<\/a>State Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau, talks with members of the Thunder Mountain High School women’s basketball team Thursday after introducing them on the Senate floor and congratulating them for winning this year’s regional title. The team during their visit to the Capitol also got a citation from the three members of Juneau’s legislative delegation for the achievement. (Mark Sabbatini \/ Juneau Empire)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
The citation was also noted by state Sen. Jesse Kiehl as he introduced the team while they were visiting the Senate floor session during their midday visit to the Capitol. The other Democratic member of the local delegation, Rep. Sara Hannan, didn’t get the same opportunity for the citation she co-sponsored since the House didn’t gavel in its floor session until more than six hours later as closed-door negotiations about the budget stalemate that caused the special session dragged on.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“It wasn’t a budget process at the end, that was a political process,” Hannan said, comparing the standoff to when she and nearly all of the other minority House members staged a walkout<\/a> earlier this session due to a floor battle over the majority changing the parameters of an education funding nearly the entire chamber had voted to support.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “Are we arguing about the dollar values and the policies?” she said. “Not really. We’re arguing about how we feel. We’re now into an argument where we’re stuck arguing. But our policy decisions isn’t really what we’re arguing about out. Personalities and processes are what the arguments were.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t The special session lasted only one day, ending in what legislators of all affiliations called a strange fashion when the stalemate was resolved by adding $35 million in capital projects to a $6.2 billion budget that resulted in 10 members of the Republican-led House majority crossing over to join the minority caucus to pass a budget approved by the Senate. The outcome was widely seen as a political defeat for the House majority, but for Juneau’s three Democratic legislators there were also setbacks as well as accomplishments.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Kiehl played a significant role in crafting parts of the budget as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which included chairing some of the subcommittees giving in-depth scrutiny to individual department’s budgets.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “You’ll see that in the inmate transportation for Lemon Creek (Correctional Center) because it’s half-closed while they’re fixing the foundations,” he said. “Some of those really nitty-gritty, but super important things.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t On the other hand, all three members of the delegation cited another relatively small item — cutting what was $15 million in child care provider assistance to $7.5 million as part of the last-minute dealmaking — among the areas where the budget fell regrettably short. While Hannan said that’s a “drop in the bucket” compared to all spending on such programs, it has a snowball effect.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “We have empty buckets and we need to start filling them because a huge piece of the workforce’s ability is parents can’t go to work if their kids aren’t supervised,” she said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t The intention of the $15 million was to lure and retain child care providers by raising average wages from about $14-$15 an hour to roughly $20 an hour. Gov. Mike Dunleavy — if he doesn’t veto the remaining funds — will thus need to make a meaningful decision about how it is allocated, Kiehl said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “Does he raise them $1.50 an hour (as of July 1) or does he start it in December?” he said. “The need is immediate — the need is yesterday. And I don’t know if $1.50 or two bucks an hour is enough to move the needle at all.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Such issues were overwhelmed by the attention paid to a handful of major items, especially an increase in the base student allocation for education and the size of the Permanent Fund dividend. Ultimately, the Senate mostly got its way with a final budget containing an 11% one-time increase in education spending and a $1,300 PFD — which while far smaller than the dividend of about $2,700 or more sought by Dunleavy and the House majority, don’t incur the sizeable deficit the larger payments would have caused.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “In the end the Senate passed a responsible budget which is why the House minority voted for it, I think,” Kiehl said. “Getting enough House majority votes to concur wasn’t pretty, but a month-long special session or playing the dice with a shutdown would have been a lot uglier.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t The remaining step is seeing if Dunleavy vetoes some or all of the budget bill, since he generally doesn’t telegraph his intentions ahead of time, Kiehl said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “I will tell you I have all my fingers and all of my toes crossed for the university deferred maintenance money,” he said. “Because those roofs and aging buried oil tanks at UAS just above the lake we have funded twice and he has vetoed twice. We are funding them a third time. If we end up with structural damage, leaky roofs and oil seeping off toward the lake we will regret it.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Legislative wins and losses<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t During the final hours of the regular session, Kiehl was among the few individual legislators able to claim victory by getting the provisions of his bill banning PFAS chemicals for most firefighting — which passed the Senate, but ran out of time in the House — added to a bill<\/a> involving refrigerants bought to a final floor vote by Rep. Stanley Wright, an Anchorage Republican. Kiehl said he suggested the merger since both proposals dealt with chemical safety.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “We talked through all the possibilities,” he said. “He went and actually talked with other legislators he respects and shares philosophy with, and wanted to make sure he wasn’t endangering his bill or doing anything that would be seen as untoward, and I promised him that I was looking for a handshake, but this was not a hijacking.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Hannan almost, but not quite, got to claim victory on a bill she introduced raising the age to purchase tobacco products to 21 and imposing a 25% sales tax on vaping products<\/a>. A companion introduced by Senate President Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican, easily passed the Senate<\/a> and he was hopeful the House would pass it before adjournment — and Dunleavy wouldn’t veto is as he did last year with a similar bill.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Instead, the likely scenario is the House will consider it next year if so inclined. Hannan said she’s hoping the emphasis virtually all legislators are voicing about a long-term fiscal plan will be a motivator to get the bill passed since it will have more immediate results than proposals that could bring in larger sums, such as Dunleavy’s efforts to enter to carbon credits markets.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “It’s not billions, but it’s $3 million a year passed,” she said. “Carbon sequestration, it probably isn’t going to generate revenue for a couple of fiscal years. Those fields are much more complex. But I think meanwhile we need to still make progress on revenue, whether it’s small amounts of revenue to deal with health impacts from nicotine addiction like a vape tax or more complex ones.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Story’s biggest accomplishment on her bills was adding three Alaska Native languages<\/a> to those recognized by the state, along with expanding the size and role of an Alaska Native language council. It passed the House with a single dissenting vote, but stalled in the Senate Finance Committee, where it was sent nine days before adjournment.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “Unfortunately, it got caught up in that finance block where they’re hearing budget bills and they don’t want to work on policy bills, even though we’ve been jumping up and down and waving and saying ‘This is just something that should happen,’” she said. “So that is the hard part when we get towards the end of session, because budget things take up so much time.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t