State lawmakers convened in Juneau on Tuesday, officially kicking off the first session of the 34th Alaska Legislature. Members of the state House and Senate will spend the next four months or so debating bills, holding hearings and building the state budget.
The first day always involves more pomp and circumstance than legislating, and this time was no exception.
After Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom presided over both bodies to swear in members, each chamber then elected its expected leaders: Sen. Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, won reelection as Senate president, and Rep. Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, will be speaker of the House. Both votes came along caucus lines: 14-6 in the Senate and 21-19 in the House, likely the first of many close votes in the narrowly divided lower chamber.
The uneventful start to the session, though, was a contrast to years past. In 2021, it took the House 22 days to pick a leader. In 2019, it was more than a month before lawmakers settled on a House speaker. Even two years ago, it wasn’t clear until the second day of the session which party would have control of the House
This time around was different. A day after Election Day — weeks before all the votes were counted — bipartisan coalitions said they were confident they had enough votes to control both bodies.
Though Republicans have a numerical majority in both chambers, two moderate Republicans joined 14 Democrats and five independents this year to wrest control of the chamber from a Republican-led coalition.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us. We have a very unique responsibility with the conditions that face our state,” Edgmon said shortly after taking the gavel. “I really look forward to working with all of you to the best of my ability.”
Senate leadership looks much the same to the last two-year period, though Democrats now outnumber Republicans in the 14-member bipartisan coalition nine to five.
Senate leaders’ priorities: school funding, pensions, energy, elections
Senate leaders say they’re eager to get to work. Stevens told reporters he expected lawmakers to cover several key priorities: school funding, pensions for state and local government employees, energy reliability and affordability, and election reform.
“Those really are our initial priorities,” Stevens said. “Things will be added to it as we move along through the session.”
Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, a member of Senate leadership who chairs the Rules Committee, said he expected the Senate Education Committee to unveil the first draft of a priority bill boosting public school funding “probably within the next week.” Wielechowski said the bill would likely not include changes to the way the state delivers education.
“I think the idea is to keep the funding issue separate from the policy issues,” he said. “I know there are a number of policy bills that people want, but I think that with the lack of funding, it's really critical that we address that, and address that first.”
That desire to keep funding and policy issues separate could set up a showdown with Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who last year vetoed an education funding bill. That bill, Senate Bill 140, included a $680-per-student boost to long-term education funding, but it left out two favorite issues of the governor: a change to the charter school approval process and retention bonuses for public school teachers that reached into the five figures.
Still, Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, said he was optimistic — last year’s bill fell just one vote short of becoming law over Dunleavy’s veto.
“The public has made it quite clear they want a long-term solution to the education equation,” Hoffman said. “I would say that there's a much better chance of passing a long-term solution than most people might think.”
Lawmakers could also find themselves in conflict with Dunleavy when it comes to returning state and local government employees to a pension system. Dunleavy has stopped short of explicitly threatening to veto a bill that would move the state back to a defined benefit plan, but he’s been lukewarm on the idea.
But Sen. Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, who shepherded a pension bill through the Senate this year, said the state was feeling the squeeze with large numbers of positions left vacant.
“Doing nothing is costing us right now,” she said.
Giessel said she also expected to discuss energy issues early in the session, too, as the Railbelt rides out another winter with gas supplies dwindling.
“We'll be talking about Cook Inlet gas, the potential for importing, we'll be talking about the LNG pipeline,” she said.
Earlier this month, state officials announced a framework agreement with Glenfarne Group, based in New York and Houston Texas, to take over development of the long-dreamed gas pipeline between the North Slope and Southcentral. The announcement came after the state’s development agency offered a $50 million letter of credit to backstop front-end engineering design work — and Giessel said she’s skeptical.
“We're offering now a completely risk-free $50 million to a company,” she said. “We don't know what the product is going to be, and if it's a nothing product, we still are paying $50 million.”
Wielechowski said he also planned to introduce a wide-ranging election reform bill that would address a witness signature requirement on absentee ballots, ways to speed up vote-counting, issues with special needs ballots, and political deepfakes.
“It'll be a comprehensive bill,” he said.
Bipartisan Senate majority faces expanded Republican opposition
The minority caucus has doubled to six Republicans, enough to guarantee seats on legislative committees. The three new members are newly elected Sens. Robert Yundt, R-Wasilla, and Mike Cronk, R-Tok, and Sen. James Kaufman, R-Anchorage, a prior member of the bipartisan caucus.
The 14-6 split gives the minority caucus a chance to block votes that require a three-quarters majority — including, notably, spending from the state’s primary savings account, the Constitutional Budget Reserve. But Senate Minority Leader Mike Shower, R-Wasilla, said obstruction isn’t first on the agenda.
“We're not starting that way, because that's kind of working backwards,” Shower said. “Our goal was to find common ground with the Senate Majority, with the House majority and minority, and things that we can work on that we agree upon.”
Shower emphasized that the minority caucus’ members had a wide variety of interests and expertise, from homebuilding and trucking to the military, health care, agriculture and management, but he said he expected much of the minority’s advocacy to have a narrower focus.
“You'll see three big topics from us: energy, education and the economy,” he said. “I think you're going to see, coming from us, a very unified vision on that.”
