As the Alaska House of Representatives advances toward a vote on Senate Bill 54, lawmakers are missing one critical piece of information: the price tag.<\/p>\n
In a Wednesday afternoon hearing, members of the House Finance Committee were told that no one exactly knows how much SB 54 will cost if it becomes law. The last estimate<\/a>, $4.3 million per year, was drafted more than seven months ago. Since then, the House Judiciary Committee has modified the bill, and the finance committee is expected to make more changes when it begins considering amendments at 10 a.m. today.<\/p>\n \u201cFinding out after the bill passes what this does is too late,\u201d said Rep. Tammie Wilson, R-North Pole. \u201cWe\u2019re going to need real numbers, and we can\u2019t wait to get the numbers until it gets to the floor. That\u2019s not fair to us or our constituents.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2016, lawmakers approved Senate Bill 91, a sweeping revision of Alaska\u2019s criminal justice system. The main drive behind SB 91 was to cut costs, and when lawmakers passed SB 91, they were told it would save the state $21.1 million per year by reducing the number of people in Alaska\u2019s prisons. By promoting alternatives to prison, such as drug treatment and probation, and by reducing the number of people who return to prison on new crimes, the state might eliminate the need to build another prison, lawmakers were told.<\/p>\n Now that the Legislature is considering a partial or total rollback of that bill, those savings will be reduced or eliminated altogether.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think there is going to be a cost to it, and I don\u2019t like indefinite fiscal notes,\u201d said Rep. Scott Kawasaki, D-Fairbanks, as he pressed Dean Williams, corrections commissioner for the state, to provide a better estimate.<\/p>\n Williams, speaking by phone in Wednesday\u2019s hearing, resisted that pressure.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do not have enough data, even with the current changes, to determine what it might be,\u201d Williams said. \u201cI just really felt after much debate and much toiling \u2026 that we could only give an extremely broad range.\u201d<\/p>\n