Valley delegation gets to work on fiscal issues in committee assignments

WASILLA — As legislators from the Mat-Su Valley start work on the 30th session of the Alaska State Legislature, which started Tuesday, they’ll be combing over pieces of the budget in their committee assignments, with an eye on impacts to the Valley.

Sen. Mike Dunleavy, who last week forwarded a fiscal plan based on budget cuts with no permanent fund dividend raids or new taxes, is a member of Senate Finance Committee.

“In the weeks to come, I hope that the best ideas from the fiscal plans presented are put forward,” Dunleavy said in a statement to the Frontiersman. “We must work collaboratively on a solution for all of Alaska.”

Rep. Cathy Tilton is on House Finance Committee, and only House Finance. According to House rules, she said, legislators assigned to Finance do not also serve on other committees.

“We’re focused on reducing the budget back again to our right-sized budget,” Tilton said in a phone interview. “We’ve already reduced the low-hanging fruit areas, the obvious things. So we’re looking at actual spending requests for this year, programmatic items, whether those programs that we’ve put into statute over the years are something the state is constitutionally mandated to do.”

Tilton’s Finance subcommittee assignments are Health and Social Services budget, Administration budget, Fish and Game Budget, and the Department of Natural Resources Budget.

Sen. David Wilson, who is on Senate Transportation, Health & Social Services, and State Affairs committees, said the budget is a top priority for all three.

“We’ll be looking at the way we do business, and if it’s an efficient way to do business,” Wilson said.

As a member of Senate Transportation, he said, he’ll be working to ensure improvements to Knik-Goose Bay Road in Wasilla get funded.

“KGB has some serious life-and-death issues there, and major safety concerns,” Wilson said. “And then there’s other issues, and transportation is probably one of the few areas where we do have some money for capital improvements. We want to make sure infrastructures are being maintained.”

Tilton echoed Wilson’s concern about KGB Road.

“In the area of transportation and priorities, road maintenance and completion of the previously-approved projects in Mat-Su, the KGB road, which is a safety corridor. The funds are sitting there, but the governor put that project on a pause. We’re going to use our best efforts to try to get that road project going.”

Tilton said the Valley delegation’s legislative priorities are fairly in line with the House minority priorities, which start with targeting spending reductions before proposing new taxes.

Tilton said other priorities for the Valley delegation to the state legislature, are protecting fisheries with the goal of maintaining a “robust” sports fishery; public safety improvements, with “significant revision of SB91;” and “resisting federal overreach” when it comes to land use and management issues.

Rep. Colleen Sullivan-Leonard, serving on Health & social Services, Labor and Commerce, and Transportation Committees, said she requested those assignments so she could work on behalf of Valley residents “to reduce regulations that may affect our small businesses during this recession period, supporting our operations, maintenance and expansion of infrastructure, and reviewing Medicaid expansion.”

Sullivan-Leonard also cited the need to address SB91, and said she’ll use feedback she’s gathered from Alaska State Troopers and constituents on the crime reform bill to help shape legislation to address it that she plans to propose in this session.

Sullivan-Leonard also said that she is a co-sponsor of HB21-22, a bill to distribute to Alaskans the portion of the Permanent Fund Dividend disbursements that Gov. Bill Walker vetoed last year.

“To cause a hardship on our citizens at a time when there is a true recession is just plain wrong!” Sullivan-Leonard said. “We know that many use their dividends as a need and not a want.”

She also echoed the need to protect the KGB Road improvement project.

The Valley delegation consists of Senators Dunleavy, Shelley Hughes, and Wilson; and Representatives Tilton, DeLena Johnson, Mark Neuman, George Rauscher, Colleen Sullivan-Leonard, and David Eastman.

SENATE COMMITTEES

Mike Dunleavy

Administration, Chair; Fish & Game, Chair; Education & Early Development, Chair; State Affairs, Chair; Finance, Member; Special Committee on the Arctic, Member

Shelley Hughes

Labor & Commerce, Vice Chair; Education, Chair; Armed Services Committee, Member; Resources, Member

David Wilson

Health & Social Services, Chair; Transportation, Member; State Affairs, Member

HOUSE COMMITTEES

Cathy Tilton

Finance, Member

DeLena Johnson

Resources, Member; State Affairs, Member; Energy, Member

Mark Neuman

Fisheries, Member; Arctic Policy, Economic Development and Tourism, Member; Transportation, Member

George Rauscher

Energy, Member; Resources, Member; Community & Regional Affairs, Member; Military & Veterans’ Affairs, Member

David Eastman

Fisheries, Member; Rules, Member; Health & Social Services, Member; Judiciary, Member; Select Committee on Legislative Ethics, Member; Legislative Council, Alternate

Colleen Sullivan-Leonard

Health & Social Services, Member; Labor & Commerce, Member; Transportation, Member