{"id":6736,"date":"2016-04-04T08:03:29","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T15:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/lawmakers-to-tackle-budget-crime-bill-daylight-time\/"},"modified":"2016-04-04T08:03:29","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T15:03:29","slug":"lawmakers-to-tackle-budget-crime-bill-daylight-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/lawmakers-to-tackle-budget-crime-bill-daylight-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawmakers to tackle budget, crime bill, daylight time"},"content":{"rendered":"

JUNEAU \u2014<\/strong> The Alaska Legislature is entering what is scheduled to be its last two weeks, with major bills yet to be resolved as lawmakers face a multibillion-dollar budget deficit.<\/p>\n

The House and Senate finance committees plan to meet two, sometimes three times a day, during the upcoming week. As time winds down, here are a few things to watch for:<\/p>\n

\n

Budget<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Senate Finance Committee plans to take up the capital budget midweek. The budget, once eagerly anticipated by legislators as a way to get funding for infrastructure projects back home, has been pared back significantly the last two years as the state struggles with a massive deficit.<\/p>\n

The committee is planning to hold meetings Wednesday and Thursday.<\/p>\n

The Legislature also still needs to finalize the state operating budget. House Speaker Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski, said negotiators to hash out differences between the House and Senate versions of the budget likely will be chosen Monday or Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\n

Daylight saving time<\/strong><\/p>\n

The House State Affairs Committee is dusting off a bill that would eliminate daylight saving time. The bill passed the Senate last year but stalled in the House.<\/p>\n

It would exempt the state from observing daylight saving time and ask the federal transportation department to change the time zone in Alaska to the Pacific standard time zone.<\/p>\n

Now, the state is four hours behind the East Coast. Sen. Anna MacKinnon, R-Eagle River, raised concerns that exempting the state could increase the time displacement from financial markets.<\/p>\n

The committee is scheduled to hear the bill Thursday.<\/p>\n

\n

Crime bill<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Senate Finance Committee plans to keep working this week on a sweeping crime bill meant to overhaul the state criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

The prison population has grown so quickly that Alaska could surpass its prison-bed capacity by 2017, according to a report by a state criminal justice commission. Rather than spending several hundred million dollars to build a new prison, Sen. John Coghill, R-North Pole, is pushing a bill that would implement broad reforms suggested by the commission.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers are working to figure out how to reduce the prison population without releasing offenders who could pose a threat to communities. They also are looking at reinvesting money spent on prison beds into programs designed to reduce recidivism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal of this is not just to reduce costs,\u201d Coghill\u2019s legislative aide, Jordan Shilling, said during a recent Senate Finance Committee meeting. \u201cIt\u2019s to invest in strategies that we know are working, to reinvest in things that reduce crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Legislature was hoping the bill would save the state money immediately but understood the need to invest money in drug and alcohol treatment programs, said Rep. Jim Colver, R-Palmer.<\/p>\n

The Office of Management and Budget has proposed reinvesting funds into pretrial programs and grants for offender programs and victims services.<\/p>\n

Under its plan, the state would need to invest $5.8 million into Department of Corrections\u2019 treatment and pretrial services and parole board staffing in the first year of the program. An additional $5 million would be used for community-based treatment, prevention, re-entry and services for victims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JUNEAU \u2014 The Alaska Legislature is entering what is scheduled to be its last two weeks, with major bills yet to be resolved as lawmakers face a multibillion-dollar budget deficit. The House and Senate finance committees plan to meet two, sometimes three times a day, during the upcoming week. As time winds down, here are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-6736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6736","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\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6736"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}