Senate bill restores PFDs to Fairbanks Four, while Legislature keeps shorting all Alaskans

By SUZANNE DOWNING

April 17, 2026 – The Alaska Senate this week unanimously passed a bill aimed at restoring Permanent Fund dividends to a narrow group of Alaskans: those whose criminal convictions are later overturned or dismissed. Consider it back pay for time served for wrongs not committed.

But the vote has an ironic twist: The Legislature has not funded the full dividend through use of the legal statutory formula for 10 years.

Under current law, Alaskans convicted of a felony or certain combinations of misdemeanors lose their eligibility for a Permanent Fund dividend during their incarceration, with those funds placed into a “restorative justice account.”

Senate Bill 167, sponsored by Sen. Scott Kawasaki, will likely also pass the House unanimously. It would allow individuals to recover dividends they forfeited while serving time, if their convictions are later vacated, reversed, or dismissed. It’s an incredibly small slice of population that this would impact and thus, the fiscal impact is negligible.

Kawasaki said the state has a duty and obligation to rectify harm done to those who might have been wrongfully convicted and to those who have been exonerated of a crime.

The bill provides a pathway for those individuals to apply for back payments within one year of their convictions being overturned. It would not apply to cases where charges were simply dropped as part of a plea agreement. Kawasaki’s bill is really aimed at helping four men known as the Fairbanks Four, whose convictions in the 1990s for the murder of John Hartman were later overturned when another man confessed to the murder.

The legal formula for determining the annual Permanent Fund dividend that is still on the books (but not followed) was first broken in 2016 when then-Gov. Bill Walker vetoed roughly half of the calculated dividend amount. Since then, successive legislatures have continued to appropriate reduced dividends, often far below what the statute would provide.

While this year’s dividend has not yet been determined, the statutory dividend would be about $3,800. The current amount being debated is under $1,500 and will likely to be closer to $1,000 by the time the Legislature adjourns. What Alaskans will get in October is likely to be one-quarter of what they are legally owed. The governor has no legal ability to add back to a sliced-and-diced dividend.

The result is that every eligible Alaskan has, in effect, seen a portion of their dividend withheld year after year, not because of their own criminal conduct, but because lawmakers themselves don’t follow the law.

On one hand, the Senate has acted unanimously to make whole a small number of individuals whose dividends were forfeited due to convictions that did not ultimately stand. On the other, the same body continues to break the law that establishes the statutory formula that would deliver full dividends to all Alaskans.

The bill now advances to the House, where it is likely to be fast tracked. If the Legislature adjourns May 20, there are only 33 days left in this session to get Kawasaki’s bill passed.