AFN delegates to vote on taking up resolutions opposing permitting bill, census plan

Delegates to the Alaska Federation of Natives convention will vote Saturday, Oct. 24, on whether to take up two late resolutions. One opposes a U.S. Senate permitting bill's rewrite of federal historic preservation review. The other opposes a Census Bureau plan to drop race and ethnicity questions from the 2030 census.

If delegates take them up and adopt them, AFN would be on record asking Congress to strip the historic preservation title from the bill and asking the Census Bureau to withdraw its proposed changes until tribes are consulted.

Taking up the resolutions requires suspending the rules, which takes a two-thirds vote of delegates or unanimous consent. The motion comes at the end of Saturday morning's regular resolutions session at the 60th annual convention in Anchorage. If it carries, delegates then vote on each resolution.

The Southeast Alaska Caucus submitted both resolutions by unanimous consent Thursday. Neither subject appears in AFN's regular packet of 48 resolutions. AFN leadership has not said whether it backs either one.

The Permitting Bill and Historic Preservation Review

The first resolution targets the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, a permitting reform bill Sen. Shelley Moore Capito introduced Sept. 30 with Sens. Mike Lee, Sheldon Whitehouse and Martin Heinrich. What "too often stands in the way is a permitting system that takes too long and costs too much," Lee said in a Sept. 30 joint release. The bill sits in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Lee chairs. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is a member. No hearing has been scheduled.

The resolution asks Congress to withdraw the bill's historic preservation title entirely, and asks Alaska's delegation to oppose that title and vote against the whole bill if it stays in.

The title rewrites Section 106 review, the federal process for weighing a project's effects on historic and cultural sites. The resolution says the bill removes tribal consultation requirements. The bill text keeps current law's sentence that an agency "shall consult" with a tribe that attaches religious and cultural significance to a property.

What changes are the steps around that duty. When an agency sets the area a project could affect and identifies historic properties there, the official "may consult" with tribes and tribal historic preservation officers, and must use information they send within 30 days of being asked. If a tribe does not answer in 30 days, the agency moves on. An official may also decide, in the official's "sole discretion," that other considerations outweigh historic preservation.

The bill also narrows what counts as harm. An adverse effect must directly alter a property, and visual, atmospheric and audible effects are excluded unless they significantly diminish it.

The resolution says the bill would penalize Tribal Historic Preservation Offices. Under the text, the Interior secretary must evaluate tribal programs at least every two years. A program whose officer does not regularly meet consultation timelines can lose its contracts and Historic Preservation Fund grants, and the secretary takes over its functions if it is not fixed within two years.

Courts would have to give "substantial deference to the agency," and lawsuits would be barred after 150 days.

The same title authorizes $200 million a year for the Historic Preservation Fund for 10 years starting in fiscal 2027, and $20 million a year for four years in grants for tribal historic preservation officers to build databases of tribal records and sacred and cultural sites. The resolution does not mention either amount.

The Census Bureau's Proposed Rule Changes

The second resolution opposes two rules the Census Bureau proposed Sept. 10. One would bar any question about race, ethnicity or sexual orientation from the census questionnaires used to count the population. The other would define a person's usual residence as the place they lawfully spent the most days between Jan. 3 and April 1, consistent with their tax records.

The bureau says the proposal does not restrict those questions on the American Community Survey, its separate sample survey, and that questions about tribal membership "are not necessarily questions about race and/or ethnicity." It says it "plans to formally notify federally recognized and state recognized tribes and conduct a tribal consultation."

The resolution asks the bureau to withdraw the changes until meaningful tribal consultation and a full impact assessment have occurred, including an analysis of federal programs and funding formulas that rely on American Indian and Alaska Native census data.

"An undercount or miscount can make Tribal communities appear smaller or less in need than they are," the resolution says.

The Alaska Municipal League urged the bureau on Oct. 5 to reconsider the residence rule and keep the race and ethnicity questions.

The Census Bureau is taking public comment through Nov. 2 on regulations.gov, where more than 100,000 comments had been filed by Friday.