State Government

Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced on Thursday a series of steps intended to help hospitals deal with a surge of COVID-19 cases. They include speeding up the process for allowing licensed health care providers to work in hospitals. The state is also looking to use federally contracted workers to temporarily staff hospitals.  

In his statement, Winkelman said that executives from Alaska’s largest hospitals told the governor Monday that the state’s critical care capacity is nearly full.

The mostly Democratic House majority didn’t have enough members present to reach a quorum. 

DeWitt said the campaign gathered 62,373 signatures. It needed roughly 9,000 more to hold a recall election.

The state of Alaska has been ordered to pay nearly $87,000 in attorneys fees to the American Civil Liberties Union after losing a lawsuit over the governor’s vetoes of court funding in 2019 and 2020.

Committee members said they don’t want to draw more than is outlined under a law that limits how much the state spends in permanent fund earnings each year. 

State budget director Neil Steininger said the governor still wants the Legislature to pass the constitutional amendments he’s proposed, to enshrine the PFD in the state constitution and lower the state’s spending limit. 

Gara, 58, is the fourth candidate to file for the primary, to be held on Aug. 16, 2022. The others are independent former Gov. Bill Walker, Libertarian Billy Toien and Dunleavy.

Without the move, it was possible Alaskans wouldn’t receive PFDs this fall for the first time in 40 years. 

Walker has teamed up with former state Labor Commissioner Heidi Drygas, who is campaigning to be his lieutenant governor.