2022 legislative session begins wind-down; it could be a productive year

The 2022 state legislative session is beginning to wind down. There are about three weeks left before a required adjournment on the 120th day required by the state constitution. The 90th day, a deadline set in statute, was passed quietly a few days ago largely without notice.

The 120th day adjournment has teeth, however. Bills passed after midnight May 18 have no legal validity.

So far this legislative session has been without the storm and fury, and delays, that accompanied adjournment in recent years. Although there’s still time for an upset, legislators seem anxious to get home to campaign. After all, it is an election year.

Money eases a lot of aches, too. Oil prices, and revenues, are high, and several billion dollars in state pandemic aid flowed into the state treasury and the economy in the last year and a half. This year there is the prospect of several hundreds million dollars for Alaska in President Joe Biden’s federal infrastructure bill.

One hot topic in years past has been the size of the Permanent Fund Dividend, the annual check sent by the state to its citizens, but even that seems subdued this year.

The House passed a budget with a $2,500 combined payment for citizens, partly a so-called “energy” dividend to offset high fuel costs and the other a “regular” dividend. The Senate is now weighing this as it considers its version of the budget. A House-Senate conference committee will reconcile differing versions of the budget including the PFD amount typically in early May before adjournment.

There’s little talk this year of a “full” dividend, or one paid according to a formula in a 1980s-era statute that is now considered obsolete. If a full dividend were paid this year it would be over $4,000, according to estimates by the Legislative Finance Division, the Legislature’s nonpartian budget analysis group.

With oil prices currently over $100 per barrel that could be afforded this year, the finance division has told legislative committees, but it would leave less money for a long list of urgent needs, such as $600 million needed next year to start the reconstruction of Anchorage’s port, which is badly corroded and in danger of failing.

Besides the lack of discord so far, itself a positive this year, the Legislature has also advanced several important initiatives. One is a major education bill that would fund a major expansion of pre-kindergarten schooling for young children and also add resources for intensive reading instruction for children in early grades.

Alaska ranks at the bottom of childrens’ skills in reading at the fourth grade level, a stigma that many legislators and Gov. Mike Dunleavy want to erase. State Sen. Shelley Hughes, R-MatSu, has taken a lead in developing this bill, but it is also a bipartisan effort with support from Democrats like Sen. Tom Begich, D-Anch.

Senate Bill 111 has passed the Senate and is now being worked on in the House Education Committee, which is expected to add changes and strengthen the bill.

Two other important bills at advanced stages of passage would aid residents and businesses, including nonprofits, in construction of energy-efficient buildings. One bill, House Bill 227, would solve technical problems and expand a bill passed in 2017 to allow building owners finance energy improvements through an assessment placed on municipal property tax levies, something like what is now commonly done with sewer and water improvements and, in the Mat-Su, special assessments to pay for extension of natural gas in local service areas.

Private banks would do the lending. The municipality just acts as a kind of middle man.

The Mat-Su Borough has approved such a program, as had Anchorage, but is waiting to see if HB 227 passes, which will improve the program. Rep. Calvin Schrage, an Anchorage legislator with no party affiliation, is prime sponsor of the bill, although there are cosponsors that include Republican and Democrats.

A somewhat similar plan that could help residential as well as commercial property owners is a proposed “Green Bank” in bills sponsored by Gov. Mike Dunleavy that are pending now in the House and Senate Finance Committees.

In this idea, a state finance corporation, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, would establish a financing mechanism to facilitate loans for homeowners, and businesses as well, working again with private banks as partners.

So-called “green banks” that specialize in energy improvements exist now in several states. Also, the idea would build on a long-standing and successful AIDEA program where the state authority partners with private banks to finance commercial property development.

Other inititiatives are making their way through legislative committees, such as a bill establishing an advanced workforce skills program for high school youths where young people can attend career and technical courses for credit and simultaneously work toward technical and trade certificates and pre-apprenticeships.

Another bill addresses the state’s shortage of teachers with a new program setting out alternatives in obtaining a teaching certificate without having to attend college for four years, usually away from home. A formal teaching apprenticeship program registered with the U.S. Department of Labor is part of this.

Anchorage Reps. Ivy Spohnholz and Zack Fields, both Democrats, have been leading on this bill along with Rep. Ken McCarty, Republican from Eagle River.