I think it’s just disgusting.”
The FDA has not approved ivermectin for treating COVID, though larger studies are ongoing to see if it could be effective. The National Institutes of Health says that there are indications it may be helpful in treating the virus based on in-vitro lab studies, but says there isn’t enough evidence to recommend for or against using it. Physicians could be liable for adverse effects from prescribing drugs that are not approved for treating a certain condition or disease, according to the NIH.
Health officials say they worry that interest in ivermectin could distract people from the most effective way to avoid serious effects of COVID: getting vaccinated.
Chambers said Topel was adamantly opposed to the vaccine, but said he didn’t deny that the virus was dangerous. Chambers said Topel had several underlying conditions and knew the risk he was getting into going to the Assembly meetings.
“He didn’t want to be a martyr, he wanted to live,” said Chambers, “But he knew that he stood by his convictions, he stood by his principles so he went to the public [hearing].”
Now, his group of friends are hoping to spread his message at an upcoming medical summit. The conference features nationally renowned vaccine skeptics, promoters of unproven cures for COVID and local doctors who disagree with the medical consensus on the use of drugs like ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and Z-Pak, an antibiotic, as COVID treatment.
RELATED: Prominent COVID vaccine critics scheduled to gather in Anchorage
Meanwhile, a mask mandate is in effect throughout Anchorage, though compliance has been spotty and it’s unclear whether Bronson’s administration is enforcing it.
To supporters of public health measures, the response from opponents feels like a collective fever dream that has pitted parts of the community against each other, when the clear enemy is the virus.
“People don’t really wake up until it happens to them or someone they love,” said Constant. “And even now, you have evidence that that isn’t even enough to wake people up.”
Correction: This story previously described ivermectin as an antiviral drug. It is more accurately described as an antiparasitic drug with some antiviral properties.
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Ian Fox, a canvasser supporting Meg Zaletel, scrolls through an iPad that will show him likely voters in the Midtown special election. Fox is one of 12 door knockers working for the campaign to retain Zaletel, Oct. 22, 2021 (Lex Treinen/Alaska Public Media) In the final days of the campaign to recall Anchorage Assembly member Meg Zaletel, tens of thousands of dollars are pouring in to fund a sprint of door knocking, mailers and a barrage of online ads before voting closes on Tuesday.
Recall supporters say the race represents a rejection of what they see as wasteful spending of federal COVID-19 relief money that flaunted normal public process. Those who oppose recalling Zaletel say she’s unfairly bearing the brunt of tough decisions to support COVID-19 mitigation measures like mask mandates, and that the health of Anchorage residents is at stake.
Regardless of which way the election goes, it’s unlikely to change the balance of the Assembly. That’s because even if the recall succeeds, the progressive Assembly will select a replacement until the regular election in April.
Still, to some observers, the cash going toward the recall — which is more than the campaign that got Zaletel elected in the first place — signifies something bigger: a deeply partisan political climate where people have starkly different views on the pandemic.
“I think there are more people on both sides of the political spectrum who are looking at recalls as just a way of irritating, annoying and distracting people in office that they disagree with,” said Jim Lottsfeldt, a political consultant who has worked in Alaska politics for decades, mostly for progressive candidates.
A campaign to recall Midtown Assembly member Felix Rivera, who is also progressive, failed in the April election. Another campaign is underway to try to unseat Jamie Allard, an outspoken conservative
It’s unclear what has caused the recent uptick in Assembly recall petitions. Ballotpedia, a crowdsourced website that tracks local elections, shows the recent recall attempts are the first for Assembly members in at least a decade.
Recall supporters say the campaign to unseat Zaletel, which is based on a minor rules violation at a meeting last fall, represents more than just unseating her.
Russell Biggs, who organized the recall, argues that Zaletel has ignored public process rules by pushing through the controversial purchase of a former hotel to use as a substance abuse treatment center. Last year, the Assembly purchased the building, near Biggs’ property in Geneva Woods, but Mayor Dave Bronson recently repurposed the building as a COVID-19 treatment center.
Biggs is also unhappy with how the Assembly has awarded federal COVID-19 relief and stimulus money.
“It’s a very unique time in Anchorage history because [the Assembly members] are being gifted millions of dollars of money,” he said. “And the people that should be in charge of that money should be using that in an ethical and responsible manner.”
Biggs pointed to funding given to groups like the Alaska Black Caucus, a civil rights group that Biggs sees as political. He described that funding — which the group said it would use for COVID-19 vaccination and testing to create the first report on the health of Black Alaskans — as irresponsible. The $1.15 million grant for the group was approved at the request of then-Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson and passed as part of a consent agenda, so it didn’t require a separate vote.
Biggs also criticized a $70,000 donation from the Unite Here union based in New York, which he sees as outsiders trying to influence the election.
Joelle Hall, president of the AFL-CIO, a labor organization, who’s leading the anti-recall campaign, said the donation was from the national umbrella union that has a local branch that’s actively opposing the recall. She’s not a fan of all the money funneling into the election, but said it’s a result of looser campaign finance laws over the last decade.
“People might lament that they wish this was like the olden days and maybe in the old days this didn’t happen,” she said. “But it’s not the old days.”
Pro-recall groups have had their share of large donations from local companies. Recall supporters got a $75,000 boost from a local paving company, a $15,000 from a property company, plus a handful of $5,000 donations from local contractors.
Those costs don’t take into account $98,000 of taxpayer money the Assembly approved to mail out and count up to 40,000 ballots.
There are also thousands of dollars the city spent after the clerk denied the recall petition, claiming that the stated reasons weren’t factually sufficient. The recall campaign appealed and the judge agreed, saying it wasn’t the court’s job to determine whether the grounds were factual. The ruling was based on a recent decision about the recall of Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
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Biggs said the influx of Outside money makes him worried about whether his campaign will succeed. His campaign to unseat Felix Rivera lost substantially in April. But he said some benefits have come out of it, like more people, including himself, engaged more heavily in local politics.
“This kind of stuff makes me want to be an activist — I don’t really I don’t like using that word,” he said, “But, you know, I have zero political aspirations except to see people get a fair shake.”
Others, like political consultant Lottsfeldt, aren’t so optimistic.
“I’m not sure I view this as increase interest in local politics as much as I view this as just another proxy for this larger cultural war,” he said.
That won’t change, he said, until national leaders turn down the temperature in political debates.
Correction: This story previously misidentified what type of group the AFL-CIO is. It is a labor organization, not a union.
Alaska offers an abundance of wild foods, but when it comes to locally grown crops, we’re often at a disadvantage. What programs and efforts are underway to help lower our dependence on outside shipments?
Lori Townsend discusses food security with UAF Cooperative Extension Program’s Casey Matney and the Intertribal Agriculture Council’s Tikaan Galbreath.
RELATED:
Agriculture projects in Alaska have yielded mixed results. Sometimes it works; sometimes it takes decades to bear fruit. Now, Alaska is working on its next big effort to promote agriculture — a large-scale land auction in the Interior. As Alaska Public Media’s Jeff Chen reports, the Alaska Division of Agriculture hopes the land will be used for ranching, wild harvests, grains, and more.
Samantha Barr, owner of Granny’s Guns in Anchorage, talks with first-time customer Ronald Nardi on Friday, a day after the city’s mask ordinance went into effect. Nardi, an advanced practice nurse, says he thinks wearing quality masks is important to slow the spread of COVID-19. (Jeff Chen/Alaska Public Media) Samantha Barr, a co-owner of Granny’s Guns in Anchorage, is no fan of face masks.
“This is a gun store, so we never liked them,” she said.
She said she has asthma, wearing a face-covering makes it hard for her to breathe, and she doubts masks actually slow the spread of COVID-19. Plus, she said, gun stores are frequent targets of theft, and having customers come in with face coverings makes her nervous.
Despite her opposition to the new mask mandate, which went into effect Thursday evening, Barr said that little will change in her store. She plans to tape up a sign in her window.
“Just ‘Per the new emergency order, whatever, the Municipality of Anchorage now requires masks in all public places,’” she said. “I won’t put that we require it.”
Samantha Barr, owner of Granny’s Guns. (Jeff Chen/Alaska Public Media) After days of dire warnings from people at recent Assembly meetings about mask mandates’ impact on personal liberty and their threat to small businesses, the mask mandate that went into effect Thursday has little impact on businesses like Granny’s.
There are large exceptions carved out for everyone from children to members of Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration, as well as for church gatherings and fitness centers. Bronson’s administration has emphasized in public statements that there is no enforcement built into the measure.
RELATED: Who needs to wear a mask in Anchorage and where? Here’s a breakdown of the new ordinance.
That’s led many businesses around the city — Granny’s Guns included — to implement laissez-faire policies on verifying masks. Matanuska Brewing, for example, wrote on its Facebook page that it would assume customers entering their stores without masks qualified for exemptions.
“Our young hosts and hostesses will not police this matter,” they wrote.
But some businesses are making changes to comply with the law.
Fatboy Vapors owner Matt Wagonner said masks were optional for employees before the mandate. Now, employees are required to wear them and customers won’t be allowed inside without masks.
“If they don’t, we’ll ask them to step outside so that we can go ahead and take their order and bring it directly outside to them,” he said.
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Wagonner said he isn’t thrilled about the new mandate, but he’s happy to comply with the law. For other business owners, the new mandate has made operating easier. Store owners that previously had the responsibility of asking customers to wear a mask, now have the power of city law to back them up.
“People know going out, ‘Oh, if I’m going into a store, I have to have a mask’ and they bring a mask with them,” said Laurette Rose, owner of Tiny Gallery, an art shop in downtown Anchorage.
A sign outside of REI in Anchorage on Friday alerts customers that local regulations now require that everyone wear a face mask. (Tegan Hanlon/Alaska Public Media) For people like Rose, the mandate brings some hope that things can return to normal and help her business.
“If you look around downtown, there’s not a lot of foot traffic. There’s not people walking around and that’s not because of the mask mandate. That’s because of case counts being high,” she said. “That’s worse for downtown businesses than any mask mandate could possibly be.”
That idea that mask mandates can help boost the economy is born out by academic research, said Nolan Klouda, director of the University of Alaska Center for Economic Development.
“Wearing a mask, by providing some level of protection … tends to make people feel safer to go outside of their homes, and perhaps spend money with local businesses,” he said.
Klouda points out that there is little cost to a mask mandate, other than the price of masks for residents.
Even for opponents of the mandate like Barr of Granny’s Guns, mask mandates haven’t affected business. Barr said that over the last year, she’s had record sales, part of a nationwide trend of new gun buyers.
“We were super busy during the last mask mandate,” she said.
The question of whether more people will wear masks due to the mandates and encourage spending is still open. On Friday, businesses said it was too early to tell.
Research shows masks are imperfect at stopping COVID-19 spread, but they do work. A recent large-scale study found that properly-worn surgical masks can prevent 11% of COVID spread in a population. Cloth masks only prevent 5% of spread, according to the same study.
That might not sound like a lot, but it means a small change in behavior could be enough to reverse trends of growing case numbers.
“We just have to kind of get the edge off of these peaks,” said South Anchorage Assembly member John Weddleton at the meeting last week where the masking rules were passed. “That 10% can do it if people rally together and just for a little while.”
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy speaks at a news conference in downtown Anchorage last month. (Nat Herz/Alaska Public Media) It’s a little more than a year from Alaska’s next gubernatorial election, and Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy would love to talk about some of the issues he ran on: crime rates (they’re down), jobs, his plans to boost the state’s energy industry.
But for now, the state remains in the grips of an intense, delta-driven surge of the coronavirus that’s stressed its hospitals and fueled a caustic public debate over a mask mandate in the state’s largest city. And a special session the governor called to address the Permanent Fund dividend and Alaska’s budget deficit is languishing.
Dunleavy spoke with Alaska Public Media’s Nat Herz this week about the state of the pandemic, his relationship with lawmakers and the outlook for next year.
Listen to the interview (the voice that breaks in partway through is Jeff Turner, Dunleavy’s deputy communications director):
This transcript was edited for clarity and condensed.
Alaska Public Media: On the pandemic: We’ve got those hundreds of contracted workers who showed up to work at hospitals. Cases seem like they are at least plateauing, if not going down. Hospitals are still in crisis standards of care, and if you look at the numbers, we still have lots of cases compared to most other places in the country. How do you think we’re doing?
Mike Dunleavy: We’d love to see the cases come down, and the cases will come down. Back in early August, the most vaccinated state in the country, Vermont, experienced a 245% increase in cases, because the delta variant’s just much more infectious. So, we’re seeing a surge that other states have seen. We want the cases to come down; we believe the cases will come down here, sooner than later.
APM: Are we doing okay?
MD: We still have the fourth-lowest death rate per capita. We did have the third. Forty-six other states have done worse.
It’s a tough one, to say that when somebody dies, ‘Are we doing good?’ Our hospitals are holding, they have assistance. None of what we’re seeing is unnecessarily unanticipated. And I would say that we’re hanging in there, and we’ll get through this.
APM: You’ve been consistent in saying that mask mandates are a choice for local governments. But what would you say to people who see that their local governments, except for in Anchorage, are not doing that, it’s costing lives, and that a mandate is something the governor has the power to put into place — so why not do it?
MD: Government has a lot of power to do a lot of things in people’s lives, which I don’t necessarily believe is good. There are some people that believe that you need government to do the right thing. I have been in government for several years — government is not perfect. Government makes mistakes, as well. I actually thought we did really well with the pandemic, when it first started, because people did what they needed to do to take care of themselves. I don’t believe in mandates, especially putting something into someone’s arms. I know other people do. I don’t.
Dunleavy sits with his chief medical officer, Dr. Anne Zink, at a news conference last month. (Nat Herz/Alaska Public Media) APM: On the mask mandate, though: Is it not worth the potential reduction in spread that we would see to violate that principle?
MD: What would that reduction be? How much?
APM: I think the state and the municipality have said it’s significant, right?
MD: If everyone wore an N-95 (mask), and wore it properly in the right settings, I think you would see a significant reduction.
Related: Alaska doctors say masks work and some are better than others
APM: You’re not convinced that a mandate would be very effective?
MD: I don’t think so. And can you describe the mandate that Anchorage just passed? People are exempt? I don’t know — is there going to be enforcement?
APM: But wouldn’t you at least accept that probably it will result in more people wearing masks, even if it’s not a lot or everyone.
MD: Probably, but I don’t know. Probably.
APM: In Anchorage, it’s been a pretty difficult couple of weeks, I think, for the local government. Do you have a sense of what is driving the kind of toxic debate and discourse that’s gone on there?
Related: Incivility in Anchorage: Ex-Assembly members do not approve
MD: I think the media is part of it. I think social media is part of it. I think there are a number of things being discussed nationally that are polarizing people. I think there are good people that absolutely believe that their rights are in jeopardy. And I believe that there are good people that believe that certain mitigation efforts such as mask wearing will have some impact
APM: But you don’t really believe that at this point, that mask-wearing will have much of an impact?
MD: It depends on what kind of mask, in what setting, for how long and how well is it fitted. We did a mask 101, many months ago, with mask experts at one of our press conferences. You start with a parent teaching a kid to cover their face when they sneeze, right? That’s a mitigating attempt. Most of us would agree that that probably won’t stop a virus. But it helps deflect, and then you work your way up to a loose fitting cloth mask, all the way up. So, it depends on what you’re wearing.
APM: But generally speaking, the average mask that someone’s going to wear — there’s an idea that either that’s going to help or it’s not going to help. And it seems like you’re kind of backing away from the idea that generally speaking, more people in masks —
MD: Help do what though, is the question? Everyone says help. Help do what? Stop the virus? It won’t stop the virus. It will not stop the virus. Does it help if the guy wearing the mask is a truck driver that goes up and down the North Slope and nobody else is around him? I don’t see how that helps. You’re talking about everyone getting into a crowded room — you’re better off wearing an N-95 if you get into a crowded room. So, it’s a matter of degree.
APM: Okay. To go back to the previous question —
MD: Can I ask you a question? When I answer your question, sometimes you don’t like the answer. I mean, I’m just being polite. But if you have a better answer, you should substitute and say, ‘This was Dunleavy’s answer.’ Or, ‘This is the answer I think he should say.’
APM: I just think that, you know, the public health folks would say —
MD: The public health folks, their job is to look at every mitigating approach you could possibly do. And ideally, you would be wearing an N-95 and be 8 feet away from people. That would be ideal.
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APM: But I think that evidence also says that if you wear a cloth mask or a surgical mask, that’s still a lot better than not wearing a mask at all.
MD: It depends on your setting.
APM: If there’s a city requirement to wear a mask in a public space — that will reduce transmission?
MD: It may.
APM: It may?
MD: You’re absolutely right — it will reduce it by 67.5%. I’m sorry, 80%. How much would Dr. Zink tell you it will reduce it by? How much will it reduce it by?
APM: I don’t know.
MD: Right? Okay.
APM: But I think the point is, we don’t know, but presumably it’s a meaningful amount somewhere between zero and not 100, because we know they’re not 100%.
MD: I think whenever you have a barrier on your face when there’s a virus around, it could have an impact on reducing spread.
APM: Going back to the Anchorage discourse question, around what’s fueling the toxic discourse there. Is it all media? Is it specific media? Is it just social media, or is it media like me, or media like The Watchman and Must Read Alaska and The Blue Alaskan?
MD: I think all of it contributes. Prior to the internet and social media, you had printed media that was pretty static. Usually, the news was dated, because you had to deliver it. But now, it’s instant, all across the world. And there are numerous, too many to even name, how many different sites there are and groups and so forth. So, I think you have a plethora of opinions, interspersed with facts. I just think the whole thing has contributed to a huge questioning situation.
APM: Is there anything government can do to fix that situation?
MD: Government can’t fix everything. I don’t believe so.
APM: What kind of consideration are you giving, if any, to any kind executive action or legislative proposals to ban mask or vaccine mandates?
MD: None, at this time.
APM: Last COVID question: What are you hearing about ivermectin right now, and would you say that people should not be using that for COVID?
MD: I’ll never pose as a doctor and tell you what you should use or shouldn’t use. That should be between your doctor and the patient. There’s ivermectin for livestock. There’s ivermectin that is actually for human beings as well. That’s a decision between the doctor and the pharmacist and the patient.
Related: Alaska GOP politicians are lobbying the governor and pharmacy board for easier access to ivermectin
APM: Would you agree that the focus on ivermectin distracts from the usefulness of vaccines?
MD: No, I don’t think it does. All of these discussions, you can have. We’ve been through this before: I was infected. I got the vaccine.That’s one discussion. There’s other potential therapies. There’s monoclonals. So, no, I don’t think it distracts.
Dunleavy speaks to reporters at a political fundraiser last year. (Nat Herz/Alaska Public Media) APM: If you got COVID, would you want ivermectin?
MD: Would I want it? I’d have to have a discussion with my doctor to see what was best. (You’re suggesting) it’s almost, like, I have this craving for ivermectin or something. I would just like to be able to know that I could get better if I got infected. That’s all.
Dunleavy’s communications aide, Jeff Turner, breaks in: It’s important to remember what the administration’s done on COVID. We now have 250 health care people coming up that were just licensed under the program that we announced a few weeks ago. So there’s that and other measures going on to address COVID. Those might be good things to bring up as well. It’s more than just face masks.
APM: The special session on the Permanent Fund seems to kind of be stalling out. There was an opinion piece the other day that basically said the governor has it backward with his fiscal plan: Locking in the Permanent Fund dividend and the Permanent Fund in the Constitution is the easy part. And the hard part is filling whatever the budget deficit is that we’re left with, if we go with your plan to divide Permanent Fund revenues 50-50 between government services and dividends. So: Where are the proposals that would give legislators confidence that you’re serious about filling that budget hole?
MD: You’re kidding me. You’re kidding me. You really don’t know where the proposals are? You haven’t seen the proposals, since we started introducing proposals in January of last year, and in subsequent special sessions, you’ve haven’t seen those proposals? We can get you — there’s probably a book that thick of proposals.
Related: Alaska lawmakers say they want compromise on PFD, but it’s unclear how they’ll get there
APM: So, basically, at this point, you feel like the Legislature has the tools in front of them?
MD: Yes, they do. They have the tools in front of them. They know the numbers. They just have to choose, as a Legislature, if they want to solve the issue with the tools that they have.
APM: Do you have the ability to knock heads together and bring everyone into a room and kind of push things forward yourself? Or is that not your job at this point?
MD: They’re having a very difficult time getting into a room with themselves right now. Our job is to lay out a budget and lay out a sustainable fiscal plan. We’ve done that. Our job is to do the research, when they ask for it. We’ve done that. Our job is to come up with as many ideas as possible, to put together a sustainable fiscal plan with all the components. We’ve done that. Our job is to provide them the environment for a special session. We’ve done that.
APM: So if Alaskans are frustrated that they haven’t seen more progress, is it your feeling that there’s really not that much more you could do, and the leadership at this point needs to come and is not coming from the Legislature?
MD: Yes. Yes. And if they don’t come up with a decision, that non-decision is a decision. That they prefer to have the situation that we have now.
APM: Do you see that changing over the next regular legislative session?
MD: I wish it changed in January. I wish it changed this summer. Alaska needs a sustainable fiscal plan. There’s nobody that argues that. What this really comes down to is whether the Permanent Fund and the Permanent Fund dividend are going to be permanent, or whether they’re subject to being spent on government programs. That’s what this comes down to.
APM: What do you feel like the chances are that we do get this resolved before the election this coming year?
MD: I have to remain optimistic. But there’s always the chance that they won’t want to resolve it. And then, the people of Alaska will have to decide if that’s the type of government that they want.
APM: There was that ruling from the federal judge last week, where he said those two psychiatrists had been unconstitutionally asked to resign. And he made a reference that you could be held personally liable. In retrospect, the fact that the request for resignations, at the start of your term, went out to a larger-than-usual group of employees after you were elected — was that a mistake?
MD: I don’t think so. No.
Related: Ex-Alaska Psychiatric Institute docs win federal court victory in challenge to Dunleavy ‘loyalty pledge’
APM: So, you feel like you guys will continue to fight that lawsuit?
MD: We’re having that discussion.
APM: What else do you want people to know?
MD: 500 health care workers are here. Our fiscals are actually looking very good for the state of Alaska. Our crime rates have plummeted over the last three years. I don’t know if I saw anything on that.
APM: Are you frustrated by the fact that people don’t seem to be acknowledging that stuff?
MD: No. I think there’s a lot of good things going on in Alaska. It’s all overshadowed by this virus, nationwide, and the politics nationwide. But there’s plenty of jobs if people want them.
APM: Do you have a sense of when the pandemic will —
MD: (joking) December 1, it will end. No, but you raise a very good question. Let me answer it. This pandemic is not going to ‘end.’ Okay? This pandemic is in many mammal species now. Denmark had to destroy millions of mink because there was a spread going back and forth, transmission. So, people need to realize that we’re going to have to live with this pandemic, this virus. We have the mitigating approaches that I think give us the upper hand. But it’s going to be with us. And, as I mentioned, it’s just a matter of time before everyone has the antibodies, either through infection or vaccination.
Vehicles line-up on Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2021, afternoon at the Loussac Library, one of Anchorage’s free COVID-19 testing sites. (Jeff Chen/Alaska Public Media) An apparent decrease in COVID-19 cases in Alaska in recent weeks appears to have stalled.
“Basically, Alaska has plateaued,” State Epidemiologist Dr. Joe McLaughlin said during a call Thursday with reporters.
Alaska reported 964 new resident COVID cases on Thursday and another 22 among nonresidents who tested positive in the state. The number of cases over the past week has increased by an average of 8% over the previous week, though it’s still about a third lower than the record high levels set at the end of September.
COVID hospitalizations also ticked up on Thursday, to 209 patients. The number of patients with coronavirus in Alaska’s hospitals reached a record high in September, at 230.
McLaughlin said hospitalizations will likely stay high as long as case counts are high. Alaska continues to lead the country in its COVID-19 rate, according to data from the New York Times.
“What we can expect with respect to hospitalizations is probably something similar to what we’ve seen in the recent days and weeks,” he said. “As soon as we do start to see a notable decline in cases, then we expect that we will see a concomitant decrease in hospitalizations.”
December 2020 was the deadliest month of the pandemic in Alaska so far with 100 deaths recorded, but hospitalization trends suggest September could surpass it once officials finish reviewing death certificates.
RELATED: Anchorage Assembly will decide tonight whether to override Bronson’s veto of masking measure
Health officials say that before the delta variant, there was usually a delay between a rise in cases and a rise in hospitalizations. The trends are different with the delta surge, which experts say could be caused by the faster transmission of the highly-contagious delta variant, as well as patients behaving differently.
“We continually see people in the emergency department who are unvaccinated who show up who never got tested. And so their first presentation is when they become hospitalized,” Alaska Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink said on Thursday.
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The state has enacted crisis standards of care for 20 hospitals, which protect them from liability when they’re forced to ration care, and Zink said another hospital had requested coverage under those standards. She didn’t name the hospital.
But Zink said a recent influx of hundreds of out-of-state health workers has helped hospitals restore some care that was being rationed, like dialysis.
“I get texts every day from happy health care workers explaining what a difference this is making on the frontline, which is fantastic,” she said.
Hispanics make up a growing share of the population in Alaska, and their stories are intertwined with the state’s culture. How has life changed for the Hispanic and Latino community through the decades?
Lori Townsend discusses Hispanic Heritage Month and a new documentary showcasing Latinos in Alaska with artist and filmmaker Indra Arriaga Delgado and University of Alaska professor Mariano Gonzales.
Clem Tillion in Halibut Cove in 2018. (Jason Sear) Clem Tillion had a story for everyone, it seemed, and now everyone is telling Clem Tillion stories.
A towering figure in the worlds of Alaska fisheries and politics — and in the intersection between the two — Tillion, 96, died Wednesday morning at his home in Halibut Cove.
“Clem Tillion belongs to history now,” said Rick Halford, who served with Tillion in the state Legislature. “Almost 100 years of his own history and a lot of great contributions to the state of Alaska. He was an outstanding person and a great teacher.”
Tillion, in the words of one close friend, was Alaska’s original “fish czar.” He helped resettle Halibut Cove, played a role in the creation of the Permanent Fund and, into his 90s, remained active as a fisheries lobbyist and an uncompromising advocate for the Permanent Fund dividend.
And he was the only Alaska lawmaker to vote against repealing the state’s income tax in 1980 — a decision he defended for the rest of his life.
“He was a long-term thinker,” said Vince Tillion, one of Tillion’s two sons. “His fish politics were for the fish. His state politics were the long-term interest of the state.”
The only thing that slowed Clem Tillion down was a long ago back injury that interfered with the sensation and circulation in his feet.
His last foot injury, which led to complications that ultimately caused his death, came as he was using heavy equipment to work on a neighbor’s foundation over the summer, said Martha Cotten, one of Tillion’s two daughters.
Tillion, left, and former state Sen. Mike Szymanski carry Tillion’s casket at Tillion’s “Dead or Alive” party in 2012. (Courtesy Mike Szymanski) “But he was going to be doing those sorts of things ’til he died anyway,” she said.
Tillion’s casket had been waiting for him for a decade: He bought one after having a premonition that he would die in October of 2012. One of his friends, tired of hearing about Tillion’s impending demise, challenged him to a bet that would come due when Tillion expected to die.
“If you’re in that casket, I will pay for all the booze that people can drink at your going-away,” the friend, former state senator and fisheries lobbyist Mike Szymanski, said he told Tillion. “If you’re not in that goddamn casket, you’re paying for all the booze, but we’re still having a party.”
Tillion lost. The “Dead or Alive Party” was an alive party.
“I had just come back from fishing, got to go over, and here’s Clem, sitting on the dock with his casket full of beer,” said another longtime friend and Homer fisherman, Buck Laukitis. “He said, ‘Buck, better have a beer — I can’t get in there ’til it’s all gone.’”
Tillion was born in 1925 in Brooklyn, New York, where his father was an architect. He served in the South Pacific during World War II — a searing experience that he would breezily recount, in gruesome detail, into his old age.
He arrived in Alaska on a steamship and traveled to the shore of Kachemak Bay by train, raft and on foot before working his way around to Halibut Cove. The community was once home to thousands of people who worked in a herring fishery, but it was largely abandoned after fish stocks died off.
Tillion could still fish for halibut and cod, and he bought most of an island in the cove for $1,400. The money was secured from an Anchorage bank with a letter of recommendation from a seafood processor named Squeaky Anderson: “He’s a crazy kid but catches fish.”
Tillion married Diana, an artist who became known for painting with octopus ink, and the couple raised four children.
He entered the state House in 1963, just a few years after statehood, when a retiring lawmaker signed Tillion up to run without consulting with him.
Tillion served in the House and Senate for nearly 20 years. While there, he helped develop the state’s system to limit the number of permitted commercial salmon fishermen, in an effort to conserve declining stocks and keep fishing rights in Alaskans’ possession.
Clem Tillion as a state senator. (Alaska State Library) Much later, as “fish czar” for Gov. Wally Hickel, he got behind a system that divided up harvests of halibut and black cod into individual catch shares for fisherman — a move aimed at eliminating frenzied, derby-style fisheries where boats faced pressure to operate in dangerous weather.
Even into his 90s, Tillion continued working on fisheries issues as a paid lobbyist for the regional Alaska Native corporation for the Aleutian Islands.
Tillion was also close with Jay Hammond, a bush pilot and fisherman who served with Tillion in the Legislature, then was elected governor.
The two worked together on the establishment of the Alaska Permanent Fund in the 1970s, which Tillion later described as the “probably the single best accomplishment completed by our state government since statehood.”
His advocacy around the fund and the dividend never stopped.
Tillion signed onto a 2016 lawsuit that unsuccessfully challenged a partial dividend veto by then-Gov. Bill Walker. And he continued writing opinion pieces and letters pushing Alaska leaders to put larger dividend payments and lower overall spending by the fund in the state Constitution. (Any resulting budget holes, he has said, could be filled by a reinstated income tax.)
A May 3 letter to the Legislature apologized for “nattering on,” cited a 1970 Harper’s Magazine story and told lawmakers that their political problems would “disappear like a plate of king crab legs at a legislative reception” if only they could agree to enshrine a “sensible” dividend payment in the Alaska Constitution.
Those positions, like many others Tillion took in his career, were geared toward preserving resources for future generations of Alaskans.
“I never thought of myself as anything but a temporary organism that was going to be here for a few years and pass on,” Tillion once told journalist Charles Wohlforth. “And the only thing that counted were my children, my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren.”
The policies Tillion fought for have not been universally embraced. One recent report published by the Nature Conservancy found that the limited entry permit program disadvantages Alaska Native and rural communities.
Tillion also could be pushy, and a crafty and confounding opponent if you found yourself on the opposite side of an issue. A 1992 Anchorage Daily News profile referenced a bumper sticker that referred to Tillion as the “prince of darkness,” and featured a photo of him sitting on a bulldozer under the headline: “Get out of the way — be it for fisheries or for family, Clem Tillion does what he thinks is best.”
But Tillion was also effective, and beloved by generations of fishermen, policymakers and family members who spent time with him.
Tillion’s casket was filled with beer for his 2012 party. Now, it rests in a crypt on a hilltop above his home in Halibut Cove, where he lies beside his late wife, accompanied by pickled herring, cookies and a martini. (Courtesy Mike Szymanski) “He could command the room, and everybody listened,” said Laukitis, who, like Tillion, served on a key fisheries policy making board called the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. “I’ve had dinner with him in restaurants, and he’s so loud that you get stares from all the way on the other side of the room. And some of his stories were not very politically correct, and some of them kind of made you cringe at times. But we’ve all heard them, and they make me smile now.”
Laukitis was one of Tillion’s close friends who got to see him in his final days.
Tillion had spent four days in the hospital for treatment of an infection in his foot. But visitors couldn’t see him there because of COVID-19 restrictions, so two of his children rolled him out of the hospital for a little party with friends, then rolled him back in for his next dose of antibiotics.
Ultimately, with his health failing, his family brought him back across Kachemak Bay to his expansive home in Halibut Cove. That’s where he died, said Martha Cotten, his daughter.
“In his room, with a picture of my mom, comfortably,” she said.
Cotten, her husband and her brother Vince spoke with a reporter late Wednesday from Tillion’s home, just before his casket was sealed in a hilltop crypt that also holds his late wife’s Diana’s coffin.
“It was a great loss,” Cotten said. “But not unexpected. We definitely all were crying for a couple of hours. But we’re bucking up.”
Inside the casket with Tillion: pickled herring, cookies, photos of his family and notes from Diana. And a martini.
Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson during public testimony at the Anchorage Assembly on Sept. 29, 2021. (Wesley Early/AKPM) As expected, Mayor Dave Bronson on Wednesday vetoed a mask requirement for most indoor public spaces that the Anchorage Assembly passed late Tuesday night.
Bronson’s veto comes after days of chaotic and combative public testimony about a proposed mask ordinance that was similar to the emergency measure approved Tuesday.
In the veto letter, Bronson blasted the Assembly for using an emergency ordinance that didn’t require public testimony, claimed the ordinance violated the Alaska constitution’s guarantee of privacy and said the city’s declining case numbers show the mandate is unnecessary.
Anchorage’s case counts have declined slightly for the past two weeks but remain high. Alaska still has the highest COVID rate of any state in the country.
Read the veto letter here.
Bronson, a conservative, and the largely progressive Assembly have sparred over numerous issues since he took office this summer, including masks. The Assembly will weigh Thursday whether to overturn Bronson’s veto and is expected to do so.
RELATED: Anchorage Assembly approves emergency mask mandate
Bronson wrote in his veto letter that the masking measure was “stoking widespread fear in an attempt to scare the public into submission.” He said the Assembly had “openly displayed their scorn for the public process” by passing the ordinance around 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday in a mostly empty Assembly chamber.
In a separate lengthy emailed statement, Bronson said that the Assembly had violated the public trust in passing the masking rules.
“They have made their agenda clear: shut down the people, shut down the public process, and shove the heavy hand of government mandates into your personal health decisions. Make no mistake, the Anchorage Assembly is not done with such intrusions,” he said.
Downtown Assembly member Chris Constant fired back in a phone interview, pointing to record COVID-19 hospitalizations and some of the deadliest months of the pandemic since Bronson took office in July.
“The mayor continues to harp on this idea that we have broken the public process. Well, I would rebut that and say that clearly, he has, as people die,” Constant said.
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In his statement, Bronson underscored that there are no penalties for not complying with the mask measure.
“I am against forcing individuals to make medical health decisions, based on the personal desires or views of nine elected representatives, especially when the public’s participation in the process has been prematurely and deliberately curtailed. Please know, there are no fines, no fees and no punishments for violating this ordinance,” he said.
The Assembly can override Bronson’s veto with eight votes. The emergency ordinance passed with nine votes on Tuesday.
Before Tuesday’s vote, the Assembly held six public meetings on a similar masking ordinance and took public comment. The Assembly heard from 276 people in person and got written comments from more than 4,000 people. The Assembly has said while most of the people commenting in person opposed a mask mandate, a majority of the written comments supported one.
Cars line up for drive-through Covid-19 testing on the Alaska Native Medical Campus on Aug. 24, 2021. (Jeff Chen/Alaska Public Media) Alaska on Wednesday recorded a jump in COVID-19 hospitalizations and 1,239 new infections.
The state Department of Health and Social Services said 204 people are now hospitalized with COVID-19, an increase of 18 patients from a day ago. That’s still below Alaska’s COVID hospitalizations record set in September, with 223 COVID patients hospitalized.
The state on Wednesday reported no new deaths linked to the virus.
RELATED: Bronson vetoes Anchorage mask mandate
Wednesday’s case numbers were more than twice as high as Tuesday’s, but Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink said the rise is a result of how tests are recorded. Speaking at an online public forum on Wednesday afternoon, Zink said that the jump happened because a new batch of tests was included in Wednesday’s numbers.
“Overall, we’ve been kind of plateauing with a slight decrease,” said Zink.
The 1,239 new cases include 1,220 Alaskans and the rest nonresidents who tested positive in the state.
Daily case counts reached above 1,700 at the end of September. Alaska still leads the country in its seven-day case rate, according to data compiled by the New York Times.
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Jose Urrutia gets a COVID-19 test at an Anchorage municipal site in August. (Jeff Chen/Alaska Public Media) After a funding crunch forced Anchorage’s city government to cut back COVID-19 testing last week amid an intense surge in cases, Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration said it plans to present the Assembly on Tuesday with a $2.65 million request that would restore testing to its previous level through the end of November.
“The Assembly is aware and is in support,” Corey Allen Young, Bronson’s spokesman, said in an email Monday.
Bronson’s administration directed Anchorage’s contracted testing company, Visit Healthcare, to cut hours last week. The company then scaled back its opening hours at several sites around the city, including at the Loussac Library and Changepoint church.
Related: Amid one of the nation’s worst COVID-19 outbreaks, Anchorage officials say they’re rationing testing
Anchorage health officials said that move was necessary because the city pays $98 per test, and a spike in testing demand amid the current surge in the virus had depleted the testing budget previously approved by the Assembly.
A number of Assembly members questioned the decision, saying they would be willing to approve additional spending to sustain testing.
The new Bronson administration proposal hasn’t been formally released yet. Young said it would be unveiled at Tuesday’s Assembly meeting, which is set to start at 5 p.m.
Ivermectin is a drug approved for use in humans to fight parasites. Federal agencies caution against using it to treat COVID-19, as studies have been inconclusive. But conservative elected officials and activists in Alaska have been lobbying for easier access to the drug. (TajPharmalImages under Creative Commons license BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) An array of Republican state lawmakers and activists are pressing Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration and the state pharmacy board to make it easier for Alaskans to get access to ivermectin, the unproven COVID-19 treatment that state and federal agencies caution against using.
In recent weeks, Palmer GOP Sen. Shelley Hughes has spoken with Dunleavy and his health commissioner to encourage them to consider supplying Alaskans with vitamins and drugs, including ivermectin, “that some Alaskan physicians are prescribing but pharmacies aren’t filling,” she said.
Three Republican representatives and a pair of Dunleavy’s appointees to the Alaska Commission on Aging, meanwhile, also testified about ivermectin at a recent pharmacy board meeting — where some asked board members to lean on pharmacists who are denying prescriptions for the drug.
Big Lake GOP Rep. Kevin McCabe, right, leaves the House floor at the Alaska Capitol in June, 2021. (Nat Herz/Alaska Public Media) “Maybe the pharmacists could be directed — or, directed’s the wrong word — suggested that they allow the doctors to actually be doctors and do their jobs,” said Big Lake GOP Rep. Kevin McCabe. “The patient and the doctor should be the ones to decide.”
Pharmacy board members did not endorse McCabe’s suggestion. And less than a week later, the board’s chair drafted a letter to the three representatives that laid out that pharmacists have the authority to refuse prescriptions.
But the legislators’ lobbying efforts highlight how some Alaskans’ insistence about ivermectin has persisted. That’s even with limited scientific evidence the drug is effective, and as federal regulators and an array of provider groups warn that it should not be used to treat or prevent COVID-19.
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The drug, which is approved to treat parasites in humans but not the coronavirus, has been linked to multiple cases of hospitalizations and even deaths stemming from misuse. Many vaccine skeptics, meanwhile, have championed it as a cure.
“Anyone who claims to be creating medical guidance and they don’t have vaccine as their No. 1 recommended tool are pushing misinformation,” said Coleman Cutchins, a state pharmacist. “Vaccine is our No. 1 drug for the prevention of severe disease from this virus.”
Related: Amid one of the nation’s worst COVID-19 outbreaks, Anchorage officials say they’re rationing testing
Very early in the pandemic, ivermectin showed some potential to be effective against the coronavirus in a lab setting.
But further research suggested that huge doses would be necessary to work in the human body. And while dozens of trials are still underway, the ones conducted so far have produced mixed results. One study from Egypt that linked ivermectin to a huge reduction in deaths was withdrawn, amid allegations of plagiarism and data manipulation.
“There is insufficient evidence for the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19,” the National Institutes of Health’s informational page says about the drug. “Results from adequately powered, well-designed and well-conducted clinical trials are needed to provide more specific, evidence-based guidance on the role of ivermectin in the treatment of COVID-19.”
Still, people have been clamoring for access to the drug around the world, including across the United States and Alaska. In August, Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce backed ivermectin and suggested that his area could become a testing ground for COVID-19 treatment research.
Related: Kenai Peninsula Borough mayor promotes debunked treatment for COVID-19
Buoyed by endorsements from lawmakers and television and radio hosts, ivermectin has been particularly popular among political conservatives, who view federal medical authorities like Dr. Anthony Fauci with increasing skepticism.
“My trust in Dr. Fauci is zero point zero zero, negative 50,” said Mike Coons, a 69-year-old conservative activist from the Mat-Su.
Coons was one of the two Dunleavy aging commission appointees who testified at the pharmacy board last month.
In a phone interview, Coons said he’s more familiar with and enthusiastic about hydroxychloroquine, another unproven drug once used to treat former President Donald Trump.
But Coons said he’s also encouraged by what he’s read about ivermectin. And when he was exposed to a neighbor who had the coronavirus, his doctor said he’d be willing to prescribe both drugs if Coons needed them.
Coons then called a local Fred Meyer pharmacy to ask if they’d fill the prescriptions. The response, he said: “Oh no, we can’t do that. Because we’re worried about liability.” Coons said he was also told that filling an ivermectin prescription written to treat COVID-19 could jeopardize a doctor’s license.
In an email, a Fred Meyer spokesperson cited warnings against the use of ivermectin by both the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Fred Meyer supports our pharmacists’ exercise of professional judgment, including consideration of information published by the FDA and CDC, in deciding whether to fill or refill prescriptions,” the spokesperson said.
After the phone call, Coons then joined the pharmacy board’s meeting to express his frustration and issue a request.
“What we need this board to do is to tell Kroger and Fred Meyer’s and Safeway and Carr’s and Walgreens that if you’re going to operate in the state of Alaska, under state of Alaska licensure, when a doctor gives a prescription, they get that prescription out to that patient — no questions asked, other than what they’re normally supposed to be asking,” Coons testified.
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While it’s rare for even one lawmaker to call into a pharmacy board meeting, each of the three Republican state lawmakers also referenced ivermectin in their testimony.
Rep. Ken McCarty of Chugiak expressed his concern about “making sure that our state has all the medications necessary.” Rep. Chris Kurka of Wasilla told board members that “we should allow doctors the freedom, if they’re using good clinical judgment, to treat their patients.”
And McCabe, the Big Lake representative, said he’s heard from doctors, physician assistants and nurses in his district who are frustrated “when they issue a prescription and the pharmacy will not fill it because it’s ivermectin.”
“Several pharmacists claim that they are being threatened, or their licenses are being threatened by this board,” McCabe said. “In times like this, where no one seems to have a cogent solution, the Alaska pharmacy board could provide leadership and guidance by at least getting out of the doctor’s way.”
Board members, however, were largely unmoved.
Chair Justin Ruffridge, a Kenai Peninsula pharmacist, pointed testifiers toward a draft ivermectin Q&A document under consideration by the board that highlights a joint position statement from three national doctors and pharmacists groups: They “strongly oppose” dispensing the drug outside of a clinical trial.
Pharmacist Justin Ruffridge pre-loads COVID-19 vaccine into a syringe at a clinic at a Soldotna school. (Nat Herz/Alaska Public Media) Less than a week after the meeting, Ruffridge drafted the letter to the three lawmakers emphasizing pharmacists’ potential legal liability for drugs they dispense, and said pharmacists were free to use their “professional judgment” when deciding whether to fill prescriptions. (The letter was dated Sept. 29, though after this story was published, the lawmakers said they never received it, and pharmacy board officials acknowledged that, in an error, it may not have been sent.)
The board has made no threats against pharmacists’ licenses related to ivermectin, Ruffridge said in the letter. But he noted that the reports of misuse of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 “should give most prescribers and pharmacists reason to pause.”
Hughes, the Palmer GOP state senator, bypassed the pharmacy board and took her ivermectin case directly to Dunleavy and Adam Crum, the state health commissioner.
Hughes, who responded to an interview request with a prepared statement, said she encouraged both Dunleavy and Crum to consider providing Alaskans with “therapeutic kits” for people who test positive for COVID-19, and their family members.
“I challenged Gov. Dunleavy and Commissioner Crum to make Alaska be the first state in the US to take this proactive step,” she said. “They said FDA doesn’t allow off-label use. I said, ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way, when it comes to saving lives.’”
Crum and a health department spokesman didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Dunleavy, Jeff Turner, said the governor “maintains that decisions regarding COVID should be left between individuals and their doctor.” Turner also referred to Dunleavy’s comments from a news conference where he was asked about ivermectin nearly two months ago.
“I know what ivermectin is — I’ve had horses and mules, and you use it for worming and other issues that horses and mules have,” Dunleavy said. “But as far as prescribing it as a therapy for humans, I haven’t heard about that.”
This story has been updated to correct a reference to Ruffridge’s letter, which pharmacy board officials originally said had been sent to the three Republican lawmakers. The legislators said they never received it, and pharmacy board officials now say that in a possible error, it may not have been sent.