Finance
From food to financing, Alaska Native organizations feel the shutdown’s pinch
WASHINGTON — The government shutdown is creating a lot of uncertainty and disruption for Alaska Native communities, and for tribal organizations that administer federal programs.
These include SNAP, for food assistance, and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which subsidizes energy bills.
Ben Mallott, president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, said the prospect that both of those programs would run out of money, just as winter begins, puts some Alaskans in a life-threatening bind.
“Without LIHEAP, without SNAP, our communities, our tribal citizens will have to decide between fuel and food,” he testified to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee Wednesday.
During the pandemic, the Federal Subsistence Board allowed emergency hunting to improve food security. Now, with the government shutdown, Mallott said the Subsistence Board can’t even meet to consider it.
Since the second Trump administration began, advocates for Native American and Alaska Native people have stressed that programs that help them aren’t D.E.I. initiatives but the result of promises, treaties and laws. Now, between the administration’s cuts to government services and the shutdown, they say the government is dodging its responsibilities.
Hearing witnesses said tribal Head Start programs will run low on money if the shutdown extends into November, and that many agency experts tribes normally turn to have lost their jobs.
Pete Upton testified about the Trump administration’s plan to abolish a fund at the Treasury Department called the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. Upton runs the Native CDFI Network, whose Alaska members include the Cook Inlet Lending Center. He said tribal communities are often in banking deserts.
“Native CDFIs are typically the only financial institutions serving these communities, providing access to capital, credit and financial education where no alternative exists,” he said.
Early in the shutdown, the Treasury Department fired the entire staff of the CDFI Fund. With no one at the federal office to certify the CDFIs, Upton said it’s hard for the community finance organizations to attract private-sector and philanthropic investment.
Certification is “a stamp for investors to say that ‘you are investable,’” Upton said. With it, “we bring in private capital at a rate of eight to one.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Indian Affairs Committee, said tribes face enormous uncertainty as the stalemate in Congress nears the one-month mark.
“We can’t figure out the path forward right now on our spending bills, although I am a little bit more optimistic on that today,” she said.
She didn’t elaborate but said earlier this week that senators are engaged in productive talks.
A girl from a disadvantaged rural family in central China topped this year’s gaokao, attracting numerous live-streamers eager to finance her education, which she declined.
The home of 18-year-old secondary school graduate Han Yaping in a Henan province village was recently bustling with live-streamers.
This attention came after Han achieved an impressive score of 699 out of 750 in the gaokao, China’s national college entrance exam.
She has received offers from China’s two leading universities, Tsinghua University and Peking University.
Han’s accomplishment is particularly remarkable given her family’s impoverished circumstances.
Her mother suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory arthritis affecting the spine, preventing her from working. Her father, who earns a living through farming and odd jobs, serves as the family’s sole provider. Han also has a younger sister.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a landmark review on Monday that proposes recommendations to regulate the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the financial decisions made by consumers.
The review, titled the Mills Review, anticipates that both consumers and firms will start delegating “more financial decision-making to AI systems,” including for agreements, initiating transactions, and executing decisions “within agreed parameters.” One of the key findings of the review outlined that while AI can help bridge advice gaps and “support growth,” there remain risks “associated with fraud, cyber security, and consumer harm.” Conducting the review, Sheldon Mills highlighted that “AI can also amplify risks: bias, discrimination, exclusion, opaque decision-making (particularly when multiple AI models interact), misleading or hallucinatory advice and erosion of consumer trust.”
The review stated that presently, one in five adults in the UK are “already open to AI making decisions for them,” particularly when decisions feel “complex or high stakes.” It found that roughly 26 percent of the population “trust general-purpose tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for financial advice” with little awareness that such platforms provide no “formal routes to recourse” or protections.
Overall, the Mills Review identified four areas that it anticipates will be impacted by AI in the financial sector: “the transformation of firms,” “new consumer journeys,” “a reshaped competition landscape,” and “amplified financial crime and cyber risk.” The FCA projected the shift in how consumers and firms consult AI to take place by 2030.
The Mills Review put forth seven “priority” recommendations to be considered by the FCA Board. It recommended that any transitions to autonomous AI models be monitored and that regulatory frameworks and perimeters be adapted and secured. The review called for the strengthening of “system-wide coordination and oversight,” the scaling up of the FCA’s AI Lab to enable it to support AI models and innovation for agentic finance, and an “AI-enabled agentic supervisory model” to be built and adopted. Finally, it recommended that a trusted “public-interest AI-enabled financial capability service” be developed.
The FCA announced, in the press release, that it will launch an AI “good and poor practice publication” in late 2026.
Finance
Fayette County Public Schools Board of Education approves audit contract, new finance director position
LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – The Fayette County Public Schools Board of Education approved a one-year audit contract capped at $131,750 plus $225 per hour during a virtual meeting Monday, along with a new finance director job description.
The contract is with Mauldin & Jenkins Certified Public Accountants, an Atlanta-based firm, and covers the 2025-26 fiscal year and the restatement of the 2024-25 fiscal year and ancillary services through FY 2029-2030. The work is set to be completed by Nov. 15.
The board approved the contract in a 5-0 vote.
Audit contract details
Interim Chief Financial Officer Kyna Koch said the cost is already accounted for in the district’s budget.
“And is actually less than we expected given our current situation — we were thrilled with the bid,” Koch said.
Koch said she believes this is Mauldin & Jenkins’ first school district audit in Kentucky, but that the firm works with school districts of more than 100,000 students throughout the Southeast.
“Quite frankly when I spoke to the folks at KDE they were thrilled because we’re running kind of short of auditors who want to do school district audits — so all around I think this was a win-win for everyone,” Koch said.
New finance director position
The board also approved a new job description for the position of Director of Finance. Acting Superintendent Dr. Bill Bradford said the title will replace two associate director positions.
“Which will not only save the school district money but it’s also going to streamline our work and align internal controls to make room for a more efficient unit,” Bradford said.
Koch said the position will be posted as soon as possible following the board’s approval.
Closed session
The board went into closed session for more than an hour to discuss pending investigations that could lead to employee discipline. When the board returned, it took no action and adjourned the meeting.
Copyright 2026 WKYT. All rights reserved.
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