Priorities & Platform

Alaska is at a crossroads. After four decades of building its economy on oil, the state faces a structural fiscal crisis that higher oil prices alone cannot solve. The Permanent Fund now supplies over 60% of state revenue, the Constitutional Budget Reserve has dwindled to roughly $3 billion, and the current budget proposes spending over $1.8 billion of that reserve in a single year. This is not a temporary problem. It requires a deliberate, long-term response.

Alaska has everything it needs to meet that moment: 365 million acres of land, extraordinary renewable energy potential, Indigenous knowledge systems built over millennia, and communities that have always known how to do more with less. What has been missing is a Governor willing to build an economy worthy of all of it.

1. Fixing the Fiscal Foundation: A blended revenue approach, including modernized oil production taxes, reforming corporate taxes to close the S-Corporation loophole that allows major drillers to pay zero state income tax, implementing a non-resident worker surcharge, a seasonal tourism assessment, and an Alaska-first oil refining mandate, could generate $470 to $905 million in new annual revenue without imposing broad-based taxes on Alaska residents.

2. Lean Governing- So Alaskans Get More: New revenue can only go so far if the machinery consuming it is inefficient. This administration will conduct a systematic, agency-by-agency review of how the state spends money on its own administration, not as an ideological exercise in shrinking government, but as a practical duty to the Alaskans paying for it. The goal is clear: identify programs that duplicate efforts, layers of administration that drain resources before reaching communities, and procurement and contracting practices that cost more than they should. Where services can be streamlined without cutting what Alaskans receive, they will be. Where consolidation makes sense, it will be implemented. Every dollar freed from unnecessary administrative overhead is a dollar available for schools, infrastructure, health services, and community programs that Alaskans truly need. A government that runs more efficiently at the top is better for Alaska. 

3. New Economic Engines: Here is a sample of strategies from the core of this vision. Bold renewable energy efforts target 80% clean electricity by 2045, including rural microgrid conversions that could save $100 to $200 million each year in diesel costs for communities presently paying up to $1.00 per kilowatt-hour. A statewide network of decentralized, community-scale data centers, powered by local renewables, will store Alaskans’ data on Alaska soil instead of in out-of-state corporate facilities. A reimagined Department of Agriculture with Alaska-first land protections, regional food hubs from Bethel to the Arctic Interior, renewed reindeer herds, and hemp production will help reduce Alaska’s current 95% reliance on food imports and keep purchasing power within the state. Responsible mineral development will follow internationally recognized environmental standards as set by IRMA. Passive housing designs will draw inspiration from Indigenous architecture. Additionally, transporting large payloads with cargo airships and revitalizing Alaska’s Marine Highway ferry system will serve communities that the road system can never reach.

4. Guardian Networks: The Rural Economy: At the core of rural economic strategy is the Alaska Guardian Network—paid, professional land stewardship roles embedded throughout communities across the state in partnership with the local Tribes. Implementing five hundred guardian positions would stabilize rural employment at $65,000 to $85,000 each, potentially cut wildfire suppression costs by up to $75 million annually, replace costly fly-in ecological surveys with consistent ground-truth data year-round, and develop the climate-resilience infrastructure essential for Alaska’s most vulnerable communities. Australia’s equivalent Indigenous Ranger programs demonstrate a 3:1 social return on investment, with every dollar invested generating three dollars in economic, cultural, environmental, and community benefits.

5. Indigenous Knowledge as Economic Foundation: Alaska’s lands are not simply resources to extract. They are economic partners. Thousands of years of Indigenous stewardship, controlled burns that regenerated browse for moose and caribou, selective harvest practices that maintained fish runs across millennia, and intertidal management that sustained shellfish populations represent a proven, compounding model for sustainable abundance. Extraction produces one revenue event. Stewardship produces revenue indefinitely. The difference is a Governor who understands which one upholds Alaska’s constitutional commitments, and that Alaska can actually afford.

The Bottom Line: Alaska does not need to choose between fiscal responsibility and a thriving future. The Permanent Fund’s sustained yield, the salmon’s return, the land’s productivity, and the well-being of every community, rural, urban, Alaska Native, and newcomer alike are the same obligation, written into the same Constitution, owed to the same future generations. This administration will govern like it.

The Alaska Constitution’s Article VII — Section 1 — Public Education: “The legislature shall by general law establish and maintain a system of public schools open to all children of the State, and may provide for other public educational institutions. Schools and institutions so established shall be free from sectarian control. No money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

Article VII is the shortest article in the Constitution; however, the courts have interpreted it with real teeth. In Breese v. State(1972), the Alaska Supreme Court established that children have a fundamental right to receive a public education under Section 1. And in Hootch v. Alaska State-Operated School System (1975), the Court held that the education clause requires the state to make secondary education available in rural communities, not just in urban centers, which led to the construction of high schools across rural Alaska. The Kasayulie v. State (1997) case found that the state’s method of financing school construction was unconstitutional because it discriminated against rural and predominantly Alaska Native communities.

The constitutional obligation is broad: a system of public schools open to all children, maintained by the state, with courts consistently reading that as requiring equitable access regardless of where a child lives. The constitution doesn’t just permit good schools, it demands them for every kid in the state.

1. Settle the BSA Lawsuit & Fund an Adequacy Study: Direct the Attorney General to settle the Kuspuk and Fairbanks North Star school district lawsuit by committing to Alaska’s first-ever adequacy study, establishing what it actually costs to educate a child here, with inflation-indexed BSA increases until that gap is closed.

The 2025 Legislature passed the largest single-year BSA increase in state history. Anchorage still faces a $90 million deficit and is cutting 500+ staff and closing schools. The gap was simply too large. Alaska has never conducted an adequacy study. The Kuspuk District’s 330 students, 90% of whom are Alaska Native, are learning in buildings with broken joists and no arts, PE, or career-technical education.

2. Repair School Infrastructure: Alaska’s K–12 buildings carry a $401 million deferred maintenance backlog. Direct DEED to publish a ranked statewide conditions inventory and submit annual capital grants prioritizing life-safety failures, roofs, heat, and foundations in rural and predominantly Indigenous communities first.

Rural and predominantly Indigenous districts have been disproportionately affected, with some schools pulling from operational budgets to fix plumbing and fire suppression, money that should be paying teachers.

3. Restore the Defined-Benefit Pension Option & Open Licensure Pathways: Make restoring the defined-benefit pension option a Governor’s priority bill. Alaska is the only state in the nation that does not offer teachers a defined benefit plan. Teacher turnover in rural Alaska runs as high as 31%, costing an estimated $20 million per year.

Simultaneously, direct DEED to expand administrative pathways for paraeducators already working in Alaska’s schools to earn teaching licensure, the most community-rooted teacher pipeline we have.

4. Fund Local Control- Not Compliance Mandates: Fund a statewide Technical Assistance network so districts can adopt state literacy and legislative priorities without red tape costs. Strengthen tribal consultation requirements for DEED and all Governor’s education commissions. Support, don’t mandate.

Eight years of state-mandated compliance initiatives have drained district capacity. Rural and tribal communities have been told what to do without being given the resources or the authority to do it.

5. Fund the Alaska Reads Act — Then Return Oversight to Districts: The Alaska Reads Act is working, 60% of K–3 students reading at benchmark by year-end 2025, up from 44%. But the state mandated it without fully funding it, and districts are pulling from operational budgets to comply. Direct DEED to shift to a support-and-accountability model: fund implementation, and return primary authority to local districts and charter schools within 120 days of inauguration.

6. Address the Federal Education Funding Freeze: The Trump administration’s withholding of federal education funds has caused immediate, concrete harm across Alaska. Anchorage stood to lose nearly $12 million. Fairbanks, $2.6 million. Kuspuk, $180,000. Rural REAAs, which operate without a local tax base, face disproportionate exposure.

The Governor will direct the Attorney General to assess legal options, join or file appropriate litigation, and submit supplemental state bridge funding for districts most dependent on federal dollars. Alaska cannot wait for Washington to fix this.

7. Reduce Chronic Absenteeism: More than 44,000 Alaska students were chronically absent last year. The root causes, food insecurity, housing instability, lack of transportation, and untreated behavioral health needs, are cross-agency problems that no single department can solve alone. Issue an Administrative Order establishing aligned plans for social services and civil rights enforcement by improving inter-agency coordination of all departments tasked with supporting Alaska’s youth. To close the achievement gap or a literacy gap, students need to be present. 

8. Expand Land-Based & Community Learning: Including Food, Nutrition & School Meals: Provide free breakfast and lunch for every Alaska student; no applications, no stigma, no child going hungry at school. Hunger is one of the most documented barriers to learning. Universal school meals eliminate the gap.

Expand grants for school gardens, food cultivation programs, and traditional foods curricula, so students learn to grow, harvest, and prepare local foods as part of their standard education. This builds nutritional knowledge, practical skills, and a deep connection to land, culture, and community.

Expand grants for community and land-based learning, connecting classrooms to local ecosystems, economies, and workforces. Establish a Summer Opportunity Initiative for academic intensives and apprenticeships. Align DEED, DHSS, DOL, and OCS so services reach Alaska’s youth without silos.

Alaska’s students, especially in rural communities, learn best when school connects to the world they actually live in. Land-based learning, subsistence knowledge, and Indigenous language instruction are not supplemental. They are the most effective and culturally grounded educational investments available in rural and urban Alaska.

9. Raise the Standard — Education That Prepares Alaska’s Kids for the World They’re Inheriting: Upgrade instruction to the highest evidence-based standards: structured literacy grounded in the science of reading across all grades, an Alaska-produced civics curriculum that teaches how our constitution and resource management decisions actually work, trauma-informed practices in every school, and climate and environmental literacy rooted in both Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Western Science. Build robust afterschool programs modeled on Iceland’s Planet Youth approach, which cut teen substance use from 42% to 5% by investing in structured activities, trusted adult mentorship, and community-level youth well-being data rather than scare tactics. Fund vocational pathways through the RISE program so rural youth have real routes into stewardship, fisheries, clean energy, and healthcare careers without leaving home.

Alaska is warming up to four times faster than the rest of the nation — more than 3°F statewide in less than fifty years, with the North Slope up 8°F in winter. Since 2020, the state has declared nearly three dozen weather- and climate-related disasters. These are not projections; they are evident in permafrost buckling roads and homes, flooding trapping communities, wildfire smoke choking summers, and salmon seasons that do not open. Chinook are 81% below their 30-year average. Chum are 92% below. The Yukon has been closed to subsistence Chinook for seven consecutive years.

Alaska’s Constitution is not merely aspirational in this matter; it is binding. Article VIII allocates fish, wildlife, and waters to the people under the principle of sustained yield; future generations have a constitutional claim to what exists today. The Preamble commits us to passing down our heritage to future generations. Article VII mandates the protection of public health. Inaction in the face of imminent climate disasters that reduce salmon populations, damage water infrastructure, or displace communities from their land is a violation of these mandates, not just a neutral policy choice.

The question is not whether Alaska can afford to act. It is whether we can afford not to: $4.3 billion in proactive investment versus $25.8 billion in disaster response. Every $1 in hazard mitigation saves $6 in recovery. All actions below are within the Governor’s existing executive authority on Day One.

1. Get Funding to Communities — Remove Barriers: Advocate for permanent federal funding for the 144 most threatened communities prioritized on risk, with no cost-sharing requirements and no competitive processes that disadvantage villages lacking grant-writing capacity. Publish all programmatic barriers within 60 days. Prioritize the capital budget based on documented risk, not on administrative capacity or political connections. Establish a state climate infrastructure revolving fund so communities are not forced to halt work between federal grant cycles.

2. Build Climate Capacity Where Alaskans Live: Rejoin the federal Coastal Zone Management Act — Alaska has been the only coastal state without a federally approved coastal management program since the legislature let the Alaska Coastal Management Program expire in 2011, costing us CZMA grant funding, and a coordinated framework for managing 34,000 miles of shoreline facing accelerating erosion, storms, and permafrost loss. Fund Tribal climate adaptation coordinators through regional hub organizations, Y-K Delta, Northwest Arctic, Norton Sound, Interior, Bristol Bay, Southeast, on multi-year cycles that develop lasting capacity. Ensure Tribal organizations lead regional climate planning, with state agencies providing support. Coordinate VPSO expansion, CHA/BHA workforce, education investments, and regional data infrastructure with these hubs. Deliver climate, health, and program data to communities in real time.

3. Support communities that need to relocate on their own timeline: Direct DCRA, DOTPF, DNR, and DHSS by Administrative Order to follow community-led relocation protocols, the community’s plan determines the schedule, not the state’s convenience. Assign a Governor’s Climate Community Liaison for Newtok/Mertarvik, Shishmaref, Shaktoolik, Napakiak, Kivalina, and other relocating communities. Use CARE data principles in relocation planning. Incorporate behavioral health, including climate grief and solastalgia treatment, into every relocation plan as a required element, not optional. Publicly report progress, timelines, and barriers annually.

4. Listen to People Who Know the Land — and Build Alaska’s On the Land Guardian Network: Formally incorporate Traditional Ecological Knowledge into all climate and resource management decisions, on terms shaped by Tribal governments, with consent as a precondition. Apply CARE principles to all state use of Tribal knowledge and data. Establish Alaska’s On the Land Guardian Network in partnership with Tribal governments, building on the Seacoast Indigenous Guardians Network in Southeast, Bristol Bay Guardians, and the Indigenous Sentinels Network, to create paid stewardship positions across the state for Alaskans who monitor lands, waters, wildlife, and heritage sites. Guardians will be developed in partnership with Tribes and guided by Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and open to all Alaskans committed to caring for the places and ecosystems we depend on. Fund Tribal data infrastructure so communities can manage and interpret their own knowledge on their own terms.

5. Protect Mental Health When the Home Itself Is Changing: Fund climate behavioral health services, partner with Tribal health organizations for rural delivery of services. Establish regional grants focused on climate behavioral health, prioritizing communities experiencing managed retreat, relocation, or severe subsistence loss. Connect climate grief to the ACE screening and trauma-informed care framework, acknowledging that environmental displacement worsens existing trauma. Ensure that the RISE program’s behavioral health component addresses solastalgia among young people in affected communities (see education section). Train educators in climate-aware social-emotional learning.

6. Treat the Salmon Collapse as the Emergency It Is — Defend Food Sovereignty and Reform Trawling: Prioritize rural subsistence food sovereignty as a non-negotiable management goal above commercial allocations during stock collapses. Directed subsistence Chinook harvest on the Yukon has been closed or severely restricted since 2020; fall chum escapement remains below the 300,000–600,000 drainage-wide goal (ADF&G SP 25-15). The NPFMC’s February 2026 action, a 45,000 Western Alaska chum cap applying only to clusters 1 and 2, June 10–August 31, not taking effect until 2028, falls short of what Tribal nations have called for. The pollock fleet caught 498,044 chum as bycatch from 2015 to 2024. Bycatch limits must never exceed subsistence harvest limits for Yukon-Kuskokwim residents. Mandate salmon-excluding devices on all trawl gear, require real-time genetic monitoring, and impose area-specific shutdowns when caps are reached. Manage trawl gear by its actual impact: federal analysis confirms pelagic trawl gear contacts the seafloor 40–100% of the time (NMFS, 2024), and any net making sustained bottom contact must meet bottom-trawl regulatory standards regardless of classification. Establish an Alaska Food Sovereignty Task Force, co-led by Tribal governments, to coordinate subsistence harvest monitoring, emergency food reserves during fishery closures, and long-term food system resilience, with an emphasis on traditional foods as medicine. Develop community-controlled food-processing and cold-storage facilities in rural hub communities. Restore salmon habitat in the Yukon and Kuskokwim basins.

7. Protect Alaska’s Land, Water, and Wildlife — Hold Extractive Industries Accountable: Establish the Alaska Climate Resilience Council within 30 days; develop a unified climate adaptation strategy within 180 days, in collaboration with tribal governments and municipalities. Require all new and expanding industrial-scale mines on state lands to meet or strive toward IRMA responsible mining standards, the only independent, multi-stakeholder standard addressing human rights, Free Prior and Informed Consent, water quality, tailings management, and environmental responsibility. Enforce strict water quality standards near salmon-bearing streams. Mandate comprehensive baseline environmental assessments and financial bonds sufficient to cover full reclamation. No extractive project moves forward without meaningful tribal consultation—and where Indigenous lands and waters are affected, Free Prior and Informed Consent. Protect critical watersheds such as Bristol Bay, the Tongass, and Arctic refuge areas as invaluable ecological and economic assets. Direct the Cyber Task Force to safeguard climate data infrastructure.

8. Invest in Resilient Infrastructure and Clean Energy as Adaptation: Integrate energy grid modernization, renewable energy, and rural broadband into Alaska’s climate adaptation strategy, these are both resilience investments and economic development. Build on communities like Kodiak, Shungnak, Kobuk, and Galena where locally controlled clean energy is already lowering costs and reducing dependence on vulnerable fuel supply chains. Pursue fair taxation of outside oil and gas corporations and direct revenue toward schools, healthcare, community infrastructure, and renewable energy. Expand clean energy workforce training so Alaskans have pathways into a resilient economy.

What makes Alaska unique is its deep connection with the land, water, and each other, which is integral to living here. It is the essence itself. Governing effectively means viewing the sustainable use of fish, land, and water not just as regulatory requirements but as a commitment to every Alaskan living now and every future generation.

The communities most impacted by climate change deserve full support from the government working on their behalf. The land requires protectors. The salmon need advocates. The Constitution calls for it.

Alaska’s Constitution (Article VIII) holds fish and wildlife in public trust and mandates management for sustained yield. The North Pacific fisheries, the largest wild-capture fisheries in the United States, are failing rural Alaska, subsistence users, sport fishermen, small-boat commercial families, and the communities that depend on them. The 2025–26 Bering Sea pollock TAC is 1.375 million metric tons- more than 3 billion pounds (NMFS IB 24-52). Seattle-based trawlers take home up to 76% of the value of all groundfish caught in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska (Alaska Beacon, 2024). As Governor, I will use every available instrument, the ADF&G Commissioner appointment (AS 16.05.251), six Board of Fisheries seats, and Alaska’s NPFMC nominations, and invest in independent reviews of scientific findings and data, to restore management integrity.

1. Manage Pollock for Sustained Yield and the Whole Food Web: Alaska’s Constitution does not authorize single-species harvest optimization. It requires sustained yield, which means accounting for what the ecosystem needs from pollock biomass, not only what the fleet can extract. Pollock is a keystone forage species, serving as primary prey for Chinook and chum salmon, Pacific halibut, Steller sea lions, northern fur seals, seabirds, and marine mammals (Aydin et al., 2007; Livingston, 1993). Removing 3+ billion pounds annually without modeling food-web demand is a drawdown, not a sustained yield. Harvest limits must incorporate ecosystem carrying-capacity modeling. The same principle applies to herring, a forage species essential to nearshore food webs and subsistence harvest now drawing increasing scrutiny at the NPFMC (Dec. 2025). Herring bycatch must be capped and reported with the same rigor applied to salmon PSC.

2.  Manage Trawl Gear by the Impact It Actually Has: Federal analysis confirms pelagic trawl gear contacts the seafloor 40–100% of the time (NMFS, 2024). Alaska state law (5 AAC 39.105(10)(C)) defines pelagic trawl as gear that does not operate in contact with the seabed. West Coast federal regulations (50 CFR 660.11) require the same. The North Pacific definition is the outlier. Any net making sustained bottom contact must meet bottom-trawl regulatory standards regardless of classification. Salmon excluder devices must be mandatory fleet-wide. The NPFMC’s June 2025 deferral to industry self-reporting through a Gear Innovation Initiative, results not expected until April 2026, is insufficient when Oceana’s pending lawsuit alleges failure to protect essential fish habitat and the National Academy of Sciences has documented that bottom trawling reduces complexity, productivity, and biodiversity of benthic habitats (NRC, 2002).

3.  Count All Bycatch Mortality — Including What Never Reaches the Deck: Bycatch assessments must include modeled estimates of unobserved seafloor mortality. Organisms killed by gear contact, but never brought aboard, are not accounted for in the current accounting. Mandatory 100% observer coverage and real-time genetic reporting are the backbone of enforcement for every reform in this plan.

4.  Prohibit Trawling in Designated Halibut Nursery Areas: Designate known juvenile halibut concentration areas in Alaskan waters as protected nursery habitat and prohibit all trawl gear within those boundaries. Trawling in nursery areas destroys recruitment before a single fish enters the directed fishery. ADF&G holds the biological data to support these designations today.

5.  Reject the Inadequate February 2026 Chum Salmon Bycatch Action: The NPFMC’s 45,000 Western Alaska chum cap applies only to clusters 1 and 2, June 10–August 31, not Bering Sea-wide, not year-round, and will not take effect until June 2028 (NPFMC Motion C-2, Feb. 2026). The Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission called it “too little and too late.” The fleet caught 498,044 chum as bycatch from 2015 to 2024 (KDLG, Feb. 2026). Directed subsistence Chinook harvest on the Yukon has been closed or severely restricted since 2020; fall chum escapement remains below the 300,000–600,000 goal (ADF&G SP 25-15). Bycatch limits must never exceed subsistence harvest limits for Y-K residents.

6.  Index All Bycatch Limits to Current Stock Abundance: Require bycatch limits to adjust automatically when annual stock assessments fall below defined thresholds. Under current federal rules, the Bering Sea pollock fleet operates under a Chinook cap of 60,000 fish, reduced to 47,591 when the three-river index falls below a threshold, a number calibrated to conditions that no longer exist. The directed subsistence Chinook harvest has been closed or severely restricted on the Yukon for six consecutive years, and fall chum subsistence remains closed as well. Limits that do not track current abundance are not management tools; they are artifacts.

7.  Require Independent Stock Assessments as a Federal Backstop: The 2025–26 federal shutdown prevented NOAA from completing SAFE reports, forcing the NPFMC to set harvest limits using 2024 data (AMCC, Jan. 2026). Alaska cannot allow federal disruptions to determine whether fisheries are managed based on current science. The Governor will advocate for state-funded supplemental assessments incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge as a permanent backstop.

8. Protect CDQ Communities While Reforming the Fleet: The Community Development Quota program delivers approximately $100 million annually to 65 Western Alaska communities, many with no viable alternative revenue. CDQ groups now hold catch rights to more than 35% of Bering Sea pollock (ADN, 2023). This administration will not collapse rural economies to fix rural fisheries. Bycatch caps, gear standards, and ecosystem-based harvest limits can be implemented in ways that preserve CDQ allocations and the infrastructure sustaining communities like Unalaska, Akutan, and Y-K Delta villages. The goal is not to shut down pollock; it is to manage pollock as the Constitution requires: for sustained yield, for the food web, for the communities that depend on both the fishery and the fish, and for future Alaskans.

The Alaska Constitution’s foundational principle is that government is “instituted solely for the good of the people as a whole.” The framers deliberately wrote a short, broad document, and the courts have read that breadth as creating affirmative obligations, not just permissions.

The constitutional framework for a public safety and justice platform rests on several interlocking provisions: government exists for the good of all the people (Art. I, §2), the legislature shall provide for public health and welfare (Art. VII, §§4-5), every person has inherent rights to life, liberty, and equal protection (Art. I, §§1, 3, 7), crime victims have enumerated rights to dignity and protection (Art. I, §24), and the privacy of every Alaskan shall not be infringed (Art. I, §22). “No person is to be denied the enjoyment of any civil or political right because of race, color, creed, sex, or national origin. Equal protection / anti-discrimination (Art. I, §3). Taken together, these create an obligation not just to punish harm after it occurs, but to build the conditions for housing, health, education, economic opportunity, and community stability that prevent it.

Alaska is the most violent state in America. Our rape rate is more than three times the national average. Nearly half of all Alaska women have experienced intimate partner violence. One in three rural communities has no law enforcement of any kind. And we spend $523 million a year on corrections, with a 67% recidivism rate, and call it a justice system.

We are not keeping Alaskans safe. We are paying for the aftermath of violence, over and over, without ever addressing the conditions that produce it. That ends with this administration.

Every Alaskan deserves safety and justice — women and girls, men and boys, LGBTQ+ Alaskans, Alaska Native communities, rural villagers, and urban residents alike. Our public safety agenda is built for all of them.

1. In rural Alaska, we will fund every community that wants a Village Public Safety Officer. One in three communities currently has none. A VPSO costs a fraction of a trooper deployment and prevents the crime, rather than responding to it days later.

2. For survivors of violence, we will build the forensic infrastructure Alaska lacks. Prosecutors currently decline half of all sex offense referrals because the evidence cannot be processed. We will fix that, and we will ensure that services for survivors are designed for every survivor, including men, boys, and LGBTQ+ Alaskans who are systematically excluded from the systems built to help them.

3. For Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, we will publish Indigenous homicide data quarterly, fund Data for Indigenous Justice as an official state partner, and staff the investigations these families have waited years for. No government agency was tracking these cases. A community advocate built the database herself. That is a governance failure this administration will correct on day one.

4. For rehabilitation and reentry, we will invest in the evidence-based programs that reduce recidivism, because every person who does not return to incarceration saves the state $81,000 a year and represents a life rebuilt. We will restore funding to Alaska’s four reentry coalitions, reform parole board transparency, and ensure that every person released from custody has housing, identification, and a treatment connection on the day they walk out the door.

Beyond the $81,000-per-year cost of incarceration, every person cycling through Alaska’s justice system without adequate treatment or support leaves a wider trail of harm: robberies, thefts, unpaid medical bills, emergency services, property damage, lost business, and the compounding burden on victims who bear those costs directly. Making the failure to invest in rehabilitation not just a moral failure, but costs every Alaskan who has ever had their car broken into, their home burglarized, or their small business shoplifted into the red.

5. For prevention, we will treat unaddressed trauma as the public health and fiscal crisis it is. Untreated trauma drives addiction, suicide, and incarceration. Evidence-based trauma treatment costs $2,000 to $8,000 per person. The downstream cost of doing nothing is nearly $20,000 per person per year in lost workforce, lost health, and lost life. Prevention is not more expensive than reaction. It is dramatically cheaper and the only approach that actually works.

The proposed investment in this agenda, more VPSOs, forensic capacity, survivor services, reentry programming, and trauma treatment, is $53 to $83 million annually. The documented savings: $64 to $121 million per year in avoided incarceration, avoided emergency response, and reduced long-term system costs. This is not a progressive argument or a conservative argument. It is arithmetic.

Several of the most important commitments cost nothing at all. Publishing MMIP data costs nothing. Parole board transparency costs nothing. Stopping the prosecution of trafficking victims for their own exploitation requires a bill, not a budget.

We know what works. We are simply not doing it. This administration will.

Alaska’s Constitution does not treat public health as optional. Article VII, Section 4 directs the legislature to “provide for the promotion and protection of public health,” using the mandatory “shall.” Section 5 extends that obligation to public welfare. The Alaska Supreme Court has consistently read these provisions as binding commitments and when paired with Article I, Section 22, the fundamental right to privacy, which the courts have interpreted more broadly than its federal counterpart, and the Preamble’s promise to “secure and transmit to succeeding generations our heritage,” what emerges is a constitutional framework that obligates the state to act: to promote health before crisis arrives, to protect it when threats materialize, and to ensure that every Alaskan, regardless of where they live, what they earn, or what they have survived, can maintain a standard of living compatible with health and human dignity.

Alaska is spending billions to treat conditions we could have prevented: Medicaid is approaching $3 billion a year and is projected to nearly double by 2044. Corrections cost $523 million. Smoking-related illness costs $509 million more. These are not separate crises; they are the compounded cost of a system built around reaction instead of investment.

A Medicaid recipient with no chronic conditions costs the program $4,581 annually, while one with eight or more chronic conditions costs $84,281. The top 10% of the sickest enrollees account for two-thirds of all Medicaid spending. Each of these individuals experienced a journey that included missed screenings, untreated behavioral health issues, and supports that never materialized.

1. What We Will Do: We will automatically enroll every eligible Alaska child in Denali KidCare using data the state already collects through the Permanent Fund Dividend application; no separate application needed, and we will apply the same approach to eligible adults. We will redirect administrative savings to community health aides, behavioral health workers, and telehealth services in communities that currently lack them. We will fund preventive screenings, tobacco cessation, and medication-assisted treatment as essential fiscal investments.

2. For young adults, every young person aging out of foster care will have a transition plan starting at 17, automatic Medicaid continuity, Tribal partnership for Alaska Native youth, and housing support to prevent homelessness that derails everything else. Between 22% and 30% of youth who age out become homeless within two years. Over 40% are incarcerated by age 20. This is a policy failure, not an inevitability.

Establishment of RISE: Resilience, Independence, Skills, and Empowerment, a multi-year program for Alaskans aged 16 to 26 who are facing recovery, foster care transition, justice reentry, or educational gaps. RISE combines long-term behavioral health treatment, GED completion, life skills, and job-ready vocational training in trades, healthcare, fishing, and technology. It will be developed regionally, with hubs in Anchorage, Bethel, Fairbanks, and Juneau, each rooted in its community’s culture.

3. To address recidivism and survivor safety, we will implement automatic Medicaid re-enrollment upon release, require discharge planning starting 90 days before release, and HHS and DOJ will collaborate to develop treatment and recovery pathways. 

The Bottom Line– Our combined investment is estimated at $60–$112 million annually in state funding against $232–$456 million in avoided costs each year. The numbers are very favorable. The young person leaving foster care with a trash bag and no plan did not fail Alaska; Alaska failed them. We will do better.

As Alaska modernizes its energy systems, healthcare networks, infrastructure, and public services, data is becoming one of the state’s most valuable assets. How that data is governed will shape economic opportunity, public trust, and individual rights for decades to come.

1. Your data belongs to you. Alaska’s constitution says so.
Article I, Section 22 clearly states that the right of the people to privacy is recognized and shall not be infringed. Alaska’s privacy clause is stronger than the federal constitution; it is broader, more explicit, and interpreted by our Supreme Court to protect both personal autonomy and the right to shield personal information from disclosure. As Alaska modernizes its energy systems, healthcare networks, and public services, data is becoming one of the state’s most important assets. How it is governed will influence economic opportunity, individual liberty, and public trust for years to come.

2. Dahlstrom: What Went Wrong — and the Standard We Must Meet
In December 2025, Lt. Governor Nancy Dahlstrom transferred Alaska’s full confidential voter roll to the DOJ without legislative approval, public notice, or enforceable safeguards, after federal courts ruled that the request lacked legal standing. That data is now being added to a nationwide federal database beyond Alaska’s control. A DeWitt administration will revoke that agreement on Day One and legally establish the conditions under which any agency can share confidential data with the federal government: explicit legislative approval, enforceable protections, and mandatory public disclosure.

3. Tribal Data Sovereignty
For Alaska Native communities, data sovereignty is an extension of tribal sovereignty. For generations, data (research) about Indigenous communities has flowed outward to institutions that used it to justify policies serving those institutions, not those communities. We will apply the CARE principles, Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics, to all state data relationships with Tribal governments: formal government-to-government agreements, health and population data returned to Tribes in actionable form, support for Tribal data infrastructure, and recognition that Indigenous knowledge systems are sovereign assets.

4. Modernizing State Systems
Alaska’s agencies manage data in silos, leading to redundancy and inconsistency and failing to support the integrated analysis needed to improve outcomes or reduce costs. Thus, an Alaska Data Governance Office will be established with a unified framework built on data minimization, transparency, and every Alaskan’s right to access and correct their own government records. We will apply FAIR principles to non-confidential state data, enabling research and public benefit. And we will require disaggregated outcome reporting so statewide averages cannot hide community-level failures.

5. The Alaska Cyber Task Force
Cybersecurity is a public safety issue. Alaska’s energy infrastructure, healthcare systems, water treatment facilities, and election systems are active targets. As an immediate priority, the DeWitt administration will establish the Alaska Cyber Task Force, which will include state law enforcement, National Guard cyber capabilities, the Division of Elections, and state IT, to provide threat intelligence, rapid incident response, election security independent of political leadership, and rural cyber resilience for communities operating critical infrastructure without dedicated security support.

Technology should serve communities. Innovation must not jeopardize autonomy. The right to privacy, enshrined in our constitution over fifty years ago, must hold significance in the digital age.

In 1969, Alaska received $900 million from the Prudhoe Bay oil lease sale. The entire state budget was under $200 million. Within three years, the legislature had spent nearly all of it. When pipeline construction was delayed, and the windfall was gone, Alaska was nearly broke.

Governor Jay Hammond insisted the state do better. He wanted to save 50% of oil revenues; the legislature gave him 25%. In 1976, voters approved a constitutional amendment establishing the Permanent Fund by a two-to-one margin. Article IX, Section 15 directs at least 25% of mineral revenues into a permanent savings account whose principal can only be used for income-producing investments, never spent.

In 1980, the legislature created APFC to manage the Fund and approved the first dividend. Hammond’s insight was political genius: if every Alaskan received a personal check, the public would defend the Fund against political raids. The first $1,000 PFD was paid in 1982 alongside a statutory formula (AS 43.23.025) and mandatory inflation proofing.

What Went Wrong:

The dividend became a political football. For 34 years the statutory formula worked. In 2016, Governor Walker vetoed half the PFD. The Supreme Court upheld the veto. Since then, the dividend has been set by annual budget negotiation, not by formula. The 2025 PFD of $1,000 was the inflation-adjusted lowest ever.

Inflation proofing was abandoned. The legislature skipped inflation proofing in FY25 and FY26, leaving the principal an estimated $500 million to $4.5 billion behind in real purchasing power. This is a quiet transfer from future generations to current spending.

The corpus protection is under assault. Proposed constitutional amendments (SJR 14, SJR 23, HJR 30) would merge the protected principal with the spendable Earnings Reserve Account. This eliminates the structural floor that prevents spending down the corpus. APFC’s own consultant projects Fund returns below 5% for the next decade, meaning the merged fund would be drawn down, not sustained.

Management costs are high. Official fees are $520 million/year. All-in costs, including performance fees, are estimated at $880 million, roughly 1% of assets. A passive index approach would cost a fraction of that and has outperformed the Fund in most recent periods.

The POMV draw may be too high. The 5% rate has been exceeded by Fund earnings less than half the time since 1995. The proposed amendments also include an uncapped “operations exception” outside the 5% cap.

How We Fix It:

Cap the total draw at 4%, all-inclusive, covering dividends, government, operations, and fees. No exceptions. No second clause. Constitutionalize it.

Restore mandatory inflation proofing as the first charge against any draw, before dividends or government spending.

Restore a formula-based dividend tied to actual Fund earnings at a 50/50 split with government services. Never promise a dollar amount- promise the formula.

Strengthen the Board of Trustees: expand to 9 members, require investment expertise, stagger terms, reduce political appointments.

Demand fee transparency with a published all-in cost report and a target below 0.75%.

Create an Alaska Investment Window (2–3% of assets) for in-state infrastructure, energy, and broadband: held to the same return standards as the rest of the portfolio.

The Permanent Fund was built as a covenant between generations. Honoring it means protecting the principal, telling the truth about what the Fund can sustain, and giving Alaskans a dividend formula they can trust.