• Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Anchorage — $2 million for training dental health care workers (2009)

• Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Anchorage — $1 million for facilities and equipment (2009)

• Alaska Native Heritage Center – $150,000 (2009)

• Yukon River Chinook salmon disaster funding ($5 million) – Declared in January of 2010 by the Secretary of Commerce.

• Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Assoc – $100,000 (2009, FY10 Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Bill)

• Protected Village Safe Water from proposed funding cuts and secured an additional $37.5 million last year for rural water and sanitation systems in Alaska through the FY10 Agriculture and Rural Development Appropriations bill ($24.5 million) and the FY10 Interior Appropriations bill ($13 million).  Authored language to eliminate the backlog of unobligated funds and streamline the grant procedures (2009)

• U.S./Canada Yukon River Salmon Agreement Studies – $500,000 (2009)

• City of Buckland for construction of a piped water and sewer system, $500,000 (2009)

• Authored key provisions in the recently enacted Tribal Law and Order Act to increase the number and training of VPSOs.

• Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, Juneau — $308,000 to expand vocational training including distance learning (2009)

• Multi-Disciplinary Combined Facility (governmental and health services in one building) for the Copper River Native Association — $1 million (2009)

• Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Consortium, Bethel — $1 million for facilities and equipment (2009)

• St. Paul Harbor – $3 Million (2009)

• Unalaska Harbor- $2 Million (2009)

• Dillingham Harbor – $885,000 (2009)

• Akutan Airport Construction – $1.2 million (2009)

• Secured access for the people of King Cove to be able to reach life saving health care and resources through a land exchange that benefited the people of King Cove and the USFWS. Izembek Land Exchange – Passed 2009.

• Eskimo whaling tax deduction (Passed 2004 PL 108-357) to allow whaling captains to claim up to a $10,000 per year charitable tax deduction to offset their equipment and fuel costs for the annual subsistence whale hunts in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.

• Increased funding to the Northwestern Alaska Career and Technical Center – Nome

• Nome Harbor – $820,000 (2009)

• Kotzebue Small Boat Harbor – $210,000 (2009)

• Maniilaq Association, Kotzebue — $500,000 for facilities and equipment (2009)

• Alaska Coastal Erosion – Restored authorization for the Army Corps of Engineers to carry out storm damage prevention and reduction, coastal erosion, and ice and glacial damage projects in Alaska – $2 million (2009).

• Co-sponsored and worked to improve the Indian Health Care Improvement Act to provide assistance to Native Alaskans (was finally included in Health Care bill which she opposed)

• Esther Martinez Native American Language Preservation Act – passed in 2006.

• Yukon and Pacific Salmon Treaty

• Sponsored the Alaska Lands Transfer Acceleration Act enacted into law in 2004 – which required the Department of Interior to complete their land transfers to Alaskans and Alaska Natives in an expedited manner.  Gave Alaska the land it was promised at statehood.

• Drug and Alcohol Interdiction, Rural Law Enforcement – $900,000 (2009, FY10 Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Bill)

• Saved Alaska Native Education Equity from Bush Administration’s proposed elimination and from the Obama Administration’s proposal to end certain effective directed grants – $33 million (2009 and 2010)
• Consistently supports funding for Strengthening Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions – $15 million (2009)

• Defense of Native Contracting preferences. Launching arguments to defend Native American contracting preferences during a hearing on contracting preferences afforded to Alaska Native corporations; also lead effort to delay implementation of Section 811 that was included in the National Defense Authorization Act.

• Introduced the Arctic Deep Water Port Act to direct the Secretary of Defense to determine the feasibility of building a deep water port in the Arctic.

• Convened a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security field hearing, which included as a witness Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Allen, on the strategic importance of the Arctic and U.S. Arctic Policy and to highlight the infrastructure needs in the Arctic.

• Introduced the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment Implementation Act to direct the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to work with the International Maritime Organization to establish agreements among the US, Russia, Canada, and other Arctic nations to coordinate shipping infrastructure such as navigation aids, icebreaking escort, tug and salvage, oil spill prevention and response, maritime domain awareness, vessel tracking and search and rescue.

• Saved the High Energy Cost Grants Program – $18.5 million  (2009, FY10 Agriculture and Rural Development Appropriations Bill) that provides financial assistance for the improvement of energy generation, transmission, and distribution facilities serving eligible rural communities with home energy costs that are over 275 percent of the national average.

• Succeeded, after a four-year effort, in getting a road corridor around Cold Bay so that an emergency, all-weather road can be built between King Cove and the airport at Cold Bay to permit emergency medical evacuations when weather prevents medivac flights to King Cove.

• Sponsored and succeeded in passing a series of provisions to make a pending Renewable Electricity Standard less economically painful and more beneficial for Alaskans. The senator won provisions that will permit Alaska utilities that generate renewable energy, even though Alaska is not connected to the interstate transmission grid, to sell credits equal to the power they produce from renewable sources, to utilities in the Lower 48. The credits may help them to afford to pay off financing charges for installation of renewable projects (Amdt. 09844, Section 131). The Senator also won amendments that will allow Alaska Native corporations to qualify (Amdt. 09307) along with tribes to gain extra (double) credits from the generation of renewable energy, which may help to finance renewable projects in rural areas. (2009)

• Won an amendment to provide credits for the installation of additional forms of hydroelectric power, including lake-taps of any size, small hydro projects defined as projects up to 50 megawatts in size (compared to the current 5 megawatts in existing federal law), and pumped storage projects (Amdt. 09994). The RES standard, as adopted by the committee, should also permit homeowners, firms or businesses that generate renewable energy in excess of their needs – distributive energy – to gain triple credits to sell to utilities elsewhere to help fund renewable energy projects. (2009)

• Sponsored provisions in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (PL 109-58):

1.    Rural Energy Aid: authorized $550 million over a decade for rural energy development via the Denali Commission.

2.    Indian Energy Assistance authorized aid to develop rural energy projects

• Authored and won passage of loan and grant program for small (less than 5 megawatt) hydroelectric projects to replace expensive diesel fuel (2008 PL 110-246).

• Won reauthorization for the Rural Alaska Village Grant program for sanitation (2008 PL 110-246).

• Authored and won passage of the Mercury Export Ban Bill (2008, PL 110-414) to prohibit the export of mercury from the US starting in 2013 so as to protect lakes, rivers, oceans, streams, fish, wildlife and people and to establish a secure storage reserve to protect air and groundwater.

• Newtok Land Exchange Bill: Authored and won passage of a bill to allow the village of Newtok to gain title to land on Nelson Island so the village may prepare for relocation to a better site (Passed 2003, PL 108-129 – the first bill authored by Lisa Murkowski to become law.)

• Authored and won passage (2006, PL 109-179) of the ANCSA Afterborn Stock Bill to allow Alaska Native Corporations to allow shareholder descendants to become members of the corporations.

• Requested and gained $20,000 in emergency aid from BIA to relieve the residents of Emmonak due to high heating fuel and food costs during the winter of 2009, after a disappointing fishing season led many families unable to afford heat and food.

• Successfully persuaded the U.S. Department of Education to reconsider its interpretation that regional Alaska Native non-profits, which had received Tribal Vocational Rehabilitation Grants for 30 years, were no longer eligible, thereby restoring benefits to shareholders of the Aleut Pribilof Islands Association, Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Tanana Chiefs, AVCP, Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, Manilaq, Kodiak Area Native Association, and Bristol Bay Native Association.

• Wrote to President Obama in 2009 to suggest that he propose appropriate amounts for Contract Support Costs to strengthen tribal self-governance and to support economic self-sufficiency in his Fiscal Year 2011 budget proposal to Congress for Indian Health Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  The Administration did substantially increase Contract Support Cost requests in the FY11 budget proposal for the Department of Interior Budget.

• Secured an exemption from U.S. Department of Transportation rules to allow medical oxygen to be shipped to locations in the bush without being packed in enormous, blowtorch-proof boxes, which are impractical for transportation in rural Alaska.

• Won inclusion of amendments to the Indian Health Care Improvement Reauthorization and Extension Act to: enhance construction of sanitation facilities; authorize repayment of travel costs for family members who escort elders and young children to larger medical centers for emergency care; permanently authorized the Community Health Aide program to ensure basic medical care is available in remote villages; provided more comprehensive behavioral health services; authorized expansion of long-term care by HIS and tribally-operated hospitals including hospice care, assisted living, community based care, and elder home care.
• Secured an amendment to the Tribal Law and Order Act to direct Congress’s research agency to evaluate the resources of rural health clinics to collect forensic evidence.

• Repealed a law that prevented federally recognized tribes near urban centers from accessing Tribal Justice funding.

• Negotiated the provision to allow Ilisagvik College in Barrow to access funding to improve and expand coursework for tribal governance and tribal public policy (2008).

• Achieved the inclusion of language to ensure that agencies can help children learn through “linguistically and culturally appropriate instruction” in the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act (2007).

• Convinced the Head Start Bureau within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that they had no authority to require the closure of Chugachmuit, Kawerak, Tanana Chiefs Conference, or St. Paul Head Start centers (2005-2008).

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