Video Clips
Quoted moments from Alaska public meetings, hearings, and press conferences.
Sean 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
Sean 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
Sean 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
Bob Dole
“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
Bob Dole
“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
Sean 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
Sean 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
Sean 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
Sean 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
Sean 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
Bob Dole
“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
Bob Dole
“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
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
Sean 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
Bob Dole
“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
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
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
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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
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
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
“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
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
“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 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
“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
“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
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
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
“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
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
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
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
“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
“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
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
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
John Sims
“The Hillcorp contract is down there at $8.36. There is an annual inflator, so it's not going to stay at that rate for the entirety of the contract. We expected about a 1.5% increase over the duration of that contract.”Taxes and the Alaska Gas Line: The Fiscal Questions Behind AK's Energy Future · Jun 9, 2026
John Sims
“Because of the cold temperatures, NStar was short on gas. And so we reached out to Hilcorp and luckily they were able to deliver an additional half BCF of gas during the month of March. That came at a cost of $16 per MCF.”Taxes and the Alaska Gas Line: The Fiscal Questions Behind AK's Energy Future · Jun 9, 2026