Valley lawmakers talk priorities

MAT-SU — With this year’s legislative session closing out its first week, members of the Valley’s Juneau delegation asked about their priorities this year listed everything from a balanced budget to sorting out rules for drone aircraft to the Knik Arm bridge project.

Budget

Putting together a spending plan for the state seemed at the top of most legislators’ minds.

“How do you go back and control growth in the state’s operating budget and still provide services that Alaskans need?” said Rep. Mark Neuman, R-Big Lake, who oversees the operating budgets for two departments — Health and Social Services and Transportation and Public Facilities. “They’re the two budgets that actually touch people’s lives every day.”

His goal is to keep DOT’s budget steady, hold it to zero growth while accounting for rising costs. He said he also is going to take a hard look at the HSS budget. He says there might be some savings in the drugs the state approves for Medicaid patients.

“We spend, just in pharmaceuticals, over $1 million a week,” Neuman said.

Rep. Wes Keller said that budgeting isn’t going to be easy this year.

“Obviously, with the declining revenues we’re going to have to stay sharp,” he said.

But the Valley, even in that environment, needs to work hard to keep its needs at the forefront, something that will take unity.

“Just making sure that the Valley delegation stays strong and working together,” Keller said.

Rep. Eric Feige, R-Chickaloon, said he expects the budget will dip slightly from this year’s level.

“It reflects the fiscal realities of the state. Oil production is down. Production is for the most part what drives the revenue for the state,” Feige said. “We have to adjust and live within our means, and I expect we will do that.”

Rep Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer, said that her No. 1 priority is economic development for the state and budget decisions weave into that.

“We need to really be watching our budget to make sure that we can continue to provide those essential services,” Hughes said. “That actually is an indicator to industry that we are a stable, predictable environment to invest in.”

Big Projects

When talking about big projects on the horizon, three sprang to legislators’ minds: the Knik Arm bridge, the gas pipeline and the Susitna-Watana Hydroelectric Dam.

Even before the legislative session began, Gov. Sean Parnell brought up the Knik Arm bridge, saying he’d like to examine the possibility of converting the project from a public-private partnership into a public project where the state contracts for its construction then operates it.

“I think we’re very close on that,” Neuman said of the bridge.

He said he thinks the state is putting together a good plan to leverage state money against federal money 10-to-1.

“If you can turn $5 million into $55 million, that’s not bad,” he said.

Feige said he had been a “stick-in-the-mud” on the bridge because he didn’t believe the projections for population growth in the Knik area. An audit last year that sent the project into a brief bit of turmoil backed up his assessment.

As for the financing, he said at the time that if the state wants a bridge, it should pay for it rather than seeking a firm to partner with.

“The decision by the governor to go to a more direct route where the state buys the bridge right from the start and there’s no lingering indecision about how we’re going to pay for it — I think that’s a more prudent way to go,” Feige said.

As for the Watana dam, Feige said he thinks landowners in the area are obstructing a good project.

“The problem that AEA has been having is those landowners have not been granting access to those lands,” Feige said.

It was that access issue that actually prompted Parnell to put in his budget just $10 million for the project rather than the $95 million it was projected to need to keep doing its studies.

Feige said the dam is a good thing for the state.

“This is a project that will guarantee solid, stable, low-cost energy for Matanuska Electric and everyone else who draws off the grid,” Feige said.

As for the gas line, Hughes said that cheap, affordable energy coming out of a pipeline like that would spur economic development.

“I was just having a conversation about the possibilities that it can open up as far as value-added processing here in the state,” Hughes said. “Right now, we ship most of our raw materials out and the reason that we do is we do not have affordable energy to do the processing here.”

Feige said he thinks the Legislature will have to decide just how much of an ownership stake the state wants to take in the line.

“The more of an equity stake we take the more we risk on our side, but the more we get as a return on our investment,” Feige said. “We have to balance in the Legislature how much do we get out of this thing versus how much do we want to put at risk.”

Bills

Though he didn’t return a call seeking comment about his priorities, Sen. Mike Dunleavy, R-Wasilla, sent out a press release immediately following Parnell’s state of the state address Wednesday about education. In his address, Parnell cheered efforts to amend the Alaska Constitution to allow public money to flow to private schools.

“This amendment would protect existing educational practices but, more importantly, would give future Legislatures the ability to create new, diverse educational opportunities which could be custom tailored to each Alaskan child. Future Legislatures could empower parents to direct the educational dollars attached to their children, regardless of whether the education comes from public or private service providers,” Dunleavy said in the press release of the joint resolution he’s sponsored to put to that amendment to a public vote.

A Legislative Research Report commissioned by Sen. Berta Gardner, D-Anchorage, the sole Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, estimates including the state’s current 11,000 private school students in the foundation formula would cost about $99.7 million for fiscal year 2014. This is the first look Alaskans have had at the direct costs of amending the state constitution to allow public money to flow to private schools.

Meanwhile, Hughes has been working on legislation that would set the rules for the use of drone aircraft in Alaska. Hughes has been studying the issue as part of a task force on drones.

“Privacy is the state’s role, to ensure that privacy is protected,” Hughes said. “FAA is adequately addressing the safety issues and our job is to address the privacy.”

She said that the approach to protecting that privacy will be to take up issues as they arise. And the first one has to do with law enforcement use of drones. Hughes has sponsored legislation that would require troopers get a warrant before spying from the air.

She’s also working on legislation tightening rules for who can get a license to be a private investigator. Right now, she said, felons could get one.

Keller also has some legislation he’s working on. One isn’t actually his bill, but it’s one he’s passionate about. He said that he wants to bolster the state ombudsman’s office.

“We’re looking at ways we can enhance the service so more and more Alaskans have somebody to stand between them and any overreach of the state government,” he said.

Also, he’s working on legislation that would put in an application for an Article V Convention. Such a convention, Keller said, is envisioned in the U.S. Constitution as a meeting to propose amendments to that document.

Another bill would see Alaska enter a compact with other states demanding the federal government balance its budget.

“What it is, is states lock arms and they tell the federal government that they have to balance their budget,” Keller said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.