HSTA-260512-1515

I'd like to call this meeting of House State Affairs to order. The time is 3:19 on Tuesday, May 12th, and we're here in Room 120. Uh, please silence your your cell phones today. Members present include Representative St. Clair, Representative McCabe, Representative Vance, Representative Holland, Representative Himschoot, Vice Chair Soria, and myself, Chair Carrick. Let the record reflect we have a quorum to conduct business.

Um, our record secretary today is Andrew Magnussen, and our moderator from the Juneau LIO is Renzo Moises. Our committee aide, as always for today, is my staff, Stuart Relay. Um, we do not have 7 items on our agenda. We have 3 items on our agenda today. Uh, we are going We're going to start with House Bill 281 from Representative Sadler relating to penny transactions.

After that, we will briefly take up for introduction House Bill 382 from the House Judiciary Committee. Uh, the Senate companion is shortly to arrive to this committee, so we will be hearing that as an intro in preparation for our hearing later this week. And then we'll spend our remaining time with House Bill 371 from Representative Cabe. So our first item today is Representative Sadler and House Bill 281 relating to penny transactions. Feel free to come on up.

This is our second hearing on the bill, so today the plan is to take public testimony, have continued discussion, and then see how the committee is feeling about this bill today. Could we first get a brief reintroduction of the bill from Representative Sadler? Certainly, Madam Chair. This is Representative Dan Sadler. Senator Tyler, House District 24, Chugiak/Eagle River.

And I was going to joke that maybe if you have 3 bills, we should just round up to 5 bills. But I won't make that joke. So we have House Bill 281 before the committee. I appreciate you bringing it forward, Madam Chair. Penny rounding is our short title, but it's rounding cash transactions to the nearest 5 cents.

You've heard it once before. I'm looking forward to hearing questions from the members of the committee and answering them and hearing public testimony on this. Excellent. I think let's go ahead and just start with the public testimony bit. So we're going to open public testimony at this time on House Bill 281.

Is there anyone in the room to testify? I don't know, maybe Chloe wants to come testify on petty transactions. Seeing no one and seeing nobody.

Online for public testimony. At this time, we are going to close public testimony on House Bill 281. And is there additional committee discussion on this bill? Representative Himschoot. Thank you, Chair Carrick.

I won't take a lot of time, but I'm very excited about this bill. If we get as far as amendments, we're allowed to use props in committee, but I want to make sure that there's a printable— printable, um, document that you could post at your till or whatever, so that along with a standard policy, there's also kind of a standard way of looking at it. So just— I don't know if we're going to get that far, but if we do, I've seen many versions of this, and we just want to make sure that it's simple and straightforward. And so I appreciate the bill. I think it's really actually more important than you realize.

And interestingly, a major merchant in my second largest town reached out I think last week, I've lost track of time, but something like last week, unaware that this bill even existed, saying that we need to do something. And I said, I agree with you. So I have high hopes for this bill on the 9th to last day of session.

Representative Holland. Great, thank you. Through the chair, well, I just, I want to offer my 2 cents that I'm really looking forward to making sure we don't, you know, step over a dime to pick up a nickel. And I really look forward to getting my dollar's worth out of this. Oh, you just had to.

Goodness.

Oh, so bad. Um, okay, are there— let's see, Representative Vance. So my question is, what happens if we don't pass this bill? What— I'll, uh, are there negative impacts to not addressing this now? I'll turn to Representative Sadler.

Thank you. Through the chair to Representative Vance. That— well, there's no immediate terrible consequences. However, the, uh, not passing this legislation would leave a situation where large retailers or small retailers retailers might begin rounding to their own advantage, taking advantage of consumers. I think the overall goal here is to make sure that rounding is fair to the consumers and to the businesses.

And in the absence of that standard symmetrical rounding, we risk businesses taking advantage of their customers. And I cannot blame them. If the law does not allow them to— does not prevent them from doing so, they will do so. And I think the benefit of a consistent method that we all know about, and those signs would be a good way to make that happen, I think people will still be comfortable using cash and not feel that they are being taken advantage of. Thank you for the question.

Follow-up. Follow-up. Have you heard of any confusion around the collection of sales tax and things? I noticed in your bill you were very prescriptive about—. Yes.

—How municipalities or anyone indicated confusion and potential arguments, lawsuits about which way people are going to do this? Through the Chair, Representative Vance, I appreciate that question. No, the National Conference of State Legislatures put out a very good white paper about that, and the recommendations they made is that you do not apply the rounding to digital transactions. They took the— made the point that some property tax calculations with mills get to fractions of pennies, and because those are done electronically, those are not affected. This does not apply to sales taxes, does not apply to income taxes, does not apply to property taxes.

It is solely aimed at cash transactions at the register. Well, thank you. I am old enough to remember a movie that had Richard Pryor, that he found the company, uh, it was back during the automated computers with the cards they had to punch in, and that was the computation. And he figured out how to game the system with just a few cents at a time and ended up scalping a lot of money because it pennies that up. And so I appreciate you wanting to help protect— this is, in a way, a consumer protection is what you are saying.

Is that correct? It is, indeed. Thank you. And through the Chair, if I may, I remember that was the IBM 360 card reader. We used them.

Yeah.

Yeah. We have members here old enough to remember using those. I have a couple folks in— [SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE] Yeah.

Representative McCabe is next. Thanks. So I think, through the chair, I think most— a lot of retailers that are not in a city that has taxes are already doing this. They're already making their, you know, instead of $1.99, they're making it a $2 item, right? I mean, they're already doing it so that they don't have to do pennies.

And it might cost them and it might save them money one way or the other, depending on how they're going. I think the melt value of a penny right now is 2 cents. And I think, like you said, it costs 4 cents to build one.

So I guess the question for me is, how long does NCSL— I mean, how long are pennies going to remain, continue to remain in circulation?

I mean, will they always be, or will they slowly phase out, or is the Federal government going to say, nope, no more pennies, and collect them all and give us all pennies on the dollar for them or dollars on the penny? Gold and silver species. Representative Sauer. Thank you, Madam Chair. My staffer Melody would like to answer that question, if she may.

Thank you. Through the chair to Representative McCabe. Like other denominations that have gone out of print, these would continue to be usable currency, like a $2 bill or a $1,000 bill. People would still be able to use pennies. But the likelihood of seeing them is going to become slimmer and slimmer.

Follow up? Follow up? Yeah, so I think that like the 2025 pennies, the last ones they minted are, you can't even find them anymore. People are gobbling them up and store them as collectibles. So kind of an interesting phase that we're going through, right?

So let's just all use gold and silver. It'd be way better. Wait for that. All right. Representative Himschoot.

Thank you. Through the chair, I wanted to point out I don't see it as just consumer protection with this bill. I see it the other way around as well, where the merchant— you don't want people arguing at the till about a penny or anything else. And so if it's just straightforward, it's better for everybody, for the merchant, for the person actually working the till, for the consumer. So I see it as a super valuable thing that we need to do.

And one day it will become CRUF. At some point this bill will probably— this law will not be needed anymore and we'll need to get rid of it. I don't know if that will be in our lifetimes.

Representative Sadler. Thank you for the dialogue, Madam Chair. Actually, I've got a little hobby. When I go to stores, I often find signs at the checkout line offering their own homegrown placards explaining what their rounding policies are. They're not always consistent, which kind of leads me to think we're on the right track here.

Um, is there any additional discussion at this time? Okay, I'm just going to take a very brief adieu. Adieu.

House State Affairs is back on the record, and at this time, seeing no further discussion, I'm going to look for a motion. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the House State Affairs pass HB 281, also known as 34-LS1281/A, from committee with individual recommendations and attached fiscal notes. Hearing and seeing no objection, House Bill 281 has been moved from committee, and we're going to take a very brief adieu, sign the paperwork, and our next bill up will be House Bill 382 relating to JASC. Adieu.

House State Affairs is back on the record, and next we have House Bill 382 relating to the Joint Armed Services Committee from the House Judiciary Committee. Just for members' information, the plan today is to have a first hearing on this bill today as the companion legislation SB 282 passed the Senate today. And we will have it in our possession on Thursday for our hearing. So the goal is to take this bill up, um, set an amendment deadline after that bill has passed the Senate tomorrow, and then be able to have a second and possibly final hearing on Thursday, just to give committee members an idea of what we're doing. Um, so today we have an introduction from Representative Gray, and, uh, welcome.

Thank you, um, House State Affairs Committee and Chair Carrick and Vice Chair Storey and all members for hearing House Bill 382 today. So House Bill 382 is, uh, our attempt to modernize the statutes setting the structure, function, and focus of the Joint Armed Services Committee. So the Joint Armed Services Committee was, was created in 1999 by then Alaska State House Representative Lisa Murkowski, and it was in response to the Federal Base Realignment and Closure Act of 1990. If you look at the statutes as they exist right now, most of them mention BRAC, Base Realignment and Closure. And something that we haven't discussed at any of the Joint Armed Services Committee meetings that I have attended is BRAC.

And so part of the reason why I felt we should update the statutes is because we don't spend Joint Armed Services Committee meetings discussing BRAC. Although that's what the statute says the purpose of the committee is. We also, a couple of years ago, Representative Will Stapp passed his Military Commission Bill, which will be housed in the executive branch, which was about aligning economic opportunities with military priorities. And we also have the Military and Veterans Affairs Committee as a special committee in the House. So for me, I felt it was really important we have these three different entities, making sure that all three have their own specific role, their own specific purpose, because if any of them are duplicating themselves, then we don't need it.

And so really, I did ask the question, do we need JASC if we have the Military Commission plus the, uh, Special Committee on Military and Veterans Affairs. And when you ask that question out loud, a lot of people come out of the woodwork to say, "Yes, we do need the JASC." And so this bill is in— it has been worked on by multiple folks. Civilian members of the Joint Armed Services Committee contributed a lot, and we also had contributions from the first staffer for Joint Armed Services Committee in 1999, which was Chris Nelson. He offered a lot of help to my staffer Kyle Johansen in crafting the legislation that you have before you. Um, as was mentioned before we started, there— it right now there's a shared seat between the Alaska Municipal League and the Alaska Federation of Natives.

This gives them each their own seat, and that's in part because the shared concept meant that one entity was essentially sitting in the seat. So, it wasn't actually being shared. We had some amendments taken up in House Military and Veterans Affairs Committee that made it better. We expanded, right, the way it was originally, it was one minority member from each body. We've expanded it to two, which we lessened the majority's presence on the committee.

And then there's a couple of others that will be in an upcoming CS. There's a couple of drafting errors in the current copy in front of you, but that will be fixed, as the chair said, when we have the Senate companion bill coming over. And that— oh, finally, this bill would sunset in 2036 because I feel like we probably don't need to wait 27 years to update the statute. We could look at it again in 10 years and see if there's any small changes that need to be made to make the committee relevant and worthy of continuing.

Great. Excellent synopsis. I have a question right out the gate. Has the JAS Committee ever had a repealer provision in it prior to this legislation? I will ask my staff, Kyle Johansen, to come forward and make sure that I'm saying the correct thing when I say no, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Kyle Johansen, staff. To the incorrect, Representative Gray, at one point it did have a repealer. That was removed by Senator Wielechowski, I believe, nearly a decade ago. This was reviewed and for some reason, I— the minutes are attached and that is one thing that escapes me, the exact reason why the repealer was taken out.

But, again, the statutes remain stale and that's the point of putting a repealer in there.

Well, I appreciate Representative Gray taking a stab at it anyway. Representative St. Clair. Thank you, Madam Chair. Through the chair, so how many members— if this legislation goes through, how many members would be on the board?

Through the chair, we're just adding one member, so we've got the 5 from each side and then we've We got the 6 civilians, so we would end up with another seat, so that would be— 16? 17. 17. Yep.

Follow-up? Follow-up. And I know I addressed this with you earlier, and I am just going to bring it up for the record. Having— both of us having spent time in the military, I have difficulty understanding why AFN and AML need to be included to this, being that there are DOD organizations, uh, in whether it's Army, Air Force, or DOD period, that would do a lot of the same things that AML and AFN would do, along with liaisons that are in, uh, most— at most installations. So I guess my question is, is why?

Thank you. Through the chair to Representative St. Clair. [Speaker:ANDREW] And again, I'm going to give an answer and then my staff can add or edit.

The reason why the AFN seat is there is because it was a floor amendment from 1999 where— so it wasn't initially part of JASC, but as it was added as a floor amendment, and like many things in life, it's hard to take things away once they're there. AFN, we've spoken with the— with AFN wants to have the seat, and they've had it for 27 years. So the reason why it was there in the first place, it was added as a floor amendment. I am not sure about AML, and so I'll turn that over to my staff. Thank you.

Through the chair, yeah, AML was brought in really because of their connection to the communities that are being impacted. That was At the time, it was determined by the sitting legislature that their input was valuable. I mean, that's basically what it was. As far as AFN, it was a floor amendment by Senator.

Georgianne Lincoln.

I have talked with the liaison for AFN, Kendra Kloster. This concept of having their own seat was put through their legislative committee. They are very excited about having their own seat. Part of this effort is to regenerate energy around this and attention to this committee, and AFN is very excited about having their own seat, and they talked about the connection to the entire Native community. AFN, the same members own or are part of corporations.

They are part of other parts of the Native community. So many of the contractors that work on the bases in all communities that have bases— Ketchikan, Kodiak, Fairbanks, Anchorage— have many, many contractors on base. The economic connections are so strong that I think that seat has grown into a really important conduit to a very important part of our economy. Representative McCabe and then Himshoot. Thanks.

Yeah, not really a question, but a comment. AML was on there for the BRAC Commission. I mean, BRAC was closing bases in communities. I was at one at one point and the community got really, really involved. I suspect that was AML's seat.

And as far as AFN, I think that the Alaska Natives have contributed per capita and per population more members to our military than pretty much any other, you know, any other group of nations, First Nations or First Peoples. And plus, they have a connection to our communities as well, right? I mean, could you imagine if J-Bear closed down and what that would do to Mountain View and what that would do to Anchorage? I think that's the BRAC Commission ties this all together, you know, the BRAC, uh, Base Realignment and Closure Commission. So I think that's where that— probably both of those came from.

Can I add something? Thank you. Uh, through the chair, I'm basically just commenting off of Representative McCabe's comments. Uh, the new bill still includes BRAC, so we're not taking BRAC away. We're just acknowledging that the focus of JASC's current meetings are not discussions about BRAC.

[Speaker:DR. ROBERT NELSON] If I might add— [Speaker:DR. JEAN GATZA, COMMISSIONER, BRAC] That's a good answer. [Speaker:DR. ROBERT NELSON] That was one thing that Mr. Nelson and the civilian members of the committee were adamant about keeping attention to BRAC, keep BRAC language in there, because that can come back, and the hangover and the pain from that process was so great. I mean, they were just— that was a no-brainer. Sorry, one more thing.

My name is Andrew Gray, and I represent House District 20, the U-Med district in Anchorage. I never put myself on the record, and I apologize. Well, you're on the record now. Thank you.

4 Years in, here we go. Representative Himschute. Thank you. Through the chair, I just wanted to I just want to reaffirm what Representative McCabe said. I think Alaska Natives have the highest per capita in the nation representation in the veteran community, and it's probably still true today in the active community.

And so the only concern I have is this was written at a time where AFN does not speak necessarily for all tribes, and so a concern I have is By saying AFN, then AFN provides their person. If you say a representative of the tribes of Alaska, it gets a little more difficult to figure out who that would be. So that's a consideration, but the inclusion of tribes, yeah, is absolutely essential. So I'm glad that that's there.

And I— yeah, I think as our relationship with the tribes develops, it will become easier to figure out how best to get a tribal voice. And AFN is certainly a fantastic tribal voice, but it's not all tribes represented with AFN. So I'll be thinking about what we could do with that.

Great, thank you, Representative Himshue. Representative Antz. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a couple questions. Since there's a little bit of consternation about a repealer, have you considered a sunset date?

Very similar effect, but it seems softer to have us reconsider this bill in 10 years rather than a repealer. Feels more permanent.

Through the chair to Representative Vance. Yes, we can do it a sunset date. Thank you for the suggestion. [Speaker:MS. KELLY] I didn't know if that was— people had heartburn, you know, with the wording on that. But I do have a question that I just want put on the record, and it's on page 4, line 15.

You added convene hearings and stakeholder consultations on emerging defense issues. Can you describe— what the intent behind that addition is. Representative Gray.

My staff, Kyle Johansen, will answer the question. Thank you, Mr. Johansen. Thank you. That was Kyle Johansen's staff to Representative Gray. I'm sorry, Representative, it was page 4, line 13?

Uh, 15. It's the question that I asked you before about can meeting hearings and stakeholder consultations on emerging defense issues. I just want to, on the record—. Oh, right. What—.

Yes, of course. What is this going to look like? What do you—. Why is this addition necessary? Right.

As alluded to earlier, we had an off-the-record conversation. This— Representative Gray testified at the last committee that this really would open it up to the committee chairs to have a broad discretion to depending on the topic or the issue to figure out who the stakeholders are. Like, we don't know right now, for example, putting a base at Nome, putting a Coast Guard base at Nome. We're not sure exactly who the stakeholders are. So a chair would just naturally reach out to that situation.

Stakeholders would emerge and the chairs would be— it's just an encouragement to like go find the stakeholders to this issue. And Representative Gray testified leaving that open So, it would adapt to different situations as they come up and not hamstring the committee chairs in any way. That was my recollection. Follow-up? Thank you.

That does answer that question. And then I just want to put on the record that typically in language, I like to avoid very prescriptive organizations like AML or— AFN and keep it broader, but with the answers that you provided, I think it proves how in this instance it's necessary because we're not just talking about tribes with AFN specifically, we're talking about the Native corporations that work specifically with these projects. I think that's important, but I do have— I thought of they don't represent every tribe. AML doesn't represent every municipality, but we do need someone who can bring a broader voice. These two organizations have clearly done that.

And with the language of revisiting this bill in a decade, it makes me more comfortable so that if for some reason those organizations were no longer existent or, you know, they weren't received in doing the amazing job they're doing now of being a broader voice, I would have a problem with that. But with us revisiting, I think it's appropriate to keep them in place unless there's a better means. But this one seems to be fitting for this specific committee. So thank you for answering the question ahead of time.

Great. Thank you, Representative Vance. Do we have additional questions or discussion? Hearing and seeing none, it sounds like we may have an amendment at least relating to the sunset provision that was described. And, um, we will get the, um, language of SB 282 that passes from the Senate, um, as quickly as possible to committee members and then set an amendment deadline that will amend— any amendments will need to be drafted to that bill.

And the intention is to try to accomplish that on Thursday such that we don't have to potentially not knock on wood, half a Saturday meeting. So we will get that to everybody. Representative Vance. Thank you. Are there any differences in the Senate version versus this?

Yes. Yes. Okay. Representative Gray, do you want to, or your staff want to speak to the differences between the two bills? Madam Chair, Kyle Johansen, staff to Representative Gray.

Currently, the only differences is the representation of two minority members versus one. There are other amendments outstanding that should be incorporated into the CS of a different vehicle. Can I just say what those are? Yeah, Representative Gray. Thanks.

So there's definitions that will be added to— I know you can't say it off the top of your head— Arctic Representative Sadler defined some of the terminology very well. We're going to add his definitions back in. And there is the—. The medals. Yes.

Through the chair.

Kyle Johansen staffed Representative Gray.

Representative David Nelson had an amendment that would put the Medal of Honor list in the hands of the Legislative Affairs Agency so they could properly track it. Right now, one of the parts of the bill in front of you tasks the Legislative Affairs Agency with keeping an active roster. Right now, they track all of our accounting, but they do not there's no staff for this committee. [Speaker:ANDREW] And I'll just add to that, that that was the biggest struggle when we took over as chair of the committee, was finding— it took a very long time to figure out who was on the committee in terms of civilian members and their contact information. And so having someone who works full-time and their job is to make sure that they have that roster would save new chairs coming in the trouble.

Great. Along with that, they would, they would keep track of the, uh, that program. Yes. Okay, um, so we will be flexible to when that Senate version comes over to us, and thank you for apprising us of those changes. And potentially, um, we will also get a summary of changes with that so we can committee members can digest that.

If there's any challenge once we are able to set an amendment deadline for any members in getting amendments drafted to the correct version of the legislation, please let us know right away. We definitely can have an additional hearing on this bill if needed, so just please reach out to us and let us know if you have any questions or concerns when that finally does come to us. Thank you, Representative Gray, and thank you. Okay, um, we, as I mentioned a moment ago, are going to transition to the third bill on today's agenda, which is House Bill 303 from Representative St. Clair. This bill we heard several times and is currently related to motor vehicle registration.

We moved the Senate companion of this legislation out of our committee, and we are bringing House Bill 303 back up at the request of Representative St. Clair, who is the sponsor to adopt a committee substitute which will remove the language of the underlying bill and replace it with new language at his request relating to data sharing by the Department of Administration and private TSA security screenings. And so I will just note before we go to the committee substitute, we do have a couple of folks online for potential questions on this. The Assistant Attorney General with the Department of Law, Justin Jetter, is joining us, as well as the Senior Regional Director of Public Affairs for Clear, the security company. So we have a couple of folks available for potential questions.

First, I'd like us to have the committee substitute for us— before us for discussion. Vice Chair Story, could I have a motion, please? Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the House State Affairs Committee adopt blank CS for House Bill 303, also known as 34-LS1468/i, as our working document. Thank you.

I'm going to object to— so our committee aide can walk through what's actually included in this legislation, and instead of describing a summary of changes, he's just going to describe the language that will be in this bill after the committee substitute is adopted. Mr. Relay. Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, Stewart Relay, staff to Representative Carrick. As you mentioned, this CS is a page 1, line 1 rewrite.

So it removes all existing language and puts in this new language.

Representative St. Clair and his staff will go through more detail, but just broadly speaking, what this CS does is that it, again, it relates to data sharing by the Department of Administration for entities that provide private security screening services in airports. And specifically, in Section 1— hold on, let me pull it up here— it amends statute relating to the data transfers, and in Section 2, it allows private entities and nonprofit organizations to do their own— to provide security services in international airports in Alaska. Madam Chair, that's a very broad summary of changes. I would turn it to the bill sponsor and his staff for any specific details. Um, great.

Well, the bill sponsor can— you can stay where you are, uh, Rep. St. Clair, and we'll just have your staff come on up and, um, allow for committee member discussion on this committee substitute. I'm also just going to note for information that, um, there is some current discussion about amending other legislation with this language. So part of the reason this is being brought forward as a committee substitute today is it may behoove us as members of the body in general to discuss these provisions and develop personal opinions on them. But the intention will be to have this conversation and then set the bill aside today. Maybe I'll start with Representative St. Clair, if you have some opening comments.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, this is a rewrite of 303. What this does is— this CLEAR is a company that does pre-approval of, uh, um, TSA. It works with TSA PreCheck except it goes a little more in depth. You pay a little bit more, but as soon as you're confirmed through— and I'll— if Miss Ng's on there, I'll actually have her explain the process.

The reason we need this legislation is because it is a private company, uh, and it's a security company working with the TSA, approved by DHS, that would be requesting confirmation of someone's driver's license, their idea, identity, etc. Now you have to opt into this. It doesn't happen automatically. You have to opt in. So if the fear is that your information is going to end up somewhere else, that's— it's not the case because It's an opt-in.

They only get your information if you say you want to be part of it. And my staff, Jake Almeida, can go a little more into detail. However— yeah, Jake can go into detail. Thank you. I think let's just open it up for discussion and just for members' info.

We haven't actually adopted the committee substitute. So I'm going to— just so we have the document before us as a working document, I'm going to remove my objection to the committee substitute. Institute. And if I see no further objection—. Just an objection.

Uh, sure. Uh, Representative Holland. Thanks. Just for, for discussion, can you just clarify for me, um, procedurally, given the title change, do we also need a resolution coming with this that would allow this title change to be happening, or am I misunderstanding how this is done when we basically take the bill number and turn it into a completely different thing. Brief it is.

House State Affairs, just to summarize, that question got answered off the record, but just to summarize the answer, this legislation does not need a title change resolution as it's a House bill that's been amended in the House.

And that is that. Representative Holland. I remove my objection. Okay, thank you. Seeing and hearing no further objection, uh, the committee substitute version I is adopted for House Bill 303 as the working document.

And is there additional questions or discussion? And I guess we can go to Mr. Almeida if you'd like to add. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, Jake Almeida, Chief of Staff to Rep. St. Clair. Just to add a few more details to background on where this language came from, There are 3 major companies nationwide that are called TSA PreCheck enrollment partners: Ademia, CLEAR, and Thalos.

And where this language came from is the company CLEAR, who again is already a verified partner with the TSA to gather Americans' information who pay a higher fee than what you would for the regular TSA PreCheck to get through lines even quicker. And, uh, they currently have a tentative agreement with the Alaska Department of Transportation to open up shop here in Alaska at the Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage. And the only thing precluding them from moving forward to do business with the state is this language barrier, uh, particularly obviously in Section 1.2805.068 is the data sharing prohibition. And so that amends that to no longer make it prohibited. But the key language is on page 2, subsection 2, and.

That provides that private entities that will be receiving Alaskans' DMV information are only companies that are recognized as being partners of the TSA's Registered Traveler Program, or as I said before, a TSA PreCheck enrollment partner. So only 3 companies, and CLEAR is one of them. They would be able to hire up to 13 Alaskans in Anchorage, and they have, uh, a subscriber base of 10,300 Alaskans already. So you have 10,000 Alaskans right now that travel out of the state pretty often, and over 55 international airports in the U.S., they get to use this subscription but not here in their own home state. So this just kind of brings clarity to that.

Ted Stevens is one of the more popular international airports in the country, and so it makes sense to push this a pro-business free market concept forward for a lot of Alaskans that already use it. And, uh, Miss Jessica Ng with Clear can answer more questions about the company in detail, and a representative from DOT who is working with Clear on the agreement if this language changes. Excellent. Thank you for that information. Do we have member questions?

Representative Holland. Thank you, through the chair. I was going to suggest that maybe we have either the TSA or CLEAR representative provide some information, because, you know, this thing's been bouncing around for a month, and there has been continued confusion, in my opinion, about what CLEAR is and what it isn't. And, you know, there's kind of 3 fundamental systems. There's the Global Entry that handles passports.

There's CLEAR that does identification verification. There's TSA that provides reduced screening. And we've kind of gotten all that tangled up, and I think it would be helpful for somebody from CLEAR maybe to kind of unwrap that again to realize that this is not a question of TSA versus CLEAR and why would we want to have a more expensive version. They are different things. And I just think for the record and for our own decision-making to get CLEAR— uh-oh, I used CLEAR.

Oh, there is no— that's it. Anyway, I'm just going to invite them to kind of help us put these back in their correct lanes. Yeah, let's go ahead and invite Ms. Jessica Ng to put yourself on the record if you could please, and then with name and affiliation, and then if you could describe in more detail what CLEAR's scope of work is.

Sure, sure. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, for the record, my name is Jessica Ng and I'm the Senior Regional Director of Public Affairs CLEAR. So CLEAR is a secure identity company, and we are best known for our work at the security checkpoint at now 60 airports around the country. Hopefully in the future, that's at Stevens Anchorage International Airport.

Um, our airport operations are authorized through the Registered Traveler Program as an opt-in only service that allows people to verify their identity using their face. The Registered Traveler Program was created by Congress and established and overseen by TSA. It was created in the wake of 9/11 to bring greater private sector innovation to the security checkpoint. One of the most commonly questions I get asked when I explain what we do is exactly the issue that Representative Holland brought up, which is what is the difference between CLEAR and PreCheck. So whereas PreCheck pertains to physical security and involves a background check, that allows you to keep your laptop in your bag, your liquids in your bag, your shoes on your feet.

In contrast, CLEAR is focused on identity verification. We match your face to the image that is on the driver's license and confirm that you are who you say you are, which allows you in subsequent, visits to the airport to keep your driver's license in your wallet. So in short, they are complementary, not competitive products or services. In fact, as Steph has already pointed out, CLEAR is an authorized enroller for TSA PreCheck. So one of our jobs is to get more people into the PreCheck program.

And many of our CLEAR+ members, CLEAR+ being the name of our airport service, do in fact have PreCheck, but we also serve standard passengers and international passengers and other people who may not actually have access to the PreCheck program. Follow-up? Follow-up? Great. Thank you for that.

I think— could you also clarify that CLEAR is not limited to airports, that the identification verification benefit that people get by being enrolled and using CLEAR extends to other venues? Isn't it that— the case, and could you describe that?

Yeah, through the chair, um, thank you for that question. Yeah, so CLEAR is a secure identity platform. In this case, the reason we're seeking this amendment really does, I will say, pertain specifically to the aviation context and quite frankly about enhancing aviation security. But you are correct to say that we have a number of business-to-business, um, integrations whereby you can securely verify you are who you say you are. It is important to note we are always an opt-in only company.

There are even in instances where CLEAR is an available option to verify your identity, it is never the only option to verify your identity. We— those integrations outside the airport, for example, when you're applying for a job, when you are In some venues, ordering beer or alcoholic drinks that are age-gated, we provide verification that you are over 21. Those integrations are all free. The paid service is only the airport verification service. Thank you, and thank you, Ms. Ng, for joining us.

Do we have additional questions for her? Vice Chair Story. Uh, thank you. Chair Carrick, through the chair to the representative from CLEAR, can you remind me what the fee is for CLEAR and then if there is a monthly fee?

Through the chair, for the full price CLEAR Plus membership is $209 per year. There are significant discounts for those who may have an American Express Platinum card. There are discounts for Alaska Airlines loyalty members, for government government employees and public servants and members of the military. But the full price, if you are paid, is $209 a year. Thank you.

Can I follow up on that? Sure. Follow-up, Representative Holland. Thank you. Through the Chair, just to follow up on that question, and I don't remember the answer, but I should.

Does that amount for the CLEAR Plus— does that include the TSA PreCheck, or is the $85-ish for the TSA PreCheck, an additional fee for those that want to combine the two programs for the full benefit of both the quick identification and the quick security process.

Through the Chair, thank you for the question. For security reasons, those systems are actually kept separate. If you enroll in TSA PreCheck through CLEAR, I believe it is $77 and $0.95, and it covers for 5 years. When you enroll in that program, it does include an FBI background check, and that is part of our effort to get more people into the PreCheck program for the physical security process. CLEAR+, by— for security reasons, it's held separately from that TSA PreCheck enrollment process.

So while we do have discounted rates for those people who decide to bundle the two, candidly, I'd have to— I believe it's approximately a $78 discount if you choose to bundle the two.

They are technically separate products, and therefore, by virtue of subscribing to one, you do not automatically receive the other. Thank you. Um, okay, looking to see if there are additional questions or discussion and not seeing any. Um, I want to just thank Miss Ng for joining us today as well as Mr. Jetter for calling in. Uh, I'm sure we can get contact information out to members if you have additional questions for either of those folks.

And, um, we do have a pending amendment on this exact issue. So, um, just members can be advised that there's a couple different routes for this language currently right now in the building. Um, for now, we are going to set House Bill 303 aside, and I want to thank Representative St. Clair for working with our office on this, and Mr. Almeida. Thank you. Okay, and that will bring us to the final item on today's agenda, which is House Bill 371, campaign contribution limits.

And I'd like to welcome Ms. Alisha Ba— it's kind of funny, we're going husband and wife team back-to-back here, I just realized— and Representative McCabe is here with us again as well. Today we're gonna have a brief reintroduction. This is our second hearing.

On the bill and then open and likely close quickly public testimony and then see what additional committee discussion we have. Representative McCabe. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee. For the record, I'm Representative Kevin McCabe. I represent House District 30, and I'll just give you a short review of House Bill 371 today.

The heart of this legislation is to strengthen transparency and accountability in Alaska's elections. Its central purpose is to give Alaskans clear visibility into the sources behind the political messages and advertising they encounter, especially when significant funding is coming from outside our borders. HB 371 delivers several practical improvements to our campaign finance statutes by calling for organizations active in our state elections to establish a physical address in Alaska. The bill also enhances reporting rules for both contributions and expenditures while shining a brighter light on bundled donations and coordinated fundraising activities. One of the bill's most important elements focuses on independent expenditure groups that draw the majority of their support from non-residents.

These groups would be required to make a clear disclosure whenever most of their funding originates from outside Alaska, providing voters with a valuable context as they evaluate campaign communications. To be perfectly clear, this measure is not designed in any way to restrict speech or limit participation in our political process. Instead, its goal is to equip voters with the full information they need to make truly informed decisions about who is seeking to shape the outcome of Alaska elections. These provisions build directly on concepts and amendments explored last year in the— on the House floor, actually. Although those earlier efforts did not advance, committee members expressed genuine interest in giving the ideas a thorough review.

HB 371 creates exactly that opportunity, and I'm happy to answer any questions the committee may have. Excellent. Thank you, Representative McCabe. And we have the bill before us. I know there's quite a lot of provisions in this legislation.

Maybe before we go to discussion, let's go ahead and deal with public testimony, and we'll just first open public testimony on House Bill 371. And there is nobody online or in the room to offer public testimony, so At this time, I will promptly close public testimony on House Bill 371. And the bill is back before us again. Are there questions and discussions from committee members?

Representative Holland. Great, thanks.

Through the chair to the sponsor, when we heard this Looks like a couple weeks ago on the 25th. I had a couple questions there regarding in some places where the amounts are based upon calendar years, in some places they're tied to election cycles, and then in particular had some— I think we maybe agreed that there was some potential clarification that could be done on the bundling of contribution disclosures on page 4, section 5. And I'm just wondering if there's any update that you might have in terms of following that last hearing and discussion for us as far as any thoughts or additional work or direction you'd gone on that discussion we had last time that might clarify some of those issues we discussed then. Representative McCabe. Yeah, Chair Carragher, through the Chair, Representative Holland.

We didn't really spend much time. I guess I was kind of looking for an amendment or amendments. We didn't spend a whole lot of time on that other than what we discussed last time about trying to get rid of that January 31st-ish kind of give me— give somebody $5,000 on the 30th and $5,000 on the second and just write one check for $10,000. You know, we kind of want to be more honest than that because there is a problem with that. There's also a problem with, you know, the reporting periods.

There's a number of— I won't say they're issues, but there are a number of ways that you can sort of manipulate the APOC rules right now. We'd like it to just be more honest and more open and So this is sort of our effort. As far as the bundling, I did spend some time looking that up, but it's been a while. So the bundling was just to prevent— let me think how the bundling went. Bundling right now is you could give $1,000, I could give $1,000, and we could give it to Steve and say, you know, make this for us, make this donation for us to Representative Carrick's campaign, and it would show in APOC that it came from Representative St. Clair as a donation from him, and yet the money came from us.

So it's just a way to sort of get to the root of who is actually making the donation and how they're doing it. And it seems to me it had a $10,000 limit on it, right? Right? Yes. Yes.

Follow-up, Representative Holland. Thank you. Thanks. Just for clarification, where we landed back on the 25th was a couple issues regarding the section starting at line 22 to 25. There's the word reasonably known by the candidate that we discussed then was kind of a soft— how do we define that for clarity, transparency, and honesty?

What is that reasonable threshold? And then there was— I think some agreement that we needed to clarify that $10,000, whether that was $10,000 from an individual that was bundled or whether that was the total value of the bundle was $10,000. So, those were the question marks that we had discussed the last meeting. I just was wondering if there had been any update on how we might clarify that language. And if there isn't, that's fine.

I just— that was— That's kind of where I landed last time was a lot of good things going on here, but that was a question area, that and the different cycles. Representative McCabe. Thanks, Chair Carrick, and through the Chair, Representative Holland. Representative McCabe again. So reasonably known is, you know, if somebody gives Steve $500 and says, hey, put this in with, you know, me and the boys put together $500 for Representative Holland for your campaign.

Thank you very much. And we just— you're not going to reasonably know. He's got cash, but he's going to write a check. So he can't really, as a candidate, you can't reasonably be expected to know. I mean, he might have done it over the space of a couple weeks.

He might not even remember. It might have been a collection jar on the— next to the cash register at work that said donate to Holland's campaign. And he wouldn't know. I mean, this is— we're talking small potatoes. The difference is huge numbers, but I think that it— a little bit of this shifts the onus away from— the reasonable word— shifts the onus away from you and I to be able to, you know, should I bring Steve into a room and say, who gave you the money for this so that I can put it on my APOC?

I don't know that that's, you know, the intent of the APOC language, although right now I think you could run afoul of that. So, okay, good enough for now. Yeah, I'll just throw in, I really like the intent in the bundling language, but I'm just not sure how it works in practice because as it stands right now, someone could give my campaign $1,000 and they might have done a bundled donation, but if they donated it online especially and there was no human interaction that came with that donation, I as the candidate would have no idea that that had taken place. And so I just wonder how reasonably known is going to work in practice. So I have the same concern, I guess, question.

So, Chair Carrick, thanks. And me as well. You know, it is— you're exactly right. They have— there's a thing called smurfing where there's, you know, all these amounts of money that are divvied up into small names, small $2, $2.59, and then the names are just kind of given to you and you're expected to do all that. I think the $10,000 limit is a way to get to a point where, um, it's almost like the fiscal note discussion yesterday.

I mean, you can go down all the way to where you have to report how much a rock is worth, right? And we're trying to get away from that. We're trying to be where it's really relevant to a campaign. If somebody's given tens of thousands of dollars that have been bundled together from 3 or 4 donors that don't want their names associated with your campaign. You know, I can imagine it can be used for political— you know, if there were some representatives in the House that didn't like another representative and they wanted to donate to his opponent, but they didn't want their names in APOC, they could bundle it all together and find an intermediary to give it to somebody, and this would tend to make that against the law.

Against the APOC rules. [Speaker:MS. KELLY] So, I think, just as a follow-up, we would be probably only seeing that get prosecuted or litigated under pretty extreme circumstances. Otherwise, any of this activity, which we don't have a way to track it currently, so even as much as it may be that people are bundling contributions, we don't really know. But this language, what I'm hearing from you, is meant to discourage that behavior and in very egregious cases potentially see litigation. Is that kind of the intent here?

[Speaker:MR. HART] Yeah, through the Chair, that's— or Madam Chair, yes, that's exactly correct. We don't— we're trying to provide a deterrent for doing that in any significant way. I mean, you know, at our level, it's probably not that big a deal with a $20,000 or $30,000 campaign every year. But when you get into some of the bigger, you know, some of the Senate, really tight Senate races, those could be $100,000 or $200,000. Even a governor's race could be in the millions, and these are designed to— this is designed to discourage any rampant behavior like that and give APOC some clear direction.

I think the other thing, too, just as a follow-up, is that the onus in this section falls on the candidate. So it starts out with each candidate shall make a full report, which includes these bundled contributions. And I, I'm still struggling a little bit with this language because I still agree with the intent, but I think oftentimes the candidate is, is oddly enough the last person to know what may, what transactions or what conversations are happening regarding donation amounts. The other question I have here is we have in this state like group organizations that provide donations, and would that be considered a bundled contribution? So for example, my stepdad pays into union dues with the IBW.

IBW has a political action committee that does, for endorsed candidates, distribute funds for those candidates, would his individual contribution to the union dues that goes to the political action committee be considered part of a bundle contribution? [Speaker:MR. BRYANT] So, Madam Chair, this is specifically designed, I believe, in— as I said, it's been a couple weeks since I've really spent a lot of time in here, but this is designed to allow Is it $2,000? It's $10,000 for the bundled contributions. For the bundle. But isn't there a $2,000— if there's not, there was— union, like a union PAC?

You're talking about like an employee's PAC where a certain amount of their employees' dues goes into a fund and then they have a committee that decides who they're going to donate to? Yeah, as an example, or potentially like another kind of political group that specifically does candidate contributions, but PAC committees are obvious examples here. This was— so, Madam Chair, this was not really designed to call that a bundled contribution. Okay.

So, I just— I'll just say I might support if it's not meant to capture that and it's instead meant to more capture the individual. I might support language to just clarify that it doesn't apply to organized groups that are already collecting. And there's numerous examples of that on, you know, both sides of the political spectrum. So it just might be good to clarify what it does and doesn't apply to here.

Additional questions from committee members? Representative—. [Speaker:REP. GARCIA] I don't know if anybody else does. Representative Holmquist. Great.

Thank you. Through the Chair, I believe some of these issues are being dealt with through a campaign initiative that is going to be on the ballot this November. I am just curious if you have done or can summarize a kind of a comparison between what this does versus where it overlaps with the initiative or where you feel like this is doing some things that the initiative is not going to take care of.

Representative McCabe. So through the Chair, Representative Hall, you are going to have to— which initiative are you talking about? Are you talking about the—. Through the Chair, I know it is the CAMP initiative, but there is probably a better name for it. Does someone want to— Representative Vance, would you like to explain sound a little bit.

Uh, there is a ballot initiative that limits campaign finance laws. That's right. Uh, to— and it's individual contributions. This bill, however, is looking at individual limits on municipal elections and also the bundling that he's been referencing. It is—.

There's no overlap as far as I can tell between the two. They're separate issues. Okay. Thanks. So, Madam Chair, if I might.

So one of the other big things about the union contributions that you're talking about is typically, like, the carpenters union here in Alaska is going to have an Alaska address. It's going to be a local union. They're going to be funding or paying into local candidates. And that's what the specific in-state address or agent requirement section of this bill was, was to make sure that any contribution such as that from a union PAC would be from a local union PAC, not from a huge— some sort of a, you know, outside the state, what we would call dark— outside dark money. If you will.

So, well, I think I get where the intent is. I just think maybe there's a little bit of language tightening here to reflect that more clearly, but I definitely respect where that's coming from. Let's see, additional questions, discussion? Senate Bill 64 had— Madam Chair, Senate Bill 64 had a true source language that dealt with organizations that are often labor unions that did have talk about the transparency about $2,000. That language was included because of the way that APOC is interpreting the language right currently that came under the dark money provisions.

They are— that language is needed. And some of what is in this bill kind of gets to that. Um, the two-source language is currently being interpreted that everyone in an organization would have to reveal who they are. And some people just want to donate their, their $50 to an organization, and then that organization makes one single contribution.

It says that they don't have to do that if they are at a certain dollar value. So it's the, it's the smaller contributions that they could remain anonymous. It's obviously that bill is still on the negotiating table, but I think I think that aligns with the intent of this bill is to make sure that we're having the transparency that everyone wants, especially with the high donors and the outside money. But it's also, like with the True Source, it's offering protections of you have these smaller contributors that, you know, don't want to be politically harassed. I think that might be where some of the confusion of the $2,000 is coming in, because that's the limit in that true source in Senate Bill 64.

And I would just say, Rep. Vance, I think, at least from my perspective, if we were to take the specific provisions from the bill that was passed, SB 64, relating to those donations and put— and transparency laws and put them as an amendment here, not other provisions, but specific to campaign financing, that would be something I would highly support. So just a thought. I don't know where the sponsor would be at on something like that. Yeah, Chair Kerik, Representative McCabe again. So yeah, I'd be open to that.

I also know that there have been a number of letters written to APOC to work on the governor's AO-360 on tightening their regulations. Some of what we're dealing with here, they have in regulation and it's not in statute, so they really have no guidance from us. And, and I think I talked about this last time, one example is the campaign signs. In the law, it says campaign signs have no value, zero value, when you're done with them. And yet APOC has made a ruling that if you reuse your campaign signs, now you have to declare a donation in kind from yourself to your campaign.

And it doesn't— it's kind of this circular thing that doesn't make much sense. So, a certain amount of this is trying to put this in statute.

So that APOC doesn't have to worry about it and worry about promulgating regulations. But I'll be really interested to see what becomes of the AO-360 discussion with APOC, so. Well, and I'll just say like Section 15 of this legislation about campaign assets post-election is extremely important updates because I think one of the things I really appreciate about this bill is we're hopefully reducing some of the time spent on frivolous complaints to APOC if we're better clarifying what, what is actually required of candidates. So, um, I think all of us here as candidates can appreciate clear rules that we can actually follow, and anyone who's run for office before, especially at the municipal level, very small-scale races, certainly appreciates super clear rules that are easy to follow. Okay, are there additional questions?

Representative Himshute. Thank you, Chair Carrick. I need to go back to the whole penny jar reference at the till for a couple reasons. First, I want to clarify, I don't believe you're allowed to do that now, right? You can't just collect anonymous money.

But also, the penny could be problematic. Go going forward. So, gold and silver specie, yes. Penny, no. So, through the chair, if that's all right, Rep. Himschute, so you are not allowed to do that as a candidate, but somebody that is bundling money and then is eventually going to give it to you is allowed to do that.

So if I wanted to go around to everybody in the workplace and say, hey, I want to collect $10 from everybody here to give to somebody's campaign, and I'll give it in my name, that would be perfectly legal. And $10 is just an arbitrary figure. I mean, in this bill, obviously it's bigger, but point being is, yes, the candidate's not allowed to do that. In fact, I think one of the senators in the other body got a $50 fine for accepting a $5 cash donation and making the mistake of putting it on her APOC form as anonymous. Somebody just threw it in their little jar on the way out the door, said, "Well, you know, here's all I got, $5," and she didn't remember who it was.

And so she put it down trying to be honest, and so for a $5 cash donation, instead of just putting it in her pocket, trying to be honest, she got a $50 fine. You know, welcome to the party, pal. Just as a note on the record for anyone who's ever thought about donating to a campaign, please put your occupation on the list. Me too, thank you. And no cash.

Cash has to be under $100 and you have to be in an envelope with your name, address, occupation, and company you work for, actually. Seems people frequently forget one or three of those things. Hence we would have donation curing. Sorry, too soon? Too soon.

We'll put up a Toki in office for that. So, um, I know there's a lot of interest on this bill, and it is my intention that the committee will take action on it before the end of session. Given the lateness of session, the likelihood of a bill like this passing this year is probably really low, but, um, I would like to give a pretty tight turnaround time for amendments so that we could take action on this bill on Thursday. Um, I'm likely going to have an amendment relating to the bundling language just to try to tighten that up a little bit more. And I would encourage maybe Rep. Vance to look into the language from SB 64 related to campaign contributions and if that's something that the sponsor is open to adding here.

Um, but as of right now, I'm setting an amendment deadline for this bill for Wednesday, May 13th at 5 PM. And so folks, if you have amendments and you'd really like to add them here or discuss them, please get them into Ledge Legal probably this afternoon. And if we are able to take up our business on Thursday— did you say May 15th, Friday? May 14th, tomorrow. 13Th is tomorrow.

Oh, I'm sorry, May 13th. My script is wrong. Thursday— or yeah, sorry, Wednesday, May 13th. Is the amendment deadline at 5:00 PM. Okay, thanks.

And if we are able to get through our business on Thursday that we have scheduled, we may negate any need for additional meetings. All of that will just be pending any potential Senate referrals. So thank you, Rep. McCabe. Thanks, Madam Chair. And if I might, you know, my intent with this was not— I'm not the expert.

We all have had issues, and my intent was to bring it to the committee and have us all work on it. And if we don't get it through this year, at least one of us will be here next year probably, and we will have a bill that we can work from that has had all of your input. Because frankly, you know, there's, you know, 7 people here that are using it all the time in campaigns and know what the issues are. So I appreciate the opportunity. I intend to offer an amendment to have APOC move to Talkeetna to operate out of the trooper post there.

Oh, salt in the wound. Too soon.

Okay, so, uh, thank you, Representative McCabe, and I fully agree. Just the goal is to have a really good discussion on this, and I think the last two hearings, even though it was late in session and we had limited time, I do hope that we can take up the issues that are in this legislation in a future legislature, whoever is here. And, uh, I think it's a good productive conversation to have. Thanks, Madam Chair. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Okay, so that concludes our business for today. Our next and possibly final meeting will be this Thursday, which is May 14th, right, at 3:15 here in Room 120. At this point, our agenda is to take up House Bill 371 from Representative McCabe that we've just heard, to also again take up SB 282 from the Senate State Affairs Committee, which is the JASC-related bill that we heard the House companion for today, and also take for a first and only hearing House Bill 301 from Representative Galvin relating to non-discrimination. So that is our full agenda for Thursday as of right now.

And like I said, that will be our last meeting unless last-minute Senate items come up that get referred to us. Um, with nothing else before us today, we're adjourned at 4:38 PM.