Visitors to the state Capitol in Juneau will have to go through a metal detector under a policy adopted on Monday.
The Capitol visitor screening policy was approved in a 9-4 vote by the Legislative Council, a body made up of members from both the House and Senate that sets the rules for the Capitol complex.
Lawmakers did not publicly discuss or debate the policy change. Before the vote, they met in a session closed to the public for more than an hour and a half for a security briefing and to discuss the policy proposal.
The council declined to require that people in the building have ID badges, which was part of the original proposal.
Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak and the council’s vice chair, supported the change. He described his reasoning in a Senate majority caucus news conference on Tuesday.
“The idea, really, is … to make sure people aren’t entering with weapons — with guns, with knives and that sort of thing,” he said. “You know, some folks have said, ‘Well, let’s wait until there’s an incident, where someone gets hurt, and then we will install it.’ I think that’s not wise at all.”
Stevens cited a comment by Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, that hundreds of people undergo screenings at the annual Alaska Federation of Natives convention with little wait time.
Stevens also noted that metal detectors are used in the Dimond Courthouse across the street from the Capitol.
“You have them (at) every airport you enter into, so it’s not as if people are unaware of how they work,” he said.
People who already have an electronic keycard to enter the building will not be affected by the policy. Stevens said the security staff who will operate the metal detectors say 20 seconds is the most time it would take to move through the devices.
Stevens said several times recently, people who work in the Capitol have told him they had concern or fear regarding visitors who don’t have a reason to be in the building.
Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau and the council chair, also voted for the change. She wrote in a newsletter to constituents on Tuesday that no legislators were happy to make the change, but waiting for a tragedy to occur was unacceptable.
“Legislative Council did not arrive at this decision lightly. For decades, we in Alaska have taken pride in the citizenry’s open access to the Legislature,” Hannan wrote. “However, and very unfortunately, in recent years our country has changed in ways that have led to increased risk of violence in our public institutions. The tragic, unchecked level of shootings in U.S. schools is in itself horrifying. The January 6th, 2020, attack on the nation’s Capitol is another dispiriting example.”
Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, opposed the change. He is not currently on the council but served as its vice chair last year and said the idea has been under discussion for at least four years. He said Capitol security staff had brought up how only a few state capitols do not require screening. He said the staff’s job is to keep the building secure, and they were doing their job by bringing the screening idea to legislators.
McCabe said the discussions prompted him and other Matanuska-Susitna Borough legislators to ask constituents about the idea while they were campaigning.
“They’re already very angry that the Capitol is still down here in Juneau, where they can’t come visit and they can’t really get to us, so they just saw closing the Capitol with magnetometers and badges … they saw that as just another step in isolating legislators from the public,” McCabe said. “And they believe, as do I frankly, that the Capitol building is the people’s building.”
McCabe predicted that the next step would be to require badges.
“I just feel we should leave it open. We have a really able security team and, frankly, Alaskans are just not that militant, that they would storm the Capitol or come into the Capitol and create an issue,” he said.
The council members who voted for the policy change were chair Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau; Stevens; House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham; Sen. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage; Sen. Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage; Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson, D-Anchorage; Rep. Calvin Schrage, I-Anchorage; Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka; and Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak.
Voting against requiring the screenings were Rep. Ashley Carrick, D-Fairbanks; Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau; Rep. Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage; and Rep. Mike Prax, R-North Pole.
The council also voted 8-5 to award a contract for up to $35,000 to University Protection Service LP to provide the screening services. The only difference in the council members’ votes was that of Stedman, who voted against the contract. He said he generally opposed adding the metal detectors, noting that visitors already have to make an effort to go to Juneau. But he said he decided to vote for the policy after the council made it less onerous by removing the ID badge requirement.