{"id":55693,"date":"2019-11-20T01:30:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/confirmation-hearings-for-empty-house-seat-scheduled-for-early-december\/"},"modified":"2019-11-20T01:30:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T10:30:00","slug":"confirmation-hearings-for-empty-house-seat-scheduled-for-early-december","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/confirmation-hearings-for-empty-house-seat-scheduled-for-early-december\/","title":{"rendered":"Confirmation hearings for empty House seat scheduled for early December"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>House republicans are planning to hold confirmation hearing for Mel Gillis, Gov. Mike Dunleavy&rsquo;s pick to fill a vacant House seat. <\/p>\n<p>The seat was vacated when Sen. Josh Revak, R-Anchorage, left the House for a Senate appointment that was recently confirmed. Revak was selected to fill the seat of Sen. Chris Birch, was died unexpectedly of a heart attack in August.<\/p>\n<p>Revak was confirmed after Senate Republicans failed to confirm Dunleavy&rsquo;s original pick Laddie Shaw, R-Anchorage.<\/p>\n<p>Gillis&rsquo; confirmation hearings are planned for Dec. 2, Zach Freeman, press secretary for the Alaska House Republicans, told the Empire Wednesday afternoon. Freeman added that date was subject to change.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Mr. Gillis has lived in Alaska for over 50 years and brings with him a wealth of experience and knowledge that will make him an asset to the entire legislature,&rdquo; Dunleavy said in a video announcement of the appointment on Nov. 17.<\/p>\n<p>Gillis has owned and operated a hunting and fishing guide business since 1970 and is a member and leader of Plaster and Cement Masons Local 867, according to the announcement from the governor&rsquo;s office.<\/p>\n<p>Gillis will need a simple majority vote from House Republicans to be confirmed. Currently there are 23 Republican members of the House, so confirmation would take 12 votes. <\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b><\/p>\n<style><\/style>\n<p><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>\u2022 Contact reporter Peter Segall at 523-2228 or psegall@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He needs a simple majority. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":55694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-55693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55693"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=55693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}