AUUF Podcasts

Cheryl Frasca has been involved in state and local fiscal policy issues for over 40 years. She started by working as legislative staff for 12 years, primarily for Finance Committee chairs, and headed up budget work at the Office of Management and Budget for two governors and two Anchorage mayors. Ms. Frasca was awarded the National Governors’ Association’s “Distinguished Service to State Government” recognition and received the Ernest Gruening Award for “Outstanding Graduate Student” from the University of Alaska Southeast. She has earned a master’s degree in Public Administration and a bachelor’s in Political Science. She retired in 2012, which means she now can plan vacations without regard to the state or municipal budget schedules. It also means she has time for volunteer work, such as serving on Commonwealth North’s Board and as a co-chair of its Fiscal Policy Study Group.

My Alaska Budget - Close The Gap video: https://youtu.be/TYW9vn5NT9Q

Revenue Spending Chart: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kb6xghviecpk099/Revenue%20Spending%20Chart.pdf?dl=0

Alaska Budget Choices tool: https://www.akbudget.com/choices.php?submit=Start+Closing+the+Gap+Now

Alaska Budget Choices website: https://www.akbudget.com

Mary Odden’s essays have appeared in the Georgia Review, Northwest Review, Nimrod, the Alaska Quarterly Review, and Under Northern Lights, an anthology of contemporary Alaska art and writing.  Born in eastern Oregon, she traveled north to work on forest fires in Alaska.  She studied writing at the University of Montana and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.  She has worked as an aviation dispatcher, village teen counselor, writing teacher, and as publisher/editor of a small newspaper in Alaska’s Copper River Valley.  In 2015, she received a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Award to work on the essays gathered in Mostly Water.  She lives with her husband in Nelchina.   

Visit Mary Odden's website

Kenneth McCoy has served as Deputy Chief of the Anchorage Police Department since 2017.  After attending the New Mexico Military Institute and receiving his commission into the United States Army, he served ten years with the Alaska Army National Guard.  He began his law enforcement career in 1994, and rose steadily through the ranks, serving in command assignments in patrol, investigations and internal affairs.  Deputy Chief McCoy holds a bachelor’s degree in Justice from the University of Alaska Anchorage and a criminal justice certificate from the University of Virginia.  He is also a graduate of the FBI National Academy and the FBI National Executive Institute, and a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and the Alaska Police Officers Association. He and his wife, Sue, have been married for 26 years and have three children.

Corey Aist is president of the Anchorage Education Association.   Born and raised in Los Angeles, he graduated from the University of California, Davis with a Bachelor of Science in Child Development in 1992. In 1993, Corey and his then-girlfriend, now wife, drove up the AlCan with their two young puppies, and ever since have called Alaska home, along with their four children—all students and graduates of Anchorage School District.  Corey began working for the Anchorage School District in 1996, after earning a Bachelor of Education degree with Honors from UAA.  He taught at Muldoon Elementary School for 10 years, then at Polaris K-12 for 14 years. Corey joined AEA’s Bargaining Team and Rights Committee in 2004. Always an advocate for teachers, he helped negotiate nine contracts for AEA members before becoming AEA President in July 2020.

https://public.tableau.com/profile/jon.w1876#!/vizhome/COVID-19USSchools/Dashboard1

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-college-cases-tracker.html

Jake Metcalfe is Executive Director of the Alaska State Employees Association, the State’s largest public employee union of state and municipal employees. He also serves as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Alaska AFL-CIO, an organization representing 50,000 working Alaskan families. A fourth-generation Alaskan, Jake is an attorney, former chair of the Alaska Democratic Party, and a former Anchorage School Board President. A 1976 graduate of Juneau-Douglas High School, Jake worked as a cold storage worker, commercial fisherman, bartender, and legislative employee. After earning a BA in History from Eastern Michigan University, and a law degree from Lewis & Clark, Jake was a state prosecutor in Bethel, and served on the Bethel City Council. Jake became General Counsel for IBEW Local 1547 in Anchorage in 2004 and served as Executive Director of the Public Safety Employee’s Association Local 803 from 2009 until 2017. He and his wife, Moira Smith, have three sons and a daughter.

ASEA website: https://www.afscmelocal52.org

Shea Siegert is Campaign Manager for Alaskans for Better Elections—Yes on 2. Shea is an Anchorage resident, who has worked in and around Alaska politics for five years. Shea got his start working with the Ship Creek Group on a slate of statehouse campaignsin the 2016 cycle and went on to work in the Legislature over three legislative sessions. Shea has also played a role on over 15 Alaska campaigns, including serving as Interim Campaign Manager to Governor Walker. Shea plans to continue working, playing, andliving in Alaska long after the next election!

Leighan Gonzales is the Chair of Protect Our Elections—No on 2. A student in UAA’s Justice Department, Leighann also works at the Alaska Innocence Project. She was born and raised in East Anchorage to young parents who worked multiple jobs to make theirway through school while raising young children. Leighan is the proud product of our public education system and spent her childhood benefiting from federally funded social service programs for low-income households. Her family relied on DenaliKidCare coverage when, as an infant, she had risky and expensive open-heart surgery to repair a congenital birth defect, with years of recovery. This inspired her lifelong fight for affordable, quality healthcare, just as her early years instilled in her a passion for justice and inspired her to campaign against special interests who seek to derail the programs and progress that made her who she is.

You can contact Leigh here - [email protected] or 907-538-590

https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_Ballot_Measure_2,_Top-Four_Ranked-Choice_Voting_and_Campaign_Finance_Laws_Initiative_(2020)

Joyce Anderson has been an officer of League of Women Voters Anchorage since 2000, serving twice served as president for a total of eight years. She has been a member of the Alaska Election Policy Work Group since 2017 and of the Anchorage MunicipalElection Commission since 2012, currently serving as its Chair. She was a member of the Anchorage Vote-By-Mail Election Stakeholder Group 2015 to 2018. Joyce moved to Alaska in 1999 after retiring from 30-years with the City of Minneapolis, including 14years as Director of Elections/Voter Registration. She worked for the Alaska Legislature from 2001 to 2016 as Executive Director of the Select Committee on Legislative Ethics, and in 2017 was appointed to serve on the nine-member Select Committee. She earned her B.A. in Business Administration in 1985, and a Master’s in Public Administration in 1996 (thesis: “Decline of Voter Turnout in the United States: Cause and Effect”).

Iron Jawed Angels - https://youtu.be/hOrD0tH_WaM

YOUR Alaska Voter Info - https://myvoterinformation.alaska.gov

Voter Fraud - info by state - https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud

Mail-in vs. Absentee - the distinction - https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jul/31/donald-trump/donald-trump-draws-false-distinction-between-absen/

Voter suppression in the United States - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States

Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to draw voting district boundaries - http://aceproject.org/main/english/et/etk01.htm

“closed primaries” - https://www.theclassroom.com/what-states-have-closed-primaries-in-elections-12081685.html

History of primaries in AK. - https://www.elections.alaska.gov/doc/forms/H42.pdf

Larry Persily has split his 44 years in Alaska between journalism and public policy work for the state, federal, and municipal offices, focusing on taxes, fiscal policies, and oil and gas. He has worked for The Associated Press, Anchorage Times, Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Petroleum News, and owned and operated weekly newspapers in Wrangell and Juneau. During his government careers, he served as deputy commissioner of the Alaska Department of Revenue, worked in the governor’s office in Washington DC, as an aide to the state House Finance Committee co-chair, and led a federal agency assisting with the development of an Alaska North Slope natural gas pipeline project. Larry also worked in the 1980s as an investigator with the state ombudsman office, which he says is like being a reporter with subpoena powers.

Here are some interesting links -

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/global_oil.php

https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2020/08/02/renewable-energy-growth-continues-at-a-blistering-pace/#26ce0aa76b60

https://northerngaspipelines.com/5-27-20/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

https://alaskasfairshare.com

https://www.facebook.com/voteyesforalaskasfairshare/

Bill Falsey is the Municipal Manager for the Municipality of Anchorage. From July 2015 through October 2017, he served as Anchorage's Municipal Attorney. Previously, Bill served as BLM's Deputy Chief of Staff and clerked for Chief Justice Alex Bryner of the Alaska Supreme Court. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, Stanford University (B.S., Physics, with Minors in History and Political Science), and A.J. Dimond High School.  Bill has been active in professional organizations and has served on a number of nonprofit boards, including Commonwealth North, ARC of Anchorage, and Alaska Common Ground.  He and his wife, Jeanette, have two children.

Bill used slides in his presentation and they are available here as a pdf - 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/28xnsw8rzqartpv/AUUFslides_wdf_20200809.pdf?dl=0

Dr. Shirley Holloway is the President of the National Alliance on Mental Health Board of Directors.  After the loss of her daughter to mental illness, Dr. Holloway found NAMI and has worked through it to improve access and quality of mental health services to underserved populations. Dr. Holloway served previously as Commissioner of Education and Early Development for the State of Alaska and now does education consulting through her business, Leadership for Excellence. Dr. Holloway's career includes being a teacher for the deaf and hard of hearing, speech pathologist, school principal, Superintendent of the North Slope Borough School District, and college professor. Shirley also has served as a Regent of Charter College, the President of Sheldon Jackson College, and as a board member for the Blood Bank of Alaska, the Special Olympics, the CIRI Foundation, and the Ilisagvik Foundation. She earned her Ph.D. at Gonzaga University. 

Some interesting links -

https://www.nami.org/Home - NAMI

https://www.namialaska.org - NAMI AK

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/988-to-become-the-new-911-for-national-suicide-prevention-lifeline/ - 988

https://www.rtor.org/directory/mental-health-resources-in-alaska/ - Mental Health Resources in AK

https://www.ktva.com/story/42427386/mental-health-clinic-offers-free-peer-support-training - Peer Support

https://alaskamentalhealthtrust.org - AK Mental Health Trust

https://ernieandjoethefilm.com - Ernie & Joe

https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/31/mental-health-medicine/ - Mental Health as a vital part of Physical Health