Months after Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered state agencies to begin reducing the number of regulations governing their operations, several have yet to complete a full tally of the baseline number of rules eligible for reduction.

Dunleavy in August issued an administrative order tasking all state agencies with reducing the number of regulations that dictate their operations by 15% by the end of 2026, and by 25% the following year.

In his order, Dunleavy said that reducing regulations was necessary to “attract investment and grow (Alaska’s) economic base.”

But state departments are behind schedule in achieving the initial phase of the order, which entails counting the number of regulatory requirements in each agency. That count was meant to be completed by mid-October, to serve as a baseline for agency reduction goals, according to an instructional document disseminated earlier this year.

According to an undated tally provided by the Department of Law on Wednesday, numerous agencies had been granted an extension until March 2 to count their regulations, including the Department of Administration, Department of Fish and Game, Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, the Department of Revenue, the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, the Division of Elections and the lieutenant governor’s office.

According to the governor’s plan, agencies have until Jan. 5 to submit a draft outline “setting forth regulations identified for reform based upon stakeholder meetings.”

Among departments that had tallied their regulations so far, the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development was leading in the number of tallied restrictions, reporting a baseline of more than 30,000. Its goal was to cut that number to just under 26,000 by the end of 2026, and just under 23,000 by the end of 2027.

That department is charged with overseeing licensing for dozens of professions across the state, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, optometrists, social workers, architects and accountants, among many others. Numerous professions in the state are governed in large part by regulation, rather than statute, allowing for boards and commissions to more easily update their requirements in response to evolving best practices.

The number of regulations varied widely among agencies. The Department of Health — which oversees the state’s Medicaid program, among numerous other responsibilities — reported a plan to reduce roughly 4,000 of its 16,000 regulations in a two-year period.

The Department of Corrections, meanwhile, reported having only 57 eligible regulations for reduction. Its goal was to cut that number to 54 next year and 47 the year after that.

When issuing his order, Dunleavy said he wanted to focus on permitting reform in the Department of Natural Resources — which is aiming to eliminate more than 700 of its 3,000 regulations — and the Department of Environmental Conservation, which planned to reduce more than 3,000 of its 13,000 regulatory requirements. The Department of Fish and Game, also identified for permitting reform, has so far counted 650 regulations but sought an extension to finish its baseline count.

The Department of Law, which is in charge of implementing the governor’s administrative order, did not provide an accounting of its own regulations or how it intended to reduce them.

Attorney General Stephen Cox said in a statement in September that the Department of Law “intends to be a model in this process” by publishing its own reform plans.

Assistant Attorney General Rebecca Polizzotto said last month that some departments had been granted extensions for counting their regulations “because of particular board meetings or how they want to do stakeholder engagement.”

Despite the extension granted, Polizzotto said she still expected “a majority of agencies” would be in “substantial compliance” with Dunleavy’s order by the end of 2026.

As for the following year — that will be up to the next governor. Dunleavy’s time as governor ends next year and he is termed out from seeking reelection. The next governor can keep the order in place, or repeal it.

Dunleavy’s regulatory reform effort follows initiatives from previous governors who also sought to reduce, update and clarify state rules. But Polizzotto said Dunleavy’s order is different.

“As opposed to just issuing the order, he actually has put together a program of how to effectuate that,” Polizzotto said in an interview last month.

Dunleavy’s regulation-slashing effort was launched shortly before he appointed Cox to serve as Alaska’s top attorney in August. Cox, who moved to Alaska in 2021, said he had been previously “involved in regulatory reform efforts at the federal level.” In an interview, he called Dunleavy’s administrative order “a very sophisticated program” that’s “modeled after best practices that have happened in other states.”

Alaska’s effort is modeled after a similar initiative in Virginia, where Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin earlier this year announced he had surpassed the 25% regulation reduction goal he had set in 2022.

According to a study conducted by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Alaska is already one of the least-regulated states in the country. Alaska ranked 44th out of 48 in the 2024 study (Arkansas and West Virginia were not included), with roughly 65,000 regulatory restrictions. For comparison, Virginia ranked 16th, with nearly 146,000 restrictions. California topped the list with 420,000 restrictions.

Polizzotto said that even if Alaska has fewer restrictions on the books, it still has work to do eliminating and updating old regulations that are no longer in use.

“That’s just not good law, and you should not have it on the books regardless of if you have fewer regulations than another state,” she said.

Asked why Dunleavy set a 25% reduction goal for every agency — rather than taking into account the vast variation in the number and scope of regulations in various agencies — Polizzotto the goal was to “strive for consistency.”

To make it easier to hit the governor’s target, the Department of Law is allowing agencies to use a variety of methods to achieve the reduction target, including by reducing the number of requirements for a given professional license, or by reducing the word count or page count in guidance documents for Alaskans seeking information on regulatory requirements.

“I don’t think we’ve come across any doubt that any agency can meet that 25% goal. Some agencies might need a little more assistance, but some agencies might be able to exceed that 25% goal, because they have so much that just hasn’t been cleaned up,” said Cox.

Roman Dial’s first encounter with Dick Griffith at the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic pretty much encapsulated the spirit of the man Dial called the “grandfather of modern Alaskan adventure.”

Griffith invited the 21-year-old Dial, who was traveling without a tent, to bunk with him while rain fell in Hope at the onset of the inaugural race. And then the white-haired Griffith proceeded to beat virtually the entire field of racers — most of whom were 30 years his junior — to the finish line in Homer.

Griffith, who died earlier this month at age 98, was a prodigious adventurer with a sharp wit who fostered a growing community of fellow explorers who shared his yearning for the Alaska outdoors.

Dial was one of the many acolytes who took Griffith’s outdoors ethos and applied it to his own adventures across the state.

“Someone once told me once that the outdoor adventure scene is like this big tapestry that we all add on to,” Dial said. “And where somebody else is sort of woven in something, we pick up and kind of riff on that. And he added a really big band to that tapestry, and then the rest of us are just sort of picking up where he left off.”

On that first meeting at the race in 1982, Dial and the other Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic competitors got a sense of Griffith’s humor as well. In a story that is now Alaska outdoors lore, Griffith pulled a surprise move at the race’s first river crossing, grabbing an inflatable vinyl raft out of his pack and leaving the field in his rear view.

“You young guys may be fast, but you eat too much and don’t know nothin’,” Dial recalls Griffith quipping as he pushed off.

“Old age and treachery beats youth and skill every time.”

In those years, Griffith may have been known for his old age as much as anything. But it didn’t take long for the 50-something racing against a much younger crowd to make a mark.

Kathy Sarns was a teenager when she first met Griffith in the early 1980s, and the topic of the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic came up.

“He says, ‘You want to do that race? I think a girl could do that race,’ ” Sarns recalls. “And I’m thinking, ‘Who is this old guy?’ And then he says, ‘If you want to do the race, give me a call. I’ll take you.’ ”

Sarns took up Griffith on the offer and in 1984, she and her friend Diane Catsam became the first women to complete the race.

Sarns said the adventures “fed his soul,” and were infectious for those who watched Griffith and joined him along the way.

“He motivated and inspired so many people by what he was doing,” Sarns said. “It’s like, well if he can do that, then I guess I could do this.”

By the time Dial and Sarns had met Griffith, he had already established a resume for exploring that was likely unmatched in the state.

In the late 1950s, Griffith walked 500 miles from Kaktovik to Anaktuvuk Pass, passing through the Brooks Range. Later he went from Kaktovik to Kotzebue in what is believed to be the first documented traverse of the range.

In total, Griffith logged over 10,000 miles in the Alaska and Canadian Arctic. He raced the 210-mile Iditaski multiple times.

Starting in his 60s, Griffith made annual trips north to tackle a 4,000-mile route from Unalakleet to Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada. At age 73, he completed the journey.

“The reason he did a lot of trips by himself is because nobody could keep up,” Dial said.

Born in Colorado, Griffith grew up in rural Wyoming during the Great Depression.

The first Griffith adventure that evolved into lore was the story of how he met his wife, Isabelle.

In 1949, Griffith was plotting a trip from Green River, Wyoming, to Lee’s Ferry, Arizona — a 900-mile trip down the Green and Colorado rivers.

Isabelle said she’d fund the trip if she could come along. She did, and the two were soon married. After a series of other river adventures, the couple moved to Alaska in 1954.

The couple had two children, son Barney and daughter Kimmer.

John Lapkass was introduced to Griffith through Barney, a friend with whom Lapkass shared outdoor adventures.

Like many, Lapkass connected with Griffith’s wry sense of humor. Griffith would write “Stolen from Dick Griffith” on all of his gear, often accompanied by his address.

In Alaska, Griffith basically pioneered rafting as a form of getting deep into the Alaska backcountry.

Anchorage’s Luc Mehl has himself explored large swaths of the state in a packraft. An outdoors educator and author, Mehl met Griffith over the years at the barbecues he hosted leading up to the Alaska Wilderness Classic.

Although he didn’t embark on any adventures with Griffith, Mehl was amazed at how much accomplished well into his 80s.

“There are people in these sports that show the rest of us what’s possible,” Mehl said. “It would be dangerous if everybody just tried what Dick did. But there is huge value in inspiration. Just to know it’s a possibility is pretty damn special.”

Griffith continued to explore and compete. He ran his last Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic at age 81 and continued with rafting trips through the Grand Canyon into his late 80s.

John Clark’s dad worked with Griffith on Amchitka Island in the early 1960s, assisting with drilling on the Aleutian island before it was used for nuclear testing.

Clark went to high school in Anchorage and regularly joined Griffith on a weekend ski, often tackling the Arctic Valley to Indian traverse.

Clark described the 21-mile trek through the Chugach Mountains as a “walk in the park” for Griffith, a brisk workout to keep him prepped for bigger adventures.

“I was a teenager and I liked to sleep in,” Clark said. “And he wouldn’t even ask me. He would just come knock on my door at 8 a.m. and say, ‘Get your skis.’ ”

Many of those adventures were done mostly anonymously as a course of habit with friends, some only finding out after the fact what Griffith had accomplished.

“He had the heart of an explorer,” Clark said. “Dick’s exploring 40 years ago would have been with the pure motivation of finding out if he could get from here to there.”

Griffith also was well-known for officiating marriages across the state. He married Sarns and her husband, Pat Irwin, as well as Lapkass and his wife.

“I don’t know how it started,” Lapkass said. “We weren’t the first but it was kind of special. Everybody sort of wanted him to do the honors.”

He would celebrate the matrimonies with annual “Still Married” parties at his house on the Hillside, open to both those who remained married and even those who didn’t. He continued to officiate marriages until the last few years.

As the community of outdoor enthusiasts grew, the parties at Griffith’s weren’t only held to celebrate marriages. He regularly had big gatherings at his house on Sundays and for the holidays, bringing together his “orphans,” many of whom had no immediate family in the state.

The gatherings were a great time to bring new friends into the fold and rehash old adventures. One story — perhaps more a favorite of guests than the host — involved an instance where Griffith had a bad case of frostbite on his backside after being battered by frigid tailwinds.

“I don’t know how many Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners we had there,” Sarns said. “Always plenty of food and lots of laughter, and that’s where we’d pull out the photos of him recovering in the hospital.”

In 2012, Alaska author Kaylene Johnson-Sullivan published “Canyons and Ice: The Wilderness Travels of Dick Griffith,” which covered his hundreds of adventures through Alaska and beyond.

The film “Canyons & Ice: The Last Run of Dick Griffith” documented his career and last trip through the Grand Canyon at age 89.

While his achievements were documented in his later years, Lapkass said Griffith’s motivations for being in the wilderness were almost completely internal.

“He was quite an inspiration for a lot of folks,” Lapkass said. “He wasn’t looking for sponsorship, for money or big TV productions or anything. He just felt like doing it. So he did it. And that definitely impressed a lot of people. Because some folks, you know, they want to do stuff, but then they want to let everybody know that they did it.”

As his life went on, Griffith was deeply involved with the Eagle River Nature Center as a board member, trail worker and financial donor.

Perhaps Griffith’s biggest gift to the outdoors community was a dose of self-confidence, a little extra boost to reach that next peak.

“Everybody that came near him benefited,” Sarns said. “Just because it just made you think outside the box a little more, being around him. You may push yourself maybe a little more, whether it’s an extra mile or an extra 100 miles. For some people it was just, ‘Hey maybe I can just go climb that mountain after all.’ ”

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – At Saturday’s 17th Annual Polar Plunge for Special Olympics Alaska, participants jumped into Goose Lake’s chilly water for a cause.

“The wind today, it’s a cold one,” the organization’s President and CEO, Sarah Arts, said.

More than 800 people came out to jump into the lake, she said. They exceeded their fundraising goal by late morning.

She said it means a lot to the athletes to know that the community is behind them.

“Inclusion is such a big part of what we do, and sport is a universal language. And through sport, everyone can be included. And it’s so amazing to see the community out here,” Arts said.

She said there were hot tubs for participants to warm up in afterward they jumped into the lake.

“I have to give some shout-outs to South High School Partners Club. Those students had some very creative plunges. A couple of face plants, belly flops. We had a back flip. So, they’re really getting creative today,” she said.

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