Video Clips

Quoted moments from Alaska public meetings, hearings, and press conferences.

Clips from Commonwealth NorthClear

Heidi Hedberg “That started October 1st for January cohort. I still have the same number of staff. I still have a better IT system, but I am— we're not on staff yet. So there's significant concerns around supporting the IT modernization efforts.”

xit Interviews: What Alaska's Commissioners Want the Next Governor to Know - October 15, 2026 · Oct 20, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “And so we have had to pivot in the last year to address those changes.”

xit Interviews: What Alaska's Commissioners Want the Next Governor to Know - October 15, 2026 · Oct 20, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “There's been a lot of work in that space, and then we have a strong team that is working it. But we are just— it's a boat that's just getting stood up and moving forward.”

xit Interviews: What Alaska's Commissioners Want the Next Governor to Know - October 15, 2026 · Oct 20, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “Budget neutrality language was also implemented, and that means that we need to ensure that the cost of care is appropriate, which means we need to make changes within our Medicaid program.”

xit Interviews: What Alaska's Commissioners Want the Next Governor to Know - October 15, 2026 · Oct 20, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “I would say the SNAP/Medicaid changes, our congressional delegation wrote in to the bill to give us more time. But we have a lot of work to reduce our payment error rate to get it below 6% by the end of this calendar year, and we're sitting at 20%. Otherwise, the new administration administration, it's a $45 million price tag to pay for those benefits. So like the workflow, the work changes have to happen this year. This year is critical for those changes.”

xit Interviews: What Alaska's Commissioners Want the Next Governor to Know - October 15, 2026 · Oct 20, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “Last year there was a significant change through HR1 that changed Medicaid and SNAP and budget neutrality.”

xit Interviews: What Alaska's Commissioners Want the Next Governor to Know - October 15, 2026 · Oct 20, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “As I mentioned earlier, Medicaid, there is for our expansion population, which is about 47,000 Alaskans, we need to renew their eligibility every 6 months.”

xit Interviews: What Alaska's Commissioners Want the Next Governor to Know - October 15, 2026 · Oct 20, 2026

Treg Taylor “during the 4.5 years that I was the Attorney General, I was basically fighting a silent battle against business leaving the state. And this was all done in the name of ESG.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “we saw a record NPR sale, and we saw some great things in that NPR sale. We saw Exxon reinvest in the state, and we saw other companies, Shell, come back into the state.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “I was in that meeting when Shell said, we're leaving the state, and it was a gut punch.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “I'm going to prioritize protecting the most vulnerable, and that's public safety, infrastructure that is going to help move the state forward, unlocking and unleashing our resource potential— timber, minerals, rare earths— and our education.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “In the past 3 years, we've had over 23,000 kids fall off Medicaid.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “We have underperformed as a state. When it comes to developing the resources that God blessed us with.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “Biden administration had 30 by 30, which is you wanted 30% of lands, 30% of waters into conservation status by 2030.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “North Slope poverty rate, 50 to 12%. And then life expectancy, we've seen the life expectancy grow by 12 years since, since we had the developments in the 1980s on the North Slope.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “We have a duty and an obligation to develop those on behalf of Alaskans.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “Right now you all know federal lands, 62% owned by federal government, right? Less than 1% owned by individuals within Alaska. And I'm a big proponent of if you don't have private lands, you don't have private economy. We need to put more land in the hands of Alaskans.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “I helped draft this president's first-day executive order that was focused 100%. We're the only state that got an executive order, helped draft it, Unleashing Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “So that tells me that these children dropped off not because of eligibility requirements, but because of paperwork issues. And that's unacceptable, right?”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “We got the rights of way for the Ambler Road to get us to the Ambler Mining District. And we had a record lease sale in the NPRA, which unfortunately as the Attorney General I had to sue over twice.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “Right now we have some broken systems in state government that, that are not serving the people of Alaska as designed.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “This is why Alaska has a duty to develop its resources on behalf of its people.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “He was going to hang that entire thing on the backs of Alaskans, tie up our lands, prevent us from developing those lands.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “We showed that, hey, where Alaska has economic development, we have success. People come out of poverty. Look at the Red Dog Mine region, 75% to 21% poverty rate.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Treg Taylor “The shareholder complaint says, if you do not do this, this, this, and this— 4 things— in the name of ESG and climate change, we will forgive you if you pull your business completely out of Alaska.”

The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026 · Sep 18, 2026

Robert Doehl “Our permit management system now is the equivalent of carbon paper and multiple copies that don't talk to each other. It was an over-customized system that they continued to over-customize after they brought it online in 2005. It is unwieldy. It's clunky.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Tyler Robinson “Obviously, not having to do these things is a big deal. It saves cost. It saves a ton of time. We have two developments right now that are underway because a process requirement has been suspended.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Tyler Robinson “So right now it's paused. It could come back in 2028.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Shaun Debenham “this is Raspberry Townhomes. It's a development we're doing in South Anchorage. It's It's a $20 million project, 58 townhomes.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Robert Doehl “That cost them hundreds of— actually, thousands of dollars and a 3-month delay in construction. That's why we are going forward to address where— to give the Director the authority to just deal with these de minimis variances rather than tie up the cost, the delay, the risk of missing a building season”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Shaun Debenham “in Anchorage, we have a very short little window for construction. And when it extends an extra even 3 months and it takes you past the ability to get in the ground and put a foundation in, then we've got serious issues when a permit is taking so much long. And it's easily resolvable.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Shaun Debenham “Took me 9 months to go through and get a permit. 9 Months! Like, this is crazy.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Shaun Debenham “We need to outsource it, right? This is not a hard thing. If we outsource a review, If we outsource our inspections, we have very talented people here in Anchorage that are more than capable of doing this and doing it well and quickly and under the time constraints that we currently have.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Shaun Debenham “we need a comprehensive setback analysis of our Title 21 code that's 1,000 pages.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Robert Doehl “They said— we looked at all the appendices we could adopt. So if you wanted to do something that is not normal construction, we will already have in place, if the International Code folks have looked at it, the code path you can expect. So you have predictability when you show up for your permit on how that looks.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Shaun Debenham “the fire code has got to be changed. Okay, this is Raspberry Townhomes. All right, a normal driveway is 25 feet.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Shaun Debenham “that represents 30% lot coverage ratio. 30%. Now, that's interesting because R-3, which is the zone that I'm in, allows 40%, right? So I missed out by 30%. I could have increased the number of units if I had actually been able to get to 40% just simply because of existing Title 21 setbacks and other types of regulations that they have.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Robert Doehl “So where do we as a municipality lower the cost going forward? There's basically 4 areas we look at. First one, cut red tape.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Shaun Debenham “a hotel has no design standards requirement, right? But if I want to do multifamily, I have to increase my cost by 15% in order to achieve those design standards. And so why do we have design standards for multifamily, and we really desperately need multifamily, but no design standards for hotels”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Robert Doehl “what really excites me is what we're doing now, rolling out first quarter of next year, which is a new permit management system.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 2026

Shaun Debenham “here we have 44 feet of asphalt, and that's because of the fire code on our south side. And on our north side, we have a 38-foot drive aisle All asphalt, all extremely ugly because of our fire code. Now I ask the question, why is a fire truck dictating housing policy in Anchorage, Alaska? So that fire lane access represents 7,520 square feet, which is 15 units, just because of our fire code policy.”

Alaska's Housing Shortage: The Factors That Cause It & The Levers We Control - 8/27/26 · Aug 28, 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

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 “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

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

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