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The third part of a legislative audit of the Alaska Office of Children's Services (OCS) was made public on June 30, 2025. In 2018 an omnibus bill was signed into law that completely overhauled the way foster care in Alaska should work. That bill -- House Bill 151 -- passed the Alaska State House and the Alaska State Senate unanimously. The completed audit shows that OCS failed to implement most of the required reforms.

Les Gara was the 2022 democratic candidate for governor of Alaska. He is a former legislator who served in the Alaska state house from 2003 to 2019. Throughout his time in the legislature he advocated for foster care reform and in 2018 achieved it with House Bill 151.

Amanda Metivier is the director of the Alaska Child Welfare Academy at UAA and is the executive director and co-founder of Facing Foster Care in Alaska. She and her husband are foster parents who have provided homes for many youth over the past 15 years.

Alaska faces a severe shortage of licensed foster care parents. To learn more about how to be a foster parent, click here.

To volunteer for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Alaska, click here.

Link to Part 3 of the audit of OCS.

HB 151 SUMMARY

Link to previous podcast episode featuring Les Gara & Amanda Metivier

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James Brooks is a reporter for the Alaska Beacon. James is a longtime Alaska journalist, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner -- although as we will learn today initially more as an editor than as a journalist. He has laid down roots in Juneau where he and his wife and young daughter live, and he was content in his role as the ADN's chief Capitol reporter when three years ago he embarked on what he describes as "an experiment" at the Alaska Beacon. The Beacon is outcropping of the States Newsroom which is a non-profit news organization with a goal of combating disinformation in our country's growing news deserts. James and I talk about that organization and what it would it would take for it to persevere.

Link to donors to States Newsroom.

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Larry Persily is the Anchorage-based owner and publisher of the weekly newspaper the Wrangell Sentinel. Larry and his wife Leslie Murray first purchased that newspaper in 1976 when they moved to Wrangell from Chicago. After almost 50 years as an on-again off-again journalist at various publications such as the Anchorage Times, the Associated Press, the Juneau Empire, & the Anchorage Daily News, Larry re-purchased the Wrangell Sentinel in 2021.

In 2019 he purchased the newspaper in Skagway, Alaska, and then offered to give away the Skagway News instead of running it remotely from Anchorage. He ultimately sold that paper for $20.

He has also worked at the federal, state, and municipal levels on oil and gas and fiscal policy including as staff in the Alaska legislature for Rep. Mike Hawker, an Anchorage Republican, and Rep. John Lincoln, a Kotzebue Independent. Although our focus today is on the Alaska media, we do discuss his time as the Federal Coordinator for Alaska Natural Gas Transportation Projects -- a position he was appointed to by President Barack Obama -- and the prospects for an Alaska natural gas pipeline today.

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President and publisher of the Anchorage Daily News Ryan Binkley is the oldest son of former state Senator John Binkley (R-Bethel). When John ran for governor in 2006, Ryan, at 27, took over the Binkley family tourism business based in Fairbanks. That business includes the Riverboat Discovery, a gold mining tour, a partnership with a flight seeing company in Girdwood & Juneau, and a cruise port in Ketchikan. In 2017, Ryan and his three younger siblings purchased the Anchorage Daily News, the state’s largest newspaper. Ryan talks about the media landscape in Alaska, the ADN's place in it, and their future.

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Open Enrollment is an education priority of Gov. Dunleavy that would allow any Alaska student to enroll in any Alaska school. To better understand the consequences of this proposal, Sen. Bill Wielechowski, the rules chair in the Alaska State Senate, and Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, the co-chair of the House Education committee appear in this brief bonus episode.

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Nathaniel Herz is a freelance reporter who’s spent over a decade working in Alaska, including stints at the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Public Media. A few years ago he started his own newsletter "Northern Journal," where he is supported by individual subscribers and grant funding to do his own projects in collaboration with various media organizations like ProPublica, the ADN, and Alaska Public Media. He also has a podcast called "Northern Journal."

Nat is on the show today because he wanted to provide a counter perspective to the doom and gloom attitude present in some of my recent episodes discussing the future of media in Alaska.

Articles featured in today's show:

"This oil platform stopped pumping 30 years ago. Alaska still won’t make the owner tear it down."

"The last skipper in Ouzinkie: How Gulf of Alaska villages lost their Native fishing fleets."

"How a risky state investment in seafood cost Alaskans millions and left a fishing town in crisis."

Podcast episodes mentioned:

"Lisa Murkowski: 'The problem with standing on principle is when your constituents get hurt'"

"What happens when the trans-Alaska pipeline shuts down? And who pays to remove it?"

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Sen. Bill Wielechowski (D-Anchorage) is chair of the rules committee in the Alaska State Senate. He discusses the upcoming legislative special session called by Governor Mike Dunleavy to begin at 10 am, on Saturday, August 2. Sen Wielechowski explains the way special sessions generally work, why this one is different, and discusses frankly the political gamesmanship given that overrides of the Governor's vetoes must be taken up within the first 5 days of the legislature reconvening. We discuss the budget line item veto of education funding but also Senate Bill 183 which helps the legislature's auditor better assess the oil and gas tax revenue for our state. This bill was widely seen as a transparency bill and Governor Dunleavy's veto of SB 183 raises red flags.

Here is a link to the Alaska Beacon's article by reporter James Brooks about the veto of SB 183.

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Gabe Rottman is the Vice President of Policy for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. A practicing attorney with a focus on the novel issues at the intersection of press freedom, newsgathering, and technology, Gabe is the perfect person to discuss the media environment in America today and what resources are available to journalists who, through the course of just doing their jobs, could find themselves in the crosshairs of the government.

From 2012 to 2015, Rottman served as the lead federal legislative and regulatory counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union on open government, press freedom and the First Amendment. While at the ACLU, Rottman directed federal advocacy on the Espionage Act and its implications for journalist source protection. After the ACLU, he opened PEN America's Washington, D.C., office and served as its first Washington director.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press was started by journalists and lawyers in 1970 to provide legal representation to reporters. RCFP remains the leading provider of free legal services to journalists and newsrooms across the US. To contact the organization, visit RCFP.org.