The federal leader of the Denali Commission said Friday she is trying to save long-planned Alaska infrastructure projects now threatened by the Trump administration — and the life of the independent federal commission itself.
Julie Kitka, who served for three decades as president of the Alaska Federation of Natives before taking on the new role in October as federal co-chair of the Denali Commission, discussed those challenges on Friday in Nome at a conference organized by that city’s government.
“I have to tell you that dealing with the new federal administration, I had a mindset of, ‘This is an administration unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetime,’ so that’s proved out,” she said.
“Too, ‘Urgency is the new normal,’ and that’s proved out,” Kitka said at the City of Nome Investment Summit.
The Denali Commission was founded in 1998 and modeled after the Appalachian Regional Commission, which was established in1965. The Denali Commission coordinates rural Alaska infrastructure and economic development planning among multiple agencies, and it disburses grants for various projects, such as water and sewer systems, telecommunications and health care facilities. It gets funding from the federal government, through congressional appropriations and other sources, and it is empowered to receive funding from nongovernmental sources as well.
But now it is jeopardized by the Trump administration’s campaign to dramatically shrink the federal government.
Kitka said she met on Thursday with representatives of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” also known as DOGE, the ad-hoc team led by billionaire Elon Musk that has directed mass firings and deep budget cuts across federal agencies and programs.
Now Kitka said she has three DOGE people assigned to shadow her and the Denali Commission, putting her and her colleagues in the position of defending its existence.
If the Trump administration tries to eliminate the Denali Commission now, it would not be the first time. There were similar attempts in the first Trump administration, but Congress preserved the commission then.
Kitka said one way that she and others are trying to prove the commission’s value is through what she called a “strategic pivot” to emphasize dual use of funded infrastructure projects. Thus, an expanded airport runway or an improved harbor, communication system or health care facility can benefit not only the local and regional community but also the nation’s military forces, which are paying more attention to the Arctic and its role in national defense.
An example of a project that the commission is trying to save with that dual-use pivot is a project to establish climate-resilient telecommunications on the North Slope. The project, led by the Iñupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, a Tribal government, in partnership with the telecommunications company Quintillion, was working its way through a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant program.
Though the North Slope project and many others were already in the design and planning phase, the Trump administration in earlier this month terminated the grant program, called Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC.
“The BRIC program was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program. It was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters. Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, we are committed to ensuring that Americans in crisis can get the help and resources they need,” an unnamed FEMA spokesperson said in an April 4 statement.
The BRIC program was established during the first Trump administration, and a 2019 report said it saved $6 in costs for every $1 spent. The program awarded grants on a competitive basis, had protocols to ensure that awarded projects were geared at saving people’s lives and required a 25% local or state match. It was expanded during the Biden administration.
Among the BRIC-funded work in Alaska now in jeopardy is a project in Skagway to excavate a rock slope at the city’s port to lessen the risks of landslides and a localized tsunami there. The city was awarded a $19.9 million BRIC grant in February, but the Trump administration’s cancellation of BRIC projects is retroactive to 2020.
Past BRIC grants in Alaska also include $1.465 million awarded in 2022 to the Native Village of Kwigillingok, a Tribal government in a Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta village coping with accelerating erosion, increased flooding and permafrost thaw. It was one of several grants made to tribal governments or Native villages around the nation.
Kitka, in her Nome remarks, said the Denali Commission hopes to convince FEMA that the Utqiagvik telecommunications project and its BRIC funding are worth saving. It can be a “test case” to show how an infrastructure investment can benefit not just the local community but also the military.
There are 16 other pending Alaska projects that are threatened by the decision to axe the BRIC program, she added.
Kitka said another argument to be made to preserve the Denali Commissions is that its role as a coordinating agency, with funding flexibility, is itself a model of efficiency.
Because other federal departments and agencies are able to transfer money to it outside of annual deadlines, the commission can do some multiyear planning, avoiding seasonal problems and delays, she said.
“People have told me that this is the only entity, federal entity, like this in the state of Alaska, that there isn’t any other one like that,” she said. “The downside is we don’t know if it’s going to survive this new administration.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also spoke at the Nome conference and addressed concerns about halted or canceled federal funding. “As we are looking to push for new funding, we’ve got to make sure that the funds that we already secured are disbursed,” she said.
Like Kitka, Murkowski said it is important to emphasize Alaska’s role in national security and to make the case that federal investment has national benefits.
That is particularly the case in Nome and the Bering Strait region, which lies at the Pacific gateway to the Arctic Ocean, is involved in Arctic diplomacy and borders Russia, as well as offers the potential for producing important critical minerals, she said.
“We’re looking at Greenland because of national security and mineral and economic security. What’s Nome? Chopped liver?” Murkowski said.
Justifications for the Trump administration’s focus on Greenland can apply to Alaska’s Bering Strait region, she said.
“So let’s make sure that, when we talk about the advantages of having that security on that side of North America, we don’t overlook this side of North America. And, by the way, this side, it is already part of the United States of America,” she said.