What does the leaked Supreme Court draft mean for Juneau and Alaska?<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\nSeveral studies have found ivermectin to have little to no effect on COVID-19 infection or in reducing the risk of hospitalization. A 2022 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found, “treatment with ivermectin did not result in a lower incidence of medical admission to a hospital due to progression of Covid-19 or of prolonged emergency department observation among outpatients with an early diagnosis of Covid-19.”<\/p>\n
Also Wednesday, the Alaska Senate took up amendments on Senate Bill 199, a proposal from the Senate Finance Committee to enshrine a new formula for the Permanent Fund Dividend in the Alaska State Constitution. Under the bill’s proposal, the state would use 25% of the annual percent of market value draw from the Alaska Permanent Fund until 2026 when payments would increase to 50% of the draw. However, the payments would only be increased to 50% if the state is able to secure $800,000 in annual, reccurring general fund revenues, according to Senate Finance Committee Co-chair Click Bishop, R-Fairbanks.<\/p>\n
Sen. Robert Myer, R-North Pole, submitted an amendment to pay a dividend based on the existing PFD formula for one year before dropping to the 50% formula.The state hasn’t followed the formula for several years — a critical issue for many Republicans and some Democrats.<\/p>\n
Myers’ amendment included conditional language that only but the bill into effect following a public vote in November 2022 to potentially enshrine a PFD formula in the Alaska State Constitution.<\/p>\n
Sen. Lora Reinbold, R-Eagle River, said a PFD using the 50% formula was a concession on the part of many lawmakers and said the state needed to help Alaskans facing high costs.<\/p>\n
But opponents said the state couldn’t afford to pay such a large dividend and meet all its other obligations, some of which are constitutionally required. Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, called the amendment “unaffordable.”<\/p>\n
An almost identical amendment from Sen. Roger Holland, R-Anchorage, proposed a 50% dividend instead of a statutory formula, but both those amendments failed.<\/p>\n
Senators did pass 18-1 an amendment that changed language in the bill from reading the state “may” pay an amount for a dividend to “shall.” Wilson said his amendment was meant to assure Alaskans the Legislature was committed to following a formula and not setting ad hoc dividend amounts.<\/p>\n
Following the amendments, the bill was moved back to the Senate Rules Committee.<\/p>\n
The legislative session ends May 18, and lawmakers are hearing as much legislation as possible before they adjourn.<\/p>\n
• Contact reporter Peter Segall at psegall@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SegallJnuEmpire.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senate attempts to rework dividend formula. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":85442,"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":[34,652,230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-85441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-alaska-legislature","tag-pfd","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85441","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=85441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85441"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=85441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}