New boss at state resources agency: Insider who knows how to work the levers, get things done

Akis Gialopsos is Alaska’s new acting Commissioner of Natural Resources. He replaces Corri Feige, who resigned June 30 for family reasons.

Akis isn’t well known outside the state capitol in Juneau but he is a veteran insider in the corridors of power who knows where the levers are.

Most important, he has the confidence of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who appointed him to take Feige’s place.

The new acting commissioner says he has marching orders to finish out Feige’s short-term priorities.

Those include revamping the state’s wildfire response and protection programs – the 2022 fire year is a reminder of how important that is – along with, among other things, pitching Alaska’s potential for minerals critical to national defense in an increasingly unsafe world.

By virtue of his previous state jobs he has broad knowledge of natural resource issues and the mechanics of government, and he also knows how to get an agenda through the Legislature.

Legislators say he is well-liked in the capitol, with an affable, persuasive personality that makes him effective on both sides of the partisan aisle.

Natural resources commissioners often bring with them professional and technical backgrounds. Feige, for example, is a geophysicist. Mark Myers, a previous commissioner, is a geologist.

But resource commissioners often come in with other skills, such as in law and knowledge of rural Alaska.

Akis is one of those commissioners who bring in skills that will help people in his agency, who have technical skills, get things done.

In that context he has a superb resume that includes, interestingly, small business experience. From a young age he was helping out in the family business, Little Italy restaurant in Anchorage.

Akis’s father, Spiros, and mother, P.J., opened Little Italy in November, 1984, and by age four Akis was helping greet customers at the door. Through the years he did all the things needed in running a busy restaurant including dishwashing, table waiting and when he was older,“prep” cooking, managing inventory and working with vendors.

It was a family affair. Sisters Anastasia and Emily helped out, too. Akis attended the University of Alaska Anchorage in an international studies program but had to drop out in his senior year when his father suffered a heart attack and he was needed full-time in the restaurant.

Careers can take turns in interesting ways. He came to know former state Rep. Charisse Millet after she helped the family navigate the state licensing system. Akis volunteered in Millet’s reelection campaign and, impressed with his skills, she invited him to go to Juneau to work as a legislative aide.

When Millet left the Legislature Sen. Cathy Giessel, the state senator for the district, recruited Akis to work as staff to the Senate Resources Committee, which Giessel chaired.

When Giessel was chosen to be Senate President in 2019 Akis became her chief of staff, coordinating the agenda for the Senate’s Republican Majority.

“The work at the Resources committee was like getting a master’s degree in natural resources,” Akis said.

Giessel said Akis was hesitant in taking the committee job when they first talked in late 2014. “He was clear (with me) that he knew nothing about resources,” she said. But he dove in and learned quickly. “He proved what commitment to a job can do in producing excellent performance,” Giessel said.

The topics at the Senate committee at the time were complex, she said. “They included oil taxes; negotiations to delete cash oil (incentive) credits; fishing permits and set net issues; hunting license fee issue’ mining projects and permitting, park land and invasive species.”

The way the Senate operated its resource committee was to be an advantage, Akis said, because all resources-related legislation ran through one committee, which meant, as committee staff, he had to become knowledgeable on a broad array of resource issues.

The state House operated differently, with energy and fisheries split off into special committees.

Akis had to temporarily leave state service late 2019 when his father passed away and he was needed to help run the family restaurant. “It was a difficult time for his family,” Giessel said. “He rightly prioritized family over the job.”

He wasn’t gone from Juneau for long. When Ben Stevens became Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s chief of staff he needed a deputy. Akis fit the bill and remained deputy chief of staff even after Stevens left state service. There he learned the mechanics of government within the executive branch to match what he had learned of the legislative side under Giessel.

When Miles Baker, Dunleavy’s legislative affairs director, was shifted in 2021 to help coordinate the influx of new federal infrastructure programs the governor named Akis to replace him. That meant Akis was the governor’s chief lobbyist responsible for getting Dunleavy’s bills through the Legislature.

All of this gives Akis a broad background in resources issues matched with the critical knowledge of how things get done in Juneau. Those are essential skills in heading a large and complex agency.

A top priority when Akis took the acting commissioner job was completing the reorganization of the state’s Division of Forestry and Fire Protection, which became more important in a year of major wildfires across the state.

The immediate goal Is to increase in-state capacity for standing up fire crews to respond quickly to increasingly severe fire regimes, so there would be less need to import firefighters from the Lower 48. This is not only very expensive but causes delay because of the time needed to mobilize and bring firefighters to the state.

The governor’s goal is not only faster response time but to have Alaskans on the fire lines so more of the paychecks stay in Alaska.

The DNR will also be implementing a new law that passed the Legislature this year that allows state funds to be used for wildfire preventive work, like reducing the “fuel load” of beetle-killed spruce around vulnerable communities.

Under previous law state funds could only be used in actual firefighting but not in prevention work. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Mike Cronk, R-Tok.

Cronk pushed the proposal as an economic development tool, to develop more work for people in rural communities, and as an incentive to join firefighting crews that could be called out to fight fires.

Years ago Alaska had an active group of village firefighting crews that could be called out as needed but over time the work became less attractive mainly because of the uncertainty of the seasonal work. The new law will allow people to do more kinds of work, creating incentives to sign up.

This has been a bad fire year, with more than 3 million acres burned so far and a $25 million appropriation made by the Legislature tapped out. That may require an additional supplemental appropriation this year if the current trend of more fires burning at higher intensity continues.

Also on the new commissioner’s plate is overseeing a major new agricultural project near Nenana, in Interior Alaska. Years in the planning, the Nenana-Totchaket Agriculture Project will make state lands available for new farms and businesses to support them.

Infrastructure has been built to support the project including an all-year road built by Doyon, Ltd., the Fairbanks-based Native regional corporation, for oil exploration (which proved unsuccessful) and a bridge across the Nenana River built with federal funds, an effort organized by Nenana’s Alaska Native tribe.

Empty grocery shelves are still fresh in Alaskans’ memory from the pandemic, and encouraging more locally-grown good is a key priority for the state.

Another issue on Akis’ desk at DNR, and a knotty one, is finding a way to induce more exploration for natural gas in Cook Inlet, which supplies most of the energy for power generation and space heating in Southcentral Alaska, where half of the state’s population lives.

In 2010 gas produced from older, mature gas wells in the region was declining so fast that Anchorage city officials prepared plans for winter “brownouts” if gas supplies fell short.

Plans were also made by utilities to import liquefied natural gas to make sure the lights stayed on and homes were heated.

When Hilcorp Energy arrived in Alaska in 2012 a major investment program resulted in development of new gas, and a state exploration incentive program brought smaller independent companies to the state, resulting in more gas being found in the Inlet.

The incentive program has been discontinued (it was very expensive for the state) and while Hilcorp has continued to explore and find gas the overall production in the Inlet is once again dropping.

This has caused Hilcorp to recently warn utilities in the region that in a few years gas reserves may fall below what’s needed to meet the need.

As acting commissioner, Akis is familiar with this. When he worked for Giessel in the Senate he was deeply engaged in efforts to restructure the exploration incentive program, but the Legislature ultimately dropped it because state revenues were tight at the time.

During that time, however, Akis became familiar with the problems of Inlet producing and exploring companies.

There’s no easy fix to this. The Legislature has little appetite to resurrect the exploration incentive as they were previously constructed, but the state, through DNR, must find some new way to get more natural gas developed in the region.

While Akis has inherited ambitious short-term priorities, he is positioned well to lead DNR in its mission to develop and conserve Alaska’s natural resources in the public interest.