Video Clips
Quoted moments from Alaska public meetings, hearings, and press conferences.
Joyce Anderson
“I suggest you get in touch with these individuals, tell them it was discussed at the committee meeting and that they need to submit a narrative as to why they were there.”Alaska Legislature: JETH-260626-1300 · Jun 26, 2026
Kevin McCabe
“I think it would be helpful instead of being adversarial— you know, if we put something out that says it's helpful in determining whether or not this meets our ethics statute, if you could provide the legislative purpose more than just your travel itinerary.”Alaska Legislature: JETH-260626-1300 · Jun 26, 2026
Joyce Anderson
“that means somebody else would do the training, not just— it wouldn't not be done. It would just be by somebody else other than us. Thank you for clarifying that, because I was going to say it absolutely needs to be done.”Alaska Legislature: JETH-260626-1300 · Jun 26, 2026
Joyce Anderson
“I see, Kevin, that you said in one instance there was a flat refusal to submit an agenda. That is correct. Who was that legislator?”Alaska Legislature: JETH-260626-1300 · Jun 26, 2026
Joyce Anderson
“I would think that that is an incomplete disclosure and that it should be treated as such. I know that the Rules of Procedure Committee is going to get back in place because of, you know, HB 298 being passed, and we can certainly put some, some guidelines in there regarding agendas, you know, like you said, addressing what is, what is actually an agenda with some ideas and some suggestions and stuff.”Alaska Legislature: JETH-260626-1300 · Jun 26, 2026
Joyce Anderson
“That's the reason that this requirement exists. So that we know it was for a legislative purpose. We know that it was for a legislative purpose. If they can't provide that it was— I agree with you. If they can't provide it was a legislative purpose, then they need to reimburse the money.”Alaska Legislature: JETH-260626-1300 · Jun 26, 2026
Joyce Anderson
“I feel that there should be some sort of a letter of stating that this is a requirement, and if you don't, you— I don't know what the consequences would be, but it was a policy of the committee, and now, of course, like you said, it is statute.”Alaska Legislature: JETH-260626-1300 · Jun 26, 2026
Joyce Anderson
“I'm a little upset that they adamantly refused to, you know, their refusal to submit. That's, that's not basically in their best interest.”Alaska Legislature: JETH-260626-1300 · Jun 26, 2026
Brett Watson
“we do have a better picture of what's been going on on the federal employment side. How has the Deferred Resignation Program impacted federal employment? What about reductions in force?”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brett Watson
“Many regional economists have often commented that Alaska's economy is a bit like a three-legged stool, that there's kind of three pillars that support the rest of our, the rest of our economy. Bob described that metaphor as a bucket in which industries like the oil and gas industry, the federal government, and kind of all of our other basic industries bring new money into the state.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brett Watson
“if you think about the difference in our GDP between 2015 and 2023, our state's economy grew by $16.5 billion. Well, federal spending grew by just under $9 billion, meaning half of the growth in our total GDP, both our basic GDP and all of our non-basic GDP, all the money sloshing around in the bucket, not just the new money coming into the bucket.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brett Watson
“Around half of the growth in our total GDP, half the water in the bucket was federal spending growth. And I think that that's, that's pretty significant, especially if you compare it to some of our other key basic sector industries. For example, oil and gas, which Bob mentioned, is kind of our second largest basic sector industry in the, in the state.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brett Watson
“between 2015, the start of the Alaska recession, and 2023, this is the most recent year that we have really good data for federal spending apportioned across states. Federal spending grew by about $8.7 billion in nominal terms”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brett Watson
“I was presenting data from 2023 because that's sort of the latest data that we have available to us to see what actually got spent”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brett Watson
“federal spending over the last 10 years has grown by approximately $9 billion.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brett Watson
“Just under $20 billion of federal spending in 2023. Let's compare that to the total size of the Alaskan economy in using gross domestic product as, as the denominator here. Alaska's gross domestic product in 2015 was $51 billion, and in 2023 that had grown to $68 billion. And so federal spending accounted for just under 30% of our 2023 total GDP.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Bob Loeffler
“federal government is the most important industry, if you will, that brings money in.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“by April 2026, we've taken a larger loss. That is this, the red line. And I think one thing to sort of caveat here or start with is if we look at sort of prior to April 2024 and we look at the trend upwards, we can see that the nation saw larger growth in federal jobs compared to Alaska.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“this is now showing that sort of by state, which states took the larger, the largest declines in the federal workforce. And here we can see Alaska is quite high in that, probably about the 8th largest decline.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brett Watson
“we're now— we have now a pretty good picture of what the federal workforce was up to. But that's only one important but small component of aggregate federal spending in the state.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brett Watson
“Federal spending grew by $8.7 billion from just, just under $11 billion in federal fiscal year 2015 to just under $19, just under $20 billion in federal fiscal year 2023.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“by and large, the set of people that have left have come from the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, the Department of Transportation. Those are the set of agencies that are seeing workers leave. When we look at the type of jobs for those people, they are in biological sciences, they're in maintenance, they're in physical sciences. So these are jobs that are not in administrative roles but are generally more in field jobs.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“I think for me, one of the frames that I carry is that I would think about the federal workforce as potentially a complement to our base, to our industry, rather than a substitute. For example, you know, cruise ships bring in people, those people go to Denali, and the complement being that if Denali no longer has park rangers, people don't go to Denali because there's no ability to get basic access”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“when you look at rural counties, they are more reliant on the federal workforce than urban centers. The Denali, for example, a large component of their GDP is the federal workforce. So changes that, you know, these national-level changes are going to be falling harder on these rural parts of Alaska, given that they're more reliant on the Alaska federal workforce.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“the federal government is 9th largest. This is as of 2024 Q3, is 9th largest in employment across all these sectors. But when you look at the average salary of those of federal workers, it's quite large. It's the third highest. And as I had said earlier, they're making approximately $100,000 annually.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“Alaska has seen the largest reduction, particularly due to the Deferred Resignation Program, that a large component of who is taking— who is leaving are those that were taking the DRP. When we're thinking about this DRP, these are workers that are relatively experienced. These are workers that have had approximately 10 years working for the federal government.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brett Watson
“either way you calculate this contribution of the oil and gas industry, it's grown over this time period between $3 and $4.5 billion. Or less than half of the growth in federal spending over the same time period. What about for some of our other key basic sector industries like the hard rock mining industry or the fishing industry? Well, the fishing industry over this time period grew by about a quarter billion dollars while the hard rock mining industry grew by just under a billion dollars.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brett Watson
“probably the biggest category of growth though across all of these spending categories grew 150%, uh, was federal spending in contracts. So contracts are spending that the various federal agencies engage in. The largest federal agency that spends money in the state of Alaska is the Department of Department of Defense.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“between April 2024 to April 2026, we've seen across the entire nation a 14.8% decline in the headcount of the US federal civilian workforce. There's a large decline. Alaska specifically has seen a 15.8% decline. So we are seeing a larger decline than most other places.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Bob Loeffler
“if you look at the employees from federal facilities, if you will, Denali National Park, Glacier Bay National Park, people around the bases, they may have a different— some of them may be leaving Alaska. We don't know.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“prior, there's some, you know, baseline workers that are being hired in the offseason. And we can see that that offseason hiring has declined significantly. But also we're seeing lower peaks for the seasonal workers that we're bringing in.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“Alaska did not see a large share of their workers cut. This is more so the case for places like D.C., Maryland, more capital-centric areas. Alaska did not experience a large cut to the workforce due to the RIFs or the probationary firings.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“I think broadly the way I'm sort of characterizing this is like the Capital Area, and then Alaska, right? We are— we're particularly reliant for federal workers.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“when we look at the reduction in force, the probationary termination, and the buyouts collectively, at a national scale, by far the buyouts are what have caused the largest decline in the federal workforce. That is, we're talking about at a national level here— in one month, approximately almost 75,000 to 80,000 workers suddenly leaving”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“over $1.5 billion is federal civilian wages paid to Alaskan federal workers, and that's approximately $100,000 per job. So these are high-paying jobs. There's approximately 15,500 federal workers living in Alaska, and across all states, we're the third highest share of federal workers in a state's workforce.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“we're talking about park rangers, biological science technicians, maintenance mechanics, forestry technicians. These are sort of the jobs that have, you know, direct implications for their particular field for what they were doing.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Bob Loeffler
“So we have 5 of our 12 were in the top 10 contractors for defense.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Brock Wilson
“this is me providing that information again across all states. We are third highest in reliance on the federal workforce. The only two above that are Maryland and Hawaii.”The Impact of Federal Dollars On Alaska’s Economy - 6/23/26 · Jun 26, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“I'm curious, what does that capacity look like within the Office of Venues? Do we have the real human capacity to administer these contracts more thoroughly at this point? And it seems to have been kind of like a recurring question in the Audit Committee is, you know, is our contract administration on point sort of across across the board. So I'm wondering, you know, do we have policies and procedures for this? What do we think about the total workload of the person who will be shouldering this?”Anchorage Assembly: Special Assembly Meeting · Jun 26, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“going back to the audit findings, and this is really sort of an internal business question, but I think it's germane. a lot of those findings were really related to some challenges with contract administration and capacity.”Anchorage Assembly: Special Assembly Meeting · Jun 26, 2026
Bo Whiteside
“if the administrative burden and the burden of enforcement can be addressed, including exempting our local residents from harvesting some fish and game for their freezers, then, then I'd support it going to the ballot.”Kodiak Borough: Assembly Work Session of June 25, 2026 Part 1 · Jun 25, 2026
Jeff Woods
“Fish and Game information indicates that roughly 74% of the deer harvested in the Kodiak Island Borough are harvested by people who do not live in the Kodiak Island Borough. That makes— there's about 8,000 blacktail harvested a year in the Kodiak Island— in the borough, or Unit 8, let's just call it Unit 8. So assuming that I've never once seen somebody put their antlers in the same box that they put their meat in, because that would be weird, uh, you're looking at a substantial potential revenue stream there. That's not touching fisheries at all.”Kodiak Borough: Assembly Work Session of June 25, 2026 Part 1 · Jun 25, 2026
Charles Glagolich
“It's happening in Sitka and Gustavus. I've never been there. I can't even pronounce it. They have realized that that's the direction to take, and you get pointed for our local community in the right direction.”Kodiak Borough: Assembly Work Session of June 25, 2026 Part 1 · Jun 25, 2026
Jared Griffin
“this and the next item that we are going to be looking at is about kind of like diversifying, not necessarily expanding, but, right, but diversifying our financial foundation, you know.”Kodiak Borough: Assembly Work Session of June 25, 2026 Part 1 · Jun 25, 2026
Jeff Woods
“if you were trying to, say, ship something out, you had to have a hunting/fishing license to go ahead and obtain whatever resource most likely that you're trying to extract. Theoretically, one could use the resident's address put on said hunting or fishing license to determine whether or not that would potentially fit as a resident of Unit 8 or not. There's that, assuming such a step would be legal. Uh, second off, if you're trying to collect such a tax, uh, the most obvious points of collection would either be through the shipping companies or through the airport, primarily.”Kodiak Borough: Assembly Work Session of June 25, 2026 Part 1 · Jun 25, 2026
Bo Whiteside
“I think the biggest hurdle for this would be the burden of enforcement. I mean, you have— I don't know how the state would— respond to, I guess, a cooperative approach to this and, and sharing records with us. But I do agree that there's a very high amount of transporters coming from the mainland down here to extract fish and game resources, a very, very high amount.”Kodiak Borough: Assembly Work Session of June 25, 2026 Part 1 · Jun 25, 2026
Valerie Erson
“They have concerns about the impact of a fish box excise tax on their businesses. We are also concerned with the idea that an excise tax is being discussed with the specific goal of bypassing a public vote. While we can appreciate that the Kodiak Island Borough needs to identify funding to support its activities, there should be an opportunity for the public and small businesses that would be impacted to have input into discussions on tax matters, review any proposals, and ultimately vote, as this could impact many families.”Kodiak Borough: Assembly Work Session of June 25, 2026 Part 1 · Jun 25, 2026