Bridge, gas line, education bills highlight challenging year

JUNEAU — In a year Gov. Sean Parnell declared the second session of the 28th Alaska Legislature the “education session,” lawmakers weren’t afraid to offer a grade.

Depending on whom is talking or, in some cases, who is in charge, the session was a either a rousing success, or a failure.

House Finance Committee co-chair and outgoing Rep. Bill Stoltze, R-Chugiak, said lawmakers did well to establish a path forward for education, advancing a natural gas pipeline and paying down pension debt.

“I’m happy with a lot of things that happened this session,” said Stoltze, who will be running for a Senate seat in November after 12 years in the House. “There are a lot of things we don’t know until they are concluded. But we’ve set the groundwork for some good things to happen in Alaska. The next steps are up to us and up to a lot of other people as well.”

Those in the minority, however, minced no words in calling the session a failure, with Senate Minority Leader Hollis French saying the state is “falling off a fiscal cliff. It’s not the fall that hurts, it’s the landing.

“We came up short on the single most important topic we were sent here to deal with,” French said. “In the year of education, education came last.”

The high-profile items that successfully made their way through include:

• An education bill that no one really seemed to fully like, either for its failure to add more money into the base student allocation, or for not thinking further outside traditional funding methods;

• A gas line bill that enables Gov. Sean Parnell to enter into a project development agreement for a natural gas pipeline and liquefied natural gas facility.

• A plan to pursue the Knik Arm bridge, a proposed project that some still doubt will happen anytime soon. Like the education bill, it did not pass until the 95th day, five days beyond the scheduled 90-day legislative session.

There are at least two things agreed upon among the House and Senate majorities, the minority caucuses and Parnell.

The first is legislation to start paying down the state’s pension debt, an $11.9 billion unfunded liability.

The Legislature voted to inject $3 billion into the public retirement debt, pushing the average payment to $369 million a year. Legislators agreed to put $2 billion toward the teachers’ retirement system, known as TERS, and $1 billion toward the public employees’ retirement system, also called PERS.

This payment required a three-fourths vote separately in the House and Senate because funds are to be drawn from the state’s constitutional budget reserve.

Each side approved unanimously.

This prompted Parnell to single out the cooperation as a model the federal government might want to use.

“We addressed the single-biggest cost driver,” Parnell said “I’m not sure folks here fully appreciate what just happened when it comes to the unfunded pension liability.”

He said it’s a kin to Congress and the President acting to make the Social Security program sustainable.

“If Congress and the President could deal with that significant an issue, that’s what we just did here with the legislative vote to take care of this debt,” Parnell said. “I think that’s an incredible testament of forward thinking and long-term thinking by our administration as well as legislators.”

Then there is the notion that the 28th legislative session will be historic, but the agreement stops there.

Those in the majority say it’s historically good.

“If there is something I want this session to be remembered for is that we decided to make long-term decisions,” said House Majority Leader Lance Pruitt, R-Anchorage. “We decided to make big projects happen. Knik Arm bridge, that’s a legacy project. The gas line, legacy project.

“This wasn’t just a 10-year look. This was a lifetime look. We made decisions that will affect generations,” Pruitt said. “If they look back at our Legislature, I think they’ll see this is a turning point Legislature for Alaska.”