The AKPIRG Advocate, February 2025
🚨 ACTION ALERT 🚨
All hands on deck to SAVE THE CFPB
🚨 ACTION ALERT 🚨 Sign on to our petition to SAVE THE CFPB: bit.ly/SaveTheCFPB
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is an independent bureau within the Federal Reserve responsible for ensuring that financial services and products available to American consumers are fair and transparent. When big banks, credit bureaus, predatory lenders, and Big Tech wrongfully manipulate or fail their customers, the CFPB sues. To date, the CFPB has delivered $21 billion in relief to American consumers.
The Trump administration has halted operations at the CFPB, leaving consumers without this essential oversight.
We need our federal delegation - Representative Nick Begich, Senator Lisa Murkowski, and Senator Dan Sullivan - to stand up on behalf of all Alaskan consumers and use every tool available to restore CFPB operations to their full capacity.
Sign on, and share with your community: bit.ly/SaveTheCFPB
This fact sheet sheds light on the number of Alaskans who have reached out to the CFPB for help and have benefitted from the CFPB’s work to hold companies accountable for abusive, predatory, and deceptive practices.
Created by the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC), Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), and Consumer Federation of America (CFA)
 If you, a friend, or family member has ever been helped by the CFPB, Americans for Financial Reform is collecting stories like yours to show why the CFPB is so important, including if you've:
received a refund for unfair junk fees,
had errors on your credit report fixed,
dealt with companies giving you the call center runaround,
resolved medical debt impacting your credit,
found relief from predatory loans
Sharing your story can help defend the agency that has fought for fair financial practices and saved families billions of dollars.
Apply to be AKPIRG's Executive Director!
Join AKPIRG as the new Executive Director! Lead a dynamic team driving impactful advocacy and community outreach. Competitive salary, excellent benefits, and a 4-day work week. Apply now to shape Alaska's future by sending resume and cover letter to info@nokomisstrategies.co. Applicant review begins March 5th.
To see the full job description, visit akpirg.org/careers
The Alaska Energy Transparency Project (AETP) now has a newsletter on Substack!
The Alaska Energy Transparency Project (AETP) just launched a newsletter on Substack!
The AETP newsletter provides a roundup of recent news about the electric sector in Alaska, including recent AETP stories, short news pieces, and links to stories in other publications. It also has information about the four Railbelt cooperatives, including dates of upcoming board meetings, board elections, and other developments.
Whether you're an expert in the Alaska energy sector or if you're just a civically engaged rate-payer at your local electric cooperative, this newsletter is teeming with relevant info to keep you up-to-date and informed about all things Alaska energy.
Subscribe today, and share with anyone you think may be interested!
New Faces at AKPIRG!
AKPIRG is growing! Four new staff members have joined Team AKPIRG since the start of 2025 - three of them in brand new positions for our organization. Join us in welcoming our new staff members to Team AKPIRG!
Ashlyn Luckhurst (she/her) - Operations Specialist
Jaylein Kriska (she/her) - Language Access Project Coordinator
June Okada (she/her) - Infrastructure Funding Analyst
Alec "AJ" Wilber (he/him) - Digital Communications Specialist
Keep up with AKPIRG:
The AKPIRG Digital Archive
In the past several years, we at AKPIRG have learned the value of record-keeping in our work. Two years ago, we took custody of the AKPIRG Archives from the UAA Consortium Library -- 50 years' worth of boxes containing the entirety of our organizational history -- and we digitized them for public use. We knew that these archives would be helpful in learning where we've come from as an organization and informing where we're going. But they contain so much more -- they tell the story of our communities, our movement, and our state.
And, the story is still being written.
As Alaska's only nonprofit consumer advocacy and research organization, AKPIRG makes a point to show up in decision-making spaces and advocate on behalf of Alaskans. Multiple times a week, from the Alaska State Legislature to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska to local media outlets, AKPIRG files public comments, gives testimony, publishes op-eds, and more.
Since the end of 2024, we have been adding these records to our digital archive in real time (or as close to it as we can). This means that all of AKPIRG's public statements are available on our website for the public to see, use, and share.
AKPIRG advocates for transparency from public entities every day, and this is just one way for us to offer that same standard of transparency to our community.
This is just a pilot version of a digital archive -- we're seeking greater funding to build out, debug, and generally make this online tool more functional for users. Consider making a donation to support this ongoing project: akpirg.org/donate
Have you applied for your PFD?
Have you applied for the 2025 PFD yet? Alaskans have until Sunday, March 31, to submit their applications!
If you have yet to apply, consider choosing to donate a portion of your PFD to AKPIRG through Pick.Click.Give! Pick.Click.Give makes it easy to support AKPIRG and other Alaska organizations that you love.
By choosing to support AKPIRG through Pick.Click.Give, you are choosing to support more accountability and transparency in our government; more robust language access and Alaska Native language revitalization; more affordable and reliable broadband for all Alaskans; more just and people-centered economic policies at the local, state, and federal levels; and more affordable, renewable energy in Alaska.
Thank you for your support!
