January 15, 2026, Seward Folly

Michael Paschall, former publisher of the Seward Journal, and the former chief of a Delta Junction-area volunteer fire department, pleaded guilty January 8 to defrauding the department of more than $440,000.

Paschall agreed to a plea deal during a hearing before Superior Court Judge Patricia Haines.

In exchange for his plea, the state agreed to drop three felony counts of first-degree theft and a misdemeanor count of evidence tampering.

The charges stem from Paschall’s conduct during his time as chief of the Rural Deltana Volunteer Fire Department and as the board’s secretary.

Investigators allege he took the money between August 2017 and January 2024, hiding the theft until board members uncovered it two years ago. At that point, the board discovered Paschall had failed to make insurance payments for the department over several years. They responded by firing Paschall and removing him from his role as secretary.

Dave Neuberger, who was board chair at the time, said in a 2024 interview that he reported accounting discrepancies to the Alaska State Troopers shortly after the board found out about the insurance lapse and other suspicious transactions.

The department realized at that time that they had been operating without insurance for years.

“The fire firefighters went out there and drove… and they were not insured, and obviously he created substantial risk to the firefighters themselves and to the community,” the prosecution said during a hearing over a year ago.

The board had to temporarily close the department because it didn’t have the necessary insurance to operate, so they locked the doors to both fire stations until the policy could be reinstated. In the meantime, Delta’s city fire department stepped in to cover Rural Deltana’s service area and paid to use some of its equipment. Operations at Rural Deltana resumed last fall.

During the January 8 hearing, prosecutor Andrew Grannik explained that Paschall, who had been the chief of the Volunteer Fire Department at Delta Junction, also controlled the department’s bank account. While in that position, he manipulated the account by making payments through his own credit cards and issued payments to himself.

Paschall now faces up to three years in prison after entering a guilty plea. His defense attorney, Hannah Marx, argued that his sentence should not exceed two years. The prosecution and defense will present their arguments at a sentencing hearing scheduled for July. Paschall is also required to pay more than $440,000 in restitution to Rural Deltana.

Paschall closed the doors of the Seward Journal in November 2023, after years of minimal advertising and not charging individuals for the paper. Asked why he shut down the Seward operations, he cited “…the lack of support from the business community for advertising, which is the funding source for newspapers. Several people asked how we produce the paper without charging for individual copies. Individual copy sales are a small percentage of the revenue generated by newspapers.”

The timeline raises uncomfortable questions. As the Seward Journal struggled to keep afloat with little advertising income and no fees from readers, Paschall was simultaneously funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fire department. The overlap suggests that while the newspaper couldn’t pay its own way, Paschall was securing funds elsewhere, using public money to prop up his personal finances even as one enterprise after another slipped under.