Welcome to the Real Deal With Kiehl!

Big Bills

February 25, 2024

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

The House made all the headlines this week. With multiple floor sessions late into the night, they agreed on a major education funding bill.

More below on that, other ed funding issues, and some other big (read: long) bills in the mix this year.

Thank you to everyone who testified on the budget. It makes a big difference!

Education: The Bill

On Thursday, the House passed a major education bill, 38-2. It's not perfect, but it is a welcome step forward. So what's in it?

Federal Broadband Access Grants to underserved (mostly rural) schools were the origin of the bill, and the deadline to get them flowing is why we've settled education funding in the first third of session rather than the last three days.

The base student allocation will rise $680. That puts about $175 million into schools across the state. Closer to home, it means a little more than $5.5 million to Juneau schools, $430,000 to Haines, $410,000 to the Chatham district, and $250,000 to Skagway.

Charter schools get a way to appeal to the State Board of Education if a local district terminates them. That matches the current right to appeal if a district says no to starting one. There will also be a new charter school coordinator position in the department.

Pupil transportation funding will go up, covering a chunk of the increased costs of fuel, drivers, and vehicles since the last adjustment in 2015. In dollar terms that looks like about $280,000 in Juneau, $17,000 in Haines, $4,400 in Chatham, and $560 in Skagway.

Correspondence students will go from getting funded at 9/10ths of the BSA to the full amount. Compounded with the BSA boost, that's a $1276 hike per student. This is a tough one for me. Correspondence funding (sometimes called homeschool support) doesn't need the money. Enrollments have been growing even with a stagnant BSA. I've heard no testimony that correspondence programs can't cover their bills. And even without changing the multiplier, these students would get an additional $612 each (0.9 times the $680 BSA increase.) Plus, these are the least accountable dollars in all of state government. About 1 in 10 correspondence kids take state tests each year. Compare that to neighborhood school numbers just under 90%. Someone could claim tomorrow that 3/4 of Alaska correspondence kids can't read, and there is simply no data to prove them wrong. This piece of the package is a bitter pill to swallow.

Finally, the legislation adds a flat $500 for each child who needs a reading improvement plan under the Reads Act. These are students in grades K-3 who aren't on track. It's targeted funding directed at a major need in our state.

We'll have precise numbers soon, but I estimate the cost of the whole package is around $215 million per year. I pushed my colleagues to invest more than that, but it's a strong step to stave off educational crises around our state. I look forward to voting yes when the package comes up for a Senate vote Monday.

I was thrilled to help Jirdes Baxter celebrate her 100th birthday! Rep. Story and I presented her a legislative citation. We were joined by Interior Senator Click Bishop and the Nome delegation: Sen. Donny Olson and Rep. Neil Foster. (Jirdes is the last living survivor of the 1925 diphtheria outbreak that ultimately led to the founding of the Iditarod.)

Land: The Bill

The State of Alaska owns about 1/4 of the land within our borders. The federal government owns 3/5. Alaska Native corporations hold title to almost all the privately owned land in Alaska, while individuals and 'traditional' western corporations combined hold the rest: about 1% of the acres in the state. The governor has a proposal to start shifting land from the first of those categories to the last.

SB 199 tweaks a number of things in state land law. But its biggest purpose is to set up a system to lease and sell land for commercial development.

A little context: Alaska has long made it easy to get state land for agriculture. Those tracts come with tight deed restrictions so a person can't get ag land on the cheap and flip it for subdivisions or factories. We also sell residential land in both home-sized parcels and sizable tracts you can own (or subdivide yourself.) There isn't much state land to do that with here in Southeast, but they hold annual auctions up north.

The governor hopes putting commercial parcels out on the market will drive Alaska's economy forward. The theory is sound, but I think my colleagues on the Resources Committee will likely add some safeguards. After all, the history of public land sales across the Lower 48 is not a pretty one.

For starters, unlike residential land, the governor's bill has no preference for selling to Alaskans first. Our state's history has a lot of Outside investment, but some of it has done more to stifle than stimulate local entrepreneurship. Non-Alaska buyers should get a shot after Alaskans pass on the opportunity.

We also need to make sure commercial sales are about more than extracting rent for access to public land. Imagine someone getting title to a couple of popular trailheads in the Nelchina Basin, putting up fences, and charging at the gates during caribou season—not exactly a source of economic growth.

It would also be wise to set some boundaries on the amounts. Alaskans' access to public land is a treasure that hunters, fishing families, and recreationists of all stripes in the Lower 48 can only dream of. Our healthy environment depends on functional ecosystems. We'd be fools to sell it all.

That said, there is room for a responsible program under the rules of the Alaska Lands Act. And there are other changes in the bill that just make good sense. For instance, the bill lets someone with ag land have a bed & breakfast on their farm, or charge for groomed winter skiing—as long as the other uses don't interfere with the agriculture. Those are easy ways to enhance the often marginal economics of farming, and Alaska did something similar a few years ago for our mariculture leases. An oyster farm can now bring tourists out and show them the floats—it makes sense to do the same for farms.

The bill also increases the maximum balance in the fund that pays for state residential subdivisions. Carefully managed, that will let the homesite sales our state has been doing for many decades keep up with the rising cost of surveying and subdividing.

I'll track the Resources Committee's work on this bill closely. Once it gets their OK I'll get to see whether it needs fine-tuning in Finance.

Thanks to the Alaska Cancer Action Network advocates from around the state who came to the Capitol this week.

Big Issue, Giant Bill

The 35th day of the second session is the deadline for individual legislators to introduce bills. I may hold the dubious distinction of filing the longest bill this year.

Late last year, friends from AARP asked me to consider legislation to modernize Alaska's guardianship and conservatorship laws. Problems with the public guardian system have been in the news, but there are things our law could do better for family members and other private guardians, too.

They recommended a nationwide model written by the Uniform Law Commission. The ULC brings together smart, detail-oriented folks from all over the country (including one of the Alaska State Legislature's legal eagles) to hammer out fixes for issues that could benefit from each state agreeing to deal with them the same way. They've tackled issues from artificial intelligence to wills. (They don't currently have any model bills that start with X, Y, or Z—I checked.)

I agreed to introduce a bill to get the conversation started. It clocks in at 164 pages, so we may not get to the point of holding hearings this year. Still, I look forward to getting stakeholders together and diving into it this interim.

I appreciated speaking with the Alaska Commission on Aging this week.

Education: The Rant

It's often tough to nail the balance between clarifying complex programs to make them understandable and reducing things so far people get the wrong idea. This past week in the Education committee, a presentation on school funding boiled the facts down to a sludge, but never turned of the heat. The resulting haze obscured the truth.

The Department of Education gave a presentation implying Alaska’s schools will go through $2.7 billion dollars this year. But to reach that number you have to ignore a lot of facts. First, you have to assume every district will end the year with zero dollars in the bank. That would be bad budgeting, and when I asked, the department admitted they knew full well it's not the case.

You'd also have to assume the 54 districts in our state will use $357 million dollars of federal money this year. A healthy chunk of that amount of that is multi-year grants that districts must spread over two or three years. About 1/3 of it is the last dribs and drabs of COVID-relief money that nobody expects will come again in our lifetimes. Tossing that, unexplained, in a pot with all the funds districts have handy invites the misunderstanding that the $100 million or so of such dollars is a baseline.

What's more, only around a third of the federal total goes to 50 school districts or more. Presenting it the way the department did—as though every district has that federal cash to spend—suggests it's not tied up tightly with federal strings to specific projects in specific places.

Why should we care? Opinion writers have already jumped on the department's chart to come up with indefensible statewide averages. They've used those to argue there's no lack of resources. In turn, legislators who don't want to increase school funding have used those and other partial-truths to 'inform' their constituents that schools have 'enough' money.

Public finance can be complicated. But Alaskans are smart. When government types give citizens enough context to understand what's really going on, they can push their elected officials to work on the things Alaska really needs.

All my best,

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Events & Happenings Around District B

Gustavus Contra Dance

Saturday March 2^nd Join the Everybody Welcome Contra Dance band for a social dance! No partner necessary.

Gustavus Second Saturday Market

Small business and artisan crafts! Saturday March 9^th 12:30-3:30pm.

Skagway Gathering of Artists

Join the Skagway Traditional Council most Saturdays and Tuesdays in February to work alongside fellow artists or practice Lingìt!

Skagway Music

Every Saturday from 3-5pm, swing by the Skagway library and play around on the provided instruments—including a mandolin, ukulele, guitar, banjo, and piano!

Juneau Innovation Summit

Alaska’s premier innovation event! Delve into the power of Scenario Thinking and discover effective tools and strategies for navigating the future. February 28-29^th

Juneau Curiosity Unleashed

Monday February 26^th Free K-5 family event! Explore hands on STEAM activities led by professionals in STEAM fields.

Juneau Fireside Lecture

Explore the aquatic world of Davies creek with Lindsey Call UAF PhD student, Coho, Dolly Varden and more. Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center Friday, March 1 6:30-8:00pm.

Haines Clothes Mending Circle

Bring your mending projects, questions, and ideas to the Haines Public library Monday March 4^th 4:30-6:30pm.