HFLR-20260520-1030

Will the House please come to order?

Will members please indicate their presence by voting?

Will the clerk represent Castello?

Senator Bynum.

Will the clerk please lock the roll?

For the clerk, please tally the board. 39 Members present. With 39 members present, we have a quorum present to conduct business. Mr. Majority Leader.

Mr. Speaker, there are no previous excuse absences today. Well, leading this invocation today on the last day of regular session is the their very own Representative Underwood. Will members please rise.

With the deepest respect for all beliefs, I offer this prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for carrying us through another legislative session, 120 days of long hours, difficult conversations, sacrifice, and service. Lord, we pause to acknowledge that above every title, above every vote, and above every debate, you alone are sovereign over Alaska.

Aujurn. I just ask a blessing over this state from the northernmost villages to every road system, community, over every family, every worker, every child, every elder, and every Alaskan who calls this place home. Father, bless the work that was done in this building that truly serves people of Alaska, and let anything that is not rooted in wisdom, truth, or goodness fall away. Sharpen us as leaders, refine our motives, and give us discernment beyond politics and vision beyond ourselves. Lord, as we move through the special session and continue conversations about the future of this state, especially around resource development and the opportunities that could unlock Alaska's potential, I ask for divine wisdom and creative solutions from heaven.

Give us ideas that no party owns. Give us unity where division has taken root and help us steward the abundance that you placed in this land with wisdom, humility, and courage. Protect this Capitol. Protect every member, staffer, aide, security guard, janitor, and employee who has served this session. Bless each and every one of my colleagues and their families as they travel home.

Bring restoration to weary minds and peace to anxious hearts and strength to those carrying heavy burdens that few can see. And finally, Lord, let Alaska be blessed. Let this state rise into its purpose that you have for it. May we never lose sight of the the people that we were sent here to serve. We thank you for your mercy, your guidance, and your grace that is new every single morning.

In Jesus' name, I ask all of these things. Amen. Representative Story, will you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Representative Story. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move and ask unanimous consent that the prayer be spread across the journal.

Hearing no objection, the prayer will be spread across the journal. Will the clerk please certify the journal for the previous legislative day? I certify as to the correctness of the journal for the 120th legislative day. Mr. Majority Leader.

Mr. Speaker, I move and ask unanimous consent that the journal of the previous day be approved as certified by the Chief Clerk. Hearing no objection, the journal stands approved. Mr. Majority Leader.

Concurrence. Mr. Speaker, I move and ask unanimous consent that members reach into the limbo file to take up House Bill 239. I, I will explain the changes made by the other body.

So the bill is House Bill 239. It's the crime package that once members have it on their desks, I'm going to turn to the Majority Leader to walk through the changes. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the original bill left this body on a 40-0 vote. It started as a fatal pedestrian hit-and-run bill.

If you were, you know, convicted of criminally negligent homicide and failure to render assistance fleeing the scene, it would have a presumptive sentence range 7 to 11 years and a Class A felony and required a mandatory consecutive term of not less— mandatory consecutive term for every act of abandoning somebody at the scene, recognizing there could be multiple victims in one accident. So, Mr. Speaker, how the bill has come back to us now is with about 9 various public safety bills and language sections. And I want to remind the body that the majority of this bill, uh, is, uh, language that passed also unanimously out of this body. Uh, it had to do with, um, House Bill 101, which is raising the age of consent. Uh, it used to be that if you were 16 or older, you could consent to any sexual activity.

Uh, now it's 18. The age has been raised to 18, and most of the bill is simply conforming amendments to reflect that that is the age of consent in statute. Another significant portion is Senate Bill 247, uh, AI-generated child sexual abuse material, also passed unanimously out of this body. And we remember that that, um, bill addresses the obscene, um, AI-generated child porn online And it makes it so there's a tool in the law that can actually address where technology is going with that dangerous exploitation of minors. Next, House Bill 242, sexual assault by healthcare workers.

This bill simply makes it a crime for healthcare workers to engage in sexual penetration or contact with clients outside of the course of professional treatment while they're in the exam room. So in other words, that activity under any circumstances is prohibited. Prohibited. It's a crime. It used to be tied to whether or not the victim was aware something was happening to them.

Obviously there was a terrible unintended consequence in the law with victims knowing they were being sexually assaulted and the law actually saying it was required that they were unaware that they were being sexually assaulted. So we took care of that confusion. Another big portion is House Bill 62, sexual assault examination kits. That also passed unanimously out of this body. That introduced new evidence processing timelines, statewide sexual assault kit tracking, and updated the victim's rights.

Department of Public Safety request added possession or accessing of obscene material depicting sexual contact with animals, um, as a new category of animal cruelty. I'll just leave that there. House Bill 81, criminal justice records Record sealing and victim rights. We can thank Representative Nelson for this. This is basically a workforce development law.

If you're, if you were 21 years of age or older, if you were an adult and you got convicted of a minor possession of marijuana offense that today is legal and there was no other factors complicating that, in other words, there weren't any other additional charges or anything associated, it was just a simple possession, that that is no longer available on Court View, which for a lot of people automatically kicks them out of a job. Something that's legal today, we decided we should apply the same standard to a person, a young person who got in trouble for a possession offense, but no other issues there. So sealing it, law enforcement could still look at it, but not the general public. Senate Bill 62, Board of Parole. The Senate expanded the Board of Parole from 5 to 7 and established criteria for membership on the board.

Board that was more broadly inclusive of the range of criminogenic effects that drive people to prison in the first place. And it applied a 10-year limit to board members, so we don't have lifetime appointments to that Board of Parole. Department of Corrections medical release— this authorizes the commissioner to release seriously or terminally ill prisoners to serve their sentence on electronic monitoring only after determination is made they pose no threat to the public. The corrections brought this saying we have people that are in hospice care. Prison is not the place for hospice care.

We really need an option to get them out before they die. Criminally negligent homicide, we already talked about that. Theft in the third degree, thank you to Representative Calombe for really championing this. And so theft of mail is now a standalone offense. It's a misdemeanor regardless of monetary value.

And it gives law enforcement the tool they need to prosecute this. Many of us have been the victim of mailbox thefts, and the response by public safety, unfortunately, if it's just junk mail, they find someone with your junk mail in possession, there's really not a monetary value to that. So this makes it clear that you break into someone's mailbox, you take their mail, it's a, it's a criminal offense. Confidential Address Protection Program. I think this was an important addition by the Senate, Senate Bill 31.

Creates an address protection program for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, peace officers, correctional officers, and their families.

House Bill 384, Victim Counseling Centers, was in here. That also passed out of this body. That just simply adds the victim counseling center definition to include tribal government victim counseling centers. So it's clear that confidential communications to victim counseling centers that are sponsored by tribal governments can maintain confidentiality privilege with their clients. Senate Bill 17, airbag fraud is now part of this, and this creates a criminal offense where if someone knowingly is installing or manufacturing counterfeit airbags, and you know, you get in trouble for that now.

I always didn't know that was a thing, but I guess it is a thing. And then Senate Bill 233, Controlled Substances Advisory Committee. This simply relocates the administrative home from the Department of Law to the Department of Commerce. So in short, Mr. Speaker, what began as a narrow hit-and-run sentencing bill has grown into an omnibus public safety package covering age of consent, sentencing reform, sex crimes, parole structure, address confidentiality, mail theft, and tribal victim counseling coordination. I'm proud to sponsor this bill.

I want to thank every member of this body Representative Colombe, Representative Nelson, Representative Grave, Representative Vance, many others. Uh, probably you start submitting names, you get in trouble. And on the Senate side, they helped put this package together and would ask the members to vote yes. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Representative Elam.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess I rise with a question of concern.

What started out as a small homicide hit-and-run bill has come back with 65 pages. I believe that we are— have been working for quite a while now on single subject. And so a bill goes over to the other body, comes back stuffed full of a dozen bills. I have some concerns about that. You know, Yeah, there's a lot of really good stuff in here.

There's a lot of good, uh, things that I would agree with. There's probably some stuff in here that I wouldn't agree with, but a 65-page bill coming back under the guise of, of saying that this is just, you know, part of the process— I mean, this is beyond just a Christmas tree. So I do have some, some concerns, you know, when we start talking about process in respect of of the legislative process and the bodies and all the work that we all put into all of this.

Where is that in consideration here? And so, you know, I appreciate all the work that everybody put into this. There was a lot of hard work put into a lot of these bills, but to come back with a dozen bills bundled into one and say up or down, concur, I thought we were talking about due process.

Representative Hannon.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Permission to read and use my notes? Permission granted. I'm going to speak in favor of concurrence with House Bill 239. I introduced a standalone bill, House Bill 242, that was only introduced this January, and it didn't make it all the way through the floor here.

Sometimes people say, well, a bill usually takes 2 years. This is a bill that was introduced in response to the court system and victims learning about a loophole that existed in the prosecution of sexual assault cases. We learned about this after a very high-profile sexual assault case that was being tried here in Juneau with over 17 charges and 25 victims. And one of the victims' cases the perpetrator was actually acquitted of, and her charges dismissed, although a retrial of other charges going forward, because we found at the end of the trial that awareness of the assault made it an unprosecutable crime. And I don't think that's a policy that the state of Alaska intended to create when a statute was created about sexual assault by healthcare workers.

But it existed in the statute. Um, that bill was heard in a couple of committees and had all do pass recommendations, and I appreciate the members who heard that bill and was included in this omnibus crime bill. It was a fairly small and by some standards insignificant policy bill that I think without the opportunity to be rolled into a larger crime bill probably wouldn't be changed into law this session. And I want to acknowledge the victim, Jamie Ann Halsquist, who testified at a numerous— number of committees. Many of you met her.

She testified in our committees and in the other body when they heard the omnibus crime bill. She has demonstrated great resiliency and courage to come forward, and I want to thank and acknowledge her.

The updates to this bill do not impact her case. Her charges have been dismissed. The law is not retroactive, but she is advocating to make sure that future victims aren't created by cases that can't be prosecuted. And there are other things that people could speak to about the specifics of the bills that rolled in, but I will urge you for a yes vote on concurrence on House Bill 239, and Section 7 is where this bill that I'm speaking of now lies in the bill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Representative McCabe. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So a number of years ago, there was a late session, late night session, late in the session attempt to put it together on 3 bills. One was a hairdresser bill, one was an optometrist bill, and one was a dental bill. And the single subject was, well, it's all about the head, right?

So in this case, these are all about crime. And I've looked at these, I've watched them come through, I've heard— we've— we have heard much testimony. The representative from Homer has been a tireless advocate on the CSAM bill And I think we all agree on it. She has advocated for this for years, and it is, it's one of the flagships in here, I believe. The representative from the hillside and the mail theft bill is very, very important to my district.

I've looked at all of these. Not one of them concerns me. Not one of them is something that I wouldn't take a hard look at as far as as far as something to pass, something to pass this body. The representative from Juneau as well, we heard her bill and it was actually something very emotional, very important testimony. And I would urge that we concur with this thing immediately.

And we've all seen these. And I would urge concurrence and just get on with our business because I think this is, it's a big effort, it's messy, but I think it was a good effort. I think there was a number of committee hearings on the other body, and I'd like to congratulate the judiciary chair over there for putting together what I think is a pretty cogent, pretty solid package. It includes a lot of stuff that we in this body here are very interested in. So I would urge concurrence.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Representative Vance.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in, in concurrence on this. I want to say that this body did consider, I believe, all but one of these bills. They were heavily vetted. The only one that, that we didn't have passed through committees or even on the floor is the Controlled Substances Advisory Committee transfer.

And I agree with the previous speaker that I have no concerns about the content of this. Besides, there's a couple of windows that I would like tighter. However, we have to have bills that can get agreement with every region of the state. And I think this bill does that. This bill prioritizes justice.

This is justice for those who have not had a voice. We have been requiring our children to have to defend the abuse that's been happening to them. This bill does that and so much more. So I, I want to also thank the Judiciary Chair from the other body because the process that he's had has been very transparent every committee substitute that he has offered. He included what bills were in there, very detailed, much like the, uh, what you see before us.

This is a great way to get up to speed on these bills in a hurry. And it's been bumpy, it's been a bumpy process, but crime is messy and it's things that people don't want to talk about. But I think the attention needs to go to the, to our House Judiciary Chair He has been tireless. He's been tireless in his advocacy for protecting our kids. And if it wasn't for his efforts, I think that House Bill 101 may not have made it across the finish line.

We have to provide justice for our children. And raising the age of consent is one of those things that Alaska has been behind on. We have the highest rates of rape and sexual assault and child abuse in the nation many times over. And this bill is going to move the needle. It's going to tell them, we hear you, we see you, we're going— the law will be behind you.

You won't have to justify what happened to you because the courts will do that for you. The state of Alaska is going to be your defense. But my portion of this was the generated CSAM. And we developed that in-house Judiciary Committee together with the current chair of Judiciary. And it— this, this entire bill shows the incredible work we can do when we collaborate together, when we set aside party lines and we work together to provide justice, whether it's for the families who have a death from a hit and run to our most vulnerable children.

But in the— I want to make it clear, in the generated CSAM, uh, permission to read briefly, Mr. Smith. Permission granted. On page 7 of the packet given by the Majority Leader, you can see the provisions of the generated CSAM. This is the first of Alaska law that will deal with AI-generated content.

Generated CSAM distribution is incorporated into Alaska's sexual felony presumptive sentencing grid. So I want to make it clear that if you create AI-generated images of children doing obscene things, we will prosecute you and you will have to register as a felon under the sex registry.

The state can forfeit— you will have to forfeit your assets that were involved, and there is no statute of limitations on these crimes. We will also revoke teaching certificates and bus driver certificates, because if you were doing this and you were in the, in the range of our children's lives, we take that very seriously. We're not going to mess around. We are going to prosecute pedophiles, and we're going to come after everyone who seeks to harm our children. And, um, and there's more on that.

I really appreciate the great packet to help us understand what's in this crime bill because these are serious matters. There's also, um, I, I want to give thanks to the, uh, Judiciary Chair of the other body for a request that I made on, um, an issue that people don't like to talk about, and that is bestiality. I'm going to say it here on the floor because I'm not afraid to address it. What's happening to the most vulnerable, whether animal or human, this crime is connected, and it is one of the most heinous crimes. I made the mistake of asking the investigator how these two are connected.

And he told me the story of what's happening to the vulnerable and how this is used. We— and I'm happy to say that the boldness of the chair of, uh, Judiciary of the other body put this provision in there because we need to elevate these crimes. They are happening in the state of Alaska. They're happening to the most vulnerable. And what that is also going to be a felony offense.

We need to stop brushing these things under the rug. We've been doing it for far too long. And this is a historical day because we are, we are finally bringing justice to the most vulnerable when it comes to areas that have been ignored for a very long time. You have a voice. Our children have a voice.

In the state of Alaska, Mr. Speaker. Representative Colon. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in concurrence, or supportive concurrence, too. I appreciate that the mail theft bill got into the omnibus.

I wanted to just give a little bit background where it came from and give recognition and credit where credit is due. So my husband teaches kids youth Sporting, uh, shooting sports. And we were at an awards banquet, a kids' awards banquet, and one of the moms was an APD detective. And we're sitting there at dinner and she explained to me what she's struggling with was all these seniors were getting their mail stolen. And she told me that there was no state statute and that the feds were not really pursuing these unless it was a really big offense.

And so that's where it started. We crafted a bill and it was actually one of the easier bills to run because half the chamber here has been a victim of mail theft. I heard all sorts of stories from their neighbors, from ourselves, how seniors tend to lean more on paper documents. And so when their mail theft is, or their mail is stolen. Their Social Security cards, their retirement accounts, a lot of things in that mailbox.

And they were losing money and generally really difficult for them to try to figure out how to unwind it. And so I wanted to give credit to Tiffany Lofman. She showed up for every meeting. She testified. I worked, I want to give credit to the Department of Law too.

They helped craft those definitions you see in in the bill, and I'm hoping that now they have another tool in their toolbox to pursue this mail theft and make— not only protect seniors, but protect all of us from getting our mail stolen. So thank you.

Representative Sadler.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and good morning. Um, you know, I'm not sure if, uh, this is HB 239. I'm not sure if that's the bill number or the number of different pieces of legislation that were stuffed into one into one bill. Mr. Speaker, this is no way to legislate. Um, I understand late session, getting things across the finish line and so forth, but this, this represents a, a sad failure of our process.

And I'm not sure if it's either a failure of legislative leadership or a success of legislative cynicism and brinksmanship. This kind of thing, when the public's trying to watch the— there's a whole dog's breakfast of issues that are in this one bill. People that care about these issues, whether it's mail theft or age of consent or CSAM, are watching this and don't know what's going on. And this kind of combination fuels confusion and mistrust and cynicism, and it's just very difficult for the public to track and even harder for the public to trust. You know, it's almost absurd to talk about individual elements of the bill, but we have them, we will.

I support almost all of them, and I'm going to vote yes on this, but as I do, I'm going to hold my nose because this process— I won't say stinks, but it just does not smell good.

Representative Stapp. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to rise in support of this omnibus bill. I haven't heard anything that I think the policies we've discussed all year have kind of been crammed in that. The only concern I have is page 62, 63, and 64 are all amended statutes, and I've Never seen that in a bill.

So my hope is, and I'm going to trust that the member of majority leader and the folks in judiciary work hard to make sure that all these things were done right and there aren't any unintended consequences to passing this omnibus legislation, because I don't think I've ever seen a bill that had 3 entire pages of amended statutes listed one by one by one, Mr. Speaker. But yeah, no, I think it's a good bill.

Yeah, I'm going to support it, and I also think we're probably beyond the point where we complain about process at this point, Mr. Speaker. Thank you. Rep. Sam Gray. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in support of concurrence.

Permission to look at my notes? Permission granted. There was one small change made to House Bill 101, which is included in this. It was a change in the window for sending sexually explicit images. That's something that we worked on in judiciary.

We were happy with our version, but like many things in the legislature, you don't always get things exactly the way you want them. I want to thank the former House Judiciary Chair. I think for years we've been collaborating on this, whether we knew we were collaborating or not, and I am grateful for her work in this bill and for being a part of this process. This is the result of years of work.

When I was first elected, I met with my constituent, Keeley Olson, who is the executive director of STAR, Standing Together Against Rape. At that time, before I ever stepped foot in this building, she said that the, the way that we can make A important reduction in the amount of sexual assault in Alaska is to raise the age of consent to 18. As has already been mentioned, we have the highest sexual assault rate in the country. The majority of the victims are young. Being younger is a risk factor.

What we are doing today is telling predators that 16- and 17-year-olds are now off limits. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Minority Leader Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And so I rise in support of this bill and I will vote for it.

I know a number of the members here have a variety of bills that they worked on diligently and are in the bill. I will caution, and I have to echo the comments from the member from Hinai is having lived through the aftermath of SB 91 and some of the unintended consequences and a lot of the real challenges that came with this. When you take up an omnibus crime bill, taking up on the last day with minutes to look at, look at it, it's not good practice, Mr. Speaker. So I'm going to, I'm going to trust the members that have worked on this so diligently. And, but hope that if we're going to do this type of policy in the future, we would give it the type of attention that it deserves.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Representative Tomaszewski.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So part of this omnibus crime bill is actually House Bill 74, which I carried here in the House. It did pass two committees and is currently in rules. I would have liked to see it just pass on its own, on its own merits, but being part of this omnibus crime bill, I am certainly not opposed to. I think it's somewhat the way the sausage gets made here in this building, in this legislature.

Sometimes it's a messy process and it's a long drawn-out process. This bill has been being worked on for a long time now. And there are a lot of really good pieces of legislation in this, in this omnibus bill, and I look forward to supporting it. You know, just to point out a few— mail theft. Mail theft in my district is out of control, and having the ability to stop these folks and making it a real crime and stop them from doing it, I think, is really important.

And there's a lot of really good pieces of legislation like my bill, HB 74, the counterfeit and non-functioning airbags. It's—. You can, you can Google it and find instances where a simple fender bender ignited an airbag which killed someone. A simple fender bender which The person would have never been hurt if it had not been for a non-functioning counterfeit airbag which blew up in their face. So these things need to be addressed.

I'm glad it's being addressed. I'm glad we're able to concur with this. Well, I hope we're able to concur with this legislation, and I ask for your support. Thank you.

Representative Prox.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess just another comment on the process. The bill itself's got a number of things in there that did go through some process, etc., and in and of themselves, they're certainly a good idea, but we don't know. There might be some, as was mentioned before with the other omnibus crime bill, SB 91, there might be a lot of unintended consequences. So collectively, it's the way it's done, I guess.

But we, we kind of exclude the public from a lot of these bills that there just needs to be more discussion about our responsibility to take care of things ourselves rather than just hand it over to the government. Because one of the complaints that we're going to have in part because of this bill, but everything that we do is the cost of government. And we're making, we're creating the demand for more police protection, and that leads to more incarceration, and that leads to more expense and more complaining. And we're leaving, through this process, we're leaving the public out of the discussion And that's unfortunate. Another thing is there could be, when this gets reviewed, there could be some significant flaw that we didn't see in one of the bills, and then the whole bill would have to be vetoed.

That would be kind of bad. There's this kind of a high-risk way of establishing public policy, and I wish that we would spend more time on these bills individually, one by one, and less time on frivolous bills and posturing bills and what have you. We just need to maybe stay around more on the weekend and do these bills one by one so they all get a thorough vetting. But anyway, at that, having said that, we are where we are and we probably should concur with this bill. Representative Josephson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm eager to vote for this bill. Um, just a word on process. If there are 10 bills within this bill, and I think there may be 11, and you think about 10 bills assigned to 2 committees by the Speaker, that would be, say, 3 hearings per committee. That's 6 hearings for a bill to come to this floor.

That sounds like 60 hearings to me. 60. If the other body did that, you're at 120 hearings. 120 Hearings. Plus floor time.

And, you know, I'm in the building 11 hours a day except Saturdays, sometimes a little less on Sundays. I think others are here that much too. I think the majority leader from the other body is here a lot more than that. So it's easy to say, well, we just would find those, you know, we'd find that 120 hearing opportunity. No, no, we wouldn't.

No, we would not do that. There's no time. That's point number one. Um, the issue of exposure to the bill is always— it's one of the, the difficulties of this job. So our House Resources Committee knows oil and gas tax property really well.

Ask me in 30 days and I'll catch up, I guess. But if you don't have time and it's not staring at you in committee, you don't have time. Um, I wanted to note that the Department of Law, I'm told, has no issues with this bill. There is less than 1% chance this bill would be vetoed. Much less.

It's like, you know, the smallest 0.0001% that the administration would veto an age of consent bill. I don't think so. Um, the common theme in this bill is public safety. That's the single subject. They're all about public safety.

And in terms of SB 91, that is not a threat because SB 91 was a relaxation of criminal laws. This is an intensity in enforcement of criminal laws. So now, could we have overdone it? I don't know. I mean, the representative from North Pole is right.

This is going to result in some increase— some increase in incarceration and the corrections budget. But is there an alternative? When you look at all these offences that need gap-filling and that are a reflection of new technology, we're trying to keep up. With bad actors. So this is like one of the easiest votes I'll ever cast, and I support it.

In wrap-up, Mr. Majority Leader. Yes, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of all the members. You know, for the members that are concerned about the numbers of conforming amendments or repealers, I can say we have both a court system able assisting in the Department of Law every step of the way in this. Even when this bill left this body and became an omnibus public safety bill, we work closely with both the courts and the Department of Law to make sure everything that got put in was amended, caught any errors caught.

So I'm feeling very confident that we have a very structurally sound bill all the way through the process. Really proud to recommend that the body concur on this. And I do, Mr. Speaker, want to commend a very senior staff member in this building, Gary Zepp, who has not just been a closer, but he's pitched all 9 innings on this. And he is probably one of the few staff people in this building that could make a bill so easy on the mind of the reviewer with, uh, that all the PowerPoints and the slides that break down each bill and the policy implications. And I would be remiss if I didn't commend him, Mr. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House concur in the Senate amendments to committee substitute for House Bill 239 Judiciary, thus adopting Senate committee substitute for committee substitute for House Bill 239 Finance.

I recommend the members vote yes. Are you ready for the question?

Brikides.

Brikides.

Will the House please come back to order? Are you ready for the question? Question being, shall the House concur in the Senate changes to committee substitute for House Bill 239, Judiciary? Thus adopting Senate Committee Substitute for Committee Substitute for House Bill 239 Finance. Members may proceed to vote.

Will the clerk please lock the roll? Does any member wish to change his or her vote?

Will the clerk please announce the vote? 39 Yeas, 1 nay. With a vote of 39 yeas to 1 nay, the House has concurred with the Senate changes to House Bill 239. I believe we have an effective date and a title change. Mr.

Majority Leader. Mr. Speaker, I move and ask unanimous consent that the roll call vote on the passage of the bill be considered the roll call vote on the effective date clause. Hearing no objection, the effective date clause has been adopted. Mr. Majority Leader.

Mr. Speaker, I move and ask unanimous consent that Senate Concurrent Resolution 22, the title change resolution for House Bill 239, be taken up as as a special order of business. Without objection. Are you ready for the question? The question being, shall Senate Concurrent Resolution 22 pass the House? Members may proceed to vote.

Will the clerk please lock the roll?

Does any member wish to change his or her vote? Will the clerk please announce the vote? 40 Yeas, 0 nays. By a vote of 40 yeas to 0 nays, the title change resolution SCR 22 —has been adopted. Mr.

Majority Leader. Mr. Speaker, I move and ask unanimous consent that the members go into the limbo file to take up House Bill 16. The member from District 12 will explain the changes made by the other body. Representative Schraggy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

And just before I begin, am I correct that debate is limited to just the changes?

That's technically the rule. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I only ask because it has been a little while since members have seen this bill, but I will keep my remarks limited to just the changes. If there are questions, I'm happy to take those up, uh, through the course of this. But really, the only change to HB 16 was the effective date, making the effective date, uh, January 1st, 2027, so that any changes to contribution limits are not impact— or enacted until after the election cycle that we are currently in the midst stuff. Happy to hear the debate and answer any questions that may come up.

Representative Schraggi, with indulgence of the body, since we haven't seen this bill in a while, might you just provide a brief summary of it? I'd be happy to, Mr. Speaker. I was wondering if you might want me to. Just as a reminder, in 2021, the Ninth Circuit struck down Alaska's campaign contribution limits, making it so that there is effectively no limitations on campaign contributions to candidates running for office in Alaska. HB 16 reinstates contribution limits in line with voter intent over the course of history of Alaska, where we've seen limits placed into law through ballot initiative a number of times, with support remaining around 70% throughout decades of Alaska's history.

So again, this bill simply reenacts campaign contribution limits in the state of Alaska, adjusts them for inflation every 10 years so that they stay constitutionally enforceable. And I would look members to vote yes in concurrence with the Senate's change to the effective date, again making this implementable after this current election cycle. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Representative Vance.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am a hard no on concurrence because I support the right to freedom of speech regardless of the timeline.

Representative Allard. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe this is going to just generate another lawsuit. The courts have already spoken, so there's no limit on donations. And personally, I mean, I agree with the representative from Homer.

This is infringing on one's rights, so I will be a hard no as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Representative Josephson.

Several years ago, following the Ninth Circuit decision In a case called Hebden, named for the APOC director, I got very involved in this issue along with my colleague from the— co-chair colleague from House Finance. The statement of the previous member that the courts have indicated that you can't have contribution limits is completely, completely false. It's just— it's really false. There are contribution limits in state campaigns and of course federal elections all over the country. All they said fundamentally in the Ninth Circuit decision was $500 limits are pretty small.

They're pretty small.

And they didn't give us much directive after that. And so I support the bill. It's, I think it's a reasonable number. And I would note that when the public, by initiative, the Alaska people have been asked, do you want smaller rather than larger contribution limits? They said in vast numbers, smaller please, smaller please.

Um, this is a moderate number that is adjustable by inflation. I support the bill. Representative Prox.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Regardless of the change which is intended to make the bill more palatable, I am opposed to campaign contributions. It should be saying liberate dark money campaigning. If someone wants to give a contribution to the candidate, that candidate can, you know, does have an advantage. I get it.

But what the contribution limits have created, as we can, as we're already seeing, is just an explosion of what amounts to dark money in campaigns. And I think that is very corrosive because it really takes the responsibility from a campaign out of the hands or the responsibility out of— off of the candidate and they can— and if somebody thinks these are not coordinated, you're living in the wrong century. But this is just going to further obscure who is behind a candidate and result in less information, real information to the voter. So I'm opposed to concurring with this change. Representative Klawe.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So trying to remember when we did this bill, I know it was early in the year last year, I think. So I support campaign limits. I think it needs to be addressed.

My— why I've been torn on this bill and back and forth is because there's no limits on IEP contributions. So we're limiting people's ability to contribute to a candidate but an independent expenditure group can get all the money they want. If I remember right, that limit came from the feds, a federal decision, if I remember right. And so I remember that there were some amendments to try to make contribution limits on IEPs as well that failed because it would go against the court's decision. And so I'm— I guess I'm a no just because I— it's not that I'm against contribution limits.

I think there needs to be a limit, but it kind of creates an uneven playing field. So unless we can kind of do something about the other part of the contributions and not just limit people but both, I would support that. But as it is written right now, unless the sponsor can correct me, I'm a no vote. Representative Gelden.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am a proud supporter of this bill, and I want to say that we worked on this as a bipartisan freshman caucus for a while. We actually investigated what the lawsuits, uh, that happened to create this blowup of no contribution limits. We, we looked at what, why that happened. Each state is sort of all over all over the place on this.

But for our particular— the lawsuit that we were looking at, what we learned is that the limit at the time was too low. And so this got expanded in this bill quite a bit, maybe more than I would expand it. But in general, in speaking to Alaskans, there is nothing they'd like to see more than less money in politics, particularly the way I think that we've buy out all of the— whether you're online playing a game or you're trying to watch a show, what's happening is we get bombarded with ads and with, I think what some would say, are extra in the mail. People are just really tired of seeing all that. And I tell you, I ran— I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say, but I ran a statewide campaign and it was in insane how much money was spent.

We spent over $100,000 per week on television ads. Every single statewide ad in the mail was over $100,000. So really what it gets to is we as— as what we're supposed to be running around and talking to constituents about what we believe in, but instead we're spending all our time raising money. And I think that nobody wants to see that rat race in politics. Let's bring it back to the olden days where we would get together in coffeehouses, bars, or wherever and talk about the topics, as opposed to spending all of our time trying to raise money or spending everybody else's time being bombarded with, um, clips, sound clips.

They're really just sound bites, and they're not really getting into the issues and trying to solve problems, which is what I think most Alaskans would like to see. I mean, I helped with collecting signatures for something related to this topic, and I can tell you that every single person, whether they were political or not, every Alaskan said, yeah, sign me up for getting money out of politics. And this is one step toward that.

Madam Rules Chair. Mr. Speaker, I think we're getting a little far off the subject before the body. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

I will— I—. Listen, Galvin, if I could make a ruling, I would ask that you stick to the concurrence message before the body. Thank you. Thank you. I will just add that I think that the other body looked at this in light of where we are in a big deep crevasse of a problem without any limits, and I support this concurrence.

Thank you. Representative Fields. Brief it easy.

Please come back to order. And I have allowed members a little bit of latitude. This bill hasn't been before the body in almost a— well, actually more than a year, I think it is. Representative Fields. Mr.

Speaker, is it appropriate to answer the question for the member from House District 11, even though it goes a little bit beyond the changes? I think it's appropriate. Okay, um, just wanted to answer the question. So In the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo U.S. Supreme Court case, the court began to deregulate independent expenditure spending. The court steadily deregulated, culminating in the 2010 Citizens United decision.

So it is true that we as a state legislature cannot regulate the amount of independent expenditure contributions. Nonetheless, what we as a state can do is require disclosure. So that is a law on the books. Per-voter initiative. Um, I would say to the member from District 11, we might also consider a trigger law that would put into place independent expenditure campaign limits should the Supreme Court change course.

I would be supportive of that. Nonetheless, um, it is also true that the absence of campaign limits and directly to campaigns does and can have a corrupting influence. So I think the question before us today is recognizing that we face pretty tight federal limits on what we can do with independent expenditures, do we still control that which is within our control, which is those direct contributions? And I think it's pretty clear that, you know, I remember everyone who's given me a $500 contribution. Would I remember someone who gave a $5,000, $10,000 contribution?

The potential for large unlimited contributions, I believe, is fundamentally corrupting. And it should be limited, and we should also look to the future. And yeah, I think we should also put forward a trigger law related to IEs, but let's not fail to do something positive today simply because we aren't doing everything positive under the sun. We have to make incremental progress, and I will vote yes. All right, Representative Schwocki.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in opposition to concurrence. This is a very dangerous bill for the state of Alaska. This limits our ability as individuals to donate directly to our candidates. We just heard we cannot regulate those donations for independent expenditures.

I hope the public is watching.

In wrap-up, Representative Shwaggy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yeah, just briefly, I want to remind folks that the reason that we can't limit independent expenditures today is a result of Citizens United, which is very unfortunate, and we should be taking action to address that as well. It's something that I plan to continue to work on. In the meantime, I think it's unacceptable that we would allow for unlimited contributions from individuals to candidates in the state of Alaska.

I know that when I go and talk to my constituents, the notion that a candidate might receive a $10, $50, or $100,000 donation from an individual donor from in-state or out-of-state, regardless, they worry that that has an impact on the legislator and their ability to honestly represent their views in the legislature in good faith. I personally view that we, and believe that we have a crisis in trust in government between the public and our elected officials, and this is a strong step that we can take to try and restore, restore that trust. In our system. Regardless of what action we take today, if for some reason this fails, this will be on the ballot in August. I think we should do the right thing here and now, however, and enact these limits today on behalf of our voters who desperately want to see us ensure that we have a system that's above board, transparent, and without undue influence.

I would recommend concurrence. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House concur in the Senate amendments to committee substitute for House Bill 16, State Affairs. —Thus adopting Senate Committee Substitute for Committee Substitute for House Bill 16, State Affairs, amended Senate, and recommend the members vote yes. We're ready for the question. The question being, shall the House concur in the Senate changes to Committee Substitute for House Bill 16, State Affairs, thus adopting Committee Substitute for House Bill 16, State Affairs, amended Senate? Members may proceed to vote.

Will the clerk please lock the roll? Does any member wish to change his or her vote? Will the clerk please announce the vote? 21 Yeas, 19 nays. By a vote of 21 yeas to 19 nays, the House has concurred with the changes to House Bill 16.

Mr. Majority Leader. Mr. Speaker, I move the effective date clause. Are you ready for the question? The question being, shall the effective date clause be adopted?

Members may proceed to vote.

Will the clerk please lock the roll? Does any member wish to change his or her vote? Will the clerk please announce the vote? 24 Yeas, 16 nays. By a vote of 24 yeas to 16 nays, effective date clause has failed.

Mr. Majority Leader. Brikadees.

Brikadees.

Will the House please come back to order. Mr. Majority Leader. Mr. Speaker, I move and ask unanimous consent that the members go into the limbo file to take up House Bill 28. The member from District 3 will explain the changes made by the other body.

No objection. House Bill 28 is before the body. Representative Story. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a reminder, this bill seeks to help fill our high teacher vacancy rates.

Permission to read from my notes? Permission granted. It incentivizes the recruitment and retention of teachers by establishing a student loan repayment program for public school teachers, and the bill contains other policy changes. It authorizes the state to reimburse districts for energy costs subject to appropriation, and this starts in fiscal year '28. Furthermore, it aligns Correspondence Study Program materials to that of local school districts and provides provisions and flexibility for school board members and retired teachers to substitute under certain conditions.

Finally, it puts a 4% cap on the annual increase in the district's required local contribution for public education. I wanted to highlight the changes from when it left this body. When the bill went over to the other body, we had incentive program for state employees as well as teachers. What the other body did was narrow, narrow who could qualify for this. They took out the public state the public employees, narrowed it to the hardest-to-fill teacher positions of special education, English language learners, science, technology, engineering, and math teachers.

They changed, um, the amount of $24,000 from 4 first year, 8 second year, and 12 the third year to make it all $5,000, not to go over that for the 3 years. The reason why they lowered the limit was they were hoping to get more teachers to participate in this program. The pro— the program plan is open to students attending the University of Alaska, students living outside of Alaska, and individuals already employed in certain special— in these specialty areas because we need them. It creates an energy cost reimbursement program for school districts subject to appropriation based on a 3-year— district's 3-year average cost for heating, fuel, and electricity. This starts in fiscal year '28, again subject to appropriation.

Districts must make reasonable efforts not to increase energy use year after year. It requires DEED's annual education report, uh, to contain school districts' energy cost information and requires school district audits to include energy cost information needed to calculate the reimbursements. It caps the growth in a city or borough school district's required local contribution, so it may not exceed the prior year required local contribution by more than 4%. It allows correspondence students to keep certain textbooks, equipment, and curriculum materials and follow the local district's policy on student instructional materials. It changes school consolidation funding rules, allowing districts that consolidate schools to offset funding decreases for 4 years, which aligns with the hold harmless, and it shortens certain reopening reconsolidation restrictions from 7 to 4 years.

This is hoping if districts grow— Coast Guard comes back to Juneau, pipeline, gas pipeline happens, that if districts had closed their schools, they can reopen them in 4 versus 7 years. Um, again, importantly for keeping our teachers, it allows regional resource centers to reemploy retired teachers under the same kind of retired teacher reemployment framework that applies to school districts. It allows regional school board members to work as substitute substitute teachers in emergencies in time-limited circumstances, again, to help get teachers in front of our kids. And then it adds a felony moral turpitude restriction for school board members. In order to serve, they must not have felony or moral turpitude behaviors.

So That is the changes, and I urge concurrence. Brief it is.

Will the House please come back to order.

Under discussion on a concurrence vote to changes to House Bill 28, the education package, concurrence changes made in the other body. Representative Sadler, I think you were up next. I do. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and welcome back.

Here we have another concurrence on a combination bill, I'll call it, and Now I'm going to focus just on the original title and purpose and element of this bill. There may be some other good elements, and I'll leave others to speak to those pro or con. But on the topic of loan reimbursement for teachers for education loans, we had the opportunity to approve cash grants to teachers across the state earlier in this legislature that were scaled to the cost of where people live in their education careers. That was rejected. Those grants would have been provided for any purpose, which would have included reimbursement of school loans.

The legislation before us now specifically says that we will pay the tab, present the receipt for your school student loan, we'll pay that back up to $24,000, roughly what those other grants— those were bypassed. I'm concerned about elevating education, which is an important element of society, above engineering or sanitation workers or insurance agents or slope workers to repay their student loans. There have been a number of ways in which this legislature has benefited education. Increased BSA, historic highs, one-time funding outside the BSA, free certification for teachers who want to come out of retirement and teach, and this expands that to those who want to work in a separate section of the education system, regional areas. We have ADM hold harmless provisions, which are generous and mitigate the impact of reduced students on funding for education, and this sweetens that as well.

We sweetened disability benefits for teachers under the same rubric as we did so for firefighters and law enforcement agencies. Mr. Speaker, these are all great, but they seem to benefit one cohort of society, and I think the train is moving fast and very extensively down a road, down a trail. I think we ought to slow the roll a little bit and consider some of these bills independently. Again, they may be good, they may be bad, but it makes it very difficult to separate them out and not support the good elements, or, I'm sorry, it makes it difficult to discern what overall you want to do. And basically, on the loan reimbursement feature, I'm going to have to vote no on this with regret that there are other good things in the bill that may be good.

So too much, too expensive, no. Representative Vance. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm probably going to shock everybody. I'm going to rise in support of this bill, and I'm going to do it for a couple of reasons.

One is the reimbursement of school district energy costs, uh, subject to appropriation. I think this is an important measure because we have seen, uh, the cost of energy rise dramatically for our school districts, and we really don't have an understanding of how much of the budget that is and the impact, uh, to our, our classrooms. So By, by the way this was structured, I think it was very thoughtful in creating an audit and averaging, uh, over the 3 years of the cost, and that if the school district doesn't provide that information, they won't get the money. This is an incentive to give an account to the Department of Education of how much the energy is costing each school district so that we can, as legislators, can have a better understanding of where the energy needs are specifically in our state. We've been talking about the gas line.

We've been talking about a variety of different energy solutions from coal to hydro. And in these small communities throughout the state, the school district is one of the, the greatest users of lots of energy. And a couple of years ago, I was touring one of the school— smaller schools in my district and asked them what they were doing to put in energy efficiency and how much was the energy cost for that small school. And the principal said, "Well, I'm not really sure." I said, "The legislature is talking about this because we understand that you have these huge energy costs for buildings that maybe aren't at capacity and they're older, you know, and we want to know what that is so that we can help address the problem." I think this bill is a step to do that. And so I appreciate the thought behind that.

Also raising the cap of the local contribution to a little bit more reasonable number. I would prefer that we go into the statute and address that and encourage our municipalities to lower the tax burden on our property taxes. And I'm gonna keep up with this argument In my district, our property assessor is from the northern part of the peninsula. When he comes down to my district, every property is a view property, Mr. Speaker. Homer and Kachemak Bay, you know, down in my district is absolutely beautiful.

But not every property deserves to have a higher— an increased value. So therefore, the local contribution on the Kena Peninsula increased because of the property assessment increased. If the borough lowers that, then the local contribution will be lowered and the state will contribute more. We need to keep pushing on that. But I would like to— those are, those are things that I support.

And, but I would like to highlight there is one section on page 3 that deals with correspondence programs. And it says, I think the The motivation was good to say, hey, though, when you have a correspondence student who leaves correspondence, that they may retain textbooks, equipment, and other things. Correspondence students will often get a computer to do their schoolwork on because it's— a lot of it's distance ed. I'm a homeschool family. We're enrolled in the Connections Homeschool Program under the Kenai Peninsula School District.

My kids have a computer that they get under their allotment. That dollar amount is subtracted from their allotment, but we have to return that when they're done. And so the school district then has aged computers that they then have to make an account for. But here's the catch. It says on page 4 that they can keep it if, um, it's the same if it's the same as what a student who goes to a physical school might get to keep.

I don't know that this— the brick-and-mortar students get to take the— I don't know that they get issued computers or textbooks that they can actually take when they leave. So this section, while I think it was intended to be good, ended up being a nothing burger. A nothing burger. It was a nice gesture, But when you say, oh, the brick and mortar students, if you can keep the same thing that they get to keep, um, unless something's changed, that they are issued laptops that they get to keep now, then, then we've done nothing for our correspondence students. It's actually created another administrative burden on our schools.

I would recommend that because it comes out of their student allotment, Let them keep it. Let them keep the computer because it's aging out in 3 years anyway. It creates more storage, more burden on just that whole transaction of correspondence students having to go through that, and we're trying to overregulate that. Correspondence students are actually profitable to school districts because they, the allocation that is used is maybe $2,400 for a high schooler per year, uh, and the amount of money that school districts get for that student is a whole lot more than that, Mr. Speaker. So I admire the thought behind it, but because this bill does no harm to correspondence, I'm going to support this because I think there's greater issues being addressed like covering energy needs, making sure that we are addressing the local contribution, and also doing what we can to incentivize more teachers in this— in Alaska.

Thank you.

Representative Fields. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is hard to follow the other chamber this time of year with a lot of rapidly moving pieces, so Just wanted to talk to a couple of changes. And the other body, this bill had policy added to address required local contributions capped at a 4% rate. I just want to remind members that we passed a bill with required local contribution rates capped by a 31-9 vote.

I think it's fair to say that is a very broadly supported structural education reform. And I am particularly supportive of that change in this bill because if we don't address required local contribution, then we can increase the BSA but have the total amount of money in our districts go down. So I would say this is a fundamental structural reform, and it is better to do that than only look at the BSA. I also want to thank members of both education committees, including in the other body, and the members of the Education Task Force, because there's a lot of highly detailed policy in this bill. These are changes since we passed House Bill 28, and they bring together broadly supported policies that have been in development for 2 years and have been informed by members of all parties and our all caucuses.

So I realize that they're in the weeds, maybe they're not going to make the news, but that is the kind of substantive bipartisan work that we should be proud of. I will be voting for this bill, and I want to emphasize this is a better approach than only looking at the BSA. The BSA is important, but it's not all there is, and we need these structural policy reforms. Representative Schwanke. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I too rise in support of concurrence for this bill. I was not a fan of the initial bill when it left the body for the prime reason that student loan repayment funds would come out of the Higher Education Fund, which was designed to create opportunities, in part, to pay for students, our young graduates going into college scholarships. But I recognize that we do have a very significant shortage of educators, and for that reason, I'm not going to hold that against the changes that were made by Senate, the other body, Finance. I want to thank them for taking a big swing here. There's going to be a lot of opposition probably on the floor to some of those big swings.

But in light of the previous speaker, he very clearly pointed out that this is an opportunity for us to separate out BSA funds from utility costs. Across rural Alaska, our utility costs have more than doubled over the last 5 to 10 years. Some districts much worse than others. Those costs have directly eaten away at our school district's ability to educate our children. I hope that the Education Task Force also follows through in addressing this, um, in their final report.

I know that the funding will be subject to appropriation every year, But I think that this is a necessary step for the legislature to take so that we can shore up and stabilize our rural schools. So I will be in support. Thank you. Representative Bynum. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I'm going to rise and speak to the changes in the bill and why I will be voting yes on concurrence. For very— permission to read as I go through. Presentation here, Mr. Speaker. Thank you very much. One of the things that I've said continuously when I stand up and I speak on the topic of education is that I want to see durable things.

We need to do things that are durable, we need to have them in law, and that they are consistent. Section 2 of the bill provides the energy relief program. I think this is something we've been talking about for a long time. Is this going to be a fully detailed plan that's going to be consistently funded? We will see, but this is a start.

This will provide immediate relief to our school districts when we provide those funds necessary for those energy costs. It also requires in that, that the districts must show that they are making an effort to avoid the increasing energy consumption. So that's also a good thing. Section 3, it has the elements for the correspondence program. I think that that's a good start as well.

Section 4, we talk about substitute teachers needed during an emergency. We've been hearing over and over, Mr. Speaker, that we need teachers. We need teachers now. This is one element that will help. Section 5, school board eligibility rules.

I think that those, uh, changes in those rules are a good thing, and we should support that. Section 7, Mr. Speaker, we talk about reopening schools. In my district, Mr. Speaker, we've seen declining enrollment. We've had real challenge with the number of schools that we've had, and we've had to close schools, and we're talking about closing schools this year. But we're also looking for revival of our community, of industry, a growing shipyard, additional Coast Guard coming, and shortening this window to 4 years is going to be instrumental in making sure that we have an opportunity to grow again.

The required local contribution cap. This is something that we were talking about just last week, and it's something that we all agreed on. I think that's going to be good for our communities and protect our homeowners and our property taxpayers. Retired teacher reemployment. This is adopted for shortages, and they need to adopt a shortage policy.

They need to advertise the positions publicly. And attempt to recruit and hire before they implement the program. Those are all good policy changes. There's a student loan— or I'm sorry, a teacher student loan repayment pilot program in here. And if we look, it says full-time public school teachers in special education, ESL, and specifically STEM fields.

This is also something I think is gonna be good for our kids. Section 15, we say if you're going to be making these changes in these programs to talk about student loan programs, we want to know that they're going to be effective. And we say that in this bill. We say report back to us and tell us that these things are working. Let's just help us evaluate whether we want to continue the program because it does have sunset.

I'm a strong supporter of this, uh, these changes. Was glad to have an opportunity to be able to work with the other body, as many of us in this room were able to do. To be able to get these changes into the bill and make sure that they're here in front of us. I would hope that everybody will be voting a yes on concurrence. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Representative Nelson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And to partially quote Bill O'Reilly, we're doing it live. Partially. Mr. Speaker, With your permission, may I read the first sentence of the— Permission granted. This bill incentivizes the recruitment and retention of teachers by establishing a student loan repayment program for public school teachers who teach in the hard-to-fill specialty areas of special education, English as a second language, science, technology, engineering, and math.

So this is establishing— because this is, once again, we're doing it live— the goal is to establish a student loan repayment program for teachers who teach these things. These are all good things. Teachers are good things. My sister's a teacher. My wife, who has— who got 2 degrees in 3 years, is a teacher.

And one was in early childhood development. So it's, it's no fault on that. However, what about the students that actually get degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math? We're not going to repay their student loans. I have a Bachelor of Science in animal production and range management, and I'm not raising animals and I'm not managing range.

But if we are going to start picking and choosing which student loans that these students, students, which they're 18, we've been debating the age of what an adult is. Like, we take these loans out, I've taken these loans out, many of you have taken loans out to pursue an education. I didn't wanna go to college at all, but my grandfather told me, if you don't go to college, you can't come back to the ranch. So I went to college and I did that. And I took out the loans myself.

And my children already have the expectation that if they want to go to college— totally in support of that— you're going to repay for that. You have to pay for what you want to get. And that's what I did. That's what my wife has done. I mean, quite frankly, she's been a stay-at-home mom.

I'm paying for her college degrees. We are picking and choosing a specific small slice to repay their college student loans. And like, to be quite frank, I got a loan and at one point I was riding a bicycle downhill, didn't have any brakes because I was poor, and slammed into a car and it cost me $600. That came out of the money that I got from a student loan. Just, just as an example, student loans are the responsibility of these young individuals who are adults who have taken the risk to get the education to pursue the career that they want to pursue.

So I, I mean, like, we talk about energy relief, and there's many other things in this bill, but just on principle, Mr. Speaker, I have to oppose this. I have to oppose this. No disrespect to any teachers, as we've already said, but We're repaying the student loans for teachers, but not before the careers that we say we want to emphasize. I don't think that's our role. I don't think that's our place.

And with that, I, uh, I will be opposing. I will be opposing this. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Representative Ruffridge.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to rise in support of concurrence for HB 28. I think the comments of the member speaking right before me are good ones, and I have some of the similar concerns. One of the reasons why I will support the bill though is that the provisions for the student loan program do have a sunset on them, and that sunset is going to be in 4 years from now. And so I think it will be a nice understanding of whether or not it helps us fill some of these hard-to-fill positions across the state.

And that is actually a program we've used in a variety of other programs, namely in healthcare, to try to ensure that we have healthcare positions that are covered throughout the state—nursing physicians and others—and they've been effective. So I think in the past we've had some programs like this for teachers. They were effective then. This is maybe making the decision to find out if they're effective now. Some of the other changes in the bill that I'm supportive of, I know we had talked quite a bit about required local contribution being an issue up and down the rail belt.

We had letters of support for altering that from Fairbanks, the Matsu, Kenai, Anchorage. Just to name a few, that's in the bill. And I think it's a little bit more of a conservative number for those who had concerns about that, raising it to 4% as a cap instead of 2% in the discussion that we had before. The other component of this that I think is going to be an interesting discussion as we move forward in this body throughout the years, and that's the idea around energy. This year we appropriated in our budget some one-time funds for energy relief, we called it.

I like the idea of giving structure to one-time funds, and I like the idea of maybe having some structure in the future for energy costs just in general. Energy costs have risen. I've gotten some initial information from the Department of Education. They've risen by quite a bit, Mr. Speaker, over the last 10 years. The city of Anchorage alone has risen by almost $5 million just in the last 8 years.

And I think that costs go up as you get away from our population center. And this is obviously subject to appropriation. We are appropriating money this year. This gives a framework for how those dollars are going to be used. I think that's a smart decision for us to do, is to have a framework for those monies rather than have them be somewhat arbitrarily moved forward.

The last thing on here that I'll speak about is a small thing, and we're seeing that districts across the state are closing schools. Fairbanks closed schools, Kenai closed schools, Anchorage closed schools. I think the Matsu this year is closing schools. Our provision in statute was that if you closed a school, this is found on page 8 of the bill, that you had to leave that closed for 7 years. I think we're in a state of flux currently in our state.

Frankly, we might have to keep closing schools if we don't make some other changes to have some growth in our state again. But in the potential that we do make those changes and our state is growing again, this changes that provision from 7 years to 4 years and allows us to reopen schools if we need to without having penalties. And I think that's a smart decision. There's a few other things in here that I'm supportive of, but In the interest of time, I will just say I'm going to concur and sit down. Thank you.

Representative Allard. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I represent one of the largest school districts— no, the largest school district in the state of Alaska. So I'm just going to make this brief on the reasons why I'm not going to be supporting this bill. Mr. Speaker, may I reference my notes, please?

Permission granted. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So some of my core concerns on this is the new energy cost entitlement. And this is an open-ended state.

So this is a liability that we shouldn't be having. The local contribution of restructuring unfunded mandate risk on the boroughs, Mr. Speaker, and the loan repayment pilot program. I don't believe that students of any degree in colleges should be reimbursed, and I definitely don't support this either. That, that conflicts with our values and of Eagle River. And then the consolidation moratorium reduction from 7 to 4 years, it encourages a premature reconsolidation that could inflate future ADM funding claims.

And I do believe my school district would take advantage of that. And for those reasons, I won't be supporting this. Thank you. Representative Costello. Thank you.

I, um, over the last year, I actually got involved in a constituent issue. Um, there was a problem with the, the lighting in the parking lot at Diamond High School was going on in the morning, but it was going— the lights would come on half an hour after the event was starting so that people were parking in the parking lot, walking into the building in the winter on the icy parking lot, walking into the building, and then, and then the lights would show up, you know, in the parking lot to illuminate the parked cars. So I went over to maintenance and operations at the Anchorage School District, and I learned that the Anchorage School District pays $10 million in electricity every year based on peak load billing, because you have to bill as if, you know, at any point you're going to be using that electricity. And I was really shocked at that amount, the $10 million. So I like a lot of things in this bill, but I did want to say just specifically that I like the energy audits.

I think one of the ways that we can start being more efficient is once we we know what our costs are. And I think that that's a good thing in this bill. And I also like the local contribution being capped at 4%, as a previous member spoke. This is really a significant issue for Anchorage. I get emails every day saying, what's happening?

We just increased the BSA, and yet Anchorage isn't really reaping that. So I appreciate all the work that went into this bill, and I will be supporting occurrence. Representative Prox.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too rise in, I guess, reluctant support, but nothing's perfect. There seems to be pretty near 10 different subjects. I get it that they're all related to education. We maybe need to review the single subject rule.

And we have an education Task Force setup. Frankly, I'm not too optimistic that that's going to come up with something that we could agree on. These are little steps, most of them in the right direction. So I think we ought to take that risk. And then something for us to remember next year is the Executive Budget Act, and then we should state where we are in each of these areas, be it energy or teacher hiring, to figure out whether any of this is worthwhile or there'd be better alternatives.

But it's little small steps, and I think if we were to focus on the Executive Budget Act next year, we will make this turn out better. But from where we are right now, I think this is worthwhile supporting. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In wrap-up, Representative Story. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thanks everyone for their comments on the floor.

I wanted to remind everyone that this is a student loan repayment program, a pilot program of 3 years, and the funds go directly to the student loan lender. At the end of the year that the teacher has served. So just another comment I wanted to make on the bill. I wanted to go to the qualifications of school board members, and it was on page 4 starting on line 13: And may not have been convicted of a felony involving moral turpitude unless the person has been unconditionally discharged for the felony and at least 10 years have passed since the date of unconditional discharge. And then they have a definition for unconditional discharge— means the defendant is released from all disability arising under a sentence, including probation and parole.

Just wanted to clarify that, 'cause there had a question at brief at ease on that. But I think what is so important about this bill is it focuses on, um, what happens in the classroom. We know when we retain teachers, that's is so important for student achievement, for those relationships that can help address chronic absenteeism. And so keeping our teachers in the classroom, this funding for energy relief, those fixed costs that take away from what can happen in the classroom with our children, more program offerings, reasonable class sizes. So I think as appropriations go forward, with all the guide rails around them.

I'm really thinking that this bill is going to really help focus on student achievement, and I urge a strong concurrence vote. Thank you. Mr. Majority Leader.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House concur in the Senate amendments to committee substitute for House Bill 28 Finance amended, thus adopting Senate committee substitute for committee substitute for House Bill 28 Finance amended Senate, and recommend the members vote yes. Ready for the question? The question being: Shall the House concur in the Senate changes to committee substitute for House Bill 28 Finance amended, thus adopting Senate committee substitute for committee substitute for House Bill 28 Finance amended Senate? Members may proceed to vote.

Will the clerk please lock the roll? Does any member wish to change his or her vote? Will the clerk please announce the vote? 34 Yeas, 6 nays. By a vote of 34 yeas to 6 nays, House Bill 28, with the Senate changes, has passed the body.

Mr. Majority Leader. Mr. Speaker, I move and ask unanimous consent that the roll call vote on the passage of the bill be considered the roll call vote on the effective date clause. Hearing no objection, the effective date clause The clause has been adopted. Mr.

Majority Leader. Mr. Speaker, I move and ask unanimous consent that Senate Concurrent Resolution 21, the title change resolution for House Bill 28, be taken up as a special order of business. Without objection. Are you ready for the question? The question being, shall Senate Concurrent Resolution 21 pass the House?

Members may proceed to vote.

Will the clerk please lock the roll?

Does any member wish to change his or her vote? Will the clerk please announce the vote? 40 Yeas, 0 nays. By a vote of 40 yeas to 0 nays, SCR 21 has passed the House. Mr.

Majority Leader. Mr. Speaker, I move and ask unanimous consent that the members go into the limbo file to take up House Bill House Bill 126. The member from District 39 will explain the changes made by the other body. Hearing no objection, House Bill 126 is before the body. Representative Foster.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just for background, House Bill 126 was originally introduced to allow Native corporations that were involuntarily dissolved to reinstate as the same entity. And the reason the legislation was proposed in the first place was because Native corporation shareholders cannot put their assets, for example, shares and land, into a whole new corporation if they are involuntarily dissolved. And that's because Native corporations are congressionally created, and so assets have to stay with the shareholders' land and shares. And so what the other body did is they made 3 changes.

This body added and amended into the bill the addition of nonprofit and religious corporations. The other body removed that. The other body removed a $1 million asset cap when it comes to corporate filing requirements. And the other body changed the corporate— or the shareholder threshold for filing requirements from 500 current shareholders to 500 original shareholders, and those are the changes, and I would encourage the body to concur.

Brief it is.

With House, please come back to order. We are debating changes from the other body to House Bill 126. Under debate, Representative Vance. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to rise in opposition to occurrence specifically because of the change of removing the religious nonprofits.

I know that this provision was added by the member of the other body from Sutton. It was a request that his constituents specifically brought to him because a religious nonprofit— our churches and, and, or other organizations are religious nonprofits, and they have a lot of turnover in board membership, and they, they needed this help because when someone retires, when they pass away, you know, when they have a handing of the baton, a lot of stuff doesn't get communicated. And so they— that's why this was added, is because there's a legitimate need there. And I fail to understand why that issue was removed, because I think it— there's a need with the Native corporations completely I understand that, but there's also a need with our hundreds of religious nonprofits that are just saying, hey, we could use some flexibility in this as well. So on that measure, I will not be voting to concur.

Representative Schwanke.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also rise in opposition to concurrence with this. The original bill was very simple, very good, allowing these corporations to reestablish when they lapsed. But the addition of the changed language made in the Senate, um, the original language of the statute that re— that addressed reports, uh, required by these corporations all annual reports had to be made public for the benefit of their shareholders. For any entity here that had total assets exceeding $1 million, that line item is taken out of statute.

I had shareholders in my area reach out to me and say, please do not absolve these ANCs from having to report all of this data because we as shareholders need to know what is happening. So I will not be concurring. Thank you. Representative Elam. Thank you, Mr.

Speaker. I like our version better, um, and so we, uh, I voted for the, the last bill whenever it left the House. I liked our version. I stand in support of our version. I wish that that would have been the one that stayed.

In wrap-up, Representative Foster. Uh, yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. With regard to, um, the reason why nonprofits and religious corporations were removed is they have an option Native corporations do not. And the option that religious corporations have is if they were to be involuntary dissolved— and the reason that happens is you're supposed to submit a $100 fee and do a biannual report.

And if you don't do that, and I'm guessing you probably get some warnings, then the state dissolves the corporation. And so if religious corporation did not do that, then they can still transfer their assets, sell the assets, and put it into a new corporation.

And so they've got options. Native corporations do not. What this bill does is it allows a corporation to reinstate into the same legal entity that it would prior— was previously had been. And because Native corporations have land and shares that were given to them that were authorized by Congress, that land and those shares can only stay with that original Native corporation. And so that's why there's a need for this, this legislation, because Native corporations don't have other options, whereas normal corporations religious corporations, nonprofit organizations— corporations, they do have options.

With regard to the question about the disclosures, so currently all corporations right now, as I mentioned earlier, you have to submit a $100 filing fee and then also do your biannual report. Currently we've got over about 200 Native corporations in the state, and of those 200 corporations, about 140 of them, about 70% of them, fall below the threshold that's currently in statute that allows them to be exempt from certain filing requirements. So the basic filing requirement, again, is $100 plus the biannual report. The more extensive requirements is if you're a large Native corporation, you have to submit the annual report. And these annual reports have things like the income statement, audited balance sheet, audited income statements.

They have other things like, you know, you've also got the proxy statement that has to do with the local election, the Native corporation election, in terms of just voting for the board members. And so those things have to be submitted to the state if you're a large Native corporation. And what happens with those? Those are posted online for both the public and Native corporation shareholders to see. But currently in statute, there are about 140 Native corporations that below— fall below this threshold.

And the threshold is this: You have, if you're, if you have less than $1 million in assets and you have fewer than 500 current shareholders, then you don't have to send the annual report and the proxy statement to the state. That's already in law, that's already, but it's just the public that can't see those because those are not posted online. Shareholders can still see that information. I get my Native incorporation packet every year. It's got the annual report in it.

It's got the proxy statement in it. And so the concern here is what the Senate did is they removed the $1 million cap on assets, and they also changed the threshold from 500 current shareholders to 500 original shareholders. Shareholders. And why might your number of shareholders increase? Well, when you've got a shareholder who passes away, like my dad when he passed away, and he's got 10 children, he gave each of us 10 shares.

And so that's how your shareholder base grows. And so what the Senate did, the other body did, is they said, we're going to remove the million-dollar cap and we're also going to to change the shareholder threshold to 500 original. So the number— the total number of shares that are outstanding does not change. The size of the corporation does not change. And the original intent was to say that small Native corporations shouldn't be burdened with this higher filing threshold.

And the main point that I want to make— one moment here.

The main point that I want to make is that that there's a concern that shareholders are not going to have access to information, and that's not true. They're still going to get their proxy statement that has the election material in it, and they're still going to get their annual reports. The people who won't have more access is the public, because that information will not be posted online. So with that, Mr. Speaker, um, I would just ask for the support of the body to concur. Thank you.

Representative Foster, that was one of your shorter floor speeches. Thank you. Mr. Majority Leader. Here I move that the House concur in the Senate amendments to committee substitute for House Bill 126, Tribal Affairs, amended, thus adopting Senate committee substitute for committee substitute for House Bill 126, Labor and Commerce, Labor and Commerce and recommend the members vote yes.

Are you ready for the question? The question being, shall the House concur in the Senate changes to committee substitute for House Bill 126, Tribal Affairs, amended, thus adopting Senate committee substitute for committee substitute for House Bill 126, Labor and Commerce? Members may proceed to vote.

Will the clerk please lock the roll?

Does any member wish to change his or her vote? Will the clerk please announce the vote? 36 Yeas, 3 nays. By a vote of 36 yeas to 3 nays, House Bill 126 has passed the body with changes from the other body. Mr.

Majority Leader. Mr. Speaker, I move and ask unanimous consent that Senate concurrent resolution Resolution 13, the title change resolution for House Bill 126, be taken up as a special order of business.

Mr. Majority Leader, can I ask you to do the effective date clause first, please? Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move and ask unanimous consent that the roll call on the passage of the bill be considered the roll call on the effective date clause. Hearing no objection, the effective date clause has been adopted.

Madam Clerk, I'm going to take the Majority Leader's motion just a moment ago to be still in effect, unless you tell me otherwise. So without objection, are you ready for the question? The question being, shall Senate concurrent resolution 13 pass the House? Members may proceed to vote.

Will the clerk please lock the roll? Does any member wish to change his or her vote? Will the clerk please announce the vote? 39 Yeas, 0 nays. By a vote of 39 yeas to 0 nays, SCR 13 has been adopted.

Mr. Majority Leader. Mr. Speaker, I move and ask unanimous consent that members go into the limbo file to take up House Bill 278. The member from District 15, 15 will explain the changes made by the other body. Hearing no objection, House Bill 278 is before the House.

Representative Costello. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And at the top of the document for the concurrent sheet, it says House Bill 27 instead of House Bill 278. I think that's because the Senate President from Ireland ran away to his country with our 8 Stars of Gold. This is the Alaska-Ireland Trade Commission.

The changes made in the other body include moving it from a 5-member commission to a 9-member. What they added was the leadership in each body would appoint 2 members from our bodies. So those are the changes, and I encourage a yes vote on concurrence. Representative Bynum. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise to say I support these changes, speaking to only the changes, and I will volunteer. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Not seeing any wrap-up comments. Mr. Majority Leader.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House concur in the Senate amendments to committee substitute for House Bill 278, State Affairs, thus adopting Senate committee substitute for committee substitute for House Bill 278, State Affairs, and recommend that the members vote yes. Are you ready for the question? The question being: Shall the House concur in the Senate changes to committee substitute for House Bill 278, State Affairs, thus adopting Senate committee substitute for House Bill 278, State Affairs? Members may proceed to vote. Will the clerk please lock the roll?

Does any member wish to change his or her vote. Will the clerk please announce the vote? 38 Yeas, 0 nays. With a vote of 38 yeas to 0 nays, the House has concurred with the changes to House Bill 278. For the other body, Mr.

Majority Leader. Mr. Speaker, I move and ask unanimous consent that the roll call on the passage of the bill be considered the roll call on the effective date clause. Hearing no objection, the effective date clause has been adopted. Repeat, please.

Will the House please come back to order. Under introduction of guests, I'm going to turn to the youngest member of the body and soon to be married. I don't know how else to put it. Sorry. Rep.

Nelson, the floor is yours. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today, and I'll make this short because we have a lot of work today, for my first and possibly last constituents that I'm allowed to introduce on the floor. If Brianna Obayo would stand up. Brianna is my fiancée.

We first met at UAA. Funny enough, she's actually the first girl I ever met in the state, so I mean, she play me early, I guess. Uh, she studied mechanical engineering at UAA and the first in her family to not only go to college but also graduate from college. She currently works at Anchorage School District's engineering department and is working on getting her hours to take her full engineer certification. Uh, now there is a rumor going around the building that, uh, my next career choice is going to be trophy husband.

Now, after years of being in politics and my two terms and my time in the military, I've learned to end everything with, "I can neither confirm nor deny that," so I will just leave that there. She is joining us today to help me pack out for end of session, and she also wanted to come down here to see the state cabbage, but we'll see what that looks like now that it's It's the giant cabbage. So please join me in welcoming Briana Báez, the future Mrs. Nelson, to the Capitol today. Thank you.

Please say hello to everyone at Pilot Point when you get the opportunity for me, if you will. Representative Hannon.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a constituent in the gallery today. I already mentioned her earlier. Jamie Ann Hasselquist is a fearless advocate for a variety of causes, but many of you met her this session advocating for survivors of sexual assault by healthcare workers. She is the former sergeant-at-arms in the other body As a young woman, she grew up here in Juneau, and she is very active in a number of tribal activities, including her ANS camp.

And she is a fearless drummer involved with a drum group here in town and activist involved with missing and murdered Indigenous peoples causes. And she is a forager and has a line of teas out and for sale at a variety of, uh, using traditional medicines around town. And I'm just so proud of her advocacy on so many issues and pleased to introduce her formally as a constituent to you today, Jamie Ann Hasselquist and the Peradovich Gallery.

Not seeing additional guests for introduction, the House will stand at ease to the call of the Chair.