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House District 40: Arctic

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  • Candidate picture

    Thomas “Ikaaq” Baker
    (Rep)

  • Candidate picture

    Robyn “Niayuq” Burke
    (Dem)

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    Saima “Ikrik” Chase
    (Dem)

Biographical Information

How do you plan to address the challenges of funding, teacher recruitment and retention, and ensuring educational equity across remote, rural and urban communities in Alaska in order to improve overall educational outcomes?

According to the U.S. Energy Administration in 2023, Alaska generated about 25% of its total electricity from renewable energy sources. What other alternatives do you think would help with our energy issues?

What options would you suggest where Alaska can increase our state revenue?

What could the Alaska legislature do to help restore voters’ trust in the integrity of our elections system?

Do you support or oppose continuation of our current open primary/ ranked choice voting election system.  Why?

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Campaign Mailing Address PO Box 1557
Utqiagvik, Alaska 99723
Campaign Phone 907-738-3346
Campaign Website http://Www.robynburkeak.com
Campaign Twitter Handle @RobynBurkeHD40
One top priority is ensuring is ensuring we offer teachers benefits that are competitive with other states, like a defined benefit retirement. As someone who worked in school district HR, I know firsthand that teachers are leaving because it doesn’t make financial sense for them to stay in Alaska. As School Board President, I have focused on bringing our language and culture back to the center of our education system. I believe this is essential to getting more young people in our communities to stay, and will improve educational outcomes for students in rural Alaska communities.
We are fortunate on the North Slope to have access to energy resources that power our communities and deliver economic benefits to the entire state. As long as the world depends on oil and gas, it should come from our communities because we access it more responsibly than anywhere else in the world. But many villages rely on expensive diesel generation, and the Railbelt is about to experience a shortage of natural gas. As a legislator, I would take an all of the above approach to ensuring Alaskans have access to reliable and affordable energy. The Northwest Arctic is on the cutting edge of implementing renewable energy systems, and I would support that work.
I would approach conversations about revenue with an open mind, focused on achieving an outcome that protects the Permanent Fund, doesn’t disproportionately impact working families or rural Alaska, and allows us to pay for basic services like schools, roads and airports, and public safety.
There was legislation that was close to passing that would have addressed pressing election challenges, like eliminating measures that result in a huge number of rural votes getting discarded. I would support that legislation.
I support the open primary system that we currently have. Voters in this region do not vote based on party, in general, and the closed party primary excludes voters from the decision making process.
Campaign Mailing Address po box 698
Kotzebue, Alaska 99752
Campaign Phone 907-885-9852
To address challenges around funding and teacher recruitment an retention, as your representative I would advocate for better defined retirement, and for a full based student allocation for a projected time, not just a one time raise. I would also push that the decisions in Juneau happen earlier on so that the school districts have time to recruit instead of having a last minute budget passed and them having to scramble to find teachers that fit their budgets. Our students would see more continuum of teachers if we had better benefits and a longer recruitment season.
Renewable energy is widely used in my area and is making strides to become better and better each year. The only thing I get so torn about is when I do travel to the villages and see that their solar panel farms are being trashed by kids in the area by throwing rocks or other objects at them, what do we do to fix that? We involve the students at an earlier age to have them understand why those things in their villages will help their cost of living. The other thing I am very interested in learning about is micro nuclear power, the new micro nuclear power coming out, the size of a connex, can power a village for years to come without the need for fossil fuels. Obviously it is very new and has not been tested in rural Alaska yet.
PFD was created to benefit all qualified Alaskans "individuality" and their families; it wasn't meant to fund state government. I plan advocate for that, currently the percent of market value drawn down is about 5% and it is split between funding government services and paying the PFD. I plan to ensure that a majority of the percent of market value that is drawn down from the reserve goes toward funding a higher dividend rather than using it for government shortfalls. There has been discussions about amending the Alaska Constitution make the PFD formula a part of the Alaska Constitution to further protect the PFD. We as voters should get to choose, ultimately.
I would support legislation that addressed the challenging issues that question the integrity of the election system. There is no one right or correct way to answer this question because urban areas and rural areas are so different. Often times our rural votes are not as strong as the urban votes, and get thrown to the side.
I support the ranked choice voting because it eliminates the lesser candidate and also eliminates a special runoff election which costs a lot of money. What the Sate of Alaska Division of Elections can do is do more education about ranked choice voting so that the people who are voting, especially in rural Alaska where English is sometimes not their first language, can better understand how it works.