Alaska small businesses need investment, not abandoned contracts
Traffic in downtown Anchorage on Oct. 10, 2024. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
This week is National Small Business Week, a time to celebrate the entrepreneurs who keep our communities vibrant and full of opportunity. In Anchorage, we're lucky we don't have to look far to see that spirit in action.
Just last week, a room full of small business owners, proud families, and community members gathered in Spenard to celebrate the newest graduates of Anchorage Community Land Trust's Set Up Shop and Indigenous Peoples Set Up Shop programs. These programs help entrepreneurs in underserved communities launch and grow their businesses, creating a ripple effect of community revitalization and generational wealth.
But just as we mark this week meant to honor small businesses, the future of this work is in jeopardy. Recently, the federal government terminated congressionally approved grants that fund these very programs. That means Set Up Shop — a proven path to self-sufficiency for underserved entrepreneurs — may not continue in its current form.
And let's be clear. This isn't about government waste or bloated bureaucracy. It's about breaking a contract.
Imagine hiring a contractor to paint your home. They buy the paint, prep the walls, schedule a crew, and then you cancel the job halfway through and refuse to pay. Most people would agree that's unethical, and certainly indefensible. Yet that's exactly what's happening to nonprofits like ACLT, who were asked to do a job, only to see the funding pulled midstream. The work still needs to be done, but the government has walked away.
We're not just talking about line items in a budget. We're talking about hard- working Alaskans who have done everything right. They've taken business classes, written plans, earned certifications, and opened storefronts, and are now left with fewer tools and less support than they were promised. When we don't invest in our own people, we pay the price in other ways, with lost jobs, empty buildings, and neighborhoods full of untapped potential.
When an entrepreneur opens a new business in Anchorage they hire locally. They spend locally. They transform vacant lots into thriving storefronts. The economic return goes far beyond the individual business owner and it makes our city a better place to live.
Set Up Shop has helped more than 500 entrepreneurs turn ideas into realities, and side hustles into fully fledged businesses. These businesses hire locally, pay taxes, and invest in their neighborhoods. That's not charity. That's economic infrastructure built from the ground up.
We will continue to do this work, with or without the original funding. That's what it means to serve your community. But we could benefit from you being with us. If you believe in the promise of local business and the power of neighborhood-led change, we invite you to consider supporting ACLT and, most importantly, supporting these entrepreneurs. You could visit their businesses, share their stories and help us keep the momentum alive.
Because when we invest in our neighbors, we all win — and that's just good business.
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During the Trump officials' visit, they also hope to make a case for additional development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which Trump has advocated, and for being included in planning decisions. Nagruk Harcharek, president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, an advocacy group whose members include leaders from the region, called the officials' visit 'a step in the right direction.' For years, the state has sought to develop its stores of North Slope natural gas as a way to provide affordable energy to more residents and bolster revenues via exports. But cost concerns, shifts in direction, competition from other projects and questions about economic feasibility have stymied progress. Oil companies have long reinjected gas that occurs with oil deposits on the slope to produce more oil, which remains Alaska's economic lifeblood. The latest gas proposal calls for a roughly 810-mile (1,300-kilometer) pipeline that would carry gas from the North Slope to port and a facility that would process and export liquefied natural gas to Asian countries. In a March speech to Congress, Trump touted his ongoing support of the 'gigantic natural gas pipeline." He said countries like Japan and South Korea 'want to be our partner, with investments of trillions of dollars each.' No firm commitments from countries have been made. The company advancing the project — in partnership with a state corporation — is in a stage of refining cost estimates, previously pegged at around $44 billion for the pipeline and related infrastructure, before final decisions are made on whether to move forward with the project. While Dunleavy has likened Trump's friendly approach to energy development as 'Christmas every day,' Alaska's fortunes remain tightly linked to the volatility of oil prices, which are down sharply from a year ago, squeezing state revenues. State lawmakers across party lines overwhelmingly passed a resolution urging Congress to provide Alaska with 90% of royalty revenues for oil and gas leases in the Arctic refuge, arguing the U.S. government reneged on past promises for such a share. The resolution also asked for that to be extended to the petroleum reserve. Alaska's tax structure allows companies like ConocoPhillips Alaska — which is pursuing a massive oil project known as Willow in the reserve — to write off a portion of their development costs against production taxes they incur elsewhere on the North Slope. While lawmakers widely support Willow, they also have argued a change in federal royalty share would address a hit to state revenues created by production in the reserve.
