Connect with us

Alaska

U.S. Supreme Court dismisses argument of Alaska employee union dues

Published

on

U.S. Supreme Court dismisses argument of Alaska employee union dues


ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – The U.S. Supreme Court decided against hearing a case that would eliminate the option for Alaska state employees to opt out of paying union dues entirely.

The state was appealing a lower court’s ruling allowing state union workers to opt out of paying union dues more easily, but Tuesday’s ruling by the federal court prevented that from happening.

In 2021, an Anchorage Superior Court judge ruled that Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration violated the Alaska Constitution by unilaterally changing how state employees’ union dues are collected. The ruling came after Dunleavy created an opt-in program in 2019 for state employees that would have given them an option to have union dues collected from their paychecks.

Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor said Tuesday that the state is disappointed the Supreme Court did not take up the case.

Advertisement

“It was always a long shot, but we had some hope when the Court re-listed our case a few times because that generally means the justices are taking a hard look,” Taylor wrote in an email. “Ultimately, the Court declined to take this one on. Where there is uncertainty about an employee’s constitutional rights, the State should always defer to protecting those rights and seek clarity on the State’s role through the third branch of government—which is what occurred here. As always, we are committed to upholding the law and will follow the court decisions.”

Heidi Drygas, the head of the Alaska State Employees Union, the AFSCME Local 52, said in a statement that while the union is happy with the call, it also came at a financial cost.

“This is good news for ASEA, yet we can’t help reflecting on the price Alaskans paid to reach this conclusion,” Drygas wrote. “The Governor pursued a politically motivated, frivolous lawsuit to waste untold hours and more than a million dollars during one of the largest public service crises in our state’s history. Alaska’s public workforce showed up on the frontlines of the pandemic to help Alaskans despite being largely short-staffed and underfunded. The Governor returned the favor by seeking to undermine their rights to bargain collectively for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

“ASEA hopes the Administration will focus now on pragmatic solutions for recruiting and retaining public employees. ASEA will continue to advocate for paying workers fairly and timely for the work they do, treating employees with respect, and providing incentives to stay — like a secure retirement. I’m proud of our union members and our team and I’m excited to forge ahead for the benefit of public employees and all working Alaskans.”

Advertisement



Source link

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Alaska

Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 ASAA State Championship Brackets – March 10

Published

on

Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 ASAA State Championship Brackets – March 10


The 2026 Alaska high school girls basketball state championships begin this week, and High School On SI has brackets for all four classifications.

The brackets will be updated with scores and matchups throughout the week.

All four classifications will play their state championship games at Alaska Airlines Center in Anchorage.

Advertisement

The 1A and 2A championships run March 11-14. Classes 3A and 4A play the following week, March 18-21.

Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 State Championship Brackets, Matchups, Schedule – March 10

3/11 – Shaktoolik (1) vs. Arlicaq (16)

3/11 – Kake (8) vs. Tri-Valley (9)

Advertisement

3/11 – Fort Yukon (4) vs. Andreafski (13)

Advertisement

3/11 – Sand Point (5) vs. Napaaqutgmiut (12)

3/11 – Scammon Bay (2) vs. Nunamiut (15)

3/11 – Akiuk Memorial (7) vs. Newhalen (10)

3/11 – Davis-Romoth (3) vs. Cook Inlet Academy (14)

Advertisement

3/11 – Hoonah (6) vs. Shishmaref (11)


3/12 – Seward (1) vs. Chevak (8)

3/12 – Metlakatla (4) vs. Cordova (5)

Advertisement

3/12 – Craig (2) vs. Susitna Valley (7)

Advertisement

3/12 – Glennallen (3) vs. Degnan (6)


3/18 – Barrow (1) vs. Kotzebue (8)

Advertisement

3/18 – Grace Christian (4) vs. Galena (5)

Advertisement

3/18 – Monroe Catholic (2) vs. Delta (7)

3/18 – Mt. Edgecumbe (3) vs. Kenai Central (6)

Advertisement

3/18 – Mountain City Christian Academy (1) vs. North Pole (8)

Advertisement

3/18 – Colony (4) vs. West (5)

3/18 – Bartlett (2) vs. Juneau-Douglas (7)

3/18 – Wasilla (3) vs. Service (6)


More Coverage from High School On SI



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Alaska

Made In The USA: The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company

Published

on

Made In The USA: The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company


This is the Alaska Wall Tent by the Alaska Gear Company, each one is made in the United States from Sunforger 13oz DLX, a double-filled, pre-shrunk, marine-grade canvas ideal for longterm outdoor use.

The Alaska Wall Tent comes in an array of sizes and versions, allowing you to choose the one that best suits your individual use-case. They’re all individually made in Alaska, and perhaps even more importantly, they’re all tested extensively to be able to handle local conditions.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 5

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 2

Image DescriptionThis is the Alaska Wall Tent by the Alaska Gear Company, each one is made in the United States from Sunforger 13oz DLX, a double-filled, pre-shrunk, marine-grade canvas ideal for longterm outdoor use.

History Speedrun: The Alaska Gear Company

The Alaska Gear Company was formerly known as Airframes Alaska, it’s an aviation and outdoor equipment supplier and manufacturer headquartered in Palmer, Alaska. The company is led by majority owner Sean McLaughlin, who bought the original bush airplane parts business when it had just two employees and $100,000 in annual revenue. McLaughlin has since grown it to approximately 100 employees and $20 million in annual sales.

The company can trace its early roots to a licensed maker of Piper PA-18 Super Cub fuselages at Birchwood Airport. Through a series of acquisitions, including Reeve Air Motive (an aircraft parts retailer operating out of Anchorage’s Merrill Field since 1950, Alaska Tent & Tarp, and Northern Sled Works, the company grew well beyond aviation into outdoor recreation and cold-weather gear.

Advertisement

That diversification ultimately drove the rebrand from Airframes Alaska to Alaska Gear Company in late 2023, as the old name no longer conveyed the full scope of what the company produces and sells.

The Alaska Gear Company now operates out of three locations – a 100,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Palmer, a production facility in Fairbanks, and a retail store with an in-house sewing workshop at Merrill Field in Anchorage.

Its product lines span two major categories. On the aviation side, the company is best known for its hand-built Alaskan Bushwheel tundra tires, FAA-approved titanium landing gear, Super Cub fuselage modifications, and a wide range of bush plane parts. On the outdoor side, it manufactures Arctic Oven hot tents, canvas wall tents, custom freight and pulk sleds, and a modernized version of the iconic military bunny boot designed for extreme cold weather conditions.

More recently in 2024, the Alaska Gear Company was named “Made in Alaska Manufacturer of the Year” by the Alaska Department of Commerce.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company

The Alaska Canvas Wall Tent is a handmade-in-Alaska canvas tent made from 13oz Sunforger DLX double-filled, preshrunk, marine-grade cotton canvas that’s treated to resist fire, water, and mildew while still remaining breathable.

Advertisement

It comes in four sizes, including 8×10, 10×12, 12×14, and 14×16 feet, all with 5-foot wall heights, and it’s available either unframed (starting at $1,295) or with a frame (starting at $2,300). The unframed version can be constructed in the field using lengths of wood sourced from the area, reducing the initial pack weight – this is crucial for trips into the wilderness by bush plane where every pound of weight is critical.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 7

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 4

Image DescriptionIt comes in four sizes, including 8×10, 10×12, 12×14, and 14×16 feet, all with 5-foot wall heights, and it’s available either unframed (starting at $1,295) or with a frame (starting at $2,300). The unframed version can be constructed in the field using lengths of wood sourced from the area, reducing the initial pack weight – this is crucial for trips into the wilderness by bush plane where every pound of weight is critical.

All tents include a 4.5 inch oval stove jack for use with wood or propane stoves, as well as a 56 inch triangular rear window with insect screening, an 18oz vinyl sod cloth around the base to block drafts and moisture, ridgepole openings at both ends, rope-reinforced eaves, brass grommets, overlapping door flaps with ties, a heavy-duty zippered door, and 100 feet of sisal rope for tie-downs.

The tents are now available to buy direct from the Alaska Gear Company here, and at the time of writing they have stock ready to ship out immediately.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 10
The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 9
The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 8
The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 3

Images courtesy of the Alaska Gear Company



Source link

Continue Reading

Alaska

Lakes are growing in Alaska. That’s not entirely a bad thing

Published

on

Lakes are growing in Alaska. That’s not entirely a bad thing

The St. Elias Mountains in southeast Alaska are dotted with over 100 lakes where glaciers crumble into milky, turquoise water. Those lakes are expanding at an ever-quickening pace.

The lakes will quadruple in size over the next century or two, scientists report March 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This growth will transform landscapes, create new salmon habitat and may even change the course of a major river.

“We are seeing the great age of ice retreat” in Alaska, says Daniel McGrath, a glaciologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. “These glaciers are just peeling back from the landscape,” revealing deep grooves they carved in the Earth, where lakes are now forming.

Glacial hydrologist Eran Hood of the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, who was not part of the study, adds that “understanding where these lakes are going to emerge is important” because it “changes the whole nature of the downstream ecosystem.”

Advertisement

Hugging the coastline along the Alaska-Canada border, the tiny mountainous region that includes the St. Elias Mountains is losing 60 cubic kilometers of ice per year. Because lakes absorb solar heat, the glaciers that shed ice into lakes are shrinking faster than those that terminate on dry land. Across southeast Alaska, these lakes attached to glaciers have expanded by 60 percent since 1986, reaching a combined area of 1,300 square kilometers.

McGrath and his colleagues wondered how far this runaway expansion might go. So, they combined satellite images with estimates of ice thickness — mapping deeply eroded grooves that are still hidden under glaciers.

The results were “eye-opening,” McGrath says. The team identified 4,200 square kilometers of glacier-covered grooves adjacent to existing lakes.

He and his colleagues predict that the lakes will continue to expand — causing rapid ice retreat — until they fill those grooves, reaching a combined size of around 5,500 square kilometers, an area the size of Delaware.

“By the end of this century, all of these lakes will probably be more or less fully developed,” says study coauthor Louis Sass III, a glaciologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Science Center in Anchorage. But those growing lakes are already reshaping entire landscapes in a way that is often overlooked in public discourse around glacier retreat.

Many of Alaska’s glaciers terminate on dry land, and their meltwater often creates barren, rocky floodplains downstream, where the streams alternate between trickles and floods — constantly branching and shifting course as they lay down sediment released by the glacier.

“Those habitats are fairly inhospitable for a lot of fish,” including some salmon, says Jonathan Moore, an aquatic ecologist with Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. The water is too cold, and fish eggs “get swept out or buried by the floods every year.”

But as glaciers retreat into lakes and those lakes expand, their meltwater has time to drop its sediment and warm a few degrees in the lake before spilling into a river. Rivers that carry less sediment are less prone to shifting channels.

Advertisement

A 2025 study by Moore and remote sensing scientist Diane Whited of the University of Montana found that as glacial lakes expanded over 38 years in southeast Alaska, the downstream river channels stabilized, allowing willows and bushes to spread across floodplains.

“It creates salmon habitat,” Hood says. A 2021 study by Moore and Hood predicted that by 2100, glacial retreat in southeast Alaska will transform 6,000 kilometers of river channels into decent habitat for some local species of salmon. The lakes themselves will create spawning grounds for sockeye salmon — an important commercial species.

But these changes will come with upheaval.

For instance, one major river, the Alsek, will probably shift its course as retreating glaciers cause two lakes to merge, providing an easier path to the ocean.

People in Juneau are feeling another dramatic effect of expanding lakes. At least once per year, a lake dammed by the nearby Mendenhall Glacier spills out in a flash flood that gushes through town, forcing some residents to build protective levees around their homes.

Advertisement

These ecosystems “are going to be transformed,” Moore says. “But that transformation is going to be pretty violent and pretty dangerous.”



Source link
Continue Reading

Trending