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LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION OFFICES
There are Legislative Information Offices (LIO's) across the
state designed to help you understand what's happening in state government. The LIO's are staffed by friendly, knowledgeable, non-partisan people who can help you contact legislators, find a bill, testify at a committee hearing or provide you with any more general legislative information. We have two LIO's in District 35, one in Seward and one in Homer. These offices are both open while the legislature is in session from January through May. The Seward office is located at 2001 Seward Hwy, at the south-end of the Chamber of Commerce Bldg; their number is 224-5066. The Homer LIO is located at 345 W. Sterling Hwy, Suite 102A. The Homer LIO is behind Point West Video, across from the Homer Middle School; their number is 235-7878.
BUDGET FINANCE SUBCOMITTEES
The legislature has begun to go through the Governor's
recommended budget for Fiscal Year 2005, which begins July 1st. I am a member of three budget subcommittees, Fish & Game, Revenue, and Transportation (see sub-headings).
FISH AND GAME
I have attended two subcommittee hearings so far for the
Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G). We heard an overview from the Sportfish Division and briefly touched on the Mission and Measures of ADF&G. All funding for the Sportfish Division comes from dedicated federal funds and fishing licenses. The Department discussed the different federal funds and how those funds impact the Department's budget. The Division of Commercial Fisheries presented an overview of this year's proposed cuts, amounting to about a $2 million loss of funds. I asked the Department's Director to prepare detailed information relating to how these funding cuts will impact the Commercial Fisheries Division's functions. In most areas of the state, these funding cuts will have the dramatic effect of limiting time for commercial fishing openings and may cause a conservative management approach. Decreases in fish population
surveys, sonar counters and biologists limit collection of
information and monitoring of returning fish stocks. I am
working with other legislators to restore funding through the budget subcommittee process. If we underutilize our fishery resources, we will not only negatively impact local economies, we will also decrease fish taxes to the state. Please contact Chris Knight in my office at 1-800-665-269 if you would like more specific information.
TRANSPORTATION
The Transportation Finance Subcommittee has met once. The
Commissioner and his staff gave an overview of the Department of Transportation. Questions were raised about reorganizing the list of State Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP) projects each year. Normally, the STIP is redone every three years, but there are concerns about recent repeated annual reorganizations. Some of the state funded road projects in District 35 have been reorganized and delayed for several years by this process. I suggested to the committee that we should consider only allowing additions to the STIP every three years. We will discuss this proposal further at an upcoming meeting.
REVENUE
We will have our first Revenue Subcommittee meeting next week. At first glance, the budget for the Department of Revenue (DOR) has changed very little from last year. However, like all departments, the DOR will have to absorb about $2.6 million in personnel costs related to medical and retirement increases.
EDUCATION FUNDING SUBCOMMITTEE MEETING TIMES
As I mentioned in last week's newsletter, I was appointed to an education subcommittee to discuss the numerous education
funding proposals currently before us. This subcommittee will meet on February 3rd from 11 am-12 pm and February 5th from 12:30-2:30 pm to discuss ways to increase education funding: including, increasing the Base Student Allocation, inflation-proofing the Base Student Allocation, and imposing a $100 per-worker tax for education. We will also investigate giving a one-time direct allocation to school districts for the specific purpose of Teacher's Retirement System contribution increases. We will be taking public testimony at both of these hearings. If you are interested in testifying, please contact your local Legislative Information Office. Remember that this subcommittee is already convinced that we need additional funding for education. At these meetings we will attempt to
find the most favorable way to increase this funding.
SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION
There is quite a bit of consternation surrounding the recent
Anchorage Daily News article on school consolidations in the
Kenai Peninsula Borough School District (KPBSD). The reason
for much of this concern stems from the way the foundation
formula is calculated. The foundation formula allocates
funding on a per student basis, but is also adjusted for
several other factors, one of which is school size. This
adjustment is designed to correct for the different per-student administrative costs of providing equal education in different sized schools. If the KPBSD was an "average" District, the cost savings of consolidation would equal the reduction in state foundation formula funding. However, the KPBSD is one of the most administratively efficient school districts in the state, and has historically spent less on administration than the calculated extra cost of operating smaller schools. Therefore, by consolidating schools we would only "save" 3 million dollars while losing $3.5 million in state foundation formula adjustments. If the KPBSD had done a poor job of managing our schools in the past and had spent more than the average differential, eliminating our smaller schools would have created a net savings for the District.
HB 395 HEARING
The Shallow Natural Gas regulation bill, , will be heard in the House Oil and Gas Committee on Thursday, February 5th, at 1:00 pm. As you may remember from previous news articles, this bill addresses six main issues: 1.) Better protection for water quality. 2.) Better protection of surface owner's property rights. 3.) Allowing consideration of public comments. 4.) Providing better public notice. 5.) Closing regulatory loopholes allowing operators to access natural gas below 3,000 feet. 6.)
Repealing the Commissioner of DNR's authority to override local ordinances. I co-sponsored this bill with three other
legislators who are similarly concerned about shallow natural gas regulations. This bill addresses completely separate issues than the buyback legislation that myself and Senator Gary Stevens have introduced. Testimony on HB 395 should be limited to the issues addressed in HB 395.
Link to HB 395:
SENATE BILL 250 STATUS
, Buyback of Homer Area Shallow Natural Gas
Leases, will be heard in the Senate Community and Regional
Affairs Committee on Wednesday, February 4th. The bill sponsor (Senator Gary Stevens) and the committee members will discuss the bill. Public testimony may be taken in the future, but for this meeting the public is welcome to listen in from the LIO. I will be working with Senator Gary Stevens to make our case for this important legislation.
SEISMIC SURVEYS
Approximately 80-90 private property owners in the Homer area were recently contacted by a company called EDCON. EDCON is requesting permission from these property owners to do low level seismic work, or "gravity surveys," on private land. I have learned from conversations with the Department of Natural Resources that this passive survey is generally permissible on state land and may be conducted in areas regardless of whether or not the land or mineral rights have been leased. I urge caution in drawing too close of a connection between this survey and the Homer area Shallow Natural Gas (SNG) leases. This survey is part of a broader regional survey that was planned before the letting of the Kachemak Bay area SNG leases. I do not believe that any costs associated with this survey could be attributed to the cost of buying back the SNG leases in the Homer area.
HB 260 PASSED SENATE HESS
I introduced last year to encourage volunteerism among health care providers. If HB 260 becomes law, health care providers would gain immunity from liability for civil damages resulting from omissions in provided health care services. This immunity, however, only applies when the health care services are provided free of charge and with the patient's prior consent. This change in statute would be especially useful for retired physicians who may still maintain their license, but not their expensive medical malpractice insurance. HB 260 was passed out of the Senate HESS Committee on January 28th, and now awaits a hearing in Senate Judiciary.
HJR 31 DISCUSSION
The House Ways and Means Committee has considered , a
constitutional amendment to distribute about 1/2 of the
principle of the Permanent Fund to current state residents
while terminating the yearly dividend program. The remaining $15 billion dollars left in the Permanent Fund would be used to generate revenue for state services. This plan could pay up to $20,000 per person in one-lump sum, while generating about $750 million for state services each year. Discussion centered on the potential positive and negative impacts on future generations created by distributing a large cash payout. The resolution's sponsor, Rep. Jim Holm, believes HJR 31 could be another alternative for the voters to consider this fall along with the Percent of Market Value (POMV) plan.
Distributing proceeds from state assets as cash to current
residents could imply that the legislature might then be able to distribute an equal percentage of land. Remember that the Permanent Fund is simply proceeds of our subsurface oil and mineral rights. At statehood, Alaska received 102 million acres with subsurface mineral rights to provide an economic base for the state. Placing a large portion of the state's assets into private citizen's hands would reduce the state's future ability to fund basic core services. HJR 31 will be heard again in the House Ways and Means Committee.
I do not think HJR 31 has much support from the committee's
members; however, I look forward to any comments you might
have on this proposal.
HESS COMMITTEE
We met once this week to hear an overview on the Crossings
Wilderness Expeditions for Youth (CWEY) program, which is based in Wrangell. This is a voluntary program for at-risk youth. The programs last an average of 6 weeks and have a high success rate. The kids spend time in the wilderness learning and developing a variety of skills that also apply to their regular lives. Currently, regulations do not allow Medicaid to pay for sending children to in-state treatment programs like CWEY. Medicaid pays about $90,000 per adolescent to send kids out of state for similar therapy programs. We are working to get these regulations changed so kids can stay in state for treatment, which would save Medicaid about $70,000 per child and keep our dollars in Alaska.
BILL ACCESS SYSTEM
All bills can be found on the State's BASIS system. You can see what committee a bill is in, when it will be heard, how committee members voted, and much more. You can access the system from the website below:
LIVE ON THE WEB
Remember that you can hear most committee hearings or tune into just about any legislative session, present or past, by going to Gavel to Gavel, which transmits TV and public radio broadcasts of the state legislature as they occur. Gavel to Gavel also has an online archive of past meetings. Click on the link below to connect to Gavel to Gavel:
Link to Governor's State of the State Speech:
If you need to contact the staff please click on one of the links below:
Lauren Radcliffe,
Cameron Yourkowski,
Chris Knight,
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