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

Alright, good afternoon everybody. Welcome to Commonwealth North. My name is Chris Noss. I serve on the Commonwealth North Board of Directors and have the privilege of moderating this afternoon. In the private sector, An exit interview usually happens in a small room with someone from HR and a box of tissues.

Today we are doing it at the Petroleum Club, on the record, in front of— in the front of a room of Alaska's most opinionated people. Commissioners, thank you for your courage being here today, and thank you for your service. Before we begin, I want to recognize the people who make Commonwealth North possible. If you serve on the Commonwealth North board, please stand for a moment.

That includes Kai Binkley-Sims, our president. I don't see her yet today. And also Ross Johnston, who is our executive director, who has been a major part of putting this together. So thank you.

Commonwealth North was founded in 1979 by two former governors. Walter Hickel and Bill Egan. One was a Republican and one a Democrat, and they built this organization on the idea of politics should not get in the way of doing what's right for Alaska. That work depends on members. If you find value in this afternoon, join us.

Individual memberships start at $300 and corporate memberships start at $2,500. The QR code on the screen will get you there. Our thanks to our cornerstone members, GCI and ConocoPhillips, whose year-round support makes programs like this one possible.

Two dates of note: next Wednesday, October 21st at noon, bring your lunch and join us for an on— join us online for the other half of the ticket, Alaska's next Lieutenant Governor on the record. And on Thursday, October 29th, at 5:00 PM at the Wild Birch Hotel. The Anchorage Security and Defense Dialogue closing reception is your chance to rub shoulders with top brass, diplomats, and federal policymakers. The rest of the calendar is on the screen. In December, Alaska hands the keys of state government— let me see here, sorry.

So why we're here today. In December, Alaska hands the keys of state government to a new administration. On one of the shortest transition timelines in American politics. Election night is November 3rd, and the new governor takes oath on December 7th with some tabulations in there.

At most new jobs, 5 weeks is about how long it takes to find a good coffee, find the good coffee, and figure out who actually knows how things work. The next governor gets 5 weeks to learn all of state government. Fortunately, several of the people who know how it works is sitting right up here. Over here. Institutional knowledge that took years to build can walk out the door in weeks.

So think of this afternoon as a working session on continuity of government held in public before the clock actually starts. We will hear from 5 people today who have run the machinery of state government for over the last 8 years. Dina Bishop, the Commissioner of Education and Early Development. Doug Vincent Lang, the Commissioner of the Department of Fish and Game. Ryan Anderson, the Commissioner of the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.

Heidi Hedberg, the Commissioner of Department of Health. And Stephen Cox, the Senior Counsel to the Governor. I will introduce each of them before they speak. Each has up to 12 minutes. You will see the time cards near the front.

Thanks, David. And let's see here.

See the time cards in the front, and they will step in, and the timekeeper will step in. After all 5, we will open the floor. Raise your hand, and we will bring you a microphone. One question per person. Please make it a good question.

This afternoon is being recorded for the Commonwealth North YouTube channel, so please silence your phones. With that, let's begin. First up, Dena Bishop, Commissioner of Education and Early Development. Few people in Alaska have run schools at more levels than our first speaker. Dena Bishop has been a Commissioner of Education and Early Development since August 2023.

Before that, she was an education advisor to Governor Dunleavy. She was superintendent of the Anchorage School District, the state's largest, from 2016 to 2022, a tenure that ran straight through the pandemic. Before Anchorage, she led the Matsu Borough School District. Please welcome Commissioner Dena Bishop.

Thanks, Chris. And we were betting if we— I was hoping we were going to go alpha order by commissioners' names, and I wish my friend Ryan would have started right now. But I guess I'm first. And so thank you, as you said, Dena Bishop. And I just am going to answer the 3 questions that were presented by Ross and Planning.

We always share at the department just the vision, the purpose, and the mission. And for me, in all the work I've done, is really on the vision that public education cannot find itself or find success unless the people whom we educate actually are successful adults, have happy, healthy families, can find jobs. And add, I like to say that in— during K-12, kids are major consumers of state resources. Over $1 billion. Our goal should be make— they consume money, they should, they are young, but then when they graduate, they should be contributors.

So that's our goal. So points of pride. This is the first thing we were asked to address. And I do want to share that the strategic plan— when I arrived at the department, we really did have Alaska's Education Challenge, and many of you in the room may have been a part of that. It was a huge gathering by Governor Walker to define what we want for Alaska's children.

They're pretty ubiquitous across the United States, what people came to. Most people can find the same things we want for our children. But when I came to the department, these were the statements. And so we had a collection of statements and thinking about, well, finding your way and what do you do. I went around and said, where are we on this and what are we doing for this and what's the goal for this?

But all we had in the department were statements. One of the things that Chris didn't say was I was a former math teacher, so very data-driven. And I said, well, like, how do you know? Like, what's— where are we? And how do we know that we actually did something or didn't do something?

So we went through a process really over the last couple of years because the State Board of Education is technically the governing body that approves regulations, things like that. And we set SMART goals to be more definitive so that we know if we set a goal, are we actually going to get there? And what does it look like? What does success look like. So we did just get this through the board, um, and along with that, uh, also changed the department in an SEA action plan.

So the State Education Agency, all of our programs, resources, assistance, funding, everything is going to be geared towards those goals. We have, uh, in our department, like many probably departments, a lot of random great things going on, but they weren't put forward back to the classroom. And when you're in the division at the state, you are the furthest removed from a child. And so we needed to be sure that they're driven down. We also encouraged the LEA and the school improvement to create goals as well.

Whether it's the READS Act, school improvement through the federal government, ESEA, which is title money, there's millions of dollars coming into the state. And they're just spent without— generally what we do is we, you know, we wanted to fund a plan rather than plan the fund. And so what we've done is all the different teams at the department have to funnel their money into encouraging school districts as well to focus on the goals. One of the things at the local level is the grant management system, which is a pretty beastie organism that lives by itself, and that's how the money goes through. We are changing the grant management system with pulldowns so that you're really instilling this all the way to the local level.

Sometimes what would happen is the district would have a goal, the local education agency, but because of the school improvement federal funding, they work right with the school. And so a school might be in the lowest 5% of schools in Alaska because of reading and math, but their goal would be on improving gardening. And so they were not matched up. That's a real example that we found. So we want to ensure that to improve student learning, to improve students' outcomes, we need to align these.

And so that is significant. Another point of pride is the READS Act. Make no mistake that in my lifetime, this will be probably the most significant legislation that our state has passed because it defines how we all— brain research has demonstrated we all learn to read the same way in our brains. And so we've really used the scientific method, the science of reading, to actually teach teachers. So this included professional development for all K-3 teachers, monthly communication with parents, assessment to know where you are, using materials that have phonemic awareness and phonics in them.

And so it was very defined. It's great legislation. And it's working.

It was passed in '22. Over the last 3 years, we didn't have any data the first year as regulation was being built. But generally, this is kind of kids' stuff. It's an assessment given from K through 3 on curriculum measures, very basic skills, sounds of letters, blends, words, reading. And beginning of the year is BOY, end of the year.

So for every year, when you see red, that's 2 or more grade levels behind. That's how they come in in the beginning. 42% Of our kids in '23-'24 came in 2 grade levels behind. We're down to 39, but it's moving in the right direction. When we talk about the Mississippi Miracle, that was at the early stages.

It was bulked out. It was pushed back on. It took over 10 years for somebody to go, wait a minute, what is happening in this state? And it was really having high-quality teachers in classrooms. And that will make the best difference for all kids.

But we're moving in the right direction. Um, this is just this past year's. What these mean in numbers is that 4,264 fewer kids left in that 2 grade levels behind, and that over here, 3,771 are on grade level now. Green and blue are grade level and advanced. Red is below the 16 or the 16%, 14%.

Um, we don't really look at that. We just want to reduce the red, increase on grade level, because you don't know whether they got in the yellow from going up or going down. —And so you just work on those ends. Kids are achieving better on those early literacy. Again, it's just the third year.

When you want to ask, well, what does that mean in real numbers and across the nation, the DIBELS test that's given is over 20 million students are normed on it. And we actually are having what we call catch-up growth. So we're growing students' knowledge faster than the nation, which is what we needed to do. To catch up. Another point of pride is really a partnership with the Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

Commissioner, we got together to focus on what comes after high school. It came from— within a couple of months, I sat in an AWIB meeting gathering about what are we going to do about the workforce. And then I went to a FAFSA meeting of high school counselors. And both outcomes said there needs to be a connection to K-12. And then the K-12 people said we need a connection to the workforce.

So the governor funded that. Commissioner Munoz and I got together and we started this program. We have student advisors now at the work centers, but also we're through the RootEd program. We—. Any district can be— have a person trained.

We are looking at all different avenues for youth, especially in the resource. Students in Alaska can learn quite a bit and have quite a bit of opportunities. Also with that, we started our own apprenticeship program, a federal one that Commissioner Munoz helped with, and for teachers. And right now we have over 109 teachers across the state of Alaska to improve our workforce there and fill that gap. And our partners have about 30.

So, and these are generally paraprofessionals that couldn't take the time off to go to school. They're learning the apprenticeship model and going to be certificated teachers. Anyway, just in the first year of this program, or actually the second year, the students involved out of the first 10 school districts, it was a pilot program. This year there's over 23 school districts involved. They outpaced the nation in FAFSA completion.

In order to get the funds to go to school, whether it's at Avtech or just a local CTE or college, you need to fill out the FAFSA. That's how the Alaska Performance Scholarship is given. So we were missing millions of dollars in providing to kids, and it's really just filling up that FAFSA. So we've increased, and we won in the nation, those 5, this program created the highest growth out of the nation. Some of the things we wish we could solve, student achievement and funding cost drivers in public education.

And I do believe that these things should go together. I'm a strong believer that there has to be a return on investment because we are, K-12 does consume a lot of money. And I think it's appropriate for young people to consume it, but we should bring back to our community outcomes that we're— our community is really proud of. With that, these are just showing we are again making progress in 3, 4, and 5, and it could be a relationship to the early kids in kindergarten, first, and second learning. The test— this test is the state test that is the federal requirement, you know, that we've had this READS Act going on, so they're getting good solid basic skills, but we're nowhere near where we need to be.

You can see that grades 3 through 5 is the biggest growth. One of the things that I started to do was put all school district and publicize it. It was unheard of to put all the schools together and the school districts together. Again, you got to know it to grow it. So we talk about it, we find where our school districts are, how can we talk to others to get there.

Again, the N, or the number of kids tested, are a lot different in some of these, but districts are starting to communicate and no longer— we used to do this ourselves as superintendents, but the department would never do it for us. So now we publish the the data. Um, math is the same. I'm just going to go through it. You could just see briefly, um, we do have some movement in the lower grades, upper grades not much.

Um, in fact, in math in the upper grades, we actually declined a bit. Um, and then, um, AKSTAR is the name of the summative test. And then science, we do better. Um, but grade 5, again, the lower grades are much more engaged with that assessment. So, um, still almost little to no growth in our upper grades.

So we publicize that. We do have a lot of funding sources in the department. And thinking about when I talk about the investment is $1.48 billion in operations that are for school districts in FY27, as well as over $120— about $124 million in capital. So we do invest and how are we invested in making knowledge for the next generation. These are some of the things.

I'm gonna go fast. It's a minute. State-sector partnerships are strong. We've worked with DOT, DEC, and Department of Labor quite extensively, especially on halong and some other. We communicate.

I would expect the next governor should expect that. Have your departments talk with each other so we're not disjointed. The state education plan is solid. Continue that. It started with Walker.

It's good stuff. Continue the SMART goals. There's competent employees there at the department. It's service-oriented. We— although we do compliance and we're organized around compliance, we are to serve people.

And finally, this is the biggest cost driver, and we should pay attention to it: energy costs. Energy is paid out of operational funds in a district. And so I did a study, just captured data. One school district, for their BSA and money per kid will spend $675. That's the lowest.

Another school district could spend up to $3,600 a child on their energy costs. So when that happens, that's taking money out of the classroom. Thinking about energy and cost drivers is essential around Alaska, and we don't need to think that Southeast is the cheapest, interior is most expensive, and Western Alaska. So with that, that was it, and I believe I made it in my time. Thank you.

Do I get questions? You're good. Okay.

Great. Thanks, Commissioner Bishop.

Let's welcome Commissioner Doug Vincent Lang. He's next up. Some of these pictures look like they've had a little AI from 8 years ago, but no. All right. Thank you, Commissioner Bishop.

Our next speaker started at the Department of Fish and Game in 1981. As a sport fish biologist. Some of that fish he counted that year may have great-great-grandchildren in your room's freezer. Doug Vincent Lang went on to serve as Assistant Director of the Division of Sport Fish, Director of the Division of Wildlife Conservation, and the state's Endangered Species Act Coordinator. Governor Dunleavy named him Acting Commissioner in December 2018, and he has led the department since.

He holds a master's degree in biological oceanography from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Please welcome Commissioner Doug Vincent Lang.

All right. I'm not going to talk about potholes today.

Hey, first off, I want to take the opportunity to thank everybody around this room. You know, when you get appointed to a commissioner, it's public service. When you get appointed, you go through this process where you basically are trying to convince people you're the right person for the job. And that places a lot of trust in me to be able to do that job. And I got through the governor's office, I got through the board process, and I got through the legislative process.

But I've also served in this role for 8 years working with everybody in this room and other people, all Alaskans. Thank you. Thank you for the trust that you placed in me. I really do appreciate it. And it's been It's been a fun journey.

So with that, I've been asked a couple questions. What are you most proud of? Well, that's an interesting question. So I talk about a couple of different initiatives. First is marine science initiatives that we initiated across the state.

We really did a lot of work in freshwater systems across the state of Alaska to unravel what was happening in freshwater with salmon. But we had no idea what was happening in the marine environment. Government. So when I came in 8 years ago, I said, let's put together a marine science program. And now that program is starting to unravel some of the things that are happening to salmon in their first 2 or 3 years, 2 or 3 months out at sea, especially in 2 or 3 years out at sea.

We're starting to piece together what factors are affecting their survival moving forward. Um, we put together an A+ genetics program, CSI-type program. I didn't realize just how cutting-edge our science program was, We're world-renowned in our department for our science and genetics. On the fish side, we can tell whether a fish is, you know, pretty quickly whether it's from an Asian fish or from an Alaskan hatchery. And now we're starting to get into it on wildlife.

We can tell pretty quickly from our genetic analysis at a scene of a bear mauling which bear that is and delineate which ones we're going to go out and deal with. So the genetics program that we've installed is just amazing in the department. We got a research vessel to replace a vessel that went down. Trident— we worked with Trident. They gave us one.

We retrofitted it. But that's going to fill in, again, that marine science program piece that we're moving forward on. And hatchery research programs— everybody thinks that we're putting too many hatchery fish out in the ocean because— and it's starving out the rest of the wild salmon stocks that are out there and that those hatchery stocks are straying into our wild stocks. We're putting together a research program over a 3- or 4-year cycle of pink salmon. We're starting to unravel those questions of whether we're having hatchery stray rates and how that's affecting our wild stocks.

Strengthening food security. Who went dipnetting this year? There's a great opportunity for Alaskans to go out under this administration and get your freezer full of fish for the winter to feed your family. We have dipnet opportunities. We have other opportunities up and down the coast.

We have king salmon opportunities down in Juneau. You should have more than enough opportunity to catch them. We've also transplanted wood bison in 3 different locations across the state. We have them in Inoko, Minto, and we're going to be putting them very soon up into Yukon Flats. And those are going to be another opportunity to hopefully get a bison during your lifetime and through drawing permits.

And we transplanted deer in Kodiak, down in Salovia. And they survived the winter and they're starting to grow. And we're fish stock— we stock fish lakes. I know I spent a lot of time when I was retired for 4 years for taking these jobs fishing in Beer Can Lake in Anchorage and just enjoying being able to fish rainbows. We've improved hunter access and angling all across the state.

We have built, God, I don't know how many, probably 15 to 20 different new boat launch facilities. And we were having trouble spending our PR funds, which is $100. And we put together a new program where people can put together ideas on where they want hunter access done. And we built all kinds of new hunter access across the state. And we've built some shooting ranges.

And we're looking right now to try to finish up one up in Jonesville, hopefully before this gets done, because we can't have that situation that's currently happening up in Jonesville. Trawling. God, I can't believe how much of an issue that has become. It's the governor's issue right now. It's just amazing how just how that's being not driven by facts, but really what people's perceptions are based on reading on Facebook.

But the governor and I put together both a governor's-led task force as well as a commissioner's-led task force to get us answers. We have recommendations from that. And now we're taking regulatory actions at the Board of Fish as well as at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to address it. And we've got new initiatives underneath both those processes. Policies to hopefully address that bottom contact issue that is a real issue that's out there.

Um, ESA and MMPA. I think everybody around the room knows that the state of Alaska hasn't been happy with the way ESA has been implemented, and we're taking that on. And I think we've had a pretty good success. Harm has been redefined under the Endangered Species Act. It used to be that anything that might harm, including a potential habitat manipulation today for something that might harm something 20 years from now, could be considered a take.

That's no longer the case. So we worked hard on getting that done and pretty proud to announce that that regulatory change has occurred. And we're also trying to get change. We've been unsuccessful, but we're trying to continue to get change for marine mammals. Marine mammals were once really depressed across the, across the North Pacific, and that wasn't okay.

We should have done our best to get them restored. But now the objective is to get marine mammals restored to a level that They're at their optimal population size. That means that the rest of the ecosystem pays to get them managed for their optimal size. We want to get that definition changed so they're a functional part of the ecosystem, because right now they're having tremendous impacts on salmon across our state. International agreements.

Most commissioners didn't get involved very much internationally. I chose to get involved internationally. We, we're in the process right now of negotiating a salmon treaty with Canada for Southeast fisheries. We drew some pretty hard lines in the sand. No surprise.

Last two annexes, we gave up quite a bit of fish to the south and to Canada. We're not going to do that this time, at least if I have anything to say about it. Yukon 7-year agreement. We did something pretty unique. The state of Alaska signed an agreement with Canada to try to rebuild Yukon River salmon stocks.

When I took office, the salmon stocks in the Yukon were severely depressed, and I went up and down that river and talked to people. Eagle River. Said, what can we do? They said, don't— no longer— we can't have a focus on single-year management. We have to look at a life cycle salmon.

So we put a 7-year agreement in place. And I can say this last year, 10 years ago, 8 years ago, we were having about 30,000 to 40,000 king salmon return to the river. This year we had 110,000 king salmon come back to the river. I think pretty good success. And we also have MOUs with Yukon— with Yukon government and the B.C.

Government on And things from transboundary mining to the 40-Mile Caribou Herd. Even though we are having issues with tariffs with our Canadian brethren, we are doing the right thing and we're maintaining our cross-border cooperation with Canada. And we've also supported growth in mariculture and aquaculture. You know, both, both are things that are very needed in our state and provide an additional opportunity for Alaskans to get into those mariculture and aquaculture businesses. And Amazingly enough, we began the discussion on finfish aquaculture.

I can say that that was a very difficult discussion to have with the legislature. I think several legislators told me, we got more comments on your comments on finfish aquaculture than we did on the permanent fund or tax structures for oil and gas industry. So, but it's time to have that discussion because at the end of the day, the worldwide finfish production is not going down and it's going to be a competitive source. So we have to look at how we're going to face that new reality moving forward. And then we've made significant revisions to how we collect data.

We've joined the 21st century. We now have a mobile app out there, and that mobile app, you can, you can buy a license, you can find out what the regulations are in the waters you're fishing. And we're making new strides to try to get our, our data collection on how sport fish is harvested from, from that big book you get in the mail every now and then. Which is trying to make you recall what you caught 12 months ago or 14 months ago. We're going to make that more interactive so you get something a month out from when you fished.

So advice, what do I, what do I wish I could have solved? I think the one thing I wish I could have solved is the increasing distrust or confidence that the public has in the Board of Fish process and the Board of Game process. I think we've seen in this last couple of years that there's been a general slide of distrust for that process. So the average Alaskan doesn't feel the opportunity any longer to have a fair voice in having their proposal heard and discussed by the board. And oftentimes you're seeing proposals significantly changed.

I think the one thing Alaska has is Fish and Game was so critical to our citizenry at statehood that it really drove why we wanted to become a state. And we wanted to make sure that as we move forward after that, that people had the opportunity to become engaged in how they wanted to see their Fish and Game resources managed. And that's the Board of Fish and that's the Board of Game regulatory process. We got to get that confidence restored. So advice for the next governor— all right, that's interesting.

Learn the issues, learn the science and facts, talk to all sides, make decisions, but don't be afraid to change from those decisions as you learn more. In fact, learn from the past, look to the future. So a couple of key issues that the new governor needs to tackle is, again, I said we're entering negotiations right now for the next 10-year annex of the Pacific Salmon Treaty. We need to hold the line. We can't afford to give up more fish when they're basically just to have more fish harvested in the south.

We've got to hold that line moving forward.

At the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, You have to realize that, that 70% of the fish that we harvest in Alaska, our economic contribution comes from the EEZ waters, 3 to 200 miles out. Just ending trawling isn't the answer. We need responsible management of trawling, but just ending trawling isn't going to have a huge significant impact to Alaska, whether we like it or not. At the end of the day, we have to learn to work with that industry to try to minimize the impacts that they're having. And make sure that we have good observer coverage and that pelagic gear is fished pelagically, not on the bottom.

Arctic policy has been one of the key things that I've been engaged with with the Governor's office for the last 8 years. We're an Arctic state, and the only reason the nation's an Arctic nation is because of Alaska. We have a right to be involved in the discussions of what the Arctic looks like moving moving forward. We shouldn't have those policy discussions being made back in D.C., a long ways away from us. This is our backyard.

You wouldn't want your neighbor— you wouldn't want somebody in D.C. telling you how you can do your backyard. So, you know, get involved. We got to stay engaged in that. Federal subsistence. We had agreements under ANILCA and ANSCA that all Alaskans should be able to have that resource availability to them and only during times of need, Do you restrict it?

That's no longer happening. We have to get an agreement on how we're going to manage our subsistence resources moving forward. Everybody should have an opportunity when the resources are there to go out and harvest them. Bears and people. I got to know I got a minute left, but 2 days ago I got a call saying, "Hey, Doug, we got a bear in a hospital in Jaybir." Oh, good God.

Yeah. So we discussed it. We got the bear out of the hospital. Bear came back 2 more times that next day, so we shot it. But the controversy associated with shooting bears is large.

And, you know, we don't want to be in the position having to shoot bears, but we can't— also can't have bears walking into hospitals potentially. So bears and people— I thought bears was an issue in rural environments. No, it's not. It's an issue in urban environments. We're gonna have to deal with that moving forward.

And then And then lastly, international relations. This job works to have fish available for harvest. But if we don't have markets for our harvest, it's not going to work. So again, I got engaged in things that other commissioners didn't. I got engaged in free trade.

I got involved in MSC certification. I'm going to tell the next governor, you've got to stay engaged in those, because if you don't have a market, what's the value of the fish? And the same thing with recreational fishing. If you don't keep people interested and you don't keep that community going, you're not going to have people that are going to care about your resource and invest in it. So with that, thank— again, thank you all for the trust you placed in me.

I appreciate it.

Thanks, Commissioner. Appreciate all your service. So our next speaker came to Alaska in 1993 to study geological engineering. At UAF. He joined the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities in 2000 as an entry-level engineer.

He went on to lead the department in the northern region of DOT and in 2021 became the commissioner. Ryan Anderson oversees the roads, airports, harbors, and ferries that connect Alaska. Most of us think about them when something goes wrong, and they're usually Ryan's, uh, the first call. So please welcome Commissioner Ryan Anderson. Okay.

Well, yeah, you're not wrong about the first one to call. I got a lot of late nights. The potholes, you know, potholes and snowplowing, that seems to be the big piece of this job. But so, yeah, I really appreciate being here tonight with all of you. There's transportation in Alaska.

Well, remember, we're transportation and public facilities, but really you can't emphasize enough the importance for all of us when you look across Alaska with our geographic spread, with the rural to the urban connections that we have, the Southeast Alaska going all the way up to Utqiagvik in the north. I mean, the transportation system, when we get to what you want to be proud of, I mean, we want to be proud of the transportation system that we have. And I think When you can go from Ketchikan to Utqiagvik, you know, in a matter of hours, I think that's something to be really proud of. When you want to go from Fairbanks to Anchorage and, you know, I'm sure a lot of people have different records of time you can drive that in. I think that's something to be proud of.

But there's so much for me in this role, you know, that to, you know, it's just a— it's something you take a lot of pride in, just the system that we have that's that our predecessors have built, and then that what continues. Some of the things that we're really proud of, you know, when you look at some of our infrastructure and our services, like the International Airport System, for example, the growth over the past 5 years, let's say, has just been phenomenal out there. We're doing about 5 to 7% growth in cargo right now. I mean, it's getting to the point, because of that strategic place in the world where we are at, And, you know, being this the global gas station for all of these companies, you know, we're, I think this year we're going to deliver almost over a billion gallons of fuel to those aircraft. And that's something you don't, people don't think about, right?

It comes in at the port or it comes in from Nikiski on the pipelines and it just happens. But behind the scenes, man, there's just so much that's going on there to support that industry. Also on the passenger front, I mean, again, the growth has just been phenomenal. Southwest Airlines just stepped it up last year and they're starting service now. We're going to have— we've had numerous— I mean, just the expansion into the routes direct from Anchorage to the lower 48.

If you look over the past 3 years, I mean, it's just amazing what's happening there. And we're going to have more announcements next week about more expansion. So a lot of excitement there. And just, you know, we're number 3 in the world now. We used to be number 4.

We moved up to number 3. We're number 1. In the United States of America for cargo. And that's just something, and we continue to get that push, you know, more and more and more. And ways we've been able to do that are, they're pretty simple.

It's, you know, keeping the infrastructure program strong. We're building, we're building, we're trying to build new hardstands, you know, keep what we've got in really good shape, make sure we're good on all our weather and our, and what we have to do up here up north, and then keeping the rates and fees low. That's really key because a lot of when you get into these industries like the air carriers, you know, they, they have low profit margins. They're, they're— that makes a difference to them. So a lot of really good success there.

On the highway side, we're doing— we're investing over $1 billion a year in, you know, into our highway system and infrastructure projects. And that's across the board. That's highways. We have a good strong program with our federal highway counterparts. The aviation side of things, FAA, you know, they're putting over $300 million a year Girdwood, into our rural airports, then in addition, the internationals.

We've got a lot of really good— one thing we're proud of, these discretionary grants. Over the past 5 years, you know, we had that new Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act program that came out. And rather than having so much formula funds, it went into this discretionary grants where we got to compete for all these things. And we've done really well in Alaska in competing for these grants. And then on top of that, you know, we get into the ferry system.

One thing, you know, right, the ferry, there's a lot of discussions about the ferries and rightfully so. When you live in those areas, Southeast Alaska or Southwest Alaska, that's absolutely something that you rely on to get around. I mean, it's just, it's a way you get around it. And it started, you know, just as that basic concept. We've been able to, you know, go through a lot of trials and tribulations, but we have a plan now.

That, you know, people believe in. Along with that plan, we've been investing and going after these rural ferry program funds and our ferry boat funds and our other FHWA funds. We have $1 billion right now secured, over $1 billion for the investments in new ferries, new terminal facilities so we can start making all these ferries, we can move them around, the docks fit all the ferries, you know, the interoperability is really important. And then start trying to figure out ways to bring those, those operating costs down with more efficient ferries. And then hopefully— I'm a big advocate for building more roads to shorten those ferry runs to reduce those costs.

So working through things like that, and, and we have a pretty good path forward on those things right now. It feels good, and I think everyone's really proud about that. Another big one for us at DOT over the past years has really been how we've had to look at ourselves as an organization across the state because we're all over the place. You know, we're spread out there. We have staff up in Ukiagvik again, Nome, Kotzebue, you get on to Bethel region, Juneau, Southeast Alaska, Ketchikan.

How do we bring everybody together when something happens that we know we've got to resource it and help where it needs to be in regards to some of these disasters that we've faced? And so DOT has been on the front lines for— there's been the landslides in Southeast Alaska. Those were pretty tough ones. But we're the ones that end up— we help with the response with the first responders out there, working closely with our state and federal partners as well as tribes and others. But also, you know, we have the contracting, construction contracting authority for the state.

So we're typically the ones out there with the construction contractors trying to get these things built back. And so that's a big role for us that we take a lot of pride in, and we also, you know, respect quite a bit. And so that's been— when you saw Typhoon Merbok, that was the same thing on the west coast of Alaska. And then of course Typhoon Halong that hit. And we are just— DOT and our contractors, we're just wrapping up out there.

We've been out there the whole year, our folks. A lot of people don't see that. And that, you know, that's kind of the way we like it. We like to get in there and get the job done. You know, and then we're moving on.

And so we really take a lot of pride in those things. They, they teach us a lot, you know. We, we pull from all different parts of the state to do those things across the board, and that's been, you know, a big part for us. I think over the past 5 years anyways, there's been some pretty, pretty tough things. Some other really things we're proud of, for those of you that are out there, maybe snow machine advocates, winter trails, those things is, you know, the governor threw an administrative order last year.

We moved the recreational trails program to DOT, and what that allowed us to do was take federal highway funding and take a portion of that and start funding some of our winter trail routes. And so that really opened the door for, you know, some of these grooming activities, ice roads. If you look down at what's going on in the Bethel region and the hundreds of miles of ice roads they build, we can help fund those now. As part of our transportation system. So those, those are another big area of pride, just because we recognize that along with the pavement and the gravel roads, there's a whole nother transportation system out there for all of us that, you know, makes a lot of— people use for a lot of the same reasons that we use our highway systems for.

When it comes to some things you'd wish you'd been able to solve, I think one of the things that for me in my whole career at DOT in the 26 years, this project delivery puzzle is just something that never seems to end. You hear about more about regulatory reform, you hear about permitting reform, all of these things. And it's really just one of those, it doesn't seem to, no matter what you tackle one thing, like I think one of the latest things was Section 106, you know, and we're working on that. We think we got that figured out. Then it comes up something else, right?

It's a new regulation or just another challenge for us and we're stuck there. Right now, for example, like we're trying to do a lot in the Anchorage area for these projects. Ingrid Gamble, some things downtown, and just the right-of-way and trying to acquire land. It's just under the federal rules, it's a tough process. So that's those types of things.

I think those will continue on. It's something that And I think whoever, yeah, the next team gets to really work on that. Workforce continues to challenge us. It's been for DOT, you know, when it comes to operators, the folks out there on the front lines, depending on the location right now where the work is, you know, if there's a big project like out in Nome, for example, they have the big Nome Port project, we lose a lot of people. And so then now we're down on people and it's really hard.

We start having to fly people in now, 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. To cover those areas. But it's very location-specific. Other areas we do okay. So that's one that's going to be— yeah, always one that I think is going to be a challenge.

The Alaska Marine Highway System is similar as well. You know, trying to— we always try to keep building those systems for workforce, but they keep challenging us. And what the next administration should know, we have a lot of big projects in the works and controversial ones. Right now. And it's— I think those could go a lot of ways with the next administration.

I would just want to make sure that, you know, everyone understands the underlying, you know, how that project came to be and who the partners are, how much has been invested, what's really, you know, what happens if you just shut things down. Because we've seen over the years, you know, where things go back and forth. You know, they get shut down, then they get started up. It's just there's a lot of time and a lot of resource in that. So just to really understand that piece of it.

I also think one of the big challenges for the next administration is going to be the artificial intelligence piece of things. I think the changes are coming. We're, you know, I think each agency is working through those things and trying to find those good uses of that new tool as we go forward. But it absolutely is becoming something that It's going to be a very big topic, I believe, in the next 4 years.

I think it's important that the next administration, whoever is in these roles, spend time in the system so you understand what's happening in our transportation system. I've had the opportunity to be on small planes, helicopters, ice roads, ferries, I mean, you name it, right? Alaska is a wonderful place to experience all these different forms of transportation. I mean, the planes, trains, and automobiles thing, right? So that's important because everywhere you go, it's different in Alaska.

And people use our transportation system in different ways and very important ways. And then I think the final thing that I would just want to pass on is treat transportation as an economic opportunity. Opportunity. I think the system that we have generates so much in economic opportunities. Expansion of the system can generate so much in economic opportunities.

And it's just important that we all, you know, recognize that. And what it does— don't take it for granted. It's easy to get in our cars and just go drive down the road and think, "Man, that was— that took too long." You know, "That was too long of a trip." Or, "I was driving home and a pothole got me and, man, that really upset me." But, you know, you got to remember if you didn't have it what it would be like. And so anyways, that's the piece of it I think that, you know, for next steps. But anyways, thank you again.

It was great to have this opportunity.

Great. Thanks, Commissioner.

Um, our next speaker has served Alaska's Health Department since 2009. She became Director of the Division of Public Health in 2019, months before the pandemic arrived. In late 2022, she became Commissioner of the Department of Health, created that year when the former Department of Health and Social Services was split in two. Please welcome Commissioner Heidi Hedberg.

All right, thank you, Chris, and thanks for Ross for organizing this. I think this is a great venue to ask these questions. Where are we at? What works? What should the next administration know?

Because there's a lot of work that's happening across all of the different state agencies. But before I begin, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about my 5 Ps. And I talk about it because when you talk about system change, you have to have the 5 Ps. The first is the people. Is there feedback?

Okay. It is people are my staff. There's a lot of work that has happened and it's the culture change. There's— and the ability to make these changes. And so I want to make sure that I recognize my staff and all of the changes that happened.

The second is the public Alaskans. We thrive in Alaska. The Department of Health is an intersection. I'll talk about that in a second. The public needs to be engaged as we are changing healthcare.

The third is our policymakers. Every single year we've had a lot of legislation that has passed and has really positioned the Department of Health to really move into this next phase of changing our healthcare system. So I want to thank our policymakers. The fourth area is the press.

We need the press to make sure—. I'm so sorry.

We need to make sure that the press has accurate information and they are communicating out to Alaskans the changes. I'll tell you, it's the good, the bad, and the ugly, but the press absolutely absolutely needs to be a part of the, of the conversation. My fifth P is our providers, our providers in behavioral health and physical health. They are taking care. If you're in the tribal health system, they're the customer owners.

If you are in primary care, you are a patient. If you're behavioral health, you are a client. Our providers are the ones that are caring for Alaskans. The Department of Health, Anchorage has gone through significant change that I'll talk about. But those are the 5 Ps that need to be at the table as we're talking about these system changes that started 4 years ago.

My other, you know, sort of opening comment is Department of Health. We really are the intersection that really connects into Alaskans in their livelihood, from our vital records, from birth birth, marriage, and death certificates through prevention of infectious diseases and how they spread, managing the largest health state plan, or ensuring that Alaskans have access to that safe childcare, that the intellectual developmental disabilities, IDD, that they can have the resource they need to live a thriving livelihood. That are seniors, they can age in place and that Alaskans have access to the right resource at the right time. So our department, you know, we work very closely with other state agencies because we really are that intersection as we care for Alaskans.

So this was a fun presentation to pull together. There's just been a lot of work that has happened over the 4 years. And so what I will highlight for you, that none of the work that I'm going to talk about could have happened if we did not have a department reorganization. Department of Health and Social Services was a beast. There's no way one person in a 24-hour period can know the depth and breadth that was happening.

And so through that department reorg, we have 5 divisions that are really system-focused. Public Health, Behavioral Health, Healthcare Services that manages the Medicaid program, Seniors and Disabilities, and Public Assistance. They are the systems, and the system needs to change. But until you have a smaller span of control, you lift the hood of the engine, you're not quite sure what problems you're trying to, uh, address or to solve. And so that department reorg going out into community and just listening, and there's a lot of feedback working through my 5 Ps that really set the agenda for working through these system changes that has better positioned the department.

So a couple of things that I am proud of, and I see Chris, he used to work for us. He used to be one of our attorneys. 3 Weeks on the job, I received a report from the Department of Justice and it was the unnecessary institutionalization of youth in behavioral health in the lower 48. And I saw this report and I was like, you know, took it very seriously. But we went out and we did listening sessions, created the Youth Behavioral Health Roadmap so we could look at the continuum of care for behavioral health and identifying what is working, what is not working, how do we change the system.

Last week I just received a letter and they closed that Department of Justice case and they recognize that over time we have decreased the number of youth that are going out for behavioral health services. More Alaskans have access to prevention services and that we have a continuum of care that we are continuing to roll out. There's been a lot of progress that has happened in behavioral health. It's not perfect, but if you're in Anchorage, Southcentral Foundation, Providence, they are building out their 23-hour stabilization center so that if there's an individual that needs that short-term stabilization, they have a place to go to that is not the emergency department. All of that is really at the beginning coming in with that Department of Justice report that is now closed.

The second area that I think the department has done a lot of work is around complex care. So there was a lot of, of, it's that Friday, 4 o'clock, it was that client that had co-occurring disorders, mental health, behavioral health, physical needs. They may have been, you know, an intellectual developmental disability range, and they did not belong in Department of Corrections. They didn't belong in the emergency department. The hospital couldn't discharge them.

They were not safe to be in assisted living center. Like there was no place for them. And so we've done a significant amount of work to coordinate and to triage those cases working with the Department of Family and Community Services so that we get into a better battle rhythm and working through how the departments coordinate to make sure that that individual is getting care that they need. And so we have processed well over 100 cases. Those individuals are thriving now, and now we have a process so that these individuals are not languishing in an inappropriate location.

The third area is around public assistance. I spent, you know, I've been with the state 17 years. 13 Of those years was in public health. Public assistance was a foreign topic to me. I walked in not knowing anything and was overwhelmed coming out of the pandemic.

Department had a cyber attack and there was no offices that were open and Alaskans were not receiving the public assistance benefits that they needed. It was a— it was an experience I lived publicly for many, many years. And what I can tell you today is that every DPA office is opened. The vacancy rate has significantly decreased. I checked a couple weeks go and field services, it was at like 10% or something like that, which is phenomenal.

We have received a lot of funding from the legislature to modernize our systems. And so from getting all of the applications online to then co-locating those applications, so an individual completes one application that's a SmartForm and you don't have to repeat the information. Um, we also have DPA in a Box where if If there is not an office, we have a team that travels out to the community and works through the applications, works through the interviews, makes sure that there's documentation so that we are customer service focused in the division. The cleanup work that has happened to get our arms wrapped around the DPA budget, the staffing, the resources has been significant. There's still more work to do with public assistance, but what I can tell you is For SNAP, the food assistance, uh, the applications, it was taking 12 months to process when I stepped into this role 4 years ago.

Now the average time is 47 days. The feds ask us to be at 30 days. So like, you can see the progress that has been made over the past 4 years. I say the other 2 areas, I mean, there's a lot to be proud of. Um, Child Care Task Force, we went out, pulled everyone together created a report.

We're still working through that report. It's not just regulation updates. We need to focus on what the true cost of care is and how we change funding childcare, how we continue to grow the workforce. And we're working on our new provider license, family, friends, and neighbors, because they are out in community. They can be licensed.

And then parents that qualify for childcare subsidies can then use that family, friend, or neighbor to pay for childcare so that they can go to work. Like, there are system changes that's happening in childcare. And then finally, our— we have a new website. We launched it over a year ago. We have an analytics tool where we can actually see how long people hover on what topic, how easy it is to navigate or not navigate.

And I get weekly reports so we know and we can continue to update our information. We have the same with our staff. We have an intranet site. And then I do monthly newsletters. So we have increased the communication both internally and externally.

So what I wish we had been able to solve— a lot of what you heard me say was it was 4 years of cleaning up our house. And we've cleaned up our house, so we have defined problems and we have defined solutions. It's the time. There's just, we haven't had enough time to implement all of the solutions. Last year there was a significant change through HR1 that changed Medicaid and SNAP and budget neutrality.

And so we have had to pivot in the last year to address those changes. And so I will talk about that in my next slide of what the next administration needs to know, but this one of the areas that we really do need to focus in on.

The persistent challenges like workforce, we're doing better, but we need to do more, and technology. Like, there's a lot of modernization that's happening with provider enrollment, service agreements. They are not online yet. So what do I wish that the next administration would know. 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.

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. And that's just about time.

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.

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. So I see that I need to wrap it up. I would say the Transformation of Care Rural Health Transformation Program came to us. It's about $1.3 billion over the next, over the 5 years. That's about changing how we deliver healthcare.

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. So again, Department of Health, there's a lot of irons in the fire in the work that we are doing.

Thanks, Commissioner Hedberg. Our final speaker sees state government from the governor's office. Across every department we have heard from today, Stephen Cox is counselor to Governor Dunleavy, advising on legal, regulatory, and constitutional matters. He served as acting attorney general of Alaska from August 2025 to May 2026. Before coming to Alaska, he was the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas and chief of staff in the Office of the Associate Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Please welcome Stephen Cox.

All right. Well, thanks everybody and thanks for the invite. Let's start my clock. So I thought what I would do is I would present kind of on a theme and the theme is partnership. And partnership can be a real force multiplier in these government jobs.

I think it's especially true for the AG role, which I'll just— I'll tell anybody this is the best job I've ever had. For any attorneys in the room, I highly recommend it. Put your hand up. You serve as the General Counsel of the Governor. You serve as the General Counsel to all of the executive executive branch agencies.

I'm a little taller.

You serve as the general counsel to the governor. You serve as the counsel to all the executive branch agencies. So I get to work with all these commissioners. They're my clients. You're the chief litigation lawyer for all the civil litigation.

Most of that is defensive litigation. The state gets sued a lot. But a lot of that is affirmative civil enforcement like consumer protection cases, which are a lot of fun. You're also the chief prosecutor for the state. All the DAs report up to the AG.

So that means you get to work on a lot of different things, and that means partnership is key. It's critical partnering with the governor, partnering with the commissioners, the clients, partnering with the line attorneys. Who get the work done every day, partnering with the feds, because the feds have a big role to play here in Alaska, partnering with the city, partnering with industry. All of that is really, really helpful to get your job done. And I'll just give you a couple of examples to try to flesh this out, and hopefully they kind of answer the questions.

One of the things that I think we were most proud of in terms of partnership was the partnership with the Municipality of Anchorage. You know, we— I came into the office and I took about 60 days to meet with all the lawyers that I could in the department. Certainly the leadership, the supervisors, but even folks on the line, the staff, the paralegals, the litigation assistants, to really sort of learn what they loved about the work, what they didn't love, what could be improved, what they wanted me to kind of leave alone, and what are the big challenges that they thought we should be working on. In fact, I'll just just piggyback on something Heidi said. Within my first few days, I think I met with our head of special litigation about this problem with the DOJ, the US Department of Justice, where I used to work, and the Civil Rights Division's investigation relating to the integration mandate that stems from this old guidance document.

It's not that old, 20, 25 years ago. As a guidance document that came out of the Civil Rights Division about the Olmstead case, which is a big US Supreme Court case decided in 1999. And the guidance document went beyond what the Supreme Court said. And the Civil Rights Division was using this to go after states. And Alaska was not unique in this regard.

And I remember Mags, head of the Special Litigation Section, saying, can you do something about this. And we did. And we did that in partnership with the Department of Health and the feds. I started having conversations with the U.S. Department of Justice about this, the Olmstead guidance and the integration mandate. There was a Health and Human Services reg that was also in the books that we were litigating over.

And we got that fixed. We got the news like a week or two ago that that the case had been closed out. But that took partnership. But back to the municipality of Anchorage, the biggest elephant in the room that I was hearing about from the line attorneys and the section supervisors was the crime problem that we have in Anchorage. And it was mainly quality of life crimes, right?

You know, you can go a lot of places in Anchorage, especially downtown, and you see it right in front of you. And you've got a retail theft problem. But you've got these sort of like minor offenses. You've also got a lot of violent crime. You've got open use of drugs.

So you have a big drug problem in Alaska. And I remember thinking about like, is this something that I want to take on? Of course it was. But in the conversations with folks, It was a lot of finger-pointing. You know, well, that really isn't the law department's problem because we're not an investigative agency.

We rely on the law enforcement folks to bring those cases to us. You talk to law enforcement at the state level, DPS, it was like, well, that's, you know, that's really the municipality of Anchorage. You know, that's the Anchorage Police Department. We can't control that. Well, because I come from the perspective of sort of the federal government, a lot of times you just have to use those sort of soft skills and soft power and just sort of team building and you come up with a solution and you bring everybody into the room.

And so that's what we created. We created a task force with the municipality of Anchorage. We have folks from the city attorney's office. We've got the Anchorage Police involved. We've got the Department of Health folks involved.

And of course, we've got the Law Department and the DPS involved. We even cross-designated prosecutors so that the city prosecutors could prosecute state offenses, state felonies, especially in retail theft cases. We partnered with businesses. We met with Walmart. And talked about information sharing.

There's a lot left to be done on this front. And we're partnering with the feds too. We just signed an agreement with the Department of Justice. We're going to get a couple of SALSAs, Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys, who can work 50% of the time with the state on state offenses and 50% of the time with the feds on federal offenses.

And we'll be looking at drug crime, violent crime, fraud. And so it's all about sort of partnering. There's a lot of work left to be done, but that's something I'm really proud of. Another thing I'll mention with the municipality is a little bit outside my lane. There was a case you probably know all about.

It was a case involving the Port of Alaska and sort of the botched federal engagement on that port project stemming back to 2002. The lawsuit was brought in, I think, 2012 or '13 or something like that. Litigated in the Court of Federal Claims for years, this case. Then there was a trial, went up to the Federal Circuit, got remanded. They were about to have to do another trial.

You had the Department of Justice and the Department of Transportation saying for years that we owe you nothing. And then the city saying like, no, you owe us us, you know, like half a billion dollars, you know. And so there was a big dispute. No settlement discussions were ever really possible. And so because I was working with the municipality on public safety issues, they asked me if I could help.

And I went to the gov, and the gov was supportive of us working with the city because something that we can help the city with also helps the state. And that was back in February. Within a couple of months, I think it was early April, we had a Department of Justice settlement discussion where we presented for the first time ever about our theory of the case and why, and we came with an offer. I worked back channels with DOJ to make sure that they responded with a good offer. Within 2 or 3 months after that, we settled this case for $180 million.

I mean, that was way beyond what anybody, anybody in the federal level thought would ever be paid on this case. So it was a big, big win. But that just involved working together and sort of working in partnership with the feds and the city, even in something that was a little outside of our lane. I'll give you an example of something that's a challenge that we still haven't figured And this is a challenge that I hope the next administration really focuses on. It has to do with this quality of life situation we have in Anchorage.

And it has to do with incompetency. It has to do with the mental health problems that we have, some of the intellectual disabilities that, that these criminal defendants have, and they're incompetent to stand trial. And so what does that mean? They cycle through the process over and over. A lot of, a lot of these folks are very dangerous, or at least if they're not, if you can't show that they're very dangerous, they intimidate, they harass.

It's a problem. And there's no way to deal with this. Um, you have, uh, you know, if you, if they commit a crime and you charge them, um, you know, they're, they're going to be ruled incompetent to stand trial, and there's no capacity, no real capacity to treat them, to restore their competency if that's even possible, or to find the place to live for these folks. The time allowed under Alaska law to restore competency is the lowest in the nation. It's 90 days.

It can be extended 90 more days. For the serious, most serious offenses, you can get another 180 days. So 360 days max for the serious offenses. That's the shortest in the country. And our courts say that the clock starts ticking the minute the judge issues that order for, for restoration.

Well, there's a 120-day waitlist at API because there's only really 10 beds 10 forensic beds available to bring, you know, to restore competency, you've eaten through that entire, you know, that first or second stage of restoration that you're allowed. And so you're way behind the 8-ball. And so that's a real problem. There's also, you know, the standards for civilly committing for committing these folks are different. You have to show recent harm.

You know, if you're dealing with an intellectual disability, that's not grounds for civil commitment. And so you have a real problem, and I think on this one, I think the next administration really needs to think about increased capacity, maybe even state hospital. I'll just end with one more thing that also involves a lot of partnership, especially with some of my friends here. And that's AO360. That's regulatory reform.

This is the first time that the state has had sort of a holistic look at all of our regulations, many of which are out of date and out in— and not in line with the updates and statutes in 40 years. It was modeled off of what Governor Glenn Youngkin did in Virginia. He cut regulatory requirements by about 30% in about a year, or maybe two— a year, year and a half. And we try to do that. We're going to— I think we're on track to cutting well over 1,000 regulatory requirements in Alaska.

And I hope that work continues. There's a lot more to be done. And it's not— we're not talking about regulatory requirements that are going to be controversial politically. Or a thing like this. This is just good for business and a good thing for Alaska.

So I'll just end there.

I only went 30 seconds over. That's pretty good. Great job. Thank you.

Great, thanks, Mr. Cox. And thank you to all 5 speakers for being candid on the way as the administration comes to an end. We have about 15 to 20 minutes. We would just ask that the commissioners and senior officials sit here at the— next to Commissioner Hedberg for Q&A from the audience. Just raise your hand, we will bring you a microphone, and we can have a little question and answer period.

That would be great. And hopefully we get some interaction. Ross? Let me just make sure these are on, and this one is live. Thank you all for sitting down.

Thank you for the presentations. Anybody want to take a stab at going first? Okay, Miles. Miles, this one is not working, so I'm going to grab this mic.

And we have closer to 10 minutes. We're actually over our 5:30 mark, so with the good graces of the commissioners, we'll do 10 minutes of Q&A. And thanks, this is awesome. I've not seen something like this before, so thank you all for showing up. For Mr. Cox, I— and this is just— I hadn't thought of this question until you mentioned your last thing, but— and this had come up recently— but the legislature, there used to be a joint committee called the Admin Regulation and Review Committee that I always thought had a great purpose but never seemed to be used by the legislature, and they they repealed that a few years ago.

And I don't know if you're familiar with it, but—. I'm not, but bring it back. I'm not. Okay. I was just curious if you were, what your opinion of that was, because I always thought it would be a great partner to your theme with the administration.

And I don't know, it just never in my time working on this—. When was it repealed? Does anybody know? Oh, it was, I think, 2019 or something, and I don't really remember. I was around them, but I don't really remember why or what the controversy was, but Yeah, I mean, look, I think whatever can be done to clean up the regulations in Alaska, I think I would welcome.

There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen, though. I mean, a lot of cooks in the kitchen. And some would say, even some people that are sitting right next to me, would say that the law department can sometimes be a bottleneck on on regulations and regulatory reforms. So it's hard. It's hard.

And I would say it wouldn't be a bad idea to take another fresh look at the Alaska Administrative Procedure Act. I think it could be improved. In fact, if I were going to start anywhere with this, I might think about kind of like an APA reform type effort. We did this in 2020 in the federal— on the federal side, we put together kind of like an APA day. It was like 50 years after the APA had been— or maybe it was 75 after the APA had been passed.

We went through all sorts of, you know, lessons learned and things that are going well, things that are going wrong. And it was a good exercise, put together a booklet with a bunch of ideas for reforms. And I think Alaska would benefit. And I would put John Katchen in charge of that.

OK. Cheryl Frasca. For each of you, is there one thing that you wish you knew when you took office now, looking back? What is the one lesson you wish you knew then?

Is there one lesson? Okay, Dina.

Well, I think somebody mentioned it just in transition. I called it the secret decoder ring. Government is slow as can be, and I'm just not used to that. Working in schools, you have to make decisions quite a bit. So I wish that it truly is a bureaucracy.

It's meant that way because it's other people's money, I guess. But I wish I knew the levers because initially not everybody helps you out until you win them over. Then they'll help you out. So I wish I knew a lot more state processes going in so I wouldn't have taken, you know, just took two little wrong turns before I got on the right track. Yeah.

The Department of Health is so large with so many subject matter experts. I distinctly remember walking in and I was like, I don't know where to start. And so I didn't have a transition plan. I didn't have anything. And I knew the problems because the media was reporting on the problems before I even knew it.

It was, I feel like, a crash course. It was really humbling. And so the gift that I give now is a really good solid transition plan that you can continue to refer back to. I think that would help.

Yeah, my big thing is there's a lot of things that I know now that I wish I didn't know.

But yeah, I think the thing I've learned is is it's not going to be perfect. And, you know, you put your all into it and as long as you're doing that and you're doing it for the right reasons, you know, the end results, you know, they're going to be varied depending on— it's such a, you know, it's a complex process and that's okay. That's how it works.

It took me a little while to get to this, but it's so obvious now that I've thought of it. Fish politics are the worst. And if there were any way that I could have avoided that, that would have been great. But I think just an education on that. I mean, look, I'm new to Alaska.

I got here about 5-some-odd years ago. I love this state. We're here for good. This is our home. No matter what happened this summer.

But, but fish politics, were brutal. And that was, that was an education. That's good to hear. I guess, you know, you come into the job and you're drinking from a fire hose. And really, what you need to have is about before you start drinking from the fire hose, you need about a month just to walk around and get to know staff and talk.

Instead, you're immediately trying to solve a list of issues that the governor gives you and everybody else wants from you, but you guys are all right. You need time to learn your department. So you have to spend that time and learn it.

I think we have everybody. Is there any other questions?

Thank you. Elise. I first of all want to thank you so very much for being here today. Thank you for convening this group. Just really, I truly have a lot of respect for each of you.

And I'm wondering if— I remember, I think I was around with Walker's transition team and others, and it was a giant gathering of folks. And I guess my question is, hearing your wisdom of today, if you would be if asked, part of the next transition team?

I think there's a role for former commissioners or commissioners that are currently serving to spend some time with the new incoming administration. I think it's critical to share insights. We may not agree on what you're going to do next, but I think having that discussion is— has to happen. You know, America is built on order orderly transitions. And this governor has made it clear to his commissioners that we're going to have an orderly transition of government and we're not going to— we submitted a status quo budget.

We submitted no legislation. The plate's open for the new governor to serve it. But having that insights and discussions, yeah, I'm open to it and I'd be happy to have those discussions.

Sure. I just said absolutely. It happens in school districts all the time. And young people depend on it. That's the goal there.

Yes.

Yeah, we're all working on transition plans too. So not just being there, but having the written document to go back to. Yeah.

Okay.

They are. They are. They're being edited. By Steve Cox.

Yeah, I want to thank all of you guys for your service. I do respect each one of you. I know you have a big job. My question is, what advice would you give an incoming commissioner on how to deal with the legislature?

You know, one of my favorite things, um, you know, when I was the Director of Public Health leading through the pandemic, my engagement with a the legislature was very different because it was virtual, right? Or it just— the whole experience was different. And then when I was asked to step into this role as commissioner, I was like, okay, I don't know what to do. And they were like, well, you need to go through confirmation. I call it speed dating because I met with all 60 legislators, and sometimes I would show up and they would interview me, and sometimes I would just sit there and then I would listen to them.

And I think it was really value-added for the new administration, the new commissioners that have to go through this process to speed date and develop relationships because it's those relationships and you understand the passion, you understand the interest. We're all in this together. But how do we work together to advance so that Alaskans have better access to fill in the blank? So I would say the incoming administration, my advice would be spend time developing relationships.

I went through some, some, some, some kind of a situation with, with the legislature. I wouldn't— I would do it all over again the same way. I, I enjoyed each of my conversations with the legislators. They have a very hard job. I'd say to the next AG, be yourself, be candid, and let the political chips fall where they may.

It's really out of your control. It was out of mine. But I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Yeah, I was penning a thing, a note that I'm going to leave on the desk for the next commissioner. I said, this is a unique opportunity for confirmation to get to know the legislature. They, they got to trust you because if you want to accomplish anything, you're going to have to go through not only through the governor's office, you're going to go through them. So build that trust, take the opportunity and spend time with them down there. For those that don't know, the Commissioner of Education is appointed by the board, so we don't get to speed date, but no dating for me.

But really, it is based on relationships. Everything is. And so I like to learn and listen. I read a lot about people to know from whence they've come, what makes them tick, why are they serving in government, and then how can things come together to make good things happen for young people.

Yeah, have a really good legislative liaison. That's always a super good one. And then also one thing I've come to respect is just learning the roles of the executive versus the legislative and the judicial branches so that when you are out in the arena and working in those, you understand the roles. Because I think that's something that in the beginning, you know, we didn't get a lot of training on that. And that's something I've come to really respect that, you know, we have boundaries, you know, and then we can work to find these solutions.

But it was really important from my perspective for that.

Yep. And if you could state your name. Eleanor Andrews, Commissioner 40 years ago. You know, things don't change that much because you still have the executive branch and legislative, but I believe everybody is here for public service. It's how you do it and what you know going into it, and back in the day Marshall Lynn, who was Commissioner of Education, and Norm Garsich, who was the Attorney General.

You know, we had a lot of new people that didn't even know where their offices were. So we had this plan. Everybody was going to get one week. This is your job, Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, Director. These are the statutes that guide what you're supposed to do.

And here are the people that you interact with in your department and the legislature. We're still a small town. We can know each other if you leave the partisanship at the door and just know what your job is. My advice.

Commissioner Andrews got her last, last word. I want to thank one, you know, first and foremost, the commissioners of cabinet for making the time today. And I really appreciate working with you all over the last 8 years and wish you the best wherever you're staying, where you're at, or if you move on. You know, thank you for your service to the state. We've been there.

And I also wanted to just acknowledge Senator Merrick is here, Representative Galvin, Representative Klobuchar. And we also had former Attorney General Trey Taylor here. So with that, thank you. And really appreciate everyone online and in person today. Thank you.

And just a couple closing notes. This will be uploaded to YouTube later. The slides will also be available on our website, and I'll send them out in the newsletter summary. And this might be the only exit interview on record that ends with applause. Cause instead of paperwork.

So thank you all.