Senate Labor & Commerce, 5/6/26, 1:30pm

Good afternoon. I'd like to call the Labor and Commerce Committee of the Senate to order. The time is now 1:35 PM. We are in Beltz Room 105 of the Thomas Stewart Building in the nation's most beautiful capital city. Of Juneau, Alaska.

Today is Wednesday, May 6th. Members present are Senator Dunbar, Senator Yunt, Senator Gray Jackson, and myself, Senator Bjorkman. Senator Merrick will be here shortly. Let the record reflect that we have a quorum to conduct business. I would like to also recognize the Honorable Representative Andrew Gray, who has joined us in the audience.

We have a number of bills on our agenda today. We'll start off today's meeting with House Bill 249, transfer of.

Vehicle Title to Insurer. Then we will take up House Bill 110, Social Work Licensure Compact. Following that, we will take up Senate Bill 111, Digital Product Repair. Following that, we will take up SB 250, Data Centers Utilities. And finally, we will take up Senate Bill 207, Property Possession and Property Crimes.

Welcome everyone to Senate Labor and Commerce. Please turn off or silence your cell phones and join me in welcoming our recording secretary, Carrie Tupo, and our LAO moderator, Jude Augustine. 2016. First, we will take up House Bill 249, transfer of vehicle title to insurer. This is our second hearing on the bill.

During our first hearing, we had a presentation of the bill and took invited testimony. I would like to invite the bill sponsor staff and Tamayo Harbison to the table to provide a brief recap of the bill. Welcome back to Senate Labor and Commerce, sir. Thank you, Chair Bjorkman. Senate Labor and Commerce, for the record, and Tamayo Harbison, staff to Representative Moore.

Uh, House Bill 249, um, just to recap, would allow for the, uh, electronic signature transfer of a vehicle title between an insurance company and, uh, for example, an auto auction company in the state of Alaska. Um, currently the, uh, insurance company is required to get a notary, which has caused, um, backlogs. And so in an effort to streamline that process and, and bring up to date some antiquated transfer laws. Representative Morris brought this bill forward and thanks you for your consideration. Thank you very much, Mr. Harbison.

Are there any questions from committee members?

Hearing and seeing none at this point in time, I will open public testimony on House Bill 249.

Is there anyone in the room or online who wishes to provide testimony?

Seeing and hearing no one wishing to testify to House Bill 249 at this time, I will close public testimony.

That brings the bill back before the committee. Mr. Harbison, do you have any closing remarks? I don't. Chair Bjorkman, again, Representative Moore thanks the committee very much for consideration of this legislation. Very well.

Hearing and seeing no further committee discussion or objection, what are the wishes of the committee? Mr. Chairman, thank you. I move to report House Bill 249, version 34, liver salmon, 1279/nickel, from committee with individual recommendations and the attached fiscal note. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Ray Jackson.

Is there any objection? I will note for the record that we have been joined by Senator Merrick at 1:39 PM. Hearing and seeing no objection, House Bill 249 version 34-LS1279/n, as in Kiskee, is reported from committee with individual recommendations and the attached fiscal note. We'll take a brief at ease while we sign the paperwork and set up for our next item on our agenda. Brief at ease.

We're back on the record. Next item on our agenda is House Bill 110, sponsored by the Honorable Representative Andrew Gray. This is our 4th hearing on this bill. Members have a draft proposed committee substitute in their packet. May I have a motion, please?

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I move committee substitute for House Bill 110 version 34-LS0258/h as the working document. Object for purposes of explanation. Mr. Conrad Jackson is here with us to present the changes that are provided in this committee substitute.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the record, Conrad Jackson, staff to Senator Bjorkman and the Labor and Commerce Committee.

The draft proposed CS before the members, version H, really only has a few changes unlike previous CSs that the committee has seen. The summary of changes I'll give you is from the most recent version G. So to the new version H, we have added sections that would make sure that all of our background check requirements professionals joining the various compacts meet the requirements and the standards of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. We further added that language as a cleanup to the audiologists and the physical therapists that had been previously missed when those— when those pieces were added to the legislation. From there, Mr. Chairman, we add the the RHTP Advisory Council. That's found towards the back of the bill.

Then we make a small cleanup, really a typo on page 147. The word association was replaced with the word associated. And that was— it just makes a little more sense because we're talking about associated rules, not association rules. And that's the extent of the changes in the CS. Very well.

Thank you very much, Mr. Jackson. Are there any questions for Mr. Jackson?

Seeing and hearing none, with that I will remove my objection to the Committee Substitute. Is there further objection? Hearing no objection, House Bill 110 version 34-LS0258/h as in hogzitta is before us as a working document. The Department of Health and Social Services brought to our attention that there are two minor changes needed in the CS before we can report the bill out of committee. A copy of the conceptual amendment is on members' desks entitled Conceptual Amendment Number 1 to the CS House Bill 110 version backslash H. May I have a motion, please?

Yes, Chair Bjorkman, I move Conceptual Amendment Number 1. I'll object for purposes of explanation. Mr. Jackson is back to explain these changes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the record, Conrad Jackson, staff to Senator Bjorkman and the Labor and Commerce Committee.

The suggested changes were brought to us by the Division of Corporations, Business and Professional Licensing, just to make it a little more clear on the licensure of respiratory therapists. As members will note, the change begins in— on page 84 of the bill in Section 20 under 0890020. And on line 15, beginning on line 15, we are deleting all language through line 20 to the end of the word administered. And then from there we are adding in, we are inserting holds a respiratory therapist certification.

The thinking behind this by the division, and we do have Director Robb, or should have her here behind me for further explanation if the committee requires. As you see in here, paragraph 1 talks about a diploma or its equivalent or has completed an accredited respiratory care educational program. If a person holds a respiratory therapist certification, they have completed those, those educational requirements. So there was not a concern on how they got there, just that they did get there. The second change is on page 85.

In 0890050, and this has to do with license renewal. And in this case, we're deleting the words "submits proof to the department that the licensee," and then we're replacing that with "successfully." So it would read, "The licensee successfully completed 20 hours of continuing respiratory care education during the," deleting the word "previous" and inserting "concluding," licensing period. The point here is to make sure that, uh, they continue to have those 20 hours of continuing education.

During each licensing cycle.

Very well. Thank you very much, Mr. Jackson. With us also available for questions is the Director of Corporations, Businesses, and Professional Licensing, the illustrious Sylvan Robb. Are there any questions for Director Robb?

Seeing and hearing no questions on this proposed conceptual amendment, I'll remove my objection. Is there any further objection? Hearing and seeing no further objection, conceptual amendment number 1 to CS for House Bill 110 version \h as in huslia is adopted. Is there any further discussion on the underlying bill?

[Speaker:CHAIR] I have a few comments. I would like to thank all the members of the Health and Social Services Committee and Chair Dunbar for the work that his committee did as well on the four compacts and the language of the Rural Health Transformation Project Council that are now pieces of legislation that exist inside of this bill. I would like to thank the representative from Anchorage, Andrew Gray, for providing us with this most excellent vehicle to talk about all of these important topics that will help us come into compliance with the federal mandates under the Rural Health Care Transformation Program. Those 4 compacts that are included in this bill are a compact to help doctors, a compact for physician's assistants, a compact for psychologists, and a compact for EMS folks. The underlying bill, of course, remains a social work compact, Also included in this bill are Title VIII licensing changes and scope of practice adjustments for respiratory therapists, which we just cleaned up with an amendment, as well as scope of practice for the occupational therapists and physical therapists.

So this is an important bill for a lot of healthcare reasons and a lot of modernization here that is going to clean up licensing and practice in our state. I'm excited to move it forward.

Seeing and hearing no further discussion, what are the wishes of the committee? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move to report committee substitute for House Bill 110 version 34-LS0258/h as amended from committee with individual recommendations in the attached fiscal notes and that we grant legislative legal the authority to make technical and conforming changes when incorporating the conceptual amendment. Is there any objection? Seeing and hearing no objection, committee substitute for House Bill 110 version 34-LS0258/h as in huslia as amended is reported from committee with individual recommendations and the attached fiscal note.

We grant legislative legal the authority to make technical and conforming changes when incorporating the conceptual amendment. We'll take a brief at ease while we sign the paperwork and set up for our next item on our agenda. Brief it is.

We're back on the record now. It is 1:51 PM here in Senate Labor and Commerce. Our next item on our agenda is Senate Bill 111, sponsored by the Honorable Senator Forrest Dunbar. This is our third hearing on the bill. Thank you very much to Mr. Halen Benken, staff to Senator Dunbar, for coming to the table.

If you could please provide a brief recap of the bill, that would be most excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Bjorkman. I'll keep this brief. Uh, Senate Bill 111 is a bill providing Alaskans with the right to repair their digital products.

It requires that manufacturers make all repair parts, documentation, and tools available— that they make available to their authorized service providers, available to owners and independent service providers on equal terms. I know there is a CS forthcoming, so I'll wait to speak on details of that later. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Banken. Are there any questions for the bill sponsor?

Members do have a draft proposed committee substitute in their packet. May I have a motion, please? Yes, Mr. Chairman. I move committee substitute for Senate Bill 111, version 34-LS0560/o, as the working document. I'll object for purposes of explanation.

I'll invite my staff, Mr. Conrad Jackson, to the table to present the changes provided in the committee substitute.

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. For the record, Conrad Jackson, staff to Senator Bjorkman and the Labor and Commerce Committee. The draft proposed CS version 0 before members for consideration Makes just really a few changes from the version H. First, there's a conforming change on page 1 in the short title, changing from digital right to repair to consumer digital right to repair. The next change is in section 2, starting on page 3, line 23, going through page 4, line 2, and that subsection C is deleted. That deletion removes power sports equipment, farm equipment, and the like.

From there, Mr. Chairman, the next change is a minor drafting convention change in subsection A. So rather than say, except as provided in B and C, just says section— subsection B. The next change is in section 2 on page 5 and 6 in the definition— definitions section. And the definition of digital product is rewritten and slightly narrowed, as well as a definition is added for power sports equipment. I'm sorry, it's not added, it is deleted.

Thank you very much, Mr. Jackson. Are there any questions for Mr. Jackson?

Hearing and seeing none, I'll remove my objection. Is there any further objection to the committee substitute? I object, Mr. Chair. Very well.

Would you like to speak to your objection? Yeah, I, um, I just wanted to speak to it. Um, this of course isn't a minor change. This removes all kinds of motorsports equipment, heavy equipment, and pares it down to a relatively narrow bill. Um, there is a letter of support for the original bill from the Alaska Miners Association because they have experienced practices by manufacturers for their equipment that prevents them from repairing them themselves.

And I think, um, miners and other folks, especially working in rural Alaska, should have the ability to repair their own equipment. And so, um, I think it's unfortunate that, uh, that has all been removed from the bill. Uh, that being said, um, I understand that that is the perhaps the will of the committee, and so I will remove my objection. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Senator Dunbar. By way of discussion on the committee substitute, as we had our public hearing on this bill, there were comments and significant testimony given both for and against multiple parts of this bill and what the bill would do and what it would not do. We heard significant concern from equipment dealers of.

Outdoor power sports equipment, as well as airport equipment rentals, other tractor rental, as well as the Farm Bureau, who had significant concerns with the bill and how far that it went. It was very apparent, and I appreciate the scope, and I appreciate the need in many cases for us to be able to repair our equipment, and I have advocated significantly for that. However, with the amount of people who came out and had significant concerns with this bill, especially small businesses in my district and other parts of the state, I didn't feel comfortable taking such a big bite in a policy change at this time. And so I think if we are to look at how we can enact a right to repair statute, like other states have done, by confining it at this point to consumer electronics, This would be phones, personal computers, other things. I think that we can make progress on this issue and we can take steps forward.

I remain concerned about diesel engines and the diesel exhaust fluid systems and how they too often go into limp mode and are debilitated by computer programming that really is instigated by onerous emissions standards on those engines that really shut down their operability, and that's a problem. So instead of choosing not to move this bill forward at all, I wanted to move this narrow right-to-repair bill forward and so we could keep working and talking about the issue and talking about the challenges that the inability for folks to repair their products face. And so So that's really the choice that I'm faced with and we all are faced with is how do we respond to an issue that really is being ignored, unfortunately, at the federal level. The issue needs to be taken up at the federal level and the fact that it's not and we have states trying to enact things on their own when they should be taken up at the federal level is not the best scenario. So thank you.

Is there any further objection to the committee substitute?

Hearing and seeing no objection, Senate Bill 111 version 3-4, uh, LS0560/O, is before us as the working document. Is there any further discussion on the underlying bill?

Seeing and hearing no further discussion, what are the wishes of the committee? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move to report committee substitute for Senate Bill 111, version 34-LS0560/o, from committee with individual recommendations in the attached fiscal note. Is there any objection? Seeing and hearing no objection, committee substitute for Senate Bill 111, version 34-LS0560/o, is reported from committee with individual recommendations and the attached fiscal note.

We'll take a brief at ease while we sign the paperwork and set up for our next bill. Brief at ease.

Back on the record. It's 2:01 PM here in Senate Labor and Commerce. Our next item on the agenda is Senate Bill 250, sponsored by the Honorable Senator Lukey Gail Tobin. This is our first hearing on the bill. To present the bill, we have the sponsor, Senator Lukey Gail Tobin, and her staff, Mr. Louis Flora.

Welcome to Senate Labor and Commerce. Please state your names and affiliations for the record. And begin your presentation. For the record, my name is Lukey Gail Tobin, Senator for District I. My name is Louie Flora, and I'm staff to Senator Tobin.

Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee, for taking the time to hear this legislation. We do believe it is a, a critical piece of consumer protection, as recent reports have indicated that there are new considerations of potential hyperscale data centers being considered for our urban core. So what does the bill before you do? Well, SB 250 really talks about how we recognize and understand that data centers, which I'll talk a little bit about what a data center is here in a moment, but data centers provide critical infrastructure. We've seen them before and we've had them in our places, in our communities for since the time of the internet really being established.

They provide cloud services for many communities. They are what help transmit health records. They also provide support for things like autonomous vehicles and for large language modeling with AI devices. Of course, we also know that they are used when there are natural disasters. There is a lot of communication that needs to happen, and there are small modular data centers that are propped up in those situations so that we can have a strong emergency response.

We also know that there are micro data centers that provide support for particular types of technology, telehealth medicine, and often we know that they're are multi-tenant data centers. These are data centers that ensure that places like the legislature and state government are able to process and compute large amounts of data and provide that documentation and protection of our public records that are all now online or, or in the cloud systems. The bill before you really takes an approach that we see President Trump recently taking, which is really around requiring data centers to pay for their infrastructure that's required to to connect to the grid and also to maintain their facilities. In a new rule President Trump proposed, it's really about ensuring that data centers pay the fair cost of what it takes to establish their facilities. So what does those costs entail?

Well, really, their impacts to our land, our data connection, our broadband, and also to our water. So the legislation before you takes a consumer protection approach. It does not prevent development. It does not try to stymie development. It really takes a focus on how do we ensure that ratepayers, Alaskans, are not on the hook to pay for the development of these data centers here in Alaska.

One of the things we do want to note is that we talked with many stakeholders in developing this legislation. We had good conversations with Chugach Electric, the Alaska Center for Power and Energy. We also heard from other community members who had deep concerns about data centers and data center alleys, such as in Virginia, that have really had some significant offsite impacts to ratepayers and to community members. And we wanted to ensure that while we took a balanced approach, we didn't want the, the establishment of data centers in Alaska to be at the public's expense. So we're happy to walk you through a brief sectional analysis.

We can also talk a little bit about the structure in more of a dialogue if committee members have questions. And then we also do have an invited testifier. And of course, I believe a member of the RCA is online for additional questions. Thank you very much, Senator Tobin. Are there any questions from committee members?

Seeing and hearing none, I think it would be most excellent if we could please go through the sectional. Thank you, Chair. Uh, again, Louis Flora, staff to Senator Lukey Tobin. Um, here's the brief sectional of a committee substitute bill that came out of Senate Bill 250, came out of Community and Regional Affairs. In Section 1 on page 1, lines 4 through 10, we add a section to the Alaska Public Utilities Regulatory Act at AS4205.381, which is the section rates are to be just and reasonable, stating that cost incurred by an electric utility to furnish.

Service to a data center shall not be included in rates or charges on a utilities customer unless those rates are designed to recover costs associated with the service to the data center. And on Section 2 is kind of the meat of the bill. Page 1, line 12 through page 5, line 22 establishes a utility— that a utility that provides electric or gas service to a data center must enter into a contract with the large data center and submit that contract to the RCA for review and approval. And that's in Section A. In Section B, a contract with a data center may not cause fuel supply shortages for any public utility in the state.

C, the terms of the data center contract must include an accounting of all costs for infrastructure for a utility to furnish service to a data center and directly assign those costs to the data center. D, we have a provision that transmission infrastructure specific to serving a data center may not be considered part of a backbone transmission system for allocating system costs under an open access transmission tariff. And a backbone transmission system means the transmission assets in the rail belt that facilitate the transmission of electrical power standards established by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC. In Section E, we have a— it says a data center contract must include new variable costs and attribute them to the new user, which would be the data center. Section F requires a contract must include a backup power and reliability plan that prioritizes renewable energy.

G establishes a financial security requirement from a data center if an electric or gas utility must incur over $1 million in capital investment to furnish service to the data center, and that was included at the request of a utility— electric utility. Section H allows the RCA to determine that geographically distributed infrastructure of a data center can be considered a single facility.

We're almost done. Section I requires a municipality to enter into a community benefit agreement with the data center before the RCA approves the contract and before the data is constructed. J, the community benefit agreement must require the data center to submit a waste heat recovery assessment and, if practicable, implement waste heat recovery in the described— as described in the assessment. It must address broadband interconnection costs for the data center and require local digital infrastructure investments. It must include a water usage plan.

K requires a data center to file an end-of-life decommissioning and recycling plan.

Um, I think that's I. Excludes data centers that consume less than 15 megawatts of peak power. Excludes data centers that consume less than 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas annually. M defines contract data center electric utility facility, gas utility, and municipality for purposes of the Act. And finally, Section 3, which occurs on page 5, lines 24 through page 6, lines 10, requires a person who constructs a large data center in the state to file a decommissioning and recycling plan with the Department of Environmental Conservation.

Thank you very much.

Okay, there are a lot of interesting concepts in there. That's really fascinating. We'll go now unless members have— I was fascinated— unless members have questions for the bill sponsor, we'll go now to invited testimony. Our invited testimony is a pretty amazing person from the Kenai Peninsula. Her name is Erin McKittrick.

She is an independent energy analyst who is also an HEA board member. Ms. McKittrick, thank you for joining us today. We're glad you're here. Could you please state your name and affiliation for the record and begin your presentation, please?

Hello, through the chair. My name is Erin McKittrick, and As was stated, I'm an independent energy analyst in Philadelphia. Also serve on the board of HEA as a QR for expert on one of the IRP working groups and work as an occasional consultant. But I am speaking today on my own behalf, and my views do not represent the views of any business or organization. So there was an article in the ADN just yesterday talking about how the military is seeking to build data centers data centers on Alaskan military bases, and utilities quoted as saying that they don't have the fuel to hook up a data center.

And it also talked about the cost-causer-cost-payer principle and whether consumers would be protected from bearing data center-related costs. This is fundamentally a consumer protection bill. I want to focus my testimony today on consumer protections, what already exists, what can be created under current regulatory frameworks, and what can't exist unless something new is legislated. So there are kind of 3 pieces here.

And the first piece is protections that automatically happen under a standard industrial rate structure. And this is kind of the traditional cost-causer, cost-payer framework. It was based on a past world of slowly growing loads in all categories where infrastructure expansion was serving all different types of customers. And under that historical paradigm, the more power that gets sold, the more the prices go down because the fixed costs of existing infrastructure spread out among more kilowatt hours. And the way that this worked is that the costs of the new infrastructure were divided between all kinds of different buckets of customers based on the details of their consumption.

But when a single customer needs new infrastructure that no one else does, that wouldn't have been built at all otherwise, The traditional framework still has everyone paying for some portion of that. And this is how data centers break that traditional model in many cases, where they come in as one customer with a really enormous load, enormous infrastructure requirements. And that creates a cost shift problem that the traditional structure doesn't solve by itself, which is why there have been consumer protection bills passed in so many places, because all electric utilities have always had the old-style cost-causer-cost-payer framework. So then second, you have contracts. So this bill is built around requiring contracts, but of course utilities can sign contracts with customers today.

And if the utility were to sign a special contract with the data center, they could put in the contract things like purchase minimums and contract lengths and provisions about paying for different infrastructure. And these things may add consumer protections, but there's no defined framework today for whether these contracts would happen. Or what protections would be included or how strong they would be. And those contracts also don't touch other areas that this bill does, like water usage and community benefits. And then my third category is consumer protections that aren't currently available to utilities at all.

So everyone's well aware of the gas crisis and South Central Alaska. And while the thrust of yesterday's news article on military data centers is that no one would agree to connect a data center while fuel is scarce, the next paradigm is likely to involve increasing proportions of expensive fuel added to a background of dwindling lower-cost fuel contracts. And so under that framework, if a new large user comes in, requires the utility to buy more of the more expensive fuel rule that would raise the variable portion of a power rate, the cost of power adjustment, for everybody else. And this isn't something actually that a contract could address. It came up recently when RCA— with an RCA hearing that looked at NSTAR's gas cost adjustment and whether there were cost shifts that came from NSTAR providing gas to HEA.

And I'm not a lawyer, and that hearing is complicated, but one piece of it is that NSTAR's tariff didn't allow different gas costs for different customers. And in a lot of ways, that's a very different situation. It's a utility selling to another utility with a bunch of local households as customers. All that gas is already coming from Cook.

Endless general not changing overall demand. But when you take that principle and apply it to a data center, this looks very different. A large data center doesn't exist today, could come in, require vastly more fuel, and it would shift those new fuel costs from the more expensive imports to all of existing homes and businesses. And, you know, if a new data center has the same access to legacy fuel contracts as any other customer, it means that a data center in South Central would be allowed to buy gas that Fairbanks isn't allowed to buy today. And so treating new customers exactly like existing ones is, you know, like the other cost-causer, cost-payer provisions, a system that worked really well under framework where load was increasing slowly.

No one customer drove it. Everyone benefits together. And so data centers can break the paradigm there too. And Section 2E, you know, provides the mechanism to protect customers from those fuel shifts. And so putting this all together with consumer protection, data centers could do what I think everyone would really want them to do, which is spread out the cost and drive rates for everyone down.

And without protection, they could do exactly the opposite.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. McKittrick. Are there any questions from committee members?

I have a couple of questions.

There is a data center that is being considered on the North Slope that would require significant infrastructure to be built by someone and hook up to a utility. I'm wondering, in the provision Section 2D, about the transmission infrastructure specific to a data center not considered part of backbone transmission.

So why is that provision important when we consider a data center that could be built very far away and have significant cost to build infrastructure to connect it to the grid?

Through the chair, this is Louie Flora, staff to Senator Tobin, and if Erin is on there, I think she would be well suited to answer that question.

Uh, yeah, through the chair, I'm a little unclear on the question. A data center on the North Slope using local fuel on the North Slope wouldn't— without connecting to the existing grid doesn't, you know, it wouldn't matter. There's no public utility there. It's not, you know, connected, and so therefore it's not raising anybody's costs or lowering anybody's costs. It's a business proposition separate from the grid.

So I don't quite understand what you mean. Very good. Thank you. That's excellent clarification. Appreciate that.

Data centers themselves have been quite impactful in communities in the Lower 48 and very controversial. Do, do other states and communities where we see a lot of news driven about data centers, do they have provisions in place to mandate community benefit agreements? Are they seeking to put them in place? What is happening around the community benefit agreements.

To the chair, this is Louie Flora, staff to Senator Lukey Tobin. And again, I might defer to Erin, but my understanding is that community benefit agreements have been in place for different projects since the early 2000s, beginning in Los Angeles. I do not know if there's community benefit agreements related with data centers in the lower 48. There could be local zoning that handles some of those issues that are being discussed in community benefit agreements. But there has— there is an article in your packet that discusses the amount of projects that have been rapidly stopped or slowed down by the local opposition.

And so that community benefit agreement is one way to incorporate stakeholder concerns and to make better neighbors out of the data centers. So, but perhaps Erin might have data on the lower 48.

Through the chair, thank you. I don't have— I'm more familiar with the consumer protection provisions. I don't have any particular expertise there. And Luki Tobin for the record, uh, Senator for District I, uh, Senator Bjorkman, the document we're referring to is in your bill packet and it should be entitled $64 billion of data center projects have been blocked or delayed amid local opposition. Uh, this report actually comes from Data Center Watch and, uh, unfortunately one of our invited testifiers was unable to participate today.

Her name is Dr. Sydney Linneman. Dr. Lindeman has been working with different groups from her position that is now as a consultant. Prior, she was at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory working with communities on benefit agreements. The hope and the idea is that to establish good guardrails in advance so that we're not trying to put the cats back in the bag, so to speak. We see places like Virginia that now lawmakers there are trying to figure out how do they prevent the offsite impacts that their communities are experiencing because so many data centers have been built in one specific location.

Our hope is to, to use the lessons learned from the lower 48 and create a good framework now so that we don't have these canceled projects in the state of Alaska, so that we don't see folks who are interested in economic opportunity here have it stalled because there is significant opposition because communities weren't consulted. Understood. That makes sense. Um, final question, I think. Um, so many communities have seen their electricity rates go up in the Lower 48 as a result of data centers moving in to their communities.

However, when we talk about electricity in Alaska and trying to reduce the cost of power, many conversations point to the fact that we lack load customers and electricity users, and that keeps our costs of electricity high. So when we think about data centers coming to Alaska, how— why is that? My first question is, why is that an inverse relationship? Why are data centers in the lower 48 causing electricity costs to go up? But additional load and energy consumption in Alaska would cause electricity rates to go down.

To the chair, this is Louie Flora, staff to Senator Lukey Tobin. And again, I would like to defer to Aaron, who's done a lot of research in this area on the different impacts of energy use and pricing, if you don't mind. Erin. Through the chair. Yes, through the chair.

Thank you. It's a little wonky, but I have to explain a little bit how electric rates are set. And so generally what you do to set electric rates is that you divide your customers into different types. You have, say, residential customers, small, you know, business customers, large industrial customers. And then you go and you divide all your costs into types.

And your cost types are things generally customer, energy, and demand. So customer is like, you know, the charge for the people that are answering the phones. Energy is fuel. And demand is a lot of the cost of things like transmission lines and power plants. And it's complicated how exactly you do that.

And so then when you have a cost like you build a new power plant, you say, okay, you know, we're going to say that this power plant is 40% energy and 60% demand. And so then you go look at all your classes of customers. And you're like, okay, well, my peak demand is caused mostly by my residential consumers. So they're going to pay, you know, 60% of that power plant. And then your businesses will pay some percent of that power plant.

And your industrial users will pay some percent of that power plant. And in a case where kind of everybody's use is rising together, that works out. You built the power plant kind of because.

You needed it. You had overall growing load. Everybody pays a piece of it based on how much energy they use and their peak demand. And then it works out that this— that, you know, the rising demand that's like using more and more of that power plant is lowering costs for everybody. But if you say we need that power plant only for data centers.

That nobody else— yeah, he would have been fine without the power plant if there was no data center. And then if that power plant gets built and then the cost gets split up exactly the same way, you have your residential consumers that are still— now they're a lower portion of peak demand because you've got this new data center. So maybe they only pay 30% of a power plant, but that's still 30% more than they would have paid otherwise because they didn't need the new power plant at all. Kind of how the system for allocating costs can break down. So both things are true that if you have load growing in a way that either doesn't require much new infrastructure or requires infrastructure kind of proportional to all the different classes, then it makes it cheaper for everybody.

But it can also be true either with infrastructure, like I said, or in our specific case here in South Central with fuel, that a very large new customer comes in and requires something that wouldn't be required otherwise, and everybody has to pay at least a little bit. So that's why setting up consumer protections is, is important because you can get the positive benefits of spreading out load between more different customers without these negative ways that can go wrong, which is basically because our systems for allocating costs weren't built for cases like this.

Sorry, that was a long answer. No, that was—. Electric rates are complicated. No, Erin, that was fine. That was helpful.

Thank you for that. Are there any further questions for Ms. McKittrick or the bill sponsor? Also online available for questions from the RCA are Mr. John Springsteen, Commissioner, Ms. Julie Vogler, Commissioner, and utility engineering analyst from the RCA, Clara Knutson-Lada. If anyone has any questions for any of them.

And I see now that all of you heard this bill already in the Community and Regional Affairs Committee. Thank you for your patience.

Is there anything? Senator Yount. One quick one. Through the chair, thank you to the sponsor. How much room for local control does this leave?

If you could please speak to that, the relationship between local municipalities, boroughs, cities, and then the state. Once again, for the record, Lukey Tobin, Senator for District I. Through the chair, Senator Yount, that is a great question. I would say the entire bill is about local control. The, the hope and the idea is that by providing a framework for communities to have conversations with potential data center producers, it will lead to a mutual benefit, a mutual agreement about what the, the consequences can be.

And that's where you see the language starting on page 3, line 24, about that community benefit agreement and municipalities entering into those. We're not trying to get the state involved in these conversations. Instead, we're trying to ensure that there's fair actors on both sides. One of the things that was incredibly important to me, uh, in the lessons and learning that I've been doing about data centers is really thinking about the end of life. We do not want our communities to be on the hook for having to decommission, uh, some of these facilities.

The, the technology is moving so quickly that the GPUs are going from, uh, spaces that are the size of Manhattan to now reducing in their footprint to just being the size of football fields. And a community should not be on the hook to take and decommission all of that technology and get it out of their space. So we think that this bill, while it provides those guardrails, it leaves it up to the local community to discuss and have that collaboration with the potential producer.

Follow-up?

Very good. Senator Tobin, thank you very much. Appreciate the bill hearing. All of you, you're welcome for the review. At this point in time, we will set Senate Bill 250 aside for further consideration at a future meeting.

We'll take a brief at ease while we set up for our next item. Brief at ease.

We're back on the record. It's 2:45 PM here in Senate Labor and Commerce. Up next is Senate Bill 207. This is our second hearing on the bill. During our first hearing, we had a presentation of the bill and took invited testimony.

Thank you to my staff, Mr. Matthew Churchill, for coming to the table to provide a brief recap of the bill. Please put yourself on the record and begin your brief recap. Chair Bjorkman, members of the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee, thank you for hearing Bill 207 again today. Senate Bill 207. For the record, Matt Churchill, and I'm staffed to Senator Bjorkman.

The bill before you establishes a process that allows property owners to seek prompt law enforcement assistance in removing unlawful occupants while creating protections for occupants who may be wrongfully removed. SB 207 also clarifies that creating a fraudulent rental agreement is a crime of forgery and that advertising for sale, lease, or lease a dwelling when one has no legal right to do so is the crime of deceptive business practices.

With us today for committee questions, we have Casey Schroeder, our legislative liaison for the Department of Law's Criminal Division, and on the line we have Lail Harrison. She's Senior Assistant Attorney General.

As well as Alaska State Trooper Captain Scott Bartlett. Thank you again for hearing this bill today. Thank you very much, Mr. Churchill. Are there any questions for the bill sponsor or any of the folks listed as being available for questions? Captain Bartlett from the Troopers, Ms. Casey Schroeder, Assistant AG, Ms. Layle Harrison, Senior Assistant AG for the Civil Division.

No questions? I have a question. And Nancy Mead is here from Courts. Senator Gray Jackson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

So, and I looked at the bill, but in the bill, are there any protections for somebody who has a verbal agreement with an owner but not a written agreement?

Through the chair, uh, thank you for the question, Senator Gray Jackson. Um, so the way the bill would work, the landlord would swear an affidavit that there never had been a rental agreement, and, and rental agreements can be verbal, often are. Um, it's still a binding contract. Um, so yeah, if the landlord says that there's never been an agreement and, um, the officer has an opportunity to speak with the person they're removing who says, no, no, we did have an agreement, and pulls an agreement out, or I think makes a good argument that, and with some evidence, that there was a verbal agreement. Okay, at that point then, because the wording of the, of the bill, when an officer, when he goes to the situation where there's a requester who's asking someone to be removed, right, they have to verify that the the person who says they own the property does indeed own the property.

So that's required for the officer to verify that. But then it goes on to say, and it— and also that they appear entitled to relief under this bill. And if it appears to the officer that there's a good chance, even a fair chance, that there was a rental agreement, I would say it doesn't seem like they appear entitled to relief under this. This is where an officer, I believe, would say You are going to have to go down to the courthouse and file an eviction proceeding because it looks like there was a rental agreement here. May I follow up, Mr. Chairman?

Yes. Whether it was written or just verbal? Whether it was written or oral, correct. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Are there further questions?

Seeing no additional questions at this time, we will open public testimony on Senate Bill 207.

Is there anyone in the room or online who wishes to testify to this item?

Hearing and seeing no one wishing to testify, we will close public testimony on Senate Bill 207. Members have a draft proposed committee substitute in their packet. May I please have a motion, please? Yes, Mr. Chairman. I move Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 207, version 34-LS1266/T, as the working document.

Mr. President— I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, can I object instead of—. Sure. To skip a step, I object to adopting this CS. Okay.

And Mr. Churchill is already at the table, and he will explain the changes. Certainly. Thank you, Chair Bjorkman. I'm Matt Churchill, staff for Senator Bjorkman. So the changes would be on page 3 and line H of the version H, the most recent version.

Page 3, line 8, insert into the owner's request: I am requesting that a peace officer immediately remove the occupant from the property. And then at page 3, starting at line 25 through page 4, line 8, uh, this version T removes language giving the unlawful occupant notice to vacate within 48 hours and replaces it with language directing a peace officer, when the request is verified, to serve notice immediately to vacate and deliver possession of the dwelling unit to the owner, and providing for locks to be changed and personal property of the unlawful occupant to be removed at that time.

Those are the changes from H to T. Very well, thank you. Senator Dunbar, would you like to speak to your objection, please? Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.

I do not believe that the committee should adopt this committee substitute. So I, I won't speak to the first point about the request of the peace officer— requesting the peace officer move. I have no issue with that, and I know that municipality of Anchorage has expressed support for removing the 48-hour notice requirement. I do not think that is a good policy decision, and I'll give you, I'll give you a few reasons why. But before, before I sort of go through some of the specifics of the law, I just want to run through a scenario with everyone.

So imagine you are a single parent living in Fairbanks, and it is 30 below out, and you have two young children, and one of them is playing at a friend's house, and the other you're eating dinner with. Now, you think you have a rental agreement with the landlord, but it turns out, unbeknownst to you, that landlord doesn't actually own the property. It's in dispute. A different landlord owns the property. So even without that landlord having any specific animosity towards you, they go through this process.

They don't go through traditional landlord-tenant law. And, um, we can go into the amendments later about the fact that there actually isn't anything in here requiring that the peace officer speak to you beforehand, but the peace officer arrives at your door. If we adopt the CS, there is nothing stopping this— the, the police officer, whomever, the peace officer, from just removing you from your, from your house. The question is, do you have time to get your kid back from their friend's house? Do you have time to finish your meal?

Do you have time to pack a bag? There's nothing in here protecting them if that's the case. That peace officer can say, nope, you're out right now. Nowhere else to go. Doesn't matter what the weather is.

Doesn't matter your kid's not here. Doesn't matter you don't have anything packed. You're out right now. And I— now, whether or not you think they would actually do that, that is the law if we remove any kind of, of notice requirement. And I'll say there's a reason notice requirements are important.

And in fact, if you were in a— if you were in a homeless camp In Juneau, I think you'd have 24 hours. In Anchorage, you'd have 48 hours. So think about what it means to have no notice requirement. Someone could show up at your door and immediately say, "You're out right now." I don't think that's right. Now, there's a variety of other amendments I'm going to offer, um, whether we adopt the CS or not, to try to protect other groups and make this a little bit more like landlord-tenant law, because we have specific protections in landlord-tenant law that are being short-circuited by this process.

Now, we, we assume that these are unauthorized occupants, but we don't really know. There's no way to prove initially that that is the case except for an affidavit from a landlord who, whether they are malicious or not, there's no countervailing force to try to disprove their affidavit. Um, so I, I, I I do not recommend that we adopt this CS. I think the Judiciary Committee put the notice requirement in there for important reasons. And I— the other change I have no issue with, and we could add that by amendment, but I would urge us not to adopt the CS.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Any further discussion on adopting the committee substitute?

I have a couple of comments. Um, the notion and rationale behind the bill itself is for in obvious cases where, as Mr. Churchill pointed out, that where a person is obviously there in an adverse possession situation where they are occupying someone else's property, and it's clear to the peace officer that they did not have a rental agreement. It does not look like this is, um, the home of a family where a rental agreement would have been in place. This appears to be a situation where a person is likely known to law enforcement. They likely have contacted the person in this home multiple times It is clear that, you know, a person, an owner of a property came home from vacation.

Maybe they were a snowbird. Maybe they were gone somewhere else. They came to their property and discovered someone inhabiting their property that did not belong there. The question then becomes for society, do we want that person to have 2 whole days, 48 hours, to vacate the property, or is it more appropriate that a person who is in your home without permission— they never had permission to be there, and it's obvious to that effect— is it more appropriate that they be escorted off the property immediately? The safeguards to people who are removed immediately are that there are significant penalties.

To the landowner if they swear out an affidavit that's false, if they are in— if they are in the wrong. I'll offer an amendment later that would make sure that people that are removed, they are given notice by law enforcement that they are entitled to relief if they are wrongfully removed. The goal of this bill is when property owners come to their home or their property and people are obviously there adversely possessing it, that those folks are removed. So that's why I introduced the CS. Senator Yunt.

Thank you, through the chair. Just some comments too. Another scenario that actually happens more often than you think are homes that are listed for sale. And realtors show up, or apartments that are listed for rent, and the property managers show up, and there are people occupying that do not have an agreement. They just found a place because it's so easy now on our phones to find homes that are listed for sale or apartments for rent.

And so it actually happens quite a bit more often than you would think. But there's another good example of, of a case where They're not supposed to be there in 48 hours. I mean, what do you— that's tough. I don't know how you'd make that work and how you wouldn't incentivize bad behavior too with unintended consequences. I think if it were 48 hours, word would quickly spread to folks that wanted to game the system.

And I know it stinks. I know, as Senator Dunbar said, you know, you could get into a situation here where it actually could harm someone, you know, but I think there's other ways to make sure that doesn't happen.

Yeah, the 48 hours thing makes me very nervous for a lot of reasons. So let's leave it at that.

Senator Dunbar. Mr. Chair, is there anyone here from the Department of Law or Department of Public Safety that could explain our current forcible entry and detainer policy?

We have from the Department of Law, Ms. Casey Schroeder. She's in the room.

She's shaking her head no.

Very good. We have from the troopers, Captain Scott Bartlett. I also see Ms. Nancy Mead from the court system, if I could ask a question of her as well. Who would you like to talk to first? Uh, let's start with— what was the state trooper's name?

He said Scott Bartlett. Uh, Mr. Bartlett, um, so could you describe the current process by which you evict someone from a property?

Through the chair, for the record, this is Captain Bartlett. Um, currently we would get, uh, request through the courts where the landlord or agent would, um, or owner would go and get eviction paperwork set, uh, and then we would schedule a time to make that happen, usually within a day or two. Um, so that's currently what we do for evictions, and it usually consists of two, uh, court service officers, uh, in urban areas and more rural areas it's, uh, troopers. So in that process—. Senator Dunbar.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Captain Bartlett. In that process, uh, do you, um, verify whether or not the occupant has a rental agreement?

Not at all, no. Uh, that's, that's done through the courts, um, and we simply are just, uh, we get the order to effect the eviction, so we don't We don't rule on civil issues. That's all in the court. The bill is going to change that if it passes. But as of right now, we don't make those determinations.

Thank you. And so, yeah, you, Mr. Chair, if I might ask a follow-up. Senator Dunbar. Thank you.

So I'll ask a follow-up then. And thank you. Anticipated this, Captain Bartlett. How would you verify whether or not a rental agreement existed to effectuate this law?

Through the chair, uh, Senator Dunbar, uh, if this bill were to go forward, uh, the way it's written, uh, the way I interpret it, that we would have to verify that, uh, the agent or owner is, uh, entitled to release, which means that we would, uh, speak with the occupant or occupants, uh, see if there's any rental agreement in place, see if they're family, basically go through, uh, any of the tenancy elements. And if any of them are raised and, you know, it seems to be credible on face value, we would probably not serve that eviction and defer to the agent or owner to the courts to follow through with a typical FED process. Follow-up, Mr. Chair? Senator Dunbar.

Thank you. Captain Bartlett, are your men trained to determine what is or is not a rental agreement? I'm sorry, not just men, your officers. Apologies.

Through the chair, Senator Dunbar, we currently— they— we provide the troopers and officers the landlord-tenant booklet. And that's about the extent of the training that we provide them right now. So we would have to considerably change, uh, that and implement some more formalized training. Um, and not quite sure what that would look like right now, but if this bill passes, we'll have to figure that out. Follow-up, Mr.

Chair? Senator Dunbar. Captain Bartlett, Do you see a situation in which you would provide notice? No, that you wouldn't provide notice, that you would get the affidavit from the landlord, go to the occupants, and in one sort of one action, both ask for the affidavit ask them if they have a rental agreement and remove them from the premises.

Um, well, through the chair, Captain Bartlett, um, it's off of the working draft that I was, uh, working off of, H. Um, and I don't know if there are any other amendments that have been pushed through, but, um, the way that the bill that I read, the way I interpret that is that, you know, the homeowner does the notice or the agent does the notice, and after that they come to us, show some type of proof, which isn't standardized and it's not explained in this bill what that proof of service looks like, but we would, you know, if it was reasonable to us, we would then go forward and contact the occupants, then we would verify whether or not, you know, there was any, uh, tenancy issues there or not. If we— yeah, and we would just go from there. Follow-up, Mr. Chair? Senator Dunbar.

Uh, so Captain Bartlett, the, the community substitute— committee substitute we are looking at now would remove the notice requirement, or the, the, the time between notice and your officers removing the person. I guess I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. Do you typically remove someone at the same moment you serve them notice, say, for landlord-tenant law?

Through the chair, Captain Bartlett again. We currently do not. No, they're served notice and they're given a time period. And when that time period lapses, then we show up and we effect the typical eviction. Follow-up, Mr.

Chair? Senator Dunbar. Thank you. Well, this of course isn't landlord-tenant law. Captain Bartlett, as you read the bill, is there any protection for the occupants for, for example, the weather or the time of year as there is in landlord-tenant law?

Is there any protection or consideration for children being present? Is there any consideration in the bill as written— I'm sorry, if we take out the 48-hour notice— to remove their belongings or collect their belongings? Do you read any of that into the bill?

I did not see any of that in the bill that I'm looking at, any of them that I have right in front of me. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. Captain Bartlett, I have a question. If I'm on vacation with my family and I come home and there is someone that I do not know living in my home, can I call the troopers and say, troopers, someone has broken into my home, they don't have permission to be there, they're occupying my home, will you come and remove that person from my home?

Through the chair, Captain Bartlett again. It would depend on the facts of, on what we investigate.

Absolutely, we would respond. Um, and if we saw that they didn't have any right to be there, they would probably be arrested for burglary and trespassing based off the general fact that you're providing. But there's— yeah, there— any little thing could change that. The person could produce a document, uh, you know, uh, a lease agreement or whatever, um, that's maybe false, but you know at face value when we're standing there at the residence, we don't have the ability to make a quick determination of whether or not that release agreement's false or not. And, you know, they would have to figure that out through the court system.

Um, but we would do some investigations for sure. It's a criminal investigation until it's not.

Very good. So help me understand, if folks can possess adversely a property, as long as they produce a piece of paper or, or a story, if they, they simply have a story that they have permission to be there, even though all signs and kind of common sense say that they don't, you, you would allow them to stay on the property? Through the chair, Captain Bartlett again. It really would depend on facts, and, you know, we could do this all day long and then give you a different answer based on one little change in the scenario. Um, you know, if we showed up to the scenario that you just provided, we show up to the house and it's like, guys, like, uh, the occupant says that he has a verbal agreement and has no other evidence to back that, you'd probably get arrested for burglary and trespassing and go to jail.

Um, but, uh, it just— it's all fact-based. It depends on what our investigation shows. And, uh, you know, we can— yeah, like I said earlier, we could— you can give all kinds of different scenarios that give you a different answer, even if they're very similar. Very well. So for that instance, I'm having a hard time understanding the hesitancy from the troopers to uphold the principle of private property if someone adversely possesses your home about why it would be difficult for the troopers to determine based on the facts that they perceive from looking at the property, as well as the, the, uh, the accounts that they hear from the occupants, as well as the landowners, why the troopers cannot make a judgment about whether or not the people occupying the property have a legal right to be there or not.

Through the chair, this is Captain Bartlett. We, we don't have an issue doing that. We actually do that regularly. That's how people get arrested for burglary and trespassing. Um, I think we— there may be some miscommunication going on between you and I right now, but we do arrest people for burglary and trespassing all of the time for a similar situation that you just provided.

Now, there may be other instances where that may not be the case, um, based off of the facts. And it's all fact-driven, everything that we do. So, um, yeah. Okay, very well. My understanding in the intent of this bill is that someone owns property and they come to their property and they see that someone else is adversely possessing their property.

Without their permission. They can swear an affidavit under penalty of perjury and financial penalty that this is indeed their property, and the person adversely possessing that property never has ever had permission to occupy that property and is not an extended family member that is listed under the protections of this bill. What is standing in the way from the Department of Public Safety from executing an investigation based on the facts on the ground, as have been detailed in the scenarios that we have talked about, and having troopers execute that investigation and then make a decision based on the evidence before them whether or not the occupant of that property likely has had permission or is entitled to not be removed from that property or not.

Uh, through the chair, um, Captain Bartlett again. Um, there's nothing stopping us from doing an investigation. That's actually exactly what we would do, and we would make our determination based off of the facts that we've uncovered during our investigation. So I can't give you a— we're going to arrest on this or, or not based off of a very generalized, um, situation or scenario that you provided. We would absolutely investigate every one of these if this became law.

There's nothing stopping us at all.

Thank you. Is there any further objection to the adoption of the committee substitute? Mr. Chair, I maintain my objection. Very well.

The clerk will call the roll.

Senator Yunt. Brief at ease. Brief at ease.

We're back on the record. We are about to vote on the adoption of committee substitute. The clerk will call the roll. Senator Yunt. Yes.

Senator Dunbar? No. Senator Gray-Jackson? No. Senator Merrick?

Yes. Senator Bjorkman? Yes. 3 Yeas, 2 nays.

With a vote of 3 nays and 2 nays, committee substitute for Senate Bill 207, work draft 34-LS1266-T, as in Tanana, is before the committee as a working document.

Members have a draft proposed amendment or 5 in their packet. May I have a motion, please?

Isn't yours the first amendment, Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman, I move amendment T.1 to Senate Bill 207. I'll object for purposes of explanation. My staff, Mr. Matt Churchill, is here to provide that explanation.

Yes, Amendment— thank you, Chair Bierkman. Amendment T.1 at page 3, line 29, following the word owner, insert: and notice of the right of the occupant to bring an action under Section G of this section wrongfully removed from the dwelling unit. I'm sorry, subsection G. Very well. We had this amendment drafted after our first hearing on the bill to answer concerns about whether or not an occupant of a property would be given notice of their rights to relief if wrongfully removed.

Is there any further questions, discussion, or objections to this amendment?

Hearing and seeing none, Amendment T.1 is adopted.

After I remove my objection, if I had not already.

Members have further amendments. In their packet. Next up is Amendment T.3. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to circle back to T.3 because it deals with the issue we just discussed, although it's not completely duplicative because CS contained other materials. I want to go and I move Amendment T.4. Object.

So what this amendment does is, and we're speaking with Captain Bartlett, I think this just memorializes what they intend to do anyway. The occupant's rights are not just, um, the occupant's rights are not just to bring an action beforehand, after the fact rather. And I'll say that that is a very difficult right to effectuate, that is relying on usually folks without a lot of resources to bring a civil suit after the fact is not a good protection, uh, in these kind of cases. What this amendment does is state that— and I'll read it, um, starting on, uh, line 7 here— insert owner and notice of the right of the occupant to bring an action under G, as we said before, Then a peace officer serving notice as required under D of this section shall attempt to hand deliver the notice to the occupant of the dwelling unit. If the peace officer is able to speak with the occupant when service.

Attempt, the peace officer shall verify the following information beforehand delivering the notice. Um, beforehand delivering the notice. One, the occupant entered the dwelling unit when the dwelling unit was not open to the public, uh, or when the occupant was not otherwise privileged to do so. Two, the occupant does not have and has not had a rental agreement entitling them to occupy the unit. Three, the occupant is not an immediate family member of the property owner.

Four, no litigation related to property is pending between them. And so, I think we've heard testimony from Captain Bartlett that that is what they intend to do. But I'll say that that is not currently in the language. The language just says verify, and I'll find the exact place for you.

Verify that the requester is the record owner of the residential real property and appears entitled to relief under this section. That phrase, appears entitled to relief under this section, is doing a lot of work in in this bill. And I think that's what, um, Mr., uh, Matt, what's your last name again? Churchill. Apologies.

Mr. Churchill stated that we want the peace officers to go and actually verify this, not just based on the affidavit of the alleged landowner, of the landowner, but the occupant as well. And so that's what this amendment does. It says to do this process, you must actually speak with the occupant and let the occupant know that if they, if any of those four things are true, or they believe them to be true, then this process has to stop. Because that's also their right. They have the right to not be forcibly removed if they're a family owner.

They have the right to not be forcibly removed if they have a rental agreement. They have the right to not be forcibly removed if no litigation is pending. And I'll say this is particularly important now under this version of the bill. Now that this can all happen in a moment. You have 10 minutes to pack your stuff, get out.

So I urge support for the amendment. Thank you very much, Senator Dunbar. Mr. Churchill, do you have any comments on this amendment?

Thank you, Chair Bjorkman. I believe Senator Dunbar did accurately identify the issue here. You know, the difference between the police officer shall verify the following information before hand-delivering versus the existing language in version T. The peace officer shall verify that the person making the request is the owner. That's to be verified. But the other things would, would go to— it appears that they're entitled to relief based on the, right, all the circumstances and the affidavit.

If I may, Chair Bjorkman, uh, it would seem that that would certainly increase the workload of the officers in the investigation because rather than making the determination that it appears, uh, the owner is entitled to relief, they would have to verify. So I think under the probable cause sort of standard—. Can you tell us more about that?

Chair Bjork, I think, uh, I, I can't speak as an expert to this, um, but it certainly— when I, when I see the words, uh, that the, the peace officer would make the determination that it appears that the landowner is entitled or the owner is entitled, um, that sounds like a sort of reasonable suspicion, sort of more likely than not. Um, versus verify feels a lot more, um, probable cause, sort of, um, very likely.

Very well. I'm entitled to agree, um, Mr. Churchill. Shall verify that an occupant had entered when it was not open to the public. I mean, that would be— do we need video evidence? What do we need?

We're talking about adverse possession of people who have entered your property or a home, um, that you own, and they're not supposed to be there. Never ever had they had permission to be there. And so what we're talking about is, do, do we have a reasonable suspicion or reasonable collection of facts about whether or not they should get out, or should we have essentially a mini trial with verifiable proof to allow that person to stay in your house.

I think most Alaskans would agree that if people are on your property or in your house and never ever had they had permission to be there, they should probably not be there for very much longer. I oppose the amendment. Senator Yunt. Thank you, through the chair. More of a comment than a question.

This is— I believe the burden of proof should fall on the person who is occupying the home or the apartment or whatever it may be. If you come home and somebody is in your home that they weren't supposed to be there, sorry, and they're saying, we have a legal right to be here, I have a lease agreement, I have a verbal agreement, I mean, I can't imagine a scenario where they're not going to at least have text messages from the past. Like, I mean, if you're living in someone's home, you should have a signed lease agreement, right? Some of them expire, they don't get renewed after 12 months or 6 months, whatever it may be. But at some point you signed an agreement, probably.

Now let's say you didn't. Let's say it was a handshake deal. Has there never been any phone calls in your call logs, any text messages? I just have a really hard time grasping at that they would have no ability to prove that they had a right to be there. And so I really think I'd be very reluctant.

I am very reluctant, very, very reluctant to give, I guess, power to folks that are doing that because it's just going to massively incentivize bad behavior. Is what's going to happen. And then, I mean, this is already— it happens a lot more than people realize, but if word gets out that you're welcome to come to a place and just make it your own anytime you feel like it, it's not going to be good. So I oppose the amendment as well.

Senator Dunbar. Thank you, Mr. Chair. To be clear, what the amendment does is say the officer has to speak with the occupant and ask them these 4 questions. So, you keep saying, you know, you come home and this person's in your home and, you know, they have no right to be there.

How does the officer know that's true? You know, typically the courts decide that, they weigh evidence. Now, as Captain Bartlett has said, there is criminal trespass. If it's like an immediate, you know, emergency situation, they are in your house, you can't get into your house, you can criminally trespass them. We're not talking about criminal trespass.

We're talking about something else, filling some perceived gap between criminal trespass and landlord-tenant law. I'm not sure that gap exists, but let's say that it did. How do you actually know? Uh, people keep saying, you know, it's, it's, it's clear as day. We know they're in my house, but how does the officer know?

And what this amendment does is said, The officer has to at least talk to the occupant and ask them these 4 things, which are the things identified already in the affidavit that are supposed to stop this process. That's what the amendment does. It doesn't give the occupant additional rights. It says the officer needs to speak with the occupant and make sure that these scenarios, that their rights aren't being violated. The rights established by the bill itself.

That's what the amendment does.

I appreciate your comments, Senator Dunbar. However, the amendment reads, if the peace officer is able to speak with the occupant when service is attempted, the peace officer shall verify the following information before hand-delivering the notice. Shall verify is a significantly stronger standard than just ask them those things.

Well, I mean, but what you're asking then is for them to do this process without verifying. I mean, where else in the bill does it say that they need to verify this information?

Senator Dummer, we've We've established the working phrase in the bill is that public service— I'm sorry, public safety officers, they need to determine whether or not an occupant of the property appears entitled to relief. If it appears to the public safety officer that they have had some agreement to occupy the property or they are a family member, then they are.

Entitled to the civil process as afforded to them, but if an officer can reasonably determine that they have not, then they are going to be escorted off the property.

Is there any further discussion? Well, I, I suppose I would be open to an amendment to the amendment. The peace officer shall attempt to verify the following information, if that would make it more comfortable. I just want some assurance that the peace officer will actually talk to the person before they make a determination that they're going to remove them from the property, and that that person, when they talk to them, will understand that these are the 4 things, at least these 4 things, that short-circuit the process. That person doesn't unders— doesn't know our law.

Chapter and verse. They don't know that if they are the— if they are an immediate family member or if they've ever had a verbal agreement, then they can't be removed. Would that satisfy you, Mr. Chair, if we amended the amendment in that fashion?

I think that law enforcement, they have a duty to determine that as they're making an adjudication about whether or not the person has a right to remain there. Um, I think it's pretty clear in the bill that they have to, they have to verify that the owner is the owner of the property, and then they have to determine if the occupant is entitled to relief. I mean, that already is the standard in the bill.

I guess I disagree, Mr. President— Mr. President, I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. I don't think anywhere in the bill it says that the officer either has to inform the occupant or specifically tell the occupant that these are the 4 things that change the process. Very good. I think we need a brief at ease.

Brief at ease. Thank you.

Back on the record. It is now 3:31 p.m. here in Senate Labor and Commerce. We are discussing Amendment T.4.

We had just talked about a concept of a potential amendment to the amendment of T.4, which I will move now. I move Conceptual Amendment Number 1 to Amendment T.4, which would insert the words on line 12 of page 1 of Amendment T.4 after the word "shall," "attempt to." That is the entirety of the amendment. Conceptual Amendment Number 1. Is there any objection to conceptual amendment number 1?

Hearing and seeing no objection, conceptual amendment number 1 to amendment T.4 is adopted. Is there any further discussion of amendment T.4?

Is there any further objection to Amendment T.4?

Mr. Chair, I think you still have— are you going to remove your objection? If no one else objects.

Hearing and seeing no further objection to Amendment T.4, I'll remove my objection, and Amendment T.4 is adopted as amended by conceptual amendment Number 1.

Members have in their packets Amendment T.5.

Mr. Chair, I move Amendment T.5.

Object for purposes of explanation. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, this is— this bill purports to fill a gap between criminal trespass and traditional landlord-tenant. It does not have some of the traditional protections we have in landlord-tenant.

I'm not suggesting that this is one of them, but with this bill, this would insert a new subsection that reads: a peace officer shall determine whether an occupant has children under the age of 16 who also occupy the dwelling unit when performing service under D of the section. Or keeping the peace under E. If the police officer determines that children under age 16, uh, under age of 16 also occupy the dwelling unit, the peace officer shall assist the occupant and occupant's children in finding another place to stay or provide information to the occupant and occupant's children on available shelters.

Very good. Thank you for that amendment. Senator Dunbar, with the amendment we received a legal memo that states that there are equal protection concerns with the memo or with the amendment. Do you have any commentary on the memo? Yes, and this is a pretty standard legal memo.

A lot of things raise equal protection concerns, but just because something raises a concern doesn't mean that it's dispositive. You need to have, depending on the standard, it could be a narrowly tailored for compelling government interest or a different rational basis standard. This clearly has a rational basis. I would argue it's narrowly tailored for a compelling government interest. Just like we have different acknowledgments in our law that children require additional protection, for example, I mean, obviously especially in our sex crimes law, but elsewhere as well, children 16 and under, we take special notice when we are using the police power to make that child homeless.

And that is what this potentially is doing. Again, we, we hope that this will only be used to remove truly unauthorized occupants, but we acknowledge that this might sometimes get short-circuited. That's why they have ability to come back back later and bring a civil action. Um, but I'll say that for a 30 below night in Fairbanks or wherever else you are, um, for that moment and for the days following, uh, that 16-year-old is going to be displaced from their dwelling unit through no fault of their own, most likely. Um, and, uh, with potentially no place to go.

And so what this asks is that the peace officer— it doesn't say that they can't do this process, although I hope this process is not used on children often. What it says is, shall assist the occupant.

Children in finding another place to stay or provide information to the occupant or occupant's children on available shelters. So it's a relatively narrow protection, and I hope this process is not used on children often. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Very well, thank you, Senator Dunbar.

Um, the committee has a question for Ms. Mead.

Thank you, Chair Bjorkman. For the record, Senator Merrick. Um, Ms. Mead, can you just explain the difference between what we're doing here and trespassing? If I come home and there's someone in my house, I would think that's trespassing. I don't understand what's delineating these two issues.

Through the chair to Senator Merrick, As I understand it from the explanations I've heard about this bill all along, if you come home and somebody's in your house and you call law enforcement and say, hey, there's a trespasser sleeping in my bed or cooking in my kitchen, or perhaps the people appear homeless or there's drug activity in your house because you were gone for 6 months, that law enforcement will come. And if it's very, very evident, as the officer said online, that there is a trespass and/or burglary, then yes, they do arrest or can arrest. They make a judgment call whether this is an arrestable offense, and then they can take care of it. As I understand it, the chair of the committee is addressing this bill towards situations where the— where it's a little bit of a closer call. And sometimes law enforcement arrives at your house and says, I don't wanna speak for the chair, but he will correct me and says, look, this is a dispute between you people.

I can't see what's going on here. I'm not gonna make the judgment call. If you think this person needs to be outta your house, go to the court or do something. This is not something I'm qualified to judge whether there's criminality at play. And when that happens, this bill would come into play play, so that the homeowner would fill out the affidavit, swear to all those things, and then give the law enforcement officer confidence that that person has a deed to the house, for example, and is swearing that the occupant is the one who's not telling the truth.

And then they could follow through with this procedure. And again, I think I spoke for the sponsor in some ways. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I may follow up. Please do.

Are there such things as squatters' rights? Like if you illegally occupy a dwelling for a certain amount of time, does that give you any rights to still be there?

Through the chair to Senator Marich, I'm thinking back to adverse possession laws from, from law school. Yes. I mean, if you crisscross somebody's property and establish a path and it's open and notorious and known to the owner for 20 years might be the law in Alaska, that is then a public path. Now, it does have to be open and notorious and known to the owner. So in that regard, squatters, I can't imagine really getting the right to stay there unless the owner has been aware of it and let it happen.

That's the basis of adverse possession. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you very much. Alaska did change its adverse possession laws significantly about 20 years ago, changing what could be held as adverse possession, specifically having to do with vacant land. It was a series of legislation and conversations specifically pertaining to Alaska Native Corporation land and how long a person could essentially adversely possess or access or cross that land and then maintain adverse possession rights. And so it's a significant conversation that we won't have today as it doesn't pertain to this bill. But it's fun.

So yes, thank you, Ms. Mead. You are correct. This situation is designed to alleviate the stress over a closer call when someone does— when a property owner does come to their property and the person says, no, wait, I have permission to be here. I have this agreement, or you said, and it becomes a he said, she said. And then the property owner swears out an affidavit an affidavit under penalty of perjury and a fine that all of these conditions are met, which we see listed in the bill, as well as this person is not an immediate family member, and then they are escorted off the property.

It is not simply the case, um, where we're asking law enforcement to remove someone in a situation where it would appear that, you know, a person has the right to be there. Those situations and those things are going to be quite self-evident. And because I think it's a pretty significant test in the bill in order to meet that threshold. And so I think that's really what we're trying to do here. And that That's the case.

So—. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That's very helpful.

Senator Young. Quick question through the chair to— while we have Mrs. Mee here. So we're running a lot of scenarios by today that pertains to an owner coming home or whatever it may be, but I would like to ask, will this also cover owner's agents? So if it's a listed house and the realtor comes, can the realtor sign the affidavit? If it's an apartment building and it's the property manager, and so would that, you know, would the process still be the same and the result be the same?

Or is this only to the actual owner of the property? So I'll give you a better example. So say, say it's a house listed for sale or an apartment listed for rent and the owner is out of state and the owner of the property is not in Alaska, but their agent is. So through the chair to Senator Yunt, uh, that is covered in the bill as I read it. It, uh, every time it says owner or an agent of the owner, so that I believe is intended for that very situation.

If the owner is out of state and has somebody handling all their property interests for them, they could fill out the affidavit, etc. Follow-up. Thank you. I just wanted to confirm that and point that out and just make sure. So thank you.

The committee is currently considering Amendment T.5. We're talking about peace officers determining if there are children. And then the peace officer shall assist the occupant and the occupant's children in finding another place to stay. Captain Bartlett, is this something that troopers typically would do?

Through the chair, this is Captain Bartlett again. Uh, anytime we displace someone, we, we, if time allows, we try to make an effort to get them services.

With the addition of this amendment that instructs peace officers, it says shall assist the occupant or occupant's children in finding another place to stay or provide information to the occupants children on available shelters, would that significantly change your course of practice or action?

Through the chair, um, I, for the most part, we, we try to provide services when we can, or at minimum provide information. Um, that, that's not a huge departure from what we're doing now, so Very good. And what would happen if, let's say, all of the adverse occupants were under 16?

Uh, if they were all under— through the chair, Captain Barligan— if they were all under 16, we would get a hold of the Office of Children's Services and, um, and local— probably we might also reach out to the child advocacy centers and get them some services through those.

Very well.

I have one other question for Ms. Mead. I'm sorry I didn't ask it while you were here. I neglected.

Can you see any issue legally with Amendment T.5? Do you think there is a concern raised as to the constitutionality of this language as mentioned in the memo. To the Chair, for the record, Nancy May, General Counsel for the Alaska Court System.

I recognize that that is an issue.

By treating somebody with a 16-year-old different from somebody with a 17-year-old, there is a potential— an argument that that is an equal protection violation. I would agree with Senator Dunbar that having an equal protection issue doesn't mean that something is necessarily an unconstitutional statute if you can justify it with some sort of basis, which I believe Senator Dunbar previously put his, his basis on the record. And I understand that that could fulfill, could fulfill the making a record as to what the reasons for this were. So, so that's, I think, what the legislature needs to do when somebody says there could be an equal protection violation. It that doesn't mean somebody can't still sue and say there is an equal protection problem with this.

That would be— Senator Dunbar's argument would be one side, and somebody else could make the argument that that isn't enough for the state to draw this distinction between those with kids and those without, and I'm not sure what the court would do with that.

Very well. Thank you. Are there— Senator Dommare? Just on that, um, it relates to the amendment just because it relates to children. Is there also an equal protection concern potentially with the underlying bill in that it provides protections for immediate child, uh, immediate family members and defines them but doesn't include foster children or domestic partners?

So it includes children but not foster children?

Through the chair to Senator Dunbar, I actually don't think I'm prepared to answer that question.

So I'd better not shoot from the hip. Well, I was very impressed by your ability to remember continuous notorious Law school. Very good. Thank you very much.

If I could, Senator Bjorkman, I just wanted to add that I think the idea about that immediate family member is so that if I'm having a fight with my son, for example, the police would not want to be, you know, throwing gasoline on that fire when I want my son kicked out because he's lazy or something like that. And so they have— you would have to swear that that's not the situation. That's all I understand. Foster children with a different legal relationship might not have that. I don't know.

Very good. Thank you.

Senator Dunbar, if I may? Yes. Pardon me, Senator Bjergman. Senator Dunbar, I just thought that I heard you say that the bill did not protect T did not protect domestic partners, and that was included to the definition in Senate Judiciary. So domestic partners are now.

[Speaker:CHAIRMAN BRYANT] Very good. Thank you. [Speaker:COMMISSIONER DIXON] Yes. [Speaker:CHAIRMAN BRYANT] Very good. Okay.

At this time, I will make conceptual amendment to Amendment 1 to T.5 simply to insert on line 3 after shall and line 7 after shall, the two words "attempt to." Is there any objection to that conceptual amendment number 1 to Amendment T.5? [Speaker:MR. BOLL] I guess I would say, Mr. Chair, you could just remove "shall" and put "attempt to." Police officer— oh, wait, no, I'm sorry. I'm missing you, Mr. Indian.

Yeah, no, you're correct. No objection.

Hearing no objection, conceptual amendment number 1 to Amendment T.5 is adopted.

Is there any further objection to Amendment T.5?

Hearing no further objection, I'll remove my objection and Amendment T.5 is adopted. Members have in their packets Amendment T.6. Aye. I move Amendment T.6. I'll object for purposes of explanation.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So we've already— had this discussion about this being a gap between criminal trespass and that this is, this is only in cases where it's not clear that the person is criminally trespassing, the unauthorized occupant. In landlord-tenant law in Alaska, there are specific protections for removing someone from their home between November 1st and March 31st. I think the reason is pretty obvious.

In much of our state, it can be fatal to dispossess someone of the place they are living. In December or January because of our weather. And this does not require them— what it says is the peace officer shall assist the occupant in finding another place to stay or provide information to the occupant on available shelters. Again, the, the, these are cases because criminal trespass already covers people who are clearly criminally trespassing. These are more marginal cases where the requires an affidavit from the, from the owner that this person is, is, doesn't belong there.

Um, and, uh, that person who we don't have probable cause to believe is a criminal, um, I believe should receive some of the protections that, uh, folks get from landlord-tenant law. Now, in this case, they would not get the full protection they would only have, uh, an attempt by the officer to assist them in trying to find somewhere to survive the night and the following days. That is the justification for the amendment.

Thank you very much. Is there any additional discussion on this amendment?

Hearing from Captain Mr. Bartlett previously, it would seem that this is something that the troopers already do. At this point in time, I'll make Conceptual Amendment Number 1 to Amendment T.6, which will insert the words "attempt to" on line 5 after the word "shall." Is there any objection? Hearing and seeing no objection, conceptual amendment number 1 to amendment T.6 is adopted. Is there any further objection to amendment T.6?

Hearing and seeing none, amendment T.6 is adopted.

Members have in their packet an amendment T.7.

I move amendment T.7. Object for purposes of explanation. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This bill is very similar to T.5, but it has to do with women who are pregnant or informs the peace officer that the occupant is pregnant.

It has similar equal protection concerns to, uh, the Amendment T.5, but I believe that there is a state interest in protecting potentially a a vulnerable person who might be, um, the occupant here. And again, as established, uh, by the testimony of, uh, Miss Mead, these are not people who are clearly criminally trespassing. If that was the case, we could use criminal trespass law. This is— these are people who are unauthorized occupants that we think, although we are giving a civil relief, a civil, uh, cause, uh, to, um, we think are, um, unauth— unoccupied— unauthorized occupants. Excuse, excuse me.

So it actually reads, if an occupant appears pregnant or informs the peace officer that the occupant is pregnant when the peace officer performs service under D and E, the peace officer shall assist the occupant in finding another place to stay or provide information to the occupant on available shelters. And again, I think the state has an interest in trying to reduce the number of people who are pregnant, women who are pregnant, who are homeless. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Senator Dunbar. Ms. Mead, if we could inquire as to your thoughts on this amendment and the legal memo. Is there any difference with the equal protection concerns for this amendment as that we had previously talked about under other amendments? For the record, Nancy Maid, General Counsel for the Alaska Court System. I would say that the legal analysis of this one is quite similar as the legal analysis for the other one, that it could certainly raise equal protection concerns in a number of ways.

That does not necessarily mean a statute will be deemed unconstitutional. Somebody will argue.

The equal protection claim, and the state, based on what Senator Dunbar has put in the record, will say there's a rational basis because the state has an interest in protecting vulnerable pregnant people. Thank you very much for that explanation. Ms. Mead, do you think that that rational basis would survive a court challenge? Through the chair, that would be a question for ledge legal. I don't opine on what the court might do.

Worth a shot. Okay. Thank you. We appreciate you being here. Is there any further Committee discussion on Amendment T.7?

Hearing and seeing no further discussion, I will remove my objection and Amendment T.7 is adopted. Are there any further amendments to—. Yes, Mr. Chair, I'm going to return and I move— sorry, I'm looking at the number— Amendment T.3.

Object for purposes of explanation. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So this was an amendment we drafted after the after the CS was sent out. It would not alter the other change made by the CS, but it would restore the 48-hour notice requirement.

And so, you know, since we initially had that conversation, we've altered the bill and strengthened— I think formalized, rather— the notice requirement that Captain Bartlett described. However, I think we've also learned that these are folks who are not clearly criminally trespassing. So if the person is clearly criminally trespassing and the, and the, uh, the state trooper or police officer, the peace officer can determine that immediately, then we can use— the state can use the tools of criminal trespass to remove them from the property. This is— this bill only comes into play in closer cases, in cases where it's not abundantly clear that the person doesn't have some right to be there, that this might actually be their home, um, because it— but we have determined, or the officer has determined, that they don't deserve the full protections under landlord-tenant. Landlord-tenant law, of course, has many protections that do not exist in this bill.

I, I do. Again, I, I have no doubt that Captain Bartlett and many of his officers would do the right thing and provide the, the person, the occupant, uh, do enough time to gather their possessions, um, enough time to make sure their kid came home from school, enough time to, um, I don't know, uh, get their medicine together, whatever it is, enough time to maybe identify a place that they can go other than being homeless. I have no doubt that Captain Bartlett and his officers would do so. However, we do not know that there aren't bad actors in every jurisdiction forever. And that's what we're changing here with this law.

We are removing this notice requirement forever. And I, I am not comfortable with this bill moving without some kind of notice requirement. That is, in almost every other legal proceeding, except for ones where it's immediate and criminal and there's an urgency, in almost every— which we've established is not the case here because we use criminal trespass, almost every other case, there has to be some kind of notice. You tell someone something's going to happen, you tell them why, in this case, the peace officer tells them, here are the 4 things, and then there has to be some kind of period for that person to gather their things or prepare a response, and the relief that the bill purports to offer, Civil action after the fact is not sufficient to protect people's rights. These are often folks without a lot of resources, and even if they were people with a lot of resources, I, even as someone who is an attorney, don't feel comfortable, um, you know, going down to the court and finding the appropriate form.

And by the way, there is no form yet developed for this process, right? There is no established process here. Um, I don't know that the courts know how they're going to handle this. Um, and I don't think that the state troopers or the police yet know how they are going to handle this. But I urge you to please restore some notice period to this legislation.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much, Senator Dunbar. Are there— I'll object to the amendment. I think I did that already, but are there any comments on the amendment?

Senator Young, I—.

Through the chair, Senator Young here. Um, Could someone please provide an example of when this might come into play where it would actually be a net positive on society? I mean, because again, my concern here is that every time it gets cold in the winter or whatever it is, it's— now we're just going to start making our way in someone's house and when they're not there, they're at the grocery store or on vacation or it's listed for sale and know that we're going to— when they come back or their agent comes back as a realtor or— broker that we get 48 hours. I mean, it's— to me, I just see it as a way to encourage a lot of bad behavior. And so— but please walk me through any examples that may not be that case.

I mean, I guess I'll follow up here. I'll add one more thing. I mean, I just can't imagine a time, a scenario where somebody is there that they don't have some sort of communications from the owner or agent of the place that they can show the officers, and in which case the officer is going to say, well, you have another avenue to travel now. You have other rights that are available to you, right? I mean, we're, we're talking about people that are in a place that are not supposed to be there and were never supposed to be there.

And, and if we give them 48 hours, I believe the unintended consequences will will not be good. So that's all.

Thank you. Any further discussion? Mr. Chair, can I respond to that? Uh, one second.

Okay.

One situation I haven't not talked about at all as you've considered this bill, but I know has happened on the Kenai Peninsula quite a bit is folks who have been incarcerated, other people know that their home and property is vacant, and then their home is kind of a significant target for adverse possession as well as other things. And although criminal trespass, burglary, and other things may protect that property, it becomes difficult to enforce, especially if people know that they can claim that, oh, so-and-so who's in jail said I could be here. Um, that's difficult. And then allowing them protection under this, um, under the current law without a stipulation like this that's contemplated in the bill significantly, significantly creates problems for the person reentering society when they get out of jail. And that's, that's kind of one of the reasons why I decided to take this up, is knowing, knowing that effect and then allowing that time period and notice period to, to remain in place when people are adversely possessing folks' houses when they're in jail, I think is a problem.

Senator Dunbar. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And, and I'll say again, the— these are cases where the person is not clearly criminally trespassing. If that was the case, they can be removed there.

I think practically speaking, if someone's on the border and they are a squatter, to use the colloquial term, if they are a squatter and the police officer comes and says, you, you've been given notice, you must leave, many of them, most of them are going to leave immediately. They don't want to stick around for the police to come and potentially look through their stuff or whatever else it is. Um, so I think in most cases, as soon as they're served notice, that person will move on. Um, what I worry about is again, the, the border case, which this bill is explicitly dealing with, with which is, um, the person is not clearly criminally trespassing and they might think that they have— they might think they have a, a agreement of some kind, but it turns out it isn't, right? They thought they had— they had a verbal agreement.

Let's— here's an example. They have a verbal agreement with Mike to stay there, but Mike doesn't actually own the property. James does. But this person, not particularly sophisticated, thinks that that person does. Well, then there is no existing rental agreement with James.

And James comes and asserts his rights and says, you know, Mike might have told you that you live here, but it's actually mine, and I'm going to fill out this affidavit. And he's not wrong, is the second person. And the police officer shows up and says, yeah, sure enough, you had no agreement with this person, and so you were being removed. And all I'm asking for in this amendment is that that person that's.

Removed, have some time to gather their belongings, to set their affairs in order, to get their kid home from school, whatever it is, and to, to vacate the premises. And I'll say also, I know there's concern that the person will vandalize the stuff if they're left for those 48 hours. We have explicit criminal statutes to deal with exactly that. If the police officer shows up and and they know who this person is. In many of these cases, everyone knows, as the chair said, who this person is, and they said, "You need to leave here in 48 hours," and then they come back and the place is completely destroyed, they can go arrest that person for vandalism.

And also, the owner can bring a case against them civilly for damages. So I think we have enough protections in our civil— in our criminal law to try to deal with explicitly criminal behavior. But what this bill is trying to do is address a gap, and I think in that gap, We want to be very careful when we're bringing the police power, and we are also explicitly removing the courts, right? In normal landlord-tenant, all of these evidentiary issues, all of these notice issues are resolved by the fact that it goes through the courts. But we are, we are removing the courts from this process and saying the landlord writes an affidavit and the officer goes to the door and can immediately remove that person.

That is a significant departure, um, from our law when that person is not crim— uh, obviously criminally trespassing. So I urge support for the amendment and restoration of the notice period. Thank you very much, Senator Dunbar. Um, I'm going to maintain my objection to this amendment at this time. Um, and, uh, if you want to We have a couple of options.

We can either vote on the amendment, we can table the amendment and return, and we can take the concept under advisement, or you can withdraw the amendment and we can discuss this further.

I think the path for this bill now rests in if we are to enact something like this this year, it would need to be added to the crime bill likely on the Senate floor. But that would take substantial discussion with many people about the merit of this policy and how the policy would work in practice. I think as we've discussed, there is significant merit. I've heard about this issue from many people. And I understand, Senator Dunbar, your concern about notice.

The concern that I and property owners— and Der Yunt has voiced this as well— is that providing them with a time, especially as long as 24 hours, is significant for damage to occur— 48 hours for damage to occur and other things.

So that's kind of how I see it right now. So my— that to simplify the message here, I'm going to continue discussing the bill and topics, and I appreciate the committee's patience and everyone else's patience in discussing this. I think it's important that we discuss these concepts. So I don't intend to move the bill today, but I likely— I would like to continue to work on it and hopefully move it on Friday.

So I will at this time move to table Amendment T.3. Mr. Chair, I will withdraw Amendment T.3. Very well. Senator Gray Jackson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the conversation and I also appreciate that we've addressed an occupant who has children under 16, an occupant who is pregnant, but My question is, what about an unhoused or homeless youth under 16? How do we— is that issue addressed through the bill already? But how do we address something like that, a situation like that? Thank you for the question, Senator Green-Jackson.

I think as we heard from Captain Barnett, the troopers, they already are, as they are removing people from property where they don't belong, they already are providing them with information about different resources, different places, and different, different places that they can go. So that we heard from Captain Barnett about what it is that they are doing, and I think as we kind of look, look to that That was kind of an answer to the question I got when I asked if everyone is— what happens when everyone's under 16. So the troopers, as they are removing people, you know, they're not in the practice of simply just turning them out without additional guidance about where they can go. So we're happy to consider that for further. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Is there any other discussion on Senate Bill 207? Hearing and seeing none, again, I appreciate everyone's conversations today. This is a serious issue. It's a serious issue that happens in real life across Alaska. And it's a big deal.

And I think it's very important that we have protections in place for property owners to be able to say under penalty of perjury and financial penalty that they're the owner of property and that people have never had permission to be there and they should be escorted off. We will continue to talk about this. We'll talk about these issues as well and talk about the appropriateness of a time period as well as what it is that can be done about it. So I appreciate everyone's perseverance. It's okay for us to disagree about these things, and I appreciate Senator Dunbar's input, and I appreciate being able to talk about things that we don't agree on and come to agreement and come to an understanding about what's important on these matters.

So thank you all.

By way of a pigeon update, it's now raining and the pigeons are inside. Oh, yeah. Okay. That concludes our business for today. The Senate Labor and Commerce Committee will meet again on Friday when we will hear a bunch of bills.

They're posted on BASIS. Um, our schedule for next week will be up tomorrow afternoon. At this time, it's 4:13 PM. We're adjourned. Thank you, Mr.