Five speakers who agreed on little about the fine print agreed on the big thing: Alaska has to secure its energy future, and the window to decide how is closing fast.

ANCHORAGE (06/05/26) — Forum Summary by Ross Johnston, Executive Director

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For as long as Commonwealth North has existed, Alaska has been talking about a North Slope gas line.

Forty-seven years of discussion. A producer-led consortium, then a state-led corporation, now a developer-led model. The line has been studied, proposed, redesigned, and shelved enough times that Alaskans could be forgiven for treating the latest version as one more round of a familiar conversation.

It isn’t. And the forum’s five speakers, who diverged sharply on the fine print, were unanimous on the larger point: Alaska has to secure its energy future, and the easy decades of putting that off are over. Two things have changed since the last time this came up. The basin that has quietly heated Southcentral for two generations is running out. And for the first time, the project has a structure that could actually be financed. A perennial debate has become a decision with a clock on it.

Why This Time Is Different

The first reason is that the gas is genuinely running short, and John Sims, president of ENSTAR Natural Gas Company, made the case in numbers.

Cook Inlet produced more than 300 billion cubic feet a year at its early-1990s peak. Today it produces 60 to 70. On a severe cold-weather peak day, ENSTAR alone needs about 320 million cubic feet, more than the entire basin now produces on an average day.

That 320 peak is also why storage matters so much. The basin cannot produce that volume on a cold morning, so stored gas, much of it held in the CINGSA facility, bridges the difference. Sims called storage one of the most valuable services Hilcorp provides, and a piece that every replacement option, import or pipeline, will have to expand.

The basin has been carried, for more than a decade, by a single company. A 2010 study had warned that meeting demand would take up to 185 wells and as much as $2.8 billion. Hilcorp entered in 2012, drilled 192 wells, spent well over $1.5 billion, and kept the system whole. That is the good news and the exposure in one sentence. Almost all the recent drilling has been Hilcorp’s, and no one else carries a balance sheet to match it. The second-largest producer, HEX, made news last year by doubling output, from 10 million cubic feet a day to 25. Against a 320 peak, that is a rounding error. Prices are already moving: a cold March left ENSTAR short, and Hilcorp filled the gap at $16, against a base contract price near $8.36. In 2033, that Hilcorp contract ends. Every other number in the forum is downstream of that date.

The second reason is that the project finally has a shape that lenders might accept, and Matt Kissinger, commercial director at AGDC, walked through how it got there. The producer-led version collapsed because, by a 2016 Wood Mackenzie analysis, it was financed wrong, leaning on sponsor debt instead of project finance. The state-led version that followed never won the market’s confidence. The 2019 pivot to a developer-led model brought stage-gate discipline and the financing structure the 2016 report had recommended. Federal loan guarantees, amended to cover this project and now worth roughly $30 billion, lower the cost of debt.

Kissinger also made a point that often gets lost under the cost concerns: on the fundamentals, this is a strong site. Alaska’s land rights were resolved decades ago through the Native Claims Settlement Act, while LNG Canada’s were not, which fed that project’s delays and overruns. The route avoids the coastal mountains that were the hardest part of building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. And the Nikiski terminal site is proven ground, next to a Kenai LNG plant that shipped to Japan for roughly 50 years without a missed cargo. What remains, Kissinger said, is the part still in the Legislature’s hands: a property tax that a benchmarking study found roughly ten times higher than competing jurisdictions. His comparison was LNG Canada, which pays about $27 million a year; even with the relief on the table, he said, Alaska’s project would still pay around five times that.

A deadline and a structure. Neither has been true at the same time before.

Four Futures, and Why Even Half Counts

Brett Watson, an economist at the University of Alaska’s Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), gave the afternoon its cleanest framework. He asked the audience to weigh four futures.

A successful project, finished on reasonable schedule and budget. A partial success, the Phase 1 pipeline without the Phase 2 export terminal. No project at all. And limbo, in which Alaska limps along on costly stopgaps while Phase 1 stays perpetually around the corner, deterring the very investment in alternatives a community would otherwise make. Limbo, Watson argued, is the worst of the four.

The prices are the spine of the whole thing. Walk the ladder.

Today, gas runs about $10.80 per thousand cubic feet, by ENSTAR’s reckoning. In a no-project world, Alaska buys on the global market. Watson put the all-in landed cost of imported LNG at $9 to $21 in normal times; ENSTAR’s own figures, narrower and higher, land at $16 to $22, and the company expects that to become its customers’ baseline cost in 2033. Either way the number is volatile and exposed, with far higher spikes possible. Prices hit the high $30s after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and sit near $19 today amid the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Build Phase 1, and the price fixes at $16, escalating only slowly. 

Build Phase 2, and it falls to $5.

That $5 is the prize, and it is the only number on the ladder that bends down instead of up.

Two things about that ladder deserve more attention than they got. The first is that a partial success is not a failure. Watson showed Phase 1 tracking the $16 line for the project’s first couple of decades, inside the band Alaska would have paid for imports anyway. Sims sharpened it in the Q&A: the Phase 1 price is fixed and capped, with cost overruns barred from reaching ratepayers, knowable out to year 25. The difference between no project and Phase 1, he said, is the difference between riding the world market’s volatility and locking in a price you can plan around. Phase 1 alone still beats the status quo.

The second is that the gap between Phase 1 and the full project is exactly what worries the people on the ground. Peter Micciche, mayor of the Kenai Peninsula Borough, asked the developers to wrap up Phase 2 alongside Phase 1. The “divorce” of the two phases, he said, has made his community and the rest of the rail belt nervous, because the cheap gas, the $5, only arrives if the second half gets built.

More Than a Price

The forum spent most of its oxygen on cost, but Watson was careful to note that a gas line is not only a price. The construction phase would bring thousands of jobs, with hundreds more in long-term operations and maintenance. Cheaper energy could pull back industrial demand the state has lost or never had: a restart of the Nikiski fertilizer plant, new mining such as the Donlin project, and the kind of data-center investment that follows low-cost power. His slides put state and local revenue at the full project stage at roughly $700 million to $1.4 billion a year, depending on the tax structure. There are strategic dimensions too, including energy security for the military bases that anchor a meaningful share of the state’s economy.

Micciche echoed the industrial piece from the borough’s vantage. The peripheral value, he said, is real but conditional: the shuttered fertilizer plant, the old Kenai LNG facility, and the Marathon refinery all become more viable if the delivered gas price lands low enough. None of it is guaranteed, and he was honest that modern facilities employ fewer people than the ones they replace.

Then Watson flagged the tradeoff that almost no one expects. The rail belt’s gain does not stay on the rail belt. Through Power Cost Equalization, the state program that helps rural Alaska afford electricity, rural and urban energy prices are linked. If cheaper North Slope gas pulls rail belt prices down, the gap that program is designed to close grows wider, and the state’s subsidy bill to rural Alaska could rise rather than fall. A win for urban ratepayers, in other words, carries a cost the whole state would share. It is the kind of second-order effect that rarely makes the slide deck, and it sat squarely inside Giessel’s later argument that every community should see something from a resource the whole state owns.

Keeping the Base Covered

The forum’s central tension was fiscal, and it is narrower than the headlines suggest. The two officials with the most to lose if the terms go wrong are not trying to stop the project. They are trying to make sure it does not bill the public for its own construction. Both, notably, want it built.

Micciche spoke for the place where the terminal would sit. The published construction estimates he cited put the LNG facility alone at $23.6 to $28.4 billion, and the borough’s projected impact runs about $30 million a year. At a residential neighbor’s rate, the facility would owe $212 to $255 million; under the proposed 75 percent reduction, it would pay a first-year effective rate near 2 mills, against the 9 mills a neighbor pays and the 20-mill statutory oil-and-gas rate. The borough will give up between $132 and $175 million and call it fair. What it will not do is go below break-even. “Struggling seniors in my community must get their costs covered,” he said. Then the part that matters as much as the floor: keep us whole, he told the panel, and the borough will be the same reliable partner it has been since 1969.

That is concession, not opposition. Cathy Giessel, the Senate Majority Leader and Senate Resources Committee chair, took the same posture at state scale. “I think we can do both,” she said of reasonable public revenue and a financeable project. “I support this gas pipeline, but we’ve got to do it wisely.” Her standard is constitutional, not personal. Article 8 of the Alaska Constitution obligates the Legislature to manage the state’s resources for the maximum benefit of its people, and she reads that as a duty to make sure Alaskans, not only the developer, see a return on gas the public owns.

The ceiling on how much the public can ask is set by the project’s own thin margins. Kissinger was candid that this is a marginal project, evidenced by the plain fact that it has not been built despite the need. A project like this, he said, cannot put out $800 million to a billion dollars a year in taxes. Those are not oil-project margins. The lever the Legislature holds is the property tax itself: the governor’s bill, introduced March 20, offers full relief for ten years of operations or until production reaches 1.0 BCF per day, then a small volumetric tax, scored by the Department of Revenue at about $74 million a year, a 90 percent cut. A higher rate, 12 cents per Mcf, surfaced in discussion.

The floor and the ceiling, in other words, are closer to a deal than to a standoff.

How You Tax, Not Just How Much

Watson’s deck carried a section the clock did not allow him to present, and it speaks directly to the choice in front of the Legislature: not how much to tax, but in what form.

The right tax level, in theory, is the one that maximizes the project’s net present value to the state. Set it too high and the economics weaken until the project is no longer viable. 

One principle cuts against intuition. The state, Watson noted, is generally more patient than a private developer, which discounts future dollars more steeply. So a structure that collects less up front and more later can suit the state even when a developer would resist it. Profits-based taxes, for all their volatility, tend to distort investment the least, because they aim to skim the surplus rather than tax the activity that produces it. 

The Work Still Being Written

Much of what Giessel described was not a list of objections but a list of repairs they have been making in Senate Resources for the next bill during the special session.

The Legislature received the measure on March 20 and has held 36 hearings since. Out of them came guardrails. A cap on consumer gas prices. A bar on cost overruns reaching ratepayers. An unresolved question of who regulates the pipeline tariff, given that the project is permitted under the federal FERC rather than the state RCA. Impact funds for communities along the corridor, plus per-capita funding statewide so that every community sees a share. Expanded oversight of AGDC and approval authority over any divestiture of the state’s stake, which matters because the state has put roughly $1 billion into this effort and transferred 75 percent of it to Glenfarne. The statutory option for the state to buy 25 percent equity arrived with a six-month decision window; she is pushing for a year. A contingency provision would claw back the relief if Phase 2 never materializes.

Behind all of it sits what she called the iron law of megaprojects, the finding that most run over budget, over time, and under benefits. That is why she wants the fiscals to survive an overrun the project has not had yet.

Two fiscal questions remain genuinely open, and both move large numbers. The 45Q carbon credits, she said, may flow mostly to the developer with little to the state. And because the developer is structured as an LLC, a pass-through entity, it would owe no state corporate tax on profits.

There was one more, from Watson to Sims, that gets at what the deal actually does. Does the Phase 1 contract let utilities buy cheaper gas elsewhere if world prices fall, or does a minimum take-or-pay lock them in? There is a minimum, Sims confirmed, and the flexibility around it is still being negotiated. Certainty costs money, and that answer determines how much of it Alaska is buying.

What It Comes Down To

Strip away the mill rates and the carbon credits and the panel agreed on the destination. Alaska cannot keep heating itself on a basin that is emptying, and a fixed, capped price beats exposure to a market it cannot control. The disagreement is about how to split the bill and how fast a project of this size can be vetted in a special session with weeks left, which is not nothing, but it is a narrower gap than 47 years of false starts would suggest.

Giessel, who watched the last megaproject get built and remembers when pipeline-boom wages let the Teamsters buy an Anchorage hospital, answers to her constituents. Micciche, who ran the Kenai LNG plant for decades, answers to the 62,000 people living where this one would sit. Both want it. Both have shown where they will give. The question now is whether the rest of the terms can be settled before the clock runs out.

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Commonwealth North does not endorse a specific policy.

This summary is a recap of the information presented. It is not an official record, transcript, or position statement. The content reflects only the views and statements made by the individual presenters and participants at the time of the forum. It should not be interpreted as representing the official views, opinions, policies, or positions of Commonwealth North, its leadership, board members, staff, or affiliates.

Reference materials

• Brett Watson (ISER), “Some thoughts on AKLNG” (presentation slides)
• John Sims (ENSTAR), “ENSTAR Natural Gas Update,” June 1, 2026 (presentation slides)
• Sen. Cathy Giessel, “Policymaker Considerations” (presentation slides)

At a Commonwealth North forum on the Permanent Fund compact, four of five speakers argued Alaska’s dividend experiment has distorted fiscal policy. One argued it is the only thing keeping the state tethered to reality.

ANCHORAGE (04/16/26).

Forum Summary by Ross Johnston, Executive Director, Commonwealth North

How is it that a state with a $86.8 billion fund constantly struggles with a budget deficit?

The Alaska Permanent Fund is the largest pool of public wealth in the Western Hemisphere, built from a single ballot measure that passed in 1976 by roughly two to one.

The fund has been permanent, in the literal sense, for 50 years. The dividend attached to it has been fought over every single legislative session since Governor Bill Walker’s 2016 veto cut the annual payment in half. What was once the third rail of Alaska politics is now the annual appropriation that consumes the oxygen in every budget room.

On April 16, Commonwealth North gathered five speakers to ask whether the compact Alaskans made with themselves in 1976 and 1982 still holds, and what, if anything, should replace it. The lineup tilted heavily toward skepticism of the current arrangement. Four of the five speakers argued, in different registers and from different angles, that the dividend as currently structured is incompatible with a functioning state government. The fifth made the case that without the dividend, Alaska’s political economy collapses into something worse.

Watch the forum: commonwealthnorth.org 

A 31-Word Definition

Larry Persily, the journalist, former federal Alaska North Slope natural gas pipeline coordinator, and longtime voice on Alaska fiscal policy, opened with history. He offered what he called a 31-word definition of the Permanent Fund, drawn from the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds:

The Alaska Permanent Fund was created by the people of Alaska in 1976 as a way to save a portion of the state’s oil revenues for the needs of future generations.

Persily walked the room through the 1976 ballot, which passed 75,588 to 38,518. He noted that no Alaska statewide race has been that lopsided since. He then highlighted something easy to forget. The word “dividend” appears nowhere in the constitutional amendment. The dividend came later, in 1982, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the first residency-based version of the program in Zobel v. Williams.

Since that first check, roughly $32 billion has been distributed. A person old enough to have received every dividend, and who avoided felony convictions and prolonged absences, has collected about $54,000 over 43 years.

Persily then returned to the 2016 inflection point. When Walker vetoed the dividend appropriation by half, opponents sued. The Alaska Supreme Court, in Wielechowski v. State of Alaska, ruled that Permanent Fund earnings flow into the general fund like any other revenue and are subject to legislative appropriation. The statutory formula, the court held, did not bind the legislature. That ruling, Persily observed, has shaped every dividend debate since.

One editorial aside worth noting. Persily declined to use his full ten minutes and offered to auction off his unused time to the other panelists. The joke landed. The point underneath it, that the history is quick and the consequences are long, did not require more time to land.

What Other States Do

Angela Rodell, who served as CEO of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation from 2015 through 2021, took a different angle. Rodell ran the fund through its most consequential period in a generation. During her tenure, assets grew by more than 60%, from $50 billion to $80 billion. Her tenure also coincided with the statutory adoption of the Percent of Market Value draw, the mechanism that formally established the fund as a sustainable revenue source for state government and that shapes every appropriation debate the legislature has today. Beyond Alaska, she chaired the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds and the Pacific Pension and Investment Institute, giving her a comparative vantage few Alaskans bring to this material.

She set aside the usual comparison to Norway and walked through three U.S. peers. Her thesis was that Alaska’s compact is genuinely unique, and that the uniqueness is now a political liability.

Texas: The Institutional Compact

Texas established its Permanent School Fund in 1845, making it the world’s oldest education endowment. It now holds more than $65 billion, fueled in part by oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico. Its distribution rate maxes at 6%, averaged over 10 years. The State Board of Education determines the draw, subject to legislative backstop. Every dollar flows to public schools. No Texan receives a personal check.

New Mexico: The Evolving Compact

New Mexico’s Land Grant Permanent Fund dates to 1912 and now holds $32.6 billion. In 2022, voters approved a constitutional amendment adding 1.25% on top of the standard 5% draw, dedicated to early childhood education. That brought the total distribution to 6.25%. The amendment included a safeguard. If the fund drops below $17 billion, the extra 1.25% suspends automatically. Rodell flagged this as evidence that a constitutional compact can evolve while still protecting the corpus. No New Mexican receives a personal check.

Wyoming: The Fiscal Compact

Wyoming’s Mineral Trust Fund was created in the 1970s, inspired partly by Alaska’s model. It holds about $12 billion. Its 5% draw on a five-year average flows to the general fund, supporting all state services. Wyoming has no income tax. It also has never paid a citizen dividend, and it does not see the annual fights Alaska sees.

The Accounting Oddity

Rodell underscored a structural point that came up repeatedly later in the evening. Alaska is the only one of these funds with a separate earnings reserve account. Texas, New Mexico, and Wyoming each operate a single-account endowment. That architectural choice in Alaska, made in 1976 and reinforced since, is what makes the annual appropriation fight possible. It is also the subject of an ongoing single-account constitutional amendment effort that has come within one vote of reaching the ballot.

Rodell closed with the question the panel had been asked to address:

Is a post-PFD world inevitable? And what should replace that individual compact we created 40-some years ago?

The Asphyxiation Argument

Rep. Carolyn Hall of District 16, elected in 2024, presented the sharpest institutional case against the current dividend structure. Her thesis, delivered up front:

Alaska will not achieve a durable and stable fiscal plan until we figure out what to do with the Permanent Fund dividend.

Hall walked through the constitutional architecture first. Article 9, Section 15 runs two sentences, 73 words, and contains no reference to a dividend. The dividend, she argued, is a statutory creation, not a right, and the Wielechowski decision confirmed that. A budget that prioritizes a full statutory dividend, she said, is a budget that cannot meet the state’s constitutional obligations to public education, the University of Alaska, public health, and public welfare.

Hall was careful to name the dividend’s genuine value. She cited research indicating the dividend reduces poverty in Alaska by roughly 20% and functions as a lifeline in rural communities that conventional safety net programs cannot replicate. She flagged the 529 college savings program and the Pick. Click. Give. charitable mechanism as secondary benefits. Eliminating the dividend without compensating measures, she warned, would cause harm.

Then she turned to the numbers. The FY27 draft operating budget that the House recently passed allocates nearly $1 billion to dividends. In the current fiscal year, FY26, the operating budget included $685 million for dividends, whereas the capital budget, the funding source for roads, maintenance, and construction,  allocated just $180 million. Alaska carries $2.4 billion in deferred maintenance, $1.5 billion of which is University of Alaska facilities. A full statutory dividend under the governor’s FY27 proposal, Hall showed using a Legislative Finance Division chart, would leave zero funding for most state departments, including Public Safety, the University, Family and Community Services, the courts, Labor, and Natural Resources.

The dividend asphyxiates our ability to provide meaningful public services Alaskans want and need.

Hall closed by reading from Dave Rose’s book, Saving for the Future, on how the legislature in the 1990s raided one-time revenues to avoid taxes or drawing from the fund, letting roads, schools, and university facilities decay in the process. Rose’s line landed as the indictment she wanted it to:

Although we had ample income to cover our needs, legislators preferred to let our infrastructure fall apart rather than be perceived as raiding the “dividend fund”.

Her proposal was two items. Pause the dividend until the state can reasonably afford it. Refocus spending on constitutional obligations and the deferred maintenance backlog. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” she concluded.

A Republican Defense of the Check

Rep. Will Stapp of District 32, an Army veteran and member of the House Minority, opened by acknowledging the unusual position he was in. “I didn’t think I’d have to stand in front of people and be the first PFD defender today,” he said. He was the only speaker arguing that the dividend, as a structural feature of Alaska’s political economy, should be preserved.

Stapp’s core argument was economic and political, not sentimental. He framed the PFD as a de facto spending cap on government, one that forces legislators to justify expenditures against the concrete counterfactual of constituent checks. Without it, he argued, Alaska lacks any mechanism to discipline spending, and the state’s structural dependence on resource extraction becomes politically invisible to voters.

He presented the math as a choice. A full statutory dividend requires approximately $1.6 billion. That can come from broad-based taxes, service cuts of equivalent size, or some combination. He was direct about his own position. Stapp opposes statewide income or sales taxes so long as a dividend exists. He supports revisiting oil and gas production tax where appropriate. He made a point of noting that the governor’s recent tax proposal, the first since 2019, was hated by Stapp’s own caucus colleagues, including those who publicly champion the full statutory dividend. None of them, he said, went on record supporting the taxes required to fund it.

Numbers don’t lie. People do.

Stapp’s second thread was about public perception. Most Alaskans, he argued, believe the dividend is directly tied to resource wealth, their personal share of collectively owned minerals. Whether or not that belief tracks the statutory mechanics, it is the belief that gives the dividend its political durability. Removing the check, without replacing the underlying story about Alaska’s relationship to its resources, produces something worse than the status quo.

He recounted a recent vote cutting the FY27 dividend to $1,500, the largest amount he judged sustainable without further service reductions. The reaction, he told the room, was withering. He displayed a sample of constituent messages, some profane, some violent in tone, and observed that the anger was misdirected. Voters had been told, for years and by multiple administrations, that no tradeoff was required. Stapp’s refrain was about that dishonesty:

If you run for governor and you say I’m not gonna tax nobody, you’re gonna get a big dividend, and you’re gonna get a $2,000 BSA? Tell the person to go pound sand. Because they’re lying to you.

One editorial seam worth flagging. Stapp and Rep. Hall, representing opposite sides of the dividend question, agreed almost entirely on one point: the public has been misled for years by elected officials unwilling to name tradeoffs. They disagreed sharply on what the tradeoff should be. They agreed that the absence of honesty is the binding constraint.

Stapp closed with a warning about the alternative he saw in other small states: a bureaucratic malaise “designed to grind your soul into powder.” Keep the dividend, he argued, because it keeps voters connected to the state’s resource base, and resource development is the only plausible path to the revenues Alaska actually needs.

Three Disconnects 

Sen. Robert Myers of North Pole, Senate District Q, closed the speaker portion with the evening’s most structural argument. His starting point was economic, not political. Myers asked the room to think of the Permanent Fund Dividend not as a social program but as a substitute for something Alaska does not have: private mineral royalties.

In most oil and gas states, when resources are extracted, royalty payments flow to private landowners who own the mineral rights. Those dollars circulate through the local economy. People buy equipment, start businesses, hire workers. In Alaska, the state owns the mineral rights on state land. Royalties flow to the treasury, and from there into government services and the Permanent Fund. The PFD, Myers argued, is the one mechanism that returns any of that royalty stream to individuals, where it behaves economically like a private royalty would.

That framing set up his central claim. By routing resource wealth through government rather than through households and businesses, Alaska has created three disconnects that keep the state stuck.

The first disconnect is between government and the economy. Because state revenue comes from oil royalties and fund earnings rather than from taxes on Alaskan economic activity, the legislature has no institutional reason to care whether the private economy grows. Myers credited this observation to ISER economist Scott Goldsmith’s work in the 1980s. The legislature holds annual hearings on oil income and fund performance. It holds almost none on the health of the private economy. At best, growth is something to absorb, because more people mean more schools and more troopers without more revenue to pay for them. At worst, growth is something to be avoided or thwarted because the state does not want to offset the increased demands for services with less flexibility in the budget.

The second disconnect is between voters and the cost of government. Because Alaskans pay almost nothing in state taxes, services feel free. Human nature being what it is, Myers said, what is free attracts demand, and there is no incentive to ask whether the service is well delivered. The legislature spends money on what is politically popular, not what is the best investment.

The third disconnect is between short-term political cycles and long-term consequences. Without tax pressure to discipline decision-making, legislators reach for the revenue options with the smallest immediate pain and, according to recent ISER research, the worst long-term economic effects. The same logic applies to spending. Legislators cut ribbons on new schools. They do not cut ribbons on HVAC replacements or pothole repairs.

Myers made the pattern concrete with a single example. He asked his staff to take the 1967 general fund budget, the last one passed before Prudhoe Bay production, and index each department’s appropriation to population and inflation. Then they compared it against current spending. Most departments were up. The Department of Transportation operating budget, the line that funds road maintenance, was down. In the same year the legislature scrambled to find $70 million to meet the federal match for construction, Alaska cut maintenance spending by 12%, roughly $13 million. Construction projects employ people for a summer and produce ribbon cuttings. Maintenance produces neither.

The problem isn’t money. The problem is our priorities. And our priorities are driven by our revenue model.

Then Myers offered the counterfactual. He pointed to a 2017 study comparing natural gas development in the United Kingdom and Pennsylvania between 2000 and 2014. In the UK, royalties flow to the government. In Pennsylvania, they flow primarily to private landowners. The study found that private royalties produced more than double the economic activity per dollar, before accounting for downstream industry expansion. Myers’s inference was that dollars distributed to households and businesses do more economic work than the same dollars appropriated by the government. Applied to Alaska, a PFD functioning closer to a true royalty distribution, with a smaller share of fund earnings going to government appropriation, would produce more growth than the current split.

He closed with the data point that was hardest to shake. Since 1984, Alaska has had the worst household income growth of any state in the country. Median household income growth since 1970 tracks roughly with the Rust Belt. Myers’s conclusion was that Alaska’s flat economy predates the 2015 oil crash and the current dividend fights. The shape of the fiscal architecture, not any particular year’s appropriation, is what has held Alaska in place.

Without proposing a specific broad-based tax, Senator Myers suggested that the government funded by the people was accountable to the people.

The Single-Account Question

The Q&A opened with former Rep. Bart LeBon asking the panel two questions at once. Would the panel support consolidating the Permanent Fund’s two-account structure, earnings reserve and principal, into a single endowment? And would the panel support putting the percent of market value draw into the constitution, and at what rate?

The answers aligned more than they diverged.

Stapp answered yes and yes, with the draw rate coming down, possibly to the 4.25% to 4.75% range. His reasoning was mechanical and political. Keeping $12 billion in an earnings reserve creates a target that the legislature will eventually spend, regardless of current intent. Protection requires constitutional architecture, not legislative discipline.

Hall concurred on both counts, noting she had co-sponsored Rep. Calvin Schrage’s single-account legislation. She indicated 4.5% as her preferred draw rate, reflecting what she described as a fiscally conservative posture on long-term state finances.

Myers agreed in principle but complicated the draw-rate discussion. Callan, the Permanent Fund’s consultant, recently presented data to Senate Finance showing that over the last 30 years, a 5% draw would have exceeded earnings-plus-inflation in 14 of those five-year windows. A 4.5% draw would have done so in 11 of 30. Better, but still a losing bet nearly four years in ten. Myers’s broader point was that the draw rate debate cannot be separated from what the earnings are being spent on, and whether government spending or private-sector deployment produces more durable growth.

Persily offered the structural obstacle. Any constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority in both chambers. Legislators who want the dividend in the constitution, he noted, will block any single-account amendment that does not also constitutionalize the PFD. Legislators opposed to constitutionalizing the PFD will block any package that includes it. Separating the fights, he suggested, is the only plausible path to the supermajorities required.

Rodell was the last to speak on the point. She has been consistent, she said, in advocating for a single-account structure since her time at the fund, and the proposal has come within one vote of reaching the ballot in recent years. She supported a constitutional spending rule, leaving the specific percentage to democratic debate. She noted that Texas operates at 6% on a 10-year average and continues to grow, and that New Mexico’s $17 billion floor demonstrates how downside protection can be built into a constitutional framework.

Education, and What the PFD Competes With

Katie Parrott, president of the Alaska Association of School Business Officials, asked the panel about the pattern of the last decade, in which education funding has been increasingly pitted against the dividend in annual appropriation fights.

Rodell offered a reframe worth preserving. The pitting, she argued, is partly a communications failure. In 2016, when Walker’s veto reduced the dividend, the state did not tell Alaskans what the redirected money was doing. It was simply not drawn. The alternative, she suggested, would have been to attach the redirected funds to a specific constitutional obligation, education, infrastructure, resource development, and tell that story clearly. That conversation was never had.

Stapp’s answer was more direct. Everything competes with the dividend, including programs he supports and programs he does not. He recounted a recent exchange with a constituent who demanded that a $7 million childcare appropriation not be reduced. Stapp’s reply was that the money was coming out of the constituent’s PFD, and asked the follow-up question he said no politician asks often enough. What will you cut, or who will you tax? He recounted a second constituent, in a precinct that votes for larger dividends, who asked him why his elementary school was closing if the legislature had taken the dividend to fund education. The question, Stapp suggested, was a completely rational thing to ask, and it indicated how badly the public has been served by elected officials who refuse to name tradeoffs.

Hall emphasized public messaging, noting that political will to be honest with voters has been in short supply for more than a decade. She referenced her colleague Rep. Sarah Hannan’s work on the Department of Corrections budget, which has expanded largely because of policy decisions made by the legislature itself, not because of growth in the department’s discretion.

Myers closed the exchange by reframing the education question as an outputs question rather than an inputs question. He used his own Fairbanks high school as illustration. Built in the 1970s for 850 students, expanded during his attendance to accommodate 1,300, it now enrolls roughly 850 again. The Fairbanks district has lost a third of its students in 25 years and has closed seven schools in the last five years. The binding question, Myers argued, is not how much to spend on public schools but why the working-age population is leaving. Without an economy that keeps families in the state, the per-student funding formula produces shrinking totals regardless of the per-student allocation. Within ten years, he predicted, the dividend-versus-education fight will be superseded by an education-versus-Medicaid fight.

What Lies Ahead

The forum ended without consensus, which was by design. But the shape of the disagreement is worth naming clearly.

On the architectural questions, the panel was close to aligned. A single-account structure, constitutional protection of the draw rate, and a draw rate lower than the current 5% all drew explicit support or qualified support from every speaker who addressed them. Rodell, with institutional experience at the fund, and Persily, with decades of observation, both indicated that this architectural consolidation has been within reach for years and is primarily blocked by the political package it gets bundled with.

On the dividend itself, the gap is real and unresolved. Hall would pause it until the state can afford both the dividend and its constitutional obligations. Myers would restructure the relationship between Alaskans and the resources, ideally so that earnings flow more directly into private economic activity rather than government appropriation. Stapp would preserve the dividend specifically because its removal, absent the other structural changes Myers described, would produce a worse equilibrium. Rodell and Persily both pointed, in different ways, to the communications failure that has made honest debate politically costly.

One editorial aside. The evening’s weight of argument tilted against the current dividend structure, but the frame of each critique was different. Hall’s was constitutional. Rodell’s was comparative. Myers’s was structural and economic. Stapp’s defense was political economy: without the dividend, the discipline function goes away, and Alaska becomes what he called a trust-fund state. These are not interchangeable positions, and they do not collapse into a single policy package.

The decisions ahead are not easy ones. A single-account amendment without a dividend amendment will face one kind of political coalition. An amendment that includes the dividend will face another. A pause, as Hall proposed, requires a legislature willing to absorb the political risk Hall acknowledged carries real cost. A preserved dividend, as Stapp argued, requires a legislature willing to name the tradeoffs that come with it. Every option on the table requires someone to tell Alaskans something they would rather not hear.

At the end of the Q&A, with more hands still up than time remaining, Rep. Stapp yielded his last minute to the audience and told Larry Persily he owed him $20 for the minute he’d bought earlier. Ross offered to pay. The room laughed. 

Reference Materials

• Larry Persily presentation (PDF): Permanent Fund Has Been Permanent for 50 Years
• Angela Rodell presentation (PPTX): State Permanent Funds: Lessons for Alaska’s Future
• Rep. Carolyn Hall presentation (PDF): Alaska’s Biggest Fiscal Hurdle
• Rep. Will Stapp presentation:
• Sen. Robert Myers presentation (PPTX): Revenue Shares vs. Spending Trends since Statehood
• Wielechowski v. State of Alaska, 403 P.3d 1141 (Alaska 2017)
• Dave Rose, Saving for the Future: My Life and the Alaska Permanent Fund
• ISER research, University of Alaska Anchorage

Stay Engaged

If you benefit from this analysis, consider joining Commonwealth North as a member. Our programming is made possible by our members and by the ongoing support of our cornerstone sponsors, GCI and ConocoPhillips.

This summary is a recap of the information presented. It is not an official record, transcript, or position statement. The content reflects only the views and statements made by the individual presenters and participants at the time of the forum. It should not be interpreted as representing the official views, opinions, policies, or positions of Commonwealth North, its leadership, board members, staff, or affiliates.

Alaska’s Hidden Paycheck: Five Industries Where $100K Doesn’t Require a Bachelor’s Degree

From the processing floor to the patrol car, forum panelists mapped tangible career pathways, built on certifications, apprenticeships, and on-the-job grit, that put six-figure salaries within reach for Alaskans willing to show up and commit.

ANCHORAGE (03/18/26) — Forum Summary by Ross Johnston, Executive Director, Commonwealth North

Petroleum Club, Anchorage & Virtual  |  March 18, 2026, 4:00 PM

Silver Sponsor: Maritime Partners of Alaska  |  Bronze Sponsor: Trident Seafoods

Sixty percent.

That’s the share of Alaska’s workforce employed in wage-earning jobs that require, at most, a high school diploma. Not a niche statistic buried in an appendix. Six out of every ten wage-earning Alaskans.

Economist Mike Jones dropped that number early in the evening, pulling from Bureau of Labor Statistics records, and it reframed everything that followed. One by one, five industry leaders stood before roughly forty attendees at the Petroleum Club and walked through something that promotional brochures rarely offer: specifics. Not vague assurances about “good-paying jobs.” Actual job titles. Actual salary bands. Actual training timelines. The audience, a mix of Commonwealth North members, trade association leaders, state legislators, and workforce development professionals from UAA and the Anchorage School District, was visibly engaged. Those who attended came away feeling decidedly positive about the breadth of opportunity in Alaska’s labor market.

WATCH THE FORUM RECORDING on Commonwealth North’s YouTube channel. Presentation slides from each speaker are linked in the Reference Materials section at the end of this summary.

Why $100K? Why Now?

Executive Director Ross Johnston opened with the context that prompted this forum. The jobs least exposed to disruption from artificial intelligence (AI), he noted, are precisely the ones on display tonight. High-touch, hands-on roles that demand physical presence and human judgment. The welder. The trooper. The Baader technician tuning a filleting machine at two fish per second. These are not roles a chatbot will replace.

But the urgency goes beyond AI. An estimated four-in-ten Alaskans are living with less than $500 in savings. And a substantial part of the $3.8 billion in paychecks to nonresident workers leaves the state annually, each exiting dollar an economic multiplier that drops close to zero the moment it’s deposited in a bank in Texas or Washington. Every dollar that stays in Alaska, by contrast, generates an estimated $1.50 to $2.00 in local economic activity.

The puzzle pieces already exist, Johnston argued. The challenge is assembling them.

The Landscape: 321,000 Jobs and a Stubborn Degree Premium

Mike Jones, a research assistant professor of economics at ISER (University of Alaska Anchorage’s Institute of Social and Economic Research), set the stage with a panoramic look at the state’s labor market. Alaska’s economy encompasses approximately 321,050 wage-earning jobs across some 850 occupational codes tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The single largest category, office and administrative support, accounts for about 13 percent of all employment. Transportation, food preparation, health care, construction, sales, and management round out the major clusters.

Jones was candid about the degree premium. Jobs requiring at minimum a bachelor’s degree represent roughly 27 percent of total employment in Alaska. But they compose approximately 84.5 percent of employment in occupations where the median worker earns over $100,000 per year.

That concentration is significant, and Jones did not wave it away. Education matters. The data says so clearly. But the spectrum beneath the bachelor’s threshold is far wider than most people assume.

Among the top 25 percent of earners in occupations requiring an associate’s degree or postsecondary nondegree award, many are at or above $100,000. Jones mapped out the sub-bachelor’s occupations that pay $100,000 or more at the median, and the roster reads like an Alaska economic census: commercial pilots (the largest cluster, with over 1,500 employed statewide), police and sheriff’s officers, transportation and distribution managers, dental hygienists, air traffic controllers, power-line installers. And, to audible surprise in the room, massage therapists, whose median salary in Alaska exceeds $130,000. (“I knew I was paying a lot for a massage,” Jones quipped. “I had absolutely no frame of reference for that.”)

He also surfaced a finding that connected directly to Johnston’s opening: in many of Alaska’s highest-paying industries, nonresidents appear to out earn residents on a per-quarter basis. The pattern showed up in water transportation, IT infrastructure, mining, and hospitals. The implication is direct. Training more Alaskans to fill these roles keeps income inside the state’s economy.

Notably, half of the sub-bachelor’s occupations paying $100,000-plus require some form of postsecondary training: a certificate, occupational endorsement, or associate’s degree. Jones pointed to University of Alaska workforce reports, produced in partnership with the Alaska Department of Labor & Workforce Development, that track wage outcomes by credential type and years of experience. Among graduates of oil-and-gas-relevant programs, associate degree holders averaged fifth-year wages of approximately $113,000. Certificate holders reached nearly $89,000 by year ten. Even at the certificate level, the returns are tangible.

Jones closed by zooming out. High school career and technical education in welding, metalworking, carpentry, and construction serves as a critical on-ramp. Dual enrollment can accelerate the timeline. The pipeline, he argued, starts earlier than most people think.

The Opportunities: Sector by Sector

Five speakers. Five industries. What follows is what each brought to the table, with the specific job titles and salary data that made this forum unusually concrete.

SEAFOOD  Stefanie Moreland, Executive Vice President of Public Affairs, Trident Seafoods

Trident Seafoods is the largest vertically integrated seafood company in North America. It operates ten shore-based plants across twelve Alaska coastal communities, and, as Moreland put it, the remoteness of those sites turns each one into something approximating a small city. The company doesn’t just need people on the processing floor. It needs construction crews, electricians, diesel mechanics, wastewater treatment operators, HR generalists, cooks, and heavy equipment operators. Many of those positions can reach six-figure compensation within a few years of entry.

Moreland’s presentation was notable for its granularity. She walked through career ladders position by position, showing not just what each role pays but where it starts and how long the climb takes. The broader seafood sector supports more than 40,000 direct Alaska jobs; what follows are the specific Trident pathways she highlighted:

• Water & Wastewater Manager: $170K — 9 years experience; Trident’s larger facilities treat up to 4.5 million gallons daily; pathway starts at Treatment Plant Operator Trainee ($84K)
• Treatment Plant Operator II: $155K — 2 years experience plus associate degree and Level I wastewater certification
• Senior Cannery Technician: $152K — 10 years in machine repair; experience with fish house equipment preferred
• Construction Site Supervisor: $143K — 8 years experience in construction; pathway starts at Construction Worker I ($92K)
• Senior Baader Technician: $138K — 8–10 years, promoted and trained entirely in-house
• Maintenance Supervisor: $133K — 6 years mechanic experience plus 1–2 years in a leadership role
• Refrigeration Technician: $133K — RETA CARO, CIRO, and CREST certifications; 8–10 years ammonia refrigeration experience
• Factory Supervisor: $133K — 8 years in factory maintenance or manufacturing
• Baader Technician III: $127K — 6 years experience; mechanical/electrical background preferred
• Senior Factory Technician: $118K — 8 years experience; mentors junior technicians across multiple trades
• Refrigeration Operator II: $114K — 3–7 years industrial ammonia experience; RETA CARO certification
• PSM Coordinator: $113K — 3 years leading process safety management; pathway entry requires only a high school diploma and 2 years of mechanical aptitude
• Carpenter II: $109K — 6 years carpentry experience; assigned to a single plant
• Construction Worker II+: $106K — 5 years construction experience; travels to all Alaska plants
• Maintenance Mechanic III: $103K — 6 years mechanic experience in manufacturing

Most of these roles follow a seasonal schedule of roughly three months on, one month off, nine months per year. Moreland acknowledged it’s a unique lifestyle, but noted that retention speaks for itself: Trident’s large-vessel fleet returned a 100 percent workforce this year. The company didn’t need to hire a single outside replacement.

One role deserves special mention. The Baader technician is the person who tunes and maintains high-speed filleting machines capable of processing more than two fish per second. It’s a job that barely exists in the public imagination, and yet continuity in this role directly drives the profitability of entire processing operations. These technicians are promoted and trained in-house, starting as Baader Assistants at $80,000.

Moreland closed with Trident’s Skilled Trades Trainee Program, operated in partnership with AVTEC. The structure: two years of education and mentorship, with Trident covering tuition, room and board, supplies, and an hourly wage of $20.17. In return, graduates commit to two years of employment and enter the workforce at $77K–$90K. The company has mentored more than 20 students from communities including Cordova, Dutch Harbor, Kodiak, Metlakatla, Petersburg, and Wrangell. Moreland reported that Alaskans’ interest has been strong enough to fill the next cohort entirely with in-state applicants. The application window is open now.

HEALTHCARE  Florian Borowski, Chief Human Resource Officer, Providence Alaska

Providence Alaska is the state’s largest private employer, with more than 4,500 caregivers across hospital campuses and clinics in Anchorage, Kodiak, Valdez, and Seward. Florian Borowski, who has spent 24 years in HR leadership roles in Alaska, opened by offering to quantify his corner of the $100K question. He pulled reports before the forum and identified approximately 70 distinct positions and roughly 200 full-time employees at Providence who earn over $100,000 without a bachelor’s degree.

The common denominator across nearly all of them: an associate degree combined with a specialized certification.

Borowski organized his presentation around clinical clusters, and for each he listed not just the positions but the current number of open postings. A forum attendee could, in theory, walk out of the Petroleum Club, look up the training requirements, and begin pursuing one of these roles. Here is what Providence currently has:

Cardiovascular services:

• Cardiovascular Technologist (3 openings) — associate degree in invasive cardiovascular procedures, or 3 years direct work experience
• Echocardiograph Technician — associate degree or equivalent experience/education

 

Diagnostic imaging:

• CT Technologist (6 openings) — AMA-approved radiologic technology training; national certification within 1 year of hire
• Radiology Technologist (9 openings) — AMA-approved training program; ARRT certification
• Mammography Technologist (3 openings) — formal radiologic technology training; ARRT registry
• MRI Technologist (2 openings) — associate degree in JCERT-approved radiographic program; national MRI certification
• Ultrasound Technologist (2 openings) — accredited diagnostic sonography program; ARDMS certification within 1 year

 

Surgery and radiation therapy:

• Surgical Technician (1 opening) — associate degree; national NBSTSA certification upon hire
• Radiation Therapist — graduate of AMA-approved program; ARRT certification

What might surprise people is that the health care industry’s $100K pathways extend well beyond the clinical setting. Providence’s 72-acre Anchorage campus is, in essence, a small city of its own, and it needs electricians (journeyman certification), electronics technicians (associate degree), stationary engineers (two years of hospital engineering background), and clinical biomedical technicians (associate degree in biomedical or electronics technology). These are facilities and trades roles that mirror what you’d find on a construction site, but with the stability of a major nonprofit employer.

Training is available in-state through UAA, UAF, Kenai Peninsula College, Charter College, Anchorage Career College, and a growing array of online programs.

But Borowski’s most impassioned point wasn’t about training availability. It was about visibility. Too often, he argued, young people follow career paths based solely on role models they already know. If nobody in your life works in cardiovascular technology, the thought of pursuing it simply never occurs to you. To close that gap, Providence has launched what it calls an Ambassador Program: working health care professionals go into Anchorage schools to share their career stories. The program is currently active in five schools. Borowski wants to reach eighteen, and eventually every school district in the state.

He also championed the rise of paid training models. Providence recently adopted a paid CNA training program, joining Foundation Health Partners in Fairbanks in making it possible for trainees to learn without losing income. Health care, Borowski noted, is growing twice as fast as the state average. He urged the state to leverage its rural health transformation funding over the next five years to scale paid training across disciplines.

PUBLIC SAFETY  Captain Scott Bartlett, Alaska State Troopers

Captain Scott Bartlett was five classes short of finishing his bachelor’s degree when the Alaska State Troopers offered him a job. A buddy had suggested they apply together as a “test run.” The Troopers made him an offer. He took it.

He never went back.

That was nineteen years ago. In the time since, Bartlett has worked patrol in the Mat-Su Valley, investigated homicides and child crimes across 74 villages and cities, run the intelligence unit, served as deputy commander, and taken charge of the agency’s statewide SWAT teams. “This has been the greatest career,” he told the audience. “I am the example of $100K without a degree.”

The salary data backed him up. Based on 2024 averages, a first-full-year trooper earns $127,000, a figure that includes base pay, shift differential, specialty team incentives, and overtime. By the fifth year, average compensation reaches $166,000. By the tenth, $177,000. Bartlett, at nineteen years, hinted his own number is considerably higher.

What stood out in his presentation was less the pay and more the recruiting story. After years of hiring from outside Alaska, the Troopers watched recruit after recruit leave within two or three years, usually pulled home by spouses and family. Bartlett, assigned to the recruitment unit as a lieutenant, made a deliberate shift: hire Alaskans. He expanded the agency’s annual recruiting events from about 40 to roughly 150, showing up at high school basketball tournaments in rural communities, career fairs in Anchorage, and everywhere in between.

The Troopers also offer an early-hire program where recruits are paid to ride along and complete pre-academy curriculum for several months. Bartlett reported a perfect track record: every participant has completed both the academy and field training.

One additional pathway: court service officers, the uniformed personnel who protect courtrooms, serve legal documents, and transport prisoners. These positions are available to 18-year-olds with a high school diploma, averaged $85,000 in their first full year, and serve as a deliberate stepping-stone into the trooper pipeline.

CONSTRUCTION  Heidi Olson, Membership Director, Associated General Contractors of Alaska

Heidi Olson started by broadening the frame. AGC of Alaska represents 650 contractors, industry services, and suppliers. The sector supports over 41,000 jobs statewide. And the range of professions runs well past the hard hat. Olson displayed two full slides of job titles just to make the point: surveyors, GIS technicians, inspectors, safety professionals, contract administrators, IT specialists, accountants, project managers. Construction is a business, and like any business, it needs the entire back office to function.

Her centerpiece was a chart of Alaska Department of Labor & Workforce Development wage data negotiated in 2025, showing both base hourly rates and total compensation packages that include pension, insurance, and education benefits. The math she laid out was simple: $48.09 per hour at 40 hours per week equals $100,000 per year. A red line on her chart marked that threshold. A significant number of occupations already cleared it at base pay alone.

A sample of what the prevailing wage data shows:

• Diver: highest base hourly rate in the dataset, roughly $96/hr
• Journeyman Lineman: approximately $75/hr base
• Tunnel Equipment Operators (IA and I): $62–$71/hr base
• Welder: roughly $60/hr base
• Inside Journeyman Wireman: approximately $58/hr base
• Plumber/Steamfitter: approximately $52/hr base
• Piledriver: approximately $52/hr base
• Equipment Operator III: approximately $51/hr base
• Cement Mason IV: approximately $50/hr base

Olson was emphatic that these numbers represent a floor. Most construction workers routinely log more than 40 hours a week, often at time-and-a-half. Add differential pay for rural Alaska, overnight shifts, and weekend work, and six figures within the first year or two is realistic for someone willing to commit.

Entry into the industry comes through three doors. Formal training programs, ranging from one week to two years, at institutions like AVTEC, Northern Industrial Training, Ilišag̱vik College, Fairbanks Pipeline Training Center, and the University of Alaska system. Registered apprenticeships through labor unions including Local 302 Operating Engineers, IBEW Local 1547, Plumbers & Steamfitters UA Local 367, Western States Carpenters, Alaska Laborers, Teamsters, and Ironworkers. And straightforward on-the-job training. Construction, Olson noted, remains one of the last industries where someone with zero experience can walk onto a job site, start earning immediately, and figure out their direction from there.

She highlighted equipment operation as one of the fastest-growing fields in the sector: 296 annual openings statewide, projected growth of over 16 percent through 2032. Starting base hourly rates run $27.70–$30.01, rising to journeyman rates of $46.17–$63.75 after 5,000 to 8,000 hours of logged experience. AGC of Alaska currently has a scholarship open for high school students, college-age students, and career-changers. Deadline: March 31.

MARITIME  Mariko “Mari” Selle, Executive Director, Alaska Workforce Alliance

Mariko Selle took a different approach from the other panelists. Rather than opening with data, she asked the audience to imagine. You’re 22. You’re on a vessel on a bluebird Alaskan day. Birds, wildlife, sun on the water. You’re making more money than all your friends. And you have almost no student debt.

Then she backed it up. Alaska has more coastline than all other states combined. Its 5,400-mile navigable waterway network is the nation’s largest, twice the size of the second-largest (Louisiana, for those keeping score). The maritime industry contributes $6.75 billion in economic impact and $469 million in worker income to Alaska. And roughly half of the industry’s 70,000 jobs are held by nonresidents.

Selle organized the maritime world into five sectors. Vessel operations, covering everyone from deckhands to captains, with salaries reaching up to $350,000 at the senior end. Shipbuilding and vessel repair, where engineers, electricians, welders, and laborers can earn up to $193,000. Many high-wage jobs also exist for seafood harvesting and processing, which overlaps significantly with Moreland’s presentation. Mariculture, an emerging industry in kelp and shellfish farming that Selle flagged as one to watch. Finally, Selle addressed Research, Enhancement, and Management: the biologists, technicians, and NOAA specialists who keep Alaska’s fisheries sustainable.

Career advancement in vessel operations follows a structured ladder. The Alaska Marine Highway System provides clear pathway documents: on the deck side, an ordinary seaman advances through able seaman, bos’n, third mate, second mate, chief mate, and ultimately master. On the engine side, the ladder runs from wiper to oiler to junior engineer and up through chief engineer. Each step is measured in accumulated sea days, training, and experience. 

Training is available in-state through Alaska’s two USCG-approved facilities: AVTEC’s Alaska Maritime Training Center, and the UAS Maritime Training Center in Ketchikan. Smaller programs at Kenai Peninsula College, Kodiak College, and Prince William Sound College also provide maritime training. Selle also highlighted a program worth knowing about: the Seafarers International Union has a union hall in Anchorage, and offers a free apprenticeship with training in Maryland. The Alaska Workforce Alliance’s Maritime Works program at maritimeworks.org serves as a statewide clearinghouse for these pathways.

The forum did not cover mariculture or fisheries research in depth. Both were mentioned as sectors with growing demand, but neither was the focus of a dedicated presenter. These may warrant their own future forum.

The Missing Bridge

The audience Q&A took a turn that none of the panelists had explicitly set up but that everyone seemed to have been circling.

Senator Shelley Hughes posed the problem bluntly. One-in-three Alaskans are on Medicaid, well above the national one-in-five rate. Employers tell her they want to promote promising young workers, but those workers turn the promotions down because a raise would cost them their benefits. How do you build a bridge for people perched on that edge?

The panelists’ responses converged on a single theme: awareness. Not awareness of the Medicaid problem, which is well understood, but awareness of the careers themselves.

Selle argued that every high school student in Alaska should graduate with a plan, whether that’s post-secondary training or direct employment. Heidi Olson pushed back on the idea that choosing a plan means choosing forever. “For a young person who still has to ask to go to the bathroom all day,” she said, “it can be really daunting to make a choice of, this is what I want to do for the next 40 years.” The answer, she suggested, is giving people permission to try different things. The tools to pivot exist. The safety net of training programs, DOL job centers, and scholarship organizations is real. What’s missing is the confidence that it’s okay to fail.

Moreland took a more structural view. Past workforce development initiatives, she observed, leaned too academic. What’s needed is applied, community-based engagement that meets people where they are. Trident has spent 18 months doing exactly that, getting into schools and rural communities. The result: the company is confident, for the first time, that it can fill its next skilled trades cohort entirely with Alaskans.

Borowski offered the most specific mechanism. Providence’s Ambassador Program sends working health care professionals into schools to share their stories. Simple idea. Real problem it addresses: people don’t pursue careers they’ve never seen up close. The program is in five schools now. Borowski wants it in every district. He also returned to paid training, arguing that the state’s rural health transformation dollars should fund programs that let people learn without losing income.

What Lies Ahead

Near the end of the evening, Ross Johnston mentioned that his six-year-old daughter, Saoirse, was in the back of the room. She’d been cheering for the speakers. It was a small, offhand moment, but it landed differently than he probably intended. The entire forum had been about what Alaska will look like when today’s children enter the workforce. The jobs exist. The training pipelines exist. The salary data, laid out across five presentations, is not aspirational. It is current.

What remains underdeveloped is the connective tissue. The guidance counselors who know that a Baader technician is a real career and not a typo. The ambassador programs that put a working cardiovascular technologist in front of a high school sophomore. The paid training models that let a young person on Medicaid step onto a career ladder without losing their footing. Multiple panelists pointed to pieces already in motion: the state’s rural health transformation funding, expanding career and technical education, employer-driven trainee programs like Trident’s, the Seafarers Union’s free apprenticeship, AGC’s scholarship. The question is scale.

Jones’s data made the degree premium clear, and no one at this forum pretended otherwise. But the data also showed something else: for hundreds of specific occupations in this state, a certification, an associate degree, or simply showing up and learning on the job can lead to a six-figure career. For the 60 percent of Alaskans working in roles that require no more than a high school diploma, these are not theoretical pathways. They are open doors.

No silver bullet required. Little steps, taken together, make big leaps forward.

  If you benefit from this information, join Commonwealth North as a member. Visit commonwealthnorth.org for membership details. Watch the full forum recording on our YouTube channel.

  Coming next: Revisiting the Alaska Permanent Fund Compact, featuring three legislators, former APFC CEO Angela Rodell, and historian Larry Persilli.

Disclaimer

This summary is a recap of the information presented. It is not an official record, transcript, or position statement. The content reflects only the views and statements made by the individual presenters and participants at the time of the forum. It should not be interpreted as representing the official views, opinions, policies, or positions of Commonwealth North, its leadership, board members, staff, or affiliates.

Reference Materials

Forum Recording: Available on Commonwealth North’s YouTube channel

Presentation Slides:

• Mike Jones, ISER: “Alaskan Wage Earnings by Education and Training Requirements: Topline Numbers”
• Stefanie Moreland, Trident Seafoods: “Alaska Jobs Over $100K Without a BA”
• Florian Borowski, Providence Alaska: “$100K+ Careers Without a 4-Year Degree”
• Capt. Scott Bartlett, Alaska State Troopers: “Alaska State Troopers $100K Pathway”
• Heidi Olson, AGC of Alaska: “Careers in Construction”
• Mariko Selle, Alaska Workforce Alliance: “Careers in Maritime”

Additional Resources:

• Alaska DOL&WD  
• University of Alaska Workforce Reports: ua.edu (workforce reports section)
• Trident Seafoods Careers: tridentseafoods.com/careers
• Providence Alaska Careers: providence.jobs
• Alaska Hospital & Healthcare Association: alaskahha.org/find-your-fit
• Alaska State Troopers Recruitment: dps.alaska.gov
• AGC of Alaska / We Build Alaska: webuildalaska.com
• Alaska Maritime Works / Alaska Workforce Alliance: maritimeworks.org
• Seafarers International Union (free apprenticeship): mymaritimecareer.org
• AK DOL&WD Minimum Rates of Pay (Sept. 2025): labor.alaska.gov/lss/forms/Pamphlet_600_Issue_51.pdf
• Alaska Works Partnership: alaskaworks.org

 

Alaska’s Fiscal Crossroads: Three Perspectives on the State’s Future

Legislative leaders and a former senator dissect Governor Dunleavy’s State of the State address, revealing deep divisions over taxation, spending, and the Permanent Fund Dividend

Commonwealth North Policy Forum, February 5, 2026

ANCHORAGE — In a virtual forum that drew 50 participants, Alaska’s legislative leaders offered starkly different visions for the state’s fiscal future, highlighting the deep fault lines that continue to define budget debates in the nation’s northernmost state.

The Commonwealth North event, held just two weeks after Governor Mike Dunleavy delivered his final State of the State address, featured Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, Senate Minority member James Kaufman, and former state senator Natasha Von Imhof. Their presentations revealed not just policy disagreements, but fundamentally different philosophies about the role of government, the value of the Permanent Fund Dividend, and Alaska’s economic trajectory.

The True Cost of the Dividend

Giessel, a lifelong Alaskan and registered nurse with a history of bipartisan coalition-building, opened the presentations with a stark reminder of the state’s evolving fiscal landscape. Drawing from a graphic in her slides, she illustrated how investment earnings, primarily from the Alaska Permanent Fund, now dominate state revenues. In fiscal year 2025, these earnings accounted for 43.7 percent of total revenues—totaling $19.2 billion—eclipsing federal contributions at 36.1 percent and petroleum at 12.9 percent. When restricted to unrestricted general funds (UGF), the Permanent Fund’s role swells to 59.8 percent of $6.3 billion, with petroleum trailing at 30.1 percent. “Oil and gas have been the main source of our revenue,” Giessel noted, “but that’s changed.” She emphasized the legislature’s constitutional duty to pass a funded budget, while highlighting “heavy lifts” like navigating a massive gas pipeline project and deploying $272 million in federal funds for rural health transformation on a tight timeline.

Giessel set the tone with data-driven visuals that underscored a profound shift in state finances. In FY 2025, investment earnings—largely from the Permanent Fund via its Percent of Market Value (POMV) draw—contributed 43.7 percent to total revenues of $19.2 billion, outpacing federal funds (36.1 percent) and petroleum (12.9 percent). Narrowing to unrestricted general funds (UGF) of $6.3 billion, the Permanent Fund’s share rises to 59.8 percent, with oil at 30.1 percent.  “Oil and gas have been the main source of our revenue,” Giessel noted, “but that’s changed.” She emphasized the legislature’s constitutional duty to pass a funded budget, while highlighting “heavy lifts” like navigating a massive gas pipeline project and deploying $272 million in federal funds for rural health transformation on a tight timeline.

She urged reframing the PFD not as an individual annual check but as a massive governmental expenditure: a $1,000 dividend, for instance, costs the state roughly $680 million in total. Since the program’s inception in 1982, Alaska has distributed over $33 billion in dividends. Notably, when voters established the Permanent Fund in 1976 and launched the PFD in 1982, the state still levied a personal income tax—a broad-based revenue source later repealed, leaving the dividend as a direct claim on resource wealth without offsetting personal taxation.

Giessel highlighted the governor’s FY27 budget proposal, which her slides depicted as deliberately underfunded. To deliver a “full” statutory dividend, the plan would require $1.68 billion in additional UGF—effectively eliminating funding for the Department of Corrections, judicial branch, public safety, capital projects, water protection, and more. This gap, she implied, would necessitate a substantial draw from the Constitutional Budget Reserve (CBR) or drastic cuts, though exact CBR figures for the current cycle were tied to ongoing legislative negotiations.

Giessel, who chairs the Senate Resources Committee and has initiated a special committee on Arctic affairs, stressed the need for sustainable projects in healthcare and resource development, warning that the state’s reliance on the Permanent Fund demands careful stewardship.

The Spending Cap Solution

Senator Kaufman, representing South Anchorage, approached the fiscal challenge from a different angle: trust and predictability. A former quality manager in the oil and gas industry, Kaufman’s presentation emphasized “sequence risk” — the idea that doing things in the wrong order can doom well-intentioned reforms.

His central proposal: a spending cap mechanism modeled on the Percent of Market Value (POMV) formula currently governing Permanent Fund withdrawals.

“The POMV was mentioned earlier as a spending cap,” Kaufman explained. “Well, it’s not. That’s a revenue cap on a very select segment of revenue.” His proposal would extend similar percentage-based controls to the entire state economy.

For Kaufman, the spending cap represents a prerequisite for any discussion of new taxes. “I refuse unless we’re going to have a more significant discussion about spending protections,” he said, arguing that Alaska’s current status as a tax haven — with no state income tax or broad-based sales tax — gives it a competitive advantage that shouldn’t be surrendered without structural safeguards.

“How do we become a reliable partner in people’s lives, in people’s business endeavors?” Kaufman asked. “We need to put structures that help assure that.”

The Demographic Reality Check

Von Imhof, now four years removed from the daily pressures of legislative politics, opened with what she called the “devil in the details” of Dunleavy’s optimistic address. While the governor touted population stabilization and 6,000 new jobs, Von Imhof presented Alaska Department of Labor data painting a more troubling picture.

“The total population in red — yes, it’s increased overall,” Von Imhof said, walking through demographic charts. “But youth in yellow is down by 5,000 people. Working age in green is down 12,000 people.” The retiree population, meanwhile, has surged by more than 23,000 since 2020 as older Alaskans “age in place.”

Alaska’s population trends show a declining working-age population despite overall stability. Chart presented by Natasha Von Imhof.

The implication was clear: Alaska’s workforce — the engine of economic growth — continues to hemorrhage residents seeking opportunities elsewhere, even as the overall population numbers suggest stability.

The Dividend Dilemma

At the heart of the debate lies Alaska’s unique Permanent Fund Dividend, a yearly payout to residents funded by oil wealth that has become both sacred cow and political lightning rod.

Von Imhof introduced what she called “Comparative Dividend Currency” — a visual framework showing the PFD’s massive scale relative to other state spending priorities. One slide showed the University of Alaska and Department of Labor budgets dwarfed by the bright yellow bar representing PFD spending.

The state’s spending on the Permanent Fund Dividend (yellow) compared to investments in the University of Alaska and Department of Labor.

“We as a state would rather give a man a fish for a month or two, rather than teach him to fish for life,” Von Imhof said, her frustration evident.

Over the past six years, the state has spent between $650 million and $1.5 billion annually on the dividend — money Von Imhof argued could have funded capital projects, infrastructure, tourism facilities, and crisis treatment centers. In Governor Dunleavy’s current budget proposal, the PFD represents $2.2 billion, nearly one-third of the total unrestricted general fund budget.

“We don’t have a fiscal crisis,” Von Imhof declared. “We have a priority crisis.”

Unrestricted general fund spending for the past six years, with the PFD shown on the far left.

The Coalition-Building Challenge

Senate Majority Leader Giessel, a lifelong Alaskan and former Senate President, brought a different perspective shaped by years of building bipartisan coalitions. She defended the current legislative approach while acknowledging the challenges ahead.

On the question of taxation, Giessel highlighted a specific inequity in Alaska’s corporate tax structure. The state taxes C corporations like ConocoPhillips but has no mechanism to tax S corporations — privately held companies whose earnings flow directly to owners. Because Alaska has no personal income tax, these companies effectively pay no state income tax at all.

“There is a bill that would remediate this,” Giessel explained. “Actually, it would probably bring in $90 to $100 million a year, and that’s about equal to what a C corporation would pay. This is a very equitable correction in our tax structure that should have been corrected back when we got rid of our personal income tax.”

The proposal represents the kind of targeted policy adjustment that characterizes Giessel’s approach — incremental changes designed to address specific problems rather than sweeping reforms.

Crime, Homelessness, and Public Safety

While fiscal policy dominated the discussion, Von Imhof also addressed the elephant in the room for many Alaskans: visible homelessness and public safety concerns, particularly in Anchorage.

Despite overall crime rates declining, Von Imhof presented a series of stark images of tent encampments, outdoor deaths, and struggling businesses in Midtown Anchorage. “Homelessness and public camping are still significant problems,” she said. “There are tents, large encampments, a take-over of public spaces, and intoxicated people on drugs and/or alcohol displaying disturbing and threatening behavior.”

Her diagnosis: the state lacks the infrastructure to address the crisis. “We need a crisis intervention center for drug and alcohol treatment, detox, behavioral and mental health therapy, and rehabilitation,” Von Imhof said, careful to distinguish between criminalizing homelessness and addressing actual crimes while providing treatment opportunities.

Once again, she returned to her “Comparative Dividend Currency” framework, showing spending on the Departments of Corrections, Law, Public Safety, and the Judiciary stacked against the yellow background of PFD expenditures. 

We are not building crisis navigation facilities,” she said. “We are not engaging enough in workforce development for nurses, social workers, case managers, recovery coaches.”

Economic Growth and Capital Investment

Von Imhof also challenged the governor’s characterization of Alaska’s economic growth. While Dunleavy highlighted increased North Slope investment and activity in construction, mining, healthcare, and energy, Von Imhof presented data showing Alaska near the bottom nationally for actual economic growth over the past decade.

A chart from the Alaska Department of Labor’s Economic Trends magazine showed Alaska second-to-last among all states for real GDP growth, ahead of only North Dakota.

Alaska ranks near the bottom nationally for economic growth over the past decade.

“Why? Because the state of Alaska is not prioritizing capital investment,” Von Imhof argued. The state’s capital budget, shown in blue on another chart, averages $150-$400 million annually from unrestricted general funds — a fraction of dividend spending.

Alaska’s anemic capital budget (blue) compared to Permanent Fund Dividend spending (yellow).

“Capital projects create year-round jobs that pay competitive wages, provide retirement and health benefits, that feed families for a whole year, not just one month or two,” Von Imhof said. “This will keep the working age population in Alaska.”

The Generation Gap

Perhaps Von Imhof’s most striking data came from an analysis of roughly 48,000 social media responses from millennials and Gen Z Alaskans discussing Anchorage. The results, she said, came from “the 30 and young 40-year-olds who are our emerging leaders.”

What these younger Alaskans valued: outdoor recreation, unique seasonal experiences, community feel, proximity to nature, and cultural diversity. What would drive them away: lack of job opportunities, high cost of living (especially housing), the opioid epidemic, and limited activities for children.

Notably absent from their priorities: the Permanent Fund Dividend.

“They want jobs, housing, and for our elected leaders to deal with crime associated with the drug epidemic,” Von Imhof said. “Not a check.”

The Governor’s Mixed Messages

The panelists also grappled with what Von Imhof called “confusion” following the governor’s address. In his speech, Dunleavy had declared, “We can support ourselves by creating more wealth from our resources, not pick-pocketing cash from each other’s pockets.”

Days later, his administration introduced legislation (SB 227/HB 284) proposing a statewide sales tax, changes to oil and gas taxes, and enshrining the Permanent Fund Dividend in the state constitution.

“Governor says in speech: ‘Not pickpocketing cash from each other’s pockets,'” Von Imhof noted. “But then drops a bill with a statewide sales tax a few days after the speech?”

She supported one element of the proposal: consolidating the Permanent Fund’s Earnings Reserve and Corpus into a single account with tighter spending controls. But the overall package left her with questions: “Where will the additional revenues be spent? Is there a plan for capital spending? What is the vision?”

Taxation: The Third Rail

The question-and-answer session revealed just how difficult Alaska’s fiscal challenges remain. When asked about new taxes to balance the budget, the three panelists offered characteristically different responses.

Giessel focused on her S-corporation tax proposal as a matter of fairness and equity. Kaufman made his spending cap prerequisite clear: “I’ll consider a tax if I can see progress on the protection side of it.” He worried about “sequence risk” — implementing taxes before spending controls and spooking businesses.

Von Imhof was perhaps most blunt: “If we’re gonna collect $700 million in taxes of any source, and we’re going to turn around and pay a $1,000 dividend, which costs about $680 million, why would we set up a $10 million bureaucracy in the government to collect taxes from people around the state and businesses around the state, only to turn around and spend and give it out in a check?”

Her message: determine specific spending priorities, understand what can realistically be collected from 700,000 people and tourists, and conduct rigorous economic impact analysis before implementing any new taxes.

The Path Forward

As moderator Jon Bittner noted, the forum showcased “a phenomenal range of perspectives” and “depth of knowledge” about Alaska’s economy. But it also highlighted just how far apart the key players remain on fundamental questions.

Senator Kaufman sees salvation in structural protections and strategic planning — spending caps that create predictability and trust. Senate Majority Leader Giessel focuses on incremental reforms and building coalitions capable of passing legislation. And Von Imhof, freed from electoral pressures, advocates for a wholesale reassessment of the state’s priorities and a honest reckoning with the opportunity costs of the Permanent Fund Dividend.

The next legislative session will test whether these divergent philosophies can find common ground. With Governor Dunleavy in his final term, oil prices volatile, and the working-age population continuing its exodus, the window for action may be narrowing.

As Von Imhof put it in her closing slide: “Lots of good things happening. But lots more can be done. Hopefully we can resolve the PFD calculation.”

The question is whether Alaska’s leaders can agree on what “resolve” means — and whether they can do it before demographic and economic realities make the choice for them.

 

Alaska’s Schools Grapple With Progress and Peril

By Ross Johnston

ANCHORAGE — Alaska’s education system stands as a testament to resilience. At a recent forum hosted by Commonwealth North, five superintendents from districts large and small laid bare the triumphs of their classrooms against a backdrop of fiscal cliffs and shifting student needs. Moderated by Kai Binkley-Sims, vice chair of Commonwealth North, the panel included Dr. Jharrett Bryantt of the Anchorage School District; Clayton Holland of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District; Dr. Luke Meinert of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District; Dr. Madeline Aguillard of the Kuspuk School District; and Dr. Jason Johnson of the Galena City School District. Though representing different parts of Alaska, each superintendent shared a commitment and a passion for student outcomes. The discussion drew a crowd of teachers, policymakers, and concerned parents.

Sponsored by the Alaska Superintendents Association

For all the fiscal headwinds, Alaska’s schools are churning out successes that rival urban powerhouses — proof, educators say, that investment yields returns when it lands in the right hands.

In Anchorage, the state’s largest district with 41,700 students, Dr. Bryantt touted a “strong start” to the 2025-26 year, despite summer vetoes. 100% of the released $14 million funding went into the classroom. They began hiring20 new teacher positions within 72 hours. Bryantt touted double-digit literacy leaps: 10 percent gains in kindergarten and first-grade screeners over two consecutive years, including a staggering 21 percent jump at Kasuun Elementary, long one of the system’s lowest performers. Advanced Placement enrollment has swelled by 700 students since Bryantt’s arrival, with passing rates soaring to 89 percent at Eagle River High School — up from 55 percent in 2021. Math, too, is on the mend: Eighth-graders posted a 5 percent improvement on state assessments, one of the strongest in Alaska. Graduation rates ticked up 2 percentage points districtwide, hitting 94 percent for career-technical education (CTE) participants after the addition of 26 new pathways. “We’re within arm’s reach of 90 percent for all students,” Bryantt said, envisioning “thousands” entering college or the workforce equipped for success. Anchorage has seen an influx of 170 students displaced by Typhoon Ha-Long in Western Alaska. “Those students are traumatized… They’ve lost everything,” Bryantt said. “It’s going to take years to build them back up.” The community rallied — outfitting kids with Halloween costumes and food in a city where basics are hard to source. “We have more students with needs than we’ve ever seen before,” he added.

Down in the Kenai Peninsula, where Clayton Holland oversees 43 schools across an area the size of West Virginia, the metrics shine brighter still. The district outperforms national norms on literacy and math growth assessments, boasts an 82 percent AP pass rate (beating global averages) and counts three alumni bound for MIT and five for military academies. Graduation rates have rebounded to pre-pandemic highs, with a 90 percent target in sight, fueled by CTE expansions like energy camps and healthcare intensives offering dual credits and certifications.

Fairbanks North Star, with 11,197 students across 28 schools, marked steady literacy climbs: 66 percent of K-3 students proficient on spring 2025 mCLASS, up 3 points and surpassing goals; 60 percent in grades 3-9 on MAP assessments, another 3-point gain. Graduation soared to a record 82.6 percent, with special education up 26.7 points and Alaska Native students gaining 8.8 points. Lathrop High jumped 16 points to 79.9 percent. Algebra passing rates rose 10 percent in the first semester. 

In rural Galena City, Dr. Jason Johnson celebrated “skyrocketing” K-6 literacy at Sidney Huntington Schools alongside CTE triumphs like aviation solos, a State Board of Education award for student learning and Yukon River-based programs teaching snow machine repair and subsistence fishing at the Galena Interior Learning Academy (GILA). Johnson also highlighted the successes of special education students in IDEA’s homeschool program.

Kuspuk, a remote expanse of eight schools in seven air- or river-only villages, serves 96 percent Alaska Native students (Yup’ik and Athabascan) amid the state’s highest child poverty rate. Dr. Aguillard’s “Calillgutekluta Ciutmurrnaurtukut” — “Let’s go forward, working together” — framed triumphs in cultural unity, serving 1,391 residents across 12,000 square miles from Lower Kalskag to Stony River. Kuspuk weaves Yup’ik/Athabascan heritage into forward momentum. Graduation rates are trending upward, even with classes as small as one — as at Crow Village  Sam School, where a lone senior crossed the stage last year in a “wonderful event.” Unique place-based programs, sustained since 2005 through grants and donors, immerse students in river life: two-week expeditions teaching survival skills and a shorter eight-day George River Internship, complete with stipends and fly-in drop-offs at gravel bars or dirt strips. Applications triple capacity, limited only by adult chaperones willing to brave the wilderness with dozens of teens. “These experiences on the river… are going to carry them through life,” Aguillard said.

These wins, panelists agreed, stem not from mandates but from educators’ grit: “The Reads Act has been successful… because of the educators in the classroom,” Holland noted.

BSA Amount vs. BSA Adjusted for Cost of Living & Inflation

Alaska’s K-12 spending often draws national scrutiny — clocking in at about $22,600 per student. Yet the figure is a mirage, inflated by the state’s unique geography and unadjusted for the soaring costs of delivering education in a place where fuel prices can double overnight and teachers may need planes to reach their classrooms. 

An independent cost-of-living study (ISER) ranks Alaska 10th in raw dollars but below the national average when adjusted for expenses. A district “pencil graph” reveals a $700 shortfall per student since 2011, as costs outpace allocations. Anchorage lags 14 percent behind the U.S. average, a gap widening since 2022 when four more states surged ahead in per-pupil investment.

The BSA — Alaska’s foundational per-student funding — has barely budged in a decade. Since 2017, school district budgets have risen 8.5 percent, even as every other state department ballooned by 36 percent on average — including a 55 percent surge for the Department of Corrections. 

If The BSA had kept pace with inflation, that figure would have climbed steadily: $7,612 by FY24, $7,787 by FY25, $7,943 by FY26. Instead, the actual BSA languished at $5,930 through FY24, ticking up modestly to $5,960 in FY25 before the bipartisan legislative overrides of summer 2025 pushed it to $6,660 for FY26 and FY27 — still $1,442 short of what inflation demands today, and a yawning $2,172 gap from the 1980s’ adjusted equivalent when teacher pay topped national averages by 75 percent and pensions were the envy of the union.

Skeptics often point to administrative “bloat” as the villain. But the numbers, laid bare in Bryantt’s FY26 budget breakdown for Anchorage’s $644 million operation, puncture that myth. Districtwide administration — encompassing the superintendent, chief officers, payroll, HR, IT, risk management, and communications — claims just 5.3 percent, or $34.5 million, down from 5.7 percent the prior year. Direct classroom instruction devours 59.5 percent ($383 million), student supports 22.5 percent ($145 million), and operations/maintenance 12.7 percent ($82 million). “Cut all the administrators out,” Bryantt might counter, and you’d scrape together perhaps 5 percent of the budget — a drop that wouldn’t dent the inflation gap. Even then, districts would still lack $1,442 per student annually to reach FY26’s inflation-proofed BSA of $7,943. Statewide, DEED’s K-12 allocation rose only 12 percent since FY17, trailing inflation by hundreds of millions. “Stability builds trust and strengthens stewardship,” Bryantt’s slides proclaimed. “Predictable funding drives smarter decisions and stronger outcomes. When schools can plan ahead, every dollar goes further.” Almost every year since 2016, districts have been threatened by funding cuts leading to an unstable working environment for teachers threatened by furloughs and layoffs.  

Rural distortions amplify the pain. In places like Kuspuk’s riverine outposts, gas prices have doubled and utilities jumped 33 percent, stretching federal benefits like SNAP and Medicaid to their limits. Up to 60 percent of its operational budget derives from grants — federal and state — a lifeline that’s fraying as applications dwindle and awards are pulled. This summer’s federal funding pause nearly derailed core programs, forcing frantic encumbrance of already-spent dollars. “There’s not as many applications, there’s grants being pulled,” Aguillard said. “That’s one of the things that really is on our mind.”

Changing Demographics: Trauma and Transition

Alaska’s classrooms are evolving, but not always for the easier. Statewide, enrollment is dipping: Fairbanks has shed 500 to 600 students, 70 percent due to out-migration rather than homeschooling or charters. Birth rates are falling, with more high school graduates than kindergartners entering annually. Special education caseloads leaped 21 percent in 10 years, 28.5 percent post-COVID, per Fairbanks — amid nationwide shortages.

Homeschooling, while a “positive choice” for many families, raises alarms as it siphons resources from brick-and-mortar schools. “It is a concern for all of us as we have kids shift,” Holland said. Alaska has the highest rate of homeschool in the country at 17% compared to the national average of 6%.

Infrastructure & Transportation

From unbudgeted 27 percent spikes in electricity rates crippling rural operations to the closure of seven Fairbanks schools, infrastructure woes compound funding squeezes. In Galena, facilities are “falling apart” — second on the state’s maintenance backlog — plagued by mishaps like indoor waterfalls from leaky roofs. Food service costs ballooned $300,000 after U.S. Postal Service bypass mail cuts, forcing districts to scramble for alternatives.

High school class sizes in Fairbanks have swelled by 10 students, slashing course options and eroding gifted programs. Staff cuts — 25 percent in administration, 360 jobs overall — have left some SPED classes starting the school year with uncertified educators. “We’re hodgepodging this whole thing,” Holland lamented of lost librarians, arts and music programs. “And I keep going back to imagine what we could do if we had that funding, what other opportunities would we be able to offer our kids?” 

(FAIRBANKS SLIDE ON REDUCTIONS)

Kuspuk’s fixed costs paint a dire picture: Property insurance has tripled for buildings the district doesn’t even own, leaving it in a bind — unaffordable premiums yet insufficient coverage for a catastrophic rebuild. Fuel, barged upriver, is at the mercy of volatile markets, while utilities in Aniak once quadrupled to “some of the highest electrical rates in the world.” Now, four more communities face 27 percent hikes effective this month, blindsiding budgets via a late public notice. “We didn’t budget for that,” Aguillard said. “How do we keep the lights on in these buildings?”

(KUSPUK SLIDE ON OPERATIONAL COSTS)

Correspondence programs, vital for remote families, receive zero additional fiscal support for special education students like their peers in brick-mortar schools. “You’re depriving them of the things they need, and at the same time, you’re taking away from other students’ access,” Johnson said. Johnson also highlighted the disparity in support for residential schools as the only public schools in Alaska that had a funding reduction. 

NAEP vs. STAR: Why National Scores Miss Alaska’s Mark

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) often paints Alaska dim, but panelists called foul—it’s a blindfolded sprint on someone else’s track. “No one has actually seen the NAEP,” Johnson explained. It’s a random sample test, sprung on select grades and schools, with zero prep or familiarity. Worse, Alaska’s standards don’t align to it; districts teach to state goals, not this national yardstick. Enter STAR (Alaska’s state assessment): It mirrors what kids learn daily, offering a truer pulse on progress. “If we want to measure, why aren’t we measuring on Alaska standards?” echoed Aguillard, a Louisiana-transplant. STAR reveals gains—like Anchorage’s 5% math proficiency jump or Kenai’s above-state reading growth—that NAEP obscures. As Meinert put it, national optics distract from local truths: We’re climbing, just not always on their ladder. 

Growth data tells a truer story: Incremental literacy gains under the Reads Act, from the bottom 5th percentile toward the 80th. Yet math lags, demanding a renewed focus. 

Mississippi’s education turnaround is the stuff of headlines: dramatic NAEP gains after years of laser-focused investment. But as panelists like Aguillard dissected, it’s no plug-and-play for Alaska’s rugged realities. Mississippi poured eight full years into aligning every layer—from classrooms to state tests—to the NAEP framework, a deliberate, sustained bet before results bloomed. Alaska? “We had the Reads Act—I don’t mind it, I’m in favor,” Meinert said, “but we went right to the next thing: charters.” Initiatives flip too fast, diluting impact. Plus, Mississippi’s denser, more connected geography eases logistics; Alaska’s vastness—from Kuspuk’s 12,000 square miles of river-and-air-only villages to Galena’s remote academies—demands tailored strategies, not borrowed blueprints. “They invested full-on before seeing change,” Aguillard noted. For Alaskans, the lesson isn’t envy—it’s endurance: Commit deep, stay the course.

Recommendations: A Call for Sustained Vision

Superintendents didn’t just diagnose; they prescribed. A “Math Act” — modeled on Reads but fully funded — topped Meinert’s list: “Let’s invest in success, because we know it’s going to be successful with good policy.” 

Bryantt demurred, prioritizing teacher recruitment via defined-benefit pensions or Social Security — absent in Alaska, the only state without them. “These are literally the people that can do the math on their annuities,” he said, drawing applause.

Extra dollars? Slash class sizes through recurring hires (total cost: $120,000 per teacher with benefits), restore arts and regional CTE hubs, and bolster underfunded SPED in correspondence and residential programs. Update the BSA’s district cost factor — Anchorage’s baseline is obsolete; Mat-Su gets 10 percent more despite lower costs now.

Aguillard echoed the push for growth metrics over point-in-time tests, urging sustained grant stability to protect cultural programs. “Growth doesn’t happen overnight,” she said. “But one of the pieces that you can really see… is that heavy focus on reading and early literacy skills is paying off.” 

Above all, stability: “We don’t just need more funding, we need predictability,” Bryantt urged. Like Mississippi’s “miracle” — which took eight years of aligned standards, training and lower classes — Alaska requires a unified vision, adjusted for its extremes. “It’s intellectually dishonest” to transplant that template wholesale, Bryantt said. “This is one of the most expensive places on Earth.”

As the forum closed with a standing ovation for educators — “If we are going to make one investment in our future, it is in our kids,” said host Ross Johnston — the superintendents left no doubt: Alaska’s schools aren’t broken. They’re starved. With legislators convening soon, the question lingers: Will the state feed the system that feeds its future?