State lawmakers have less than a week left in the 121-day legislative session. The Alaska Constitution gives them until midnight next Wednesday, May 21, to finish up their work for this year.
Things are moving quickly, and it’s tough to keep up. Alaska Public Media’s Eric Stone spoke with Alaska News Nightly host Casey Grove for a look at what you need to know.
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Casey Grove: So, Eric, what do lawmakers have left in this final week?
Eric Stone: Obviously, this year, as is the case every year, one of the big things to watch is the state budget. The House and Senate each approved their own versions of the budget, and now there’s a conference committee meeting every day or so to iron out the differences between the two budgets.
It’s kind of a strange thing to watch. All of the actual negotiation takes place behind closed doors, so all the public gets to see is a carefully choreographed process.
It sounds something like this exchange between House budget head Andy Josephson and Senate top budgeter Lyman Hoffman.
Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel: "Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee adopt the following items in the executive branch-wide appropriations. Items, one and two, both items, Senate."
Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage: "Is there any objection to that? Hearing none, that motion is adopted and passes."
ES: That was a pretty big moment. Did you catch that?
CG: You know, actually, no, I didn't.
ES: OK, so that was the moment that the committee removed a very contentious item from the budget — a $78 million so-called “unallocated cut.” It would have essentially been the Legislature saying, “Hey, governor, find $78 million to cut. You decide how to do it.” Which, if you remember government class from high school, is a bit unusual and may be unconstitutional, since the Legislature is the branch that is supposed to have the power of the purse. Members of the House spent hours debating it. But just like that, in 17 seconds — at least, 17 seconds in public — it’s out of the budget.
There’s a lot more where that came from. The Senate’s budget is considerably more austere, for the most part, than the House’s. The thing to watch here are the high-profile cuts the Senate made to things like the Department of Corrections and child care. And, of course, the PFD — the Senate’s is $1,000, and the House’s is $1,400. I would suspect that with oil prices low, we’ll have something closer to the Senate’s figure. But we probably won’t find out the final number for a few days — they tend to leave the real contentious stuff until the very end.
CG: We'll definitely stay tuned to what's going on with the budget, considering all that. What else is going on?
ES: Another big thing to watch here is a bill that would modify the state’s election system. It passed the Senate on Monday and is in hearings in the House right now. There is a substantial chance it winds up passing both houses and heading to the governor before next Wednesday, but it’s hard to say.
CG: Well, what sorts of changes would it make?
ES: There is a long list. Here’s a summary from the sponsor of Senate Bill 64, Anchorage Democratic Sen. Bill Wielechowski.
Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage: "It cleans up our voter rolls. It makes our elections more secure. It makes a number of changes to ensure that voters, predominantly in military and rural districts, are not disenfranchised, and it speeds up ballot counting."
ES: Couple big things to highlight there — it would remove the witness signature requirement for absentee ballots. It’s a big reason why ballots get rejected. And also related to rejected ballots, it would create a so-called “ballot curing” process. Basically, how that works is, if you fill out part of the form wrong, the Division of Elections will notify you and give you a chance to fix it instead of not counting it.
The bill would also allow election officials to start processing absentee ballots sooner and require election officials to release ranked choice tallies in preliminary results, rather than just first-choice votes as they do now.
You heard Wielechowski there talking about cleaning up voter rolls and making elections more secure — there would be a bunch of new processes to keep track of when people move out of state, plus a new type of post-election audit to make sure the results are correct. It would also, notably, prohibit AI deepfakes in campaigns unless there’s a disclosure that it’s AI-generated.
Wielechowski says the bill looks to strike a balance between bills favored by conservatives and others from moderates and Democrats.
CG: That's his perspective as the sponsor. How's it going over with other lawmakers, though?
ES: Well, it passed the Senate along caucus lines, with the all-Republican minority opposing it. And Republicans in the House are signaling opposition as well. Conservatives are saying the bill doesn’t go far enough on election security, and they object to a few different parts of the bill. Here’s Senate Minority Leader Mike Shower, a Republican from Wasilla.
Sen. Mike Shower, R-Wasilla: "When you look at the bill, we had a saying, because I've been working on this for eight years — make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. And ultimately, where this bill kind of landed on was opening up access with very little security."
ES: He says Republicans were disappointed with changes to so-called special needs ballots, some of the absentee changes, and he says they wanted to limit the use of ballot drop boxes.
CG: That's all a lot, but what else are you keeping an eye on?
ES: There is, of course, the education bill. Lawmakers passed a $700 boost to basic per-student funding a little while ago, and it’s pending on Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s desk. He told superintendents last week he planned to veto it unless legislators passed more of his priorities, and there’s no reason to think they will. The deadline for him to veto it is Monday, and I suspect we’ll have a veto override vote shortly after that. Of course, Dunleavy can still veto school funding from the budget, and he’s indicated he might do that, and that is a much harder veto to override.
And of course, there’s a lot more, but I think you have some other stories to get to tonight, so I’ll leave it there.
