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Ack! This Newsletter is Late!

March 11, 2024

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

Sorry to be so far behind on getting you this newsletter!

The legislature looks at the governor's executive orders this week. Last week the education funding saga continued. We're in the thick of the session now—no doubt about it!

Thanks to the advocates from Facing Foster Care in Alaska who came to the Capitol two weeks ago.

Education Funding

Two weeks ago, the Governor had a press conference on the bipartisan, House-Senate compromise bill that funds schools next year. He made it very clear that he wasn’t happy with it. He said unless we pass his teacher bonus bill, and revamp the way we approve charter schools, he'll veto the compromise.

The Senate Education Committee held hearings on both those 'must haves' recently. They're very expensive, badly thought-out, and won't improve schools.

The bonus bill would give teachers a $5,000, $10,000, or $15,000 bonus, depending on the district, at the end of each of the next three years. Last week, teachers across the state panned it as a bad idea.

It may also not be constitutional. It could raise an equal protection challenge. Sure, it makes sense to give the big five school districts—Juneau, Kenai, Fairbanks, Mat-Su, and Anchorage—smaller bonuses. But the distinction between $10,000 and $15,000 districts is pretty arbitrary. It isn't based on school performance, cost of living, or actual retention numbers.

While there's no question Alaska teachers should be paid more, it won’t help much to give them a check and boot them out the door because the district can’t afford to pay their base salary.

The charter school changes similarly don't work. The notion of letting the state Board of Education & Early Development approve charters that districts have to run seems to be built on a notion that elected school boards have a grudge against charter schools. But the facts don't bear that out.

Every district in the state that runs a charter school subsidizes it with more dollars than those students generate through the funding formula. The committee heard from most of them recently and they all praised the programs and talked about their great value. And the only evidence the committee heard about charters getting disapproved were upheld by the state board on appeal.

The governor clearly doesn't have public support or legislative votes for his ideas. As someone who voted for the Alaska Reads Act, I remain open if he has proposals that make sense—and talks continue behind the scenes. But our schools need funding in the worst way, regardless of what else we do in education policy.

Getting a budget update from the Director of Legislative Finance.

Executive Orders

A dozen executive orders at once is unprecedented in Alaska. But unprecedented isn't necessarily bad, so we've taken the stack of EOs and spent almost two months looking at them. On Tuesday we're scheduled to meet in joint session and vote them up or down.

Several of them make sense. I'll support the governor's proposal to do away with a couple of advisory groups, including one that looked like a bad idea when I first wrote about it in this newsletter. Those include committees on emergency medical services, handling criminal records, and others.

Others are bad public policy. Those include dissolving the boards that govern the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, midwives, and massage therapists, plus taking total control of the Marine Highway advisory board. I've been working with my colleagues to disapprove them.

I'm frankly still up in the air on doing away with the Board of Barbers and Hairdressers. I've heard good arguments both ways, and nearly none of my constituents have cared enough to reach out about it. So I'll listen to the debate on the floor and make up my mind then.

It takes 31 votes out of 60 in a joint session to disapprove an EO. Stay tuned!

I was honored to meet the new director of Native Peoples Action, Laureli Ivanoff, who came to the capital city with Jackie Boyer.

Seafood

The fishing industry employs more people than anyone else in Alaska. Things have been tough for several years now. And even with a little bounce back in salmon runs last season, prices and markets plummeted. Experts predict next season will be more of the same.

The value of all species are in the tank. Some processors stopped buying altogether. Processing plants are closing and fishing families are at risk of losing their livelihoods.

The reasons are complex. Two thirds of Alaska’s seafood is exported, and global markets are complicated, with Chinese workers paid very little for processing fish, and Russian processors harvesting unsustainable quantities that benefit from unequal tariffs and trade policies. Add high fuel costs for Alaska boats and a strong dollar further pinching exports and we're bucking a heavy current.

There are three steps the legislature should take right now, with others to come. The first is to invest in marketing. ASMI does an excellent job building up markets for our fish. With President Biden's recent order extending sanctions to Russian seafood, there will be a hole in American grocery store supplies Alaska should fill. Our state should invest in doing that this year.

We also need to pass SJR 14, calling on the federal government to make some changes in how our country sells seafood internationally and how we should further level the playing field for what we sell. It passed the Senate last week and is scheduled for its first hearing in a House committee Tuesday.

Then we need to look longer-term. SCR 10 takes a page from the early 2000s, when the legislature created a Joint Legislative Salmon Industry Task Force. In those days expanding fish farms, old seafood plants, and quality below what it should have been threatened our coastal fishing economies. The ideas that came from that task force were largely successful in saving the industry. It's time to pass the bill creating a new group to buckle down on today's challenges. There are a lot of livelihoods at stake.

Presenting my bill on disaster relief to the Senate Community & Regional Affairs Committee.

Doubleheader

The Senate Community & Regional Affairs committee heard two of my bills back to back recently. It was a lot, but I managed to keep it brief enough they avoided toxic levels of exposure.

First, the committee took up SB 242, my bill to make our property tax process fairer and more accessible. It will install some important guardrails for property tax assessments and appeals. (You read about the details a couple of weeks ago.) Thanks to everyone who testified! I appreciate you sharing the problems you've seen in the current process. You can still send in written testimony by emailing me at sen.jesse.kiehl@akleg.gov. The bill comes before the committee again Tuesday afternoon.

After that, we moved out SB 236, my disaster assistance bill that boosts the cap on state grants to individuals and families and lets condo owners to use state assistance to pay off their share of common expenses. All four committee members recommended the Senate pass the bill. It's up for a hearing in the Senate Finance committee Tuesday morning.