Alaska Legislature will vote on extension of disaster declaration covering west coast storms
- Alaska Beacon
- 7 hours ago
- 2 min read
By James Brooks
Alaska Legislature
The Alaska Legislature is expected to declare this week that parts of Western Alaska are still in a state of disaster following a major storm in October.
On Monday, the Alaska Senate voted 19-0 to extend a state of disaster until early March, retroactively extending a disaster declaration that expired Feb. 6.
“While there has been progress made, the impacts remain severe,” said Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, shortly before the vote.
The Alaska House of Representatives is expected to take up the resolution with the extension on Wednesday.
Under Alaska law, a governor may only declare a disaster for 30 days. Dunleavy declared a disaster starting Oct. 9, then asked for an extension in November.
Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, and Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, unilaterally granted extensions in November, December and January, but when they attempted to approve an extension for February, legislative attorneys advised them that action by the entire Legislature is needed.
Part of that advice came because the governor updated the state’s disaster spending plan. On Jan. 28, Dunleavy requested permission to spend $20.5 million from the state’s disaster response fund, up $5.5 million from a prior plan.
Including federal money, the governor is requesting permission to spend $39.25 million.
State law requires a legislative vote for such a large additional draw from the disaster fund. It will have a balance of about $2.1 million after the draw, according to the governor’s letter to legislators.
More spending is expected. Last week, the director of the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has estimated at least $125 million in state and federal costs related to the storm disaster.
While the disaster fund is too small to cover that amount, Dunleavy has already requested that $40 million be taken from the state’s Constitutional Budget Reserve for the fund.
The House is expected to approve the disaster extension by a wide margin later this week, standing in contrast to its actions five years ago this month.
In 2021, legislative attorneys cautioned that legislative approval was needed to extend the state’s COVID-19 pandemic emergency disaster declaration, in place since 2020. They said that while it was possible for a governor to issue multiple, successive 30-day disaster declarations, that action might later be ruled illegal.
In February 2021, despite a request from Dunleavy, the Legislature declined to extend the pandemic emergency into a second year, and Alaska became the second state in the nation to end its state of emergency.
Subsequent analysis found Alaska’s COVID-related death rate spiked in 2021.
• James Brooks is a longtime Alaska reporter, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
