Alaska
Gov. Dunleavy promised a fiscal plan. Alaska lawmakers aren’t so sure.
JUNEAU — On what would have been the 121st day of the first regular session of Alaska’s 34th Legislature, the co-chair of the House Finance Committee was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and piling paperwork into boxes.
Lawmakers had successfully adjourned on Tuesday, a day ahead of the constitutional deadline for the end of the first regular session, surprising even themselves after last year’s session ended one hour after the constitutional deadline.
“Yesterday was odd because we adjourned at 2 in the afternoon, and people started celebrating, but it’s like — ‘Wow, it’s daylight,’” Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, said from his office Wednesday.
Lawmakers attributed their efficient passage of the budget and the relatively peaceful end of the session in part to the fact that the House and Senate are led by ideologically aligned majorities — something that hasn’t happened since 2016.
“We meet regularly and pretty much are in agreement. So that’s been one of the greatest things this whole session, I think, is the closeness we‘ve had with the House majority,” said Senate President Gary Stevens.
The broad agreement between the House and Senate — which allowed legislators to pass a budget plan and adjourn around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday — stands in contrast to lawmakers’ deepening divisions with Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
Dunleavy’s discord with the Legislature was in stark relief when lawmakers overrode his veto of an education bill Tuesday morning, just hours before adjourning. It was the first time in more than 15 years that lawmakers had mustered the votes to override a governor’s veto.
The fissure between lawmakers and the executive extends beyond education policy, and it has increasingly been playing out openly in the halls of the Capitol, after several years in which Dunleavy repeatedly vetoed bipartisan bills and budget items and left lawmakers to debate contentious plans to address Alaska’s ongoing fiscal crisis without his involvement.
Now in his seventh and penultimate year as governor, Dunleavy is calling lawmakers to work with his administration on a fiscal plan based on a legislative package that he will introduce in the coming months.
“I’ve said to the Legislature, not just this year, but years past, let’s get together and put together a long-term, sustainable approach to fiscals, sideboards, growing the economy in Alaska, competing with other states for investments, and I’m going to actually put together a package for that in the coming year,” Dunleavy said in a press conference Monday.
Dunleavy did not immediately provide details on what elements his fiscal plan would include. The announcement was met with some skepticism by legislative leaders, who said they wanted assurances from the governor that he would be directly involved in the talks.
“The administration has failed to invest early on, politically and intellectually, in overall fiscal policy,” said Josephson. “As a consequence, we‘re just standing in place.”
Dunleavy has not agreed to an interview with the Daily News, despite dozens of requests, since 2022. He declined another request Wednesday.
Dunleavy’s new call for a fiscal working group comes after lawmakers convened one in 2021 that failed to yield significant legislative changes.
To pay for basic state services that Alaskans have come to expect — like schools, troopers, roads and prisons — and still pay an annual Permanent Fund dividend, would require hundreds of millions of dollars more in dependable annual revenue than the state is currently bringing in, lawmakers have said.
Sen. Lyman Hoffman, a Bethel Democrat who has served in the Legislature for more than 38 years, said in February that Alaska is “probably facing its largest fiscal problem in 30 years.”
In response, the Senate majority took the lead this year in advancing three revenue measures that they say will help begin to address the state‘s structural deficit — one to tax online enterprises, most of which are based outside the state; one to impose corporate income tax on privately held oil companies; and one to reduce the per-barrel oil tax credits. Only the first was adopted by the Legislature this year, while the other two are poised for consideration when lawmakers reconvene in January.
But Dunleavy has said he will oppose those stand-alone revenue measures, despite the fact that his own revenue commissioner told lawmakers in 2021 that he would support those measures as part of a broader fiscal plan. (The governor’s office has since disavowed the commissioner’s statements.)
Leaders in the House and Senate say they are open to hearing what the governor is proposing, but Dunleavy’s ideas — coming in the final year of his governorship — may be too little, too late for lawmakers who have for months been asking Dunleavy to be more involved in their fiscal negotiations.
“This is his legacy at stake,” said Sen. Bill Wielechowski, an Anchorage Democrat who has taken the lead in crafting some of the Senate‘s revenue proposals.
Dunleavy “is on the verge of being, categorically, without question, the worst governor in the history of our state,” Wielechowski added. “If he wants that to be his legacy, that’s his choice. If he wants his legacy to be that he ran on a full PFD and now the PFD is on the verge of disappearing, and he ran as the education governor and now our schools are in shambles, that will be his legacy. It is up to him how he wants to approach the upcoming vetoes and his last year in office.”
Dunleavy began his tenure as governor promising Alaskans that he would deliver statutory dividends by slashing funding for state services. Facing unprecedented pushback, Dunleavy changed tack, calling instead for a fiscal plan predicated on new revenue measures and sideboards on how that revenue could be used.
Dunleavy called several special sessions in 2021 that yielded minimal results. At the time, Dunleavy unveiled a new dividend formula, which he has since abandoned. In 2023, Dunleavy decided against calling lawmakers into a special session amid divisions between the House and Senate leadership.
During his tenure, Dunleavy repeatedly backed off the revenue measures he promised. A plan to create a statewide lottery was abandoned early in his tenure. A statewide sales tax was promised in 2023 but never materialized. A carbon sequestration measure was introduced in 2023, but has not yet yielded the billions of dollars in revenue that Dunleavy initially touted.
Dunleavy began this year by introducing a 10-year plan that projected $12 billion in new state debt by 2035, starting with a $1.5 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year. Asked in December about his vision for balancing the budget in the long term, Dunleavy made no indication that a fiscal plan would be introduced by his administration. Instead, he said he would look to the Legislature for ideas.
In the following months, Senate majority members doubled down on their efforts to both balance the coming year’s budget and to introduce revenue measures that they thought could be palatable to the governor.
“The Senate has been working quite a bit on revenue issues,” said Stevens. “The hope is that as time passes, there‘ll be support for additional revenue that solves a lot of the problems we are facing right now.”
The three revenue measures ultimately introduced in the Senate were taken from a list presented by Dunleavy’s former Revenue Commissioner Lucinda Mahoney in August 2021.
That list included reducing the per-barrel tax credit; requiring all oil and gas companies to pay corporate income tax (eliminating a loophole that exempts Hilcorp from the tax); implementing a statewide sales tax; establishing legalized gambling in Alaska; implementing a tax on businesses that operate online, also called the “internet tax bill”; monetizing carbon offsets; and increasing motor fuel taxes, among other ideas.
“If the Legislature supports these measures, these are revenue measures that the governor supports as well,” Mahoney told lawmakers in August 2021. She resigned a year later, and Dunleavy has since distanced himself from some of the proposals, including the sales tax idea.
Dunleavy spokesperson Jeff Turner said earlier this year in an email that Mahoney “misspoke when she said the governor is willing to introduce a tax credit bill. That was not the governor’s plan.”
That has left lawmakers with limited willingness to take on politically risky revenue proposals — knowing that their efforts could be thwarted by Dunleavy’s veto pen.
“Unless the governor personally gets involved, but more importantly, puts political capital into making some hard choice, the whole thing will be for naught,” House Speaker Bryce Edgmon said Tuesday, shortly after the House adjourned.
Dunleavy on Monday promised to heed lawmakers’ request that he be actively involved in fiscal plan negotiations, but he also made light of the idea that his presence was necessary.
“I’ll be in the room. I’m willing to come in with a package, but there‘s also got to be agreement on sideboards, which is difficult for some folks,” Dunleavy said. Then he added, “I’m not the 61st legislator — Big Daddy, or whatever they want to call somebody — I am an executive. I’ve got a state to run. It’s a big state, so I can’t be here all the time.”
Alaska’s Maxime Germain has been named to the U.S. Olympic biathlon team and will compete at the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympic Winter Games.
Germain, 24, who was born in Juneau and graduated from West Anchorage High School in 2019, will be making his Olympic debut.
“I am stoked to have qualified,” Germain said in a U.S. Biathlon release. “The goal is now to perform there! It is going to be my first Olympics, but it shouldn’t be any different from other racing. Same venue, same racing, different name!”
The announcement was made Sunday at the conclusion of the World Cup stop in France. He is currently 34th in World Cup rankings, the second-best American behind Olympic teammate Campbell Wright.
Germain has raced for the APU Nordic Ski Center and trained with the Anchorage Biathlon Club.
“Maxime has worked really hard throughout the off season, improving his mental game and bringing an overall level up to the World Cup this year,” U.S. Biathlon High Performance Director Lowell Bailey said in the release. “This showed right away at the first World Cup in Ostersund, where he proved he can be among the world’s fastest and best biathletes. Maxime will be a great addition to the U.S. Olympic team!”
Before coming to Anchorage, Germain grew up in Chamonix, France, and started biathlon there at age 13.
Germain is a member of Vermont Army National Guard as an aviation operations specialist and is studying to become a commercial pilot. Germain has trained with the National Guard Biathlon Team and races as part of the US Army World Class Athlete Program.
Germain joins Wright, Deedra Irwin and Margie Freed as the first four qualifiers for the 2026 Olympic Biathlon Team. The remaining members of the team will be announced on Jan. 6 following completion of the U.S. Biathlon Timed Trials.
The 2026 Winter Olympics run from Feb. 6-22 in Italy.
The Bureau of Land Management on Monday said it approved an updated management plan that opens about 82% of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to oil and gas leasing.
The agency this winter will also hold the first lease sale in the reserve since 2019, potentially opening the door for expanded oil and gas activity in an area that has seen new interest from oil companies in recent years.
The sale will be the first of five oil and gas lease sales called for in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed this summer.
The approval of the plan follow the agency’s withdrawal of the 2024 activity plan for the reserve that was approved under the Biden administration and limited oil and gas drilling in more than half the reserve.
The 23-million-acre reserve is the largest tract of public land in the U.S. It’s home to ConocoPhillips’ giant Willow discovery on its eastern flank.
ConocoPhillips and other companies are increasingly eyeing the reserve for new discoveries. ConocoPhillips has proposed plans for a large exploration season with winter, though an Alaska Native group and conservation groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the effort.
The planned lease sale could open the door for more oil and gas activity deeper into the reserve.
The Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, consisting of elected leaders from Alaska’s North Slope, where the reserve is located, said it supports the reversal of the Biden-era plan. Infrastructure from oil and gas activity provides tax revenues for education, health care and modern services like running water and sewer, the group said.
The decision “is a step in the right direction and lays the foundation for future economic, community, and cultural opportunities across our region — particularly for the communities within the (petroleum reserve),” said Rex Rock Sr., president of the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. representing Alaska Natives from the region, in the statement from the group.
The reserve was established more than a century ago as an energy warehouse for the U.S. Navy. It contains an estimated 8.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
But it’s also home to rich populations of waterfowl and caribou sought by Alaska Native subsistence hunters from the region, as well as threatened polar bears.
The Wilderness Society said the Biden-era plan established science-based management of oil and gas activity and protected “Special Areas” as required by law.
It was developed after years of public meetings and analysis, and its conservation provisions were critical to subsistence users and wildlife, the group said.
The Trump administration “is abandoning balanced management of America’s largest tract of public land and catering to big oil companies at the expense of future generations of Alaskans,” said Matt Jackson, Alaska senior manager for The Wilderness Society. The decision threatens clean air, safe water and wildlife in the region, he said.
The decision returns management of the reserve to the 2020 plan approved during the first Trump administration. It’s part of a broad effort by the administration to increase U.S. oil and gas production.
To update the 2020 plan, the Bureau of Land Management invited consultation with tribes and Alaska Native corporations and held a 14-day public comment period on the draft assessment, the agency said.
“The plan approved today gives us a clear framework and needed certainty to harness the incredible potential of the reserve,” said Kevin Pendergast, state director for the Bureau of Land Management. “We look forward to continuing to work with Alaskans, industry and local partners as we move decisively into the next phase of leasing and development.”
Congress voted to overturn the 2024 plan for the reserve, supporting bills from Alaska’s Republican congressional delegation to prevent a similar plan from being implemented in the future.
A signature drive is underway for a ballot measure formally titled “An Act requiring that only United States citizens may be qualified to vote in Alaska elections,” often referred to by its sponsors as the United States Citizens Voter Act. Supporters say it would “clarify” that only U.S. citizens may vote in Alaska elections. That may sound harmless. But Alaskans should not sign this petition or vote for the measure if it reaches the ballot. The problem it claims to fix is imaginary, and its real intent has nothing to do with election integrity.
Alaska already requires voters to be U.S. citizens. Election officials enforce that rule. There is no bill in Juneau proposing to change it, no court case challenging it and no Alaska municipality contemplating noncitizen voting. Nothing in our election history or law suggests that the state’s citizenship requirement is under threat.
Which raises the real question: If there’s no problem to solve, what is this measure actually for?
The answer has everything to do with election politics. Across the Lower 48, “citizenship voting” drives have been used as turnout engines and list-building operations — reliable ways to galvanize conservative voters, recruit volunteers and gather contact data. These measures typically have no immediate policy impact, but the downstream political payoff is substantial.
Alaska’s effort fits neatly into that pattern. The petition is being circulated by Alaskans for Citizen Voting, whose leading advocates include former legislators John Coghill, Mike Chenault and Josh Revak. The group’s own financial disclaimer identifies a national organization, Americans for Citizen Voting, as its top contributor. The effort isn’t purely local. It is part of a coordinated national campaign.
To understand where this may be headed, look at what Americans for Citizen Voting is doing in other states. In Michigan, the group is backing a constitutional amendment far more sweeping than the petition: It would require documentary proof of citizenship for all voters, eliminate affidavit-based registration, tighten ID requirements even for absentee ballots, and require voter-roll purges tied to citizenship verification. In short, “citizen-only voting” is the opening move — the benign-sounding front door to a much broader effort to make voting more difficult for many eligible Americans.
Across the country, these initiatives rarely stand alone. They serve to establish the narrative that elections are lax or vulnerable, even when they are not. That narrative then becomes the justification for downstream restrictions: stricter ID laws, new documentation burdens for naturalized citizens, more aggressive voter-roll purges and — especially relevant here — new hurdles for absentee and mail-in voters.
In the 2024 general election, the Alaska Division of Elections received more than 55,000 absentee and absentee-equivalent ballots — about 16% of all ballots cast statewide. Many of those ballots came from rural and roadless communities, where as much as 90% of the population lacks road access and depends heavily on mail and air service. Absentee voting is not a convenience in these places; it is how democracy reaches Alaskans who live far from polling stations.
When a national organization that has supported absentee-voting restrictions elsewhere becomes the top financial backer of the petition, Alaskans should ask what comes next.
Supporters say the initiative is common sense. But laws don’t need “clarifying” when they are already explicit, already enforced and already uncontroversial. No one has produced evidence that noncitizen voting is a problem in an Alaska election. We simply don’t have a problem for this measure to solve.
What we do have are real challenges — education, public safety, energy policy, housing, fiscal stability. The petition addresses none of them. It is political theater, an Outside agenda wrapped in Alaska packaging.
If someone with a clipboard asks you to sign the Citizens Voter petition, say no. The problem is fictional, and the risks to our voting system are real. And if the measure makes the ballot, vote no.
Stan Jones is a former award-winning Alaska journalist and environmental advocate. He lives in Anchorage.
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