Conference Committee on HB289, 3/23/26

Good afternoon, everyone.

I call this conference committee meeting to order. It is 3:31 PM on Monday, March 23, 2026. Before us today is House Bill 289, the supplemental bill. Members present are Senator Hoffman, Vice Chair, Senator Stedman and Senator Cronk. On the House side, we have Representative Shrogy,

Representative Stapp and myself,

Representative Josephson, the chair.

As to today's agenda, the bodies were given, and this committee was given limited powers of free conference, granted by both the House and the Senate. First, I'd like to invite Alexi Painter, Director of the Legislative Finance Division, to join us at this table.

Before we begin, I'd like to explain how objections will be handled.

If there is an objection,

we'll make note of that item and hold it aside.

We'll continue to go through the other items in the area or department,

adopt them or not,

and then come back to any item that has an objection. Today we will be addressing items in House Bill 289 based on the motion sheets distributed to members earlier today and dated March 23, 2026. This will cover

basically every department that it covers, including Administration,

Commerce, Community and Economic Development,

Corrections,

Education and Early Development,

Fish and Game,

Health, Natural Resources,

Revenue,

Transportation,

Public Facilities,

University of Alaska,

Judiciary, and then separately Debt Service, Special Appropriations, Fund Capitalization, fund transfers,

and capital budget items.

So let's begin. Senator Hoffman.

Yes, Mr.

Chairman, I move that the committee adopt the following in the Department of Administration,

Item one,

house.

Okay, we have a motion.

Is there an objection to it?

Hearing no objection,

uh the motion passes as to Item One. This closes the conferenceable items in the Department of Administration. We'll now go to Commerce Committee and Economic Development. Senator Hoffman.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee adopt the following of the Department of Commerce Community and Economic Development appropriations, item one and two, house all items.

Is there an objection to the motion just made by Senator Hoffman?

Hearing no objection,

the motion passes. That action closes the conferenceable items in Commerce,

Community and Economic Development's appropriations. We'll now go to corrections. Senator Hoffman.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee adopt the following in the Department of Corrections, item one through three,

house, all items.

We have a motion. Is there an objection to the motion?

Seeing and hearing none,

the motion passes,

and that action closes the comparable items as to the Department of Corrections in this budget.

We'll now go to Department of Education and Early Development. Senator Hoffman.

I move that the committees up the following Department of Education Early Development appropriations,

items one through five, House, all items.

We have a motion as to Department of Education's budget. Is there objection to it? Seeing and hearing none, that motion passes, and this action closes the conferenceable items in Education and Early Development's Department. We'll now go to Fish and Game. Senator Hoffman.

I move that the committee adopt the following. In the Department of Fish and Game appropriations, item one through five, House all items.

We have a motion as to Fish and Game.

Any objection to it? I don't see or hear any.

The motion is adopted and this action closes the conferenceable items in Fish and Game. We'll go to the Department of Health. Senator Hoffman.

I move that the committee adopt the following. Department of Health appropriations.

Page six, item one through nine,

House

all items.

Page seven,

items 10 and 11,

House

all items.

Item 12,

line one,

House minus $2,100,000 in general fund match.

Item 12, line two, House minus $58,921,600 in federal receipts. Item 13, House.

We have a motion as to Department of Health. Is there any objection to the motion?

Okay, we have an objection.

All right.

We have an objection specifically to item 12.

Representative Stapp, would you like to speak to your objection?

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Chair, and just for clarification, my understanding is neither neither

their versions of each budget had this total fund. Is this an appropriation supplemental request from the 217 or from the 3, 4,

312 through the chair?

I think I'm going to and I think Representative Stapp is talking about February 17th and March 4th.

Yeah.

Um Mr. Painter, can you answer rep Stapp's question?

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

For the record, Alexi Painter, Legislative Finance Division. This was an amendment by the governor on February 17th to reduce the amounts by the amounts there. The Senate Finance Committee version had adopted those lower amounts, but then the full Senate version didn't include any of these items.

Thanks for the clarification, Director. I withdraw my objection.

Is there any further objection to the Department of Health items?

moved by Senator Hoffman? Seeing and hearing none, this action closes the comfortable items in health. We'll move to natural resources.

Senator Hoffman, I move that the Committee adopt the following Department of Natural Resource Appropriations, item 1, 2, 3. House, all items.

We have a motion. Is there an objection to this motion? Seeing and hearing none, the motion is adopted.

This action closes the comfortable items in natural resources. We'll now move swiftly down the alphabet to Department of Revenue. Senator Hoffman.

Senator Hoffman, I move the Committee adopt the following Department of Revenue appropriations items one through five. House, all items.

We have a motion as to Department of Revenue in the supplemental budget.

Is there an objection? Seeing and hearing none, that motion carries. This action closes the comfortable items in revenue. Now to Department of Transportation, Senator Hoffman.

Senator Hoffman, I move the Committee adopt the following Department of Transportation public facilities appropriations items one through four. House, all items.

We have a motion on Department of Transportation.

Is there an objection? Seeing and hearing none,

as before, we will adopt that motion. This closes the comfortable items in transportation public facilities.

Now the University of Alaska, Senator Hoffman.

Senator Hoffman, I move that the Committee adopt the following University of Alaska appropriations items one through four. House, all items.

Senator Hoffman has made a motion as to University of Alaska.

Is there an objection?

Seeing and hearing none,

the motion carries. This action closes the comfortable items in the University of Alaska.

Now the Judiciary. Senator Hoffman.

Senator Hoffman, I move that the Committee adopt the following Judiciary Appropriations, item 1,

House.

Is there an objection to the Senator's motion?

Seeing and hearing none, that motion carries. This action closes the comparable items in Judiciary.

Now we'll go to debt service.

Senator Hoffman.

I move the committee adopt the following debt service appropriations, item one,

House.

We have a debt service related motion. Is there an objection to the motion?

Seeing and hearing none, the motion passes. This action closes the comfortable items, uh conferenceable items in debt service. Now we'll go to Special Appropriations, Senator Hoffman.

Senator Hoffman, I move the committee adopt the following Special Appropriations Item 1. House.

We have a motion as to special appropriations.

Is there an objection to that motion? Seeing and hearing none, this action closes the comfortable items in special appropriations. Now we'll go to fund capitalization, Senator Hoffman.

Senator Hoffman, I move that the committee adopt the following fund capitalization appropriations

items one and two, House,

all items, item three, Senate.

We have a motion in fund capitalizations made by Senator Hoffman. Is there any objection to it?

Seeing and hearing none,

that motion passes. The action closes the comfortable items in fund capitalization. Now we'll go to fund transfers.

Senator Hoffman.

I move the committee adopt the following fund transfer appropriations. Item one, Senate modified by adopting amendment

HA4.

Okay, I'm going to object for purposes of an explanation.

Mr.

Painter, will you explain Amendment H.A.4?

Yes, Mr. Chairman. For the record, Alexi Painter, Legislative Finance Division.

Amendment H.A.4 replaces the constitutional budget reserve draw language from the Senate with language similar to what had been in the House version before it was voted down. There are a couple of differences from the House version.

One is that

In section A, it's a little rephrase where the House version had said, talked about insufficiency, this version does a more simple calculation.

So this language says that if unrestricted revenue available for appropriation is less than the general fund appropriations that take effect in this year that were made in last year's appropriations bills and in this bill,

then the difference between revenue and the appropriations.

is appropriated from the CBR to the general fund. The previous version or the house version had said um the amount necessary. There was some concern excuse me concern that the amount necessary could change if other appropriations from the general fund occurred. Um this is a simple calculation that couldn't be affected by other appropriations. Second change is that the headroom language, section B_ is a little rewritten from the version that had been in.

in in front of the house. Um that version it said that if there were additional general fund appropriations then thirty million was transferred from the constitutional budget reserve to the general fund. This specifically says that only the amount of those were additional appropriations, so only the amount necessary would be appropriated, there wouldn't be any extra amount beyond that. Um

and that's that's the differences between the language from the house.

Okay, what I would do, what I'd like to do at this point is move my own conceptual amendment to HA4. This conceptual amendment would reduce the headroom from 30 million to 20 million on line 19 of the amendment.

Mr. Painter, you've already explained the purpose of headroom generally, and you've described under what conditions the headroom would come into effect.

What I'd like you to do, Mr. Painter, we have published a document that shows it's from your office, it's called Governor's Supplemental Items not in House or Senate House Bill 289. The chair intends here to show good faith as to why the number 20 million is closer to the mark than 30 million, so that members have confidence

the budget is likely necessary to cover outstanding items. Can you describe anything more about your document, sir?

Yes, Mr. Chairman, for the record, Alexi Painter, Legislative Finance Division. So there's appropriations in a few columns, I'm just going to cover the general fund appropriations. So the total general fund appropriations requested by the Governor that are not in either version and since the Committee essentially adopted the higher version for either, it would be including those, total $12,584,400. However, one of these items, the Statehood Defense

$1,000,000 was intentionally left out of both bodies. The other items are either items that were in the House finance or the Senate finance version as governor's amendments that were received after the House process but were removed from the full Senate version because that section of the bill was removed or items that were submitted by the governor on March 13th, so after the process had concluded in both bodies. And so those UGF items, if you subtract that, would be

roughly 11.6 million.

Those are all the items the governor has currently submitted.

In addition,

we're aware of one item we can put numbers on,

which is there's a SNAP penalty dating back to the FY24 state performance of 4.6 million.

It's possible that that will be coming in a future supplemental.

It's also possible that that's being appealed right now.

It could be that some of that appropriation can be used

or some of that amount could be taken against existing appropriations in the bill and not need additional money so we don't know exactly how much of that will come forward. If you add that to the 11.6 million, you're at 16.2 million. In addition there's often late items that come in. Two of the most common things that we see in the April round of amendments are capitalizations of the election fund, that's generally 1 or 200,000 of general funds.

And then judgments, claims and settlements,

that's an unpredictable number.

Last year in April we got between 3 or $400,000 of UGF, but it's really hard to predict what will come in from those.

So there's a few things that we could see.

We've also seen

emergent needs come up later on in April amendments.

For example, two years ago there was an item in the Department of Corrections that came out of an audit finding. So you can see some other items, but the known items that we can foresee total 16.2 million.

All right. And so that we have good record here,

we have an amendment that I've asked to amend

to

then

Okay.

Then conceptually. And let me do that formally. So I would like to move conceptual amendment to Amendment H A4, reducing the amount on line 19 from 30 million to 20 million, which seems, based on the record presented by Mr. Painter, to be closer to the anticipated need. Is there an objection to my conceptual amendment?

Seeing and hearing none, my conceptual amendment is adopted, making line 19 read 20 million rather than 30 million. So now we have the amended amendment before us. We've heard from Mr. Painter. Is there any objection to the amended amendment?

Yeah, I object.

All right, we have an objection to the amended amendment. Rep. Stapp, would you like to talk about your objection?

All right.

Yeah, thank you, Chair.

I don't know if it's appropriate. I would actually like to move to adopt the House version of this line item in one, which basically has no CBR language in it.

I don't know if we have to deal with the underlying amendment.

Um

Mr. Chairman,

yes.

are you trying to get the C_B_R_ uh issue on the table at this point or

Yes.

Would it be appropriate to address that at a later time,

Mr. Painter?

Is there,

uh

So as I understand it, your.

I

think we should see if there is, I'm trying to think procedurally how I want to do this.

Without without prejudice to Representative Stapp, I would recommend we adopt H A4 as amended and then offer Representative Stapp a chance to amend that further.

Is there any further objection at least at this juncture to the adoption of H A4 as amended?

Seeing and hearing none,

I

that is our work. There is an objection.

All right.

Yes.

So why don't you tell us what your conceptual amendment would say, Representative Stapp?

Um I'm just a object

I'm just. Object.

Briefly. Brief at ease.

We're back on record at 3:48. We have an objection to the amended amendment without any request for further discussion. Will the clerk call the roll as to the amended amendment?

Senator Croft?

Yes.

Representative Staff?

No.

No.

Senator Stedman?

Yes.

Representative Schragi?

Yes.

Senator Hoffman.

Yes.

Representative Josephson?

Yes.

Yes.

Senate 3 aye, 0 nay. House 2 aye, 1 nay.

All right. So the committee has adopted H A4 as amended.

And then I turn to my vice chairman,

Senator Hoffman.

I move that the committee adopt the remaining item under fund transfers, item two house.

Is there an objection to Senator Hoffman's last amendment?

I don't see any objection. That motion passes. This action closes the conferenceable items in fund transfers.

We'll now go to the capital budget items, Senator Hoffman.

I move the committee adopt the following capital budget items, items one through ten. House, all items.

Any objections to the Senator's motion on capital budget items? Hearing and seeing none, those or that motion passes. This action closes the council items and capital budget items.

Now we're going to see if we can move this out.

of the conference committee. Senator Hoffman.

Mr. Chairman, I move we give Legislative Finance and Legislative Legal Services the ability to make technical and conforming adjustments to the conference committee substitute for House Bill 289.

Object.

There's an objection. Representative

Stapp, what is your objection?

Uh yeah, I I don't believe this bill requires a C_V_R_ draw to be funded, Mr Chairman. So therefore I oppose leaving this conference committee with the C_V_R_ draw as part of its requirement to be funded.

Okay,

Okay. Um

uh now now the motion that was made was about technical and conforming amendments.

uh or adjustments.

So Do you do

It's a second motion to do to

Do you maintain your objection as to the technical and conforming adjustments?

I'll remove my objection and object to the second part.

Alright. So hearing no objection, the technical and conforming adjustments motion passes. Now we move to uh the conference committee report reporting out the conference committee's substitute with individual recommendations. Um Senator Hoffman just to reformalize that.

Mr. Chairman, I move the conference committee report out Conference committee substitute for House Bill 289 with individual recommendations.

Check.

There's an objection. Would you like to speak to your objection?

I just to clarify for the record that the bill is pertinent on a draw from the constitution budget reserve that I do not believe is necessary to fund the bill.

All right with that and no other discussion

I have some discussion.

Yes, Vice Chairman Huffman.

Yes.

The way that I understand it, we've adopted language that says the constitutional budget reserve account will only be used if necessary.

We've adopted language that strengthens the, tightens up the language.

We have had substantial increases in forecast of oil prices,

and we are hoping that we will be able to accomplish all of the funding without using the CBR,

the Constitutional Budget Reserve account.

If and only if the prices do not cover those expenditures then the CBR will be utilized. So I believe that um this is the most prudent way forward and I would um say that the report should leave committee as it's been presented to the Committee.

Okay.

Thank you, Senator Hoffman. Any other comments? I don't see any. We have a motion to move this report out and back to the floors. We have a standing objection. No further discussion. Will the secretary please call the roll?

Representative Schragi?

Yes.

Senator Steadman?

Yes.

Yes.

Representative Stapp?

No.

No.

Senator Croft?

Yes.

Representative Josephson?

Yes.

Senator Hoffman?

Yes.

Yes.

House, 2 yea, 1 nay.

Senate,

3 yea, 0 nay.

All right, we're going to take at ease to sign some reports. We are not yet adjourned. We're at ease.

Sam.

March 23rd in the Senate Finance Room at 3:55.

And we've just wrapped up a conference committee meeting. This meeting closes out all conferenceable items in the FY26 supplemental bill, House Bill 289.

It concludes the work