Alaska Legislature: Senate Minority Presser, 4/16/26, 11am

Uh, Senate Minority Press Conference today. Um, we're just going to jump right into this because, uh, we obviously don't have a press conference or a press people here to ask some questions right now. But we do have some important issues that, you know, we'd like to talk about and get out there. And with that, we're just going to start with Senator Kaufman with some pension reform. Oh, well, thank you.

Senator Kaufman here. So today, the Finance Committee, the latest committee substitute for what's referred to as the pension bill, HB 78, dropped. In that, it incorporated many amendments that had been put into it in the last hearing, and all of those were around avoiding the problem that happens with pensions or defined benefit systems to trend towards being insolvent. An example being our current liability that we have about $7 billion based on the past defined benefit system, and so the intent of the amendments is to try and avoid some of those things. So we're going to be hearing from some of the stakeholders in that in hearings next week.

It was what was said today in committee, and we'll look forward to the input that we get on the latest CS, or committee substitute, on that bill.

Thank you, Senator Kaufman. You know, I was going to add a little bit to that. I do have a defined benefits, and after, you know, doing some math with, you know, Senator Steadman and stuff, and the opportunity, if I had a defined contribution with an SBS plan, you know, as a teacher, I would have quite a bit of money stored up in the SBS that actually is real money, right? It's real money if something happens to me that I can pass on to my kids or grandkids, unlike the defined benefits, and it's not like that. So I think, you know, Making sure we're fiscally responsible, like Senator Kaufman said, we cannot put that liability on the state.

And I think that's what the new changes in the pension bill, you know, make sure it protects is that liability. So, Senator Kaufman. Thank you. I just want to mention that SBS is Supplemental Benefit System. It's the Social Security equivalent that we contribute to, but it's a defined contribution plan that the employees put money in and it's matched also by the state.

Just to get— we get acronym heavy here, and just to make up for that. Thank you, Senator Kaufman. So with that, let's go to the gas lines with Senator Marsh. Yeah, we've got to watch it with those TLAs, you know, the 3-letter acronyms. But so resources have been hitting the gas line hot and heavy.

We're doing 5 days a week for this week and the next couple of weeks as well, talking about the bills and then the project in general. I guess given the attitude of some in the committee and stuff, I guess the question we got to ask ourselves is, do we really want the gas line? You know, it's not just the state revenue. I think we're focusing a little too much on the state revenue and resources right now. But it's not just the state revenue.

It's the power to transform our economy like TAPS did for us 50 years ago and put us on a firmer footing economically for a long time here. You know, you get the short-term construction jobs for a few years, which is good. You know, at a minimum, that can help stem some of our outmigration that we're looking looking at right now. But in the longer term, after the project is over, you know, we're talking about lower personal energy costs. You know, I just paying my bills up in Fairbanks this last week.

I recently paid my electric and my gas bill. It's $25 for gas up in Fairbanks, natural gas, and it's 33 cents a kilowatt hour up in Fairbanks. And so trying to find a way to stem some of that is extremely important. We can provide some stable energy for businesses. You know, we're talk about if we can get the price low enough, we could potentially restart the Agrium plant down in the Kenai.

We're hearing that mining projects around the state are losing out on investment to places like Nevada, which have much lower energy costs. So if we can, you know, start or extend the mine life of some of our mining projects by getting lower energy costs around the state, you know, whether that's Donlin or Fort Knox up in Fairbanks, you know, that's great for us too. And so I get a little concerned a couple of weeks ago in resources with what we did with HJR 18, which is just a resolution that came over from Representative Costello from the House. But, you know, it's trying to make a statement about, you know, we want this project to happen. And the way that HJR 18 got modified in committee, it switched from we want this project to, eh, I guess it's okay if it happens.

And is that the signal that we want to be projecting to investors? That's concerning to me. We've got a couple of kind of dueling bills that we're discussing.

You got SB 275 sponsored by the committee and SB 280 sponsored by the governor. 280 Is trying to address the property tax issue, which is not new. It was identified back in the late '90s. Even Senator Wielechowski had a bill addressing the property tax issue back in 2012, trying to give the gas line a break to get started. You know, we've had the mayors testify.

The municipalities, I believe, have some legitimate concerns about providing services to a growing population during the construction. Construction, but we still need to make a project that is acknowledged as economically marginal. We need to make that viable for the financing to work, and we also have some legitimate concerns from Glenfarn about lawsuits over valuation, which we have seen from TAPS over 40-odd years now, and we need to avoid those. And even yesterday, Gaffney Klein, our consultants, said that the structure, the property tax structure needs to change because of that lawsuit possibility. Not having that changed yet is probably holding up the project.

And then we've got 275, which is a much different character of a bill. It's trying to make the project more political. It's focusing almost strictly on state revenue, and it's ignoring the economic benefits to the state. Question is, do we, do we believe that making the project less about economics and more about politics is going to make it more likely to happen. I don't.

We have to be focusing on the politics— or on the economics, not on the politics. I'm concerned when we've got a committee member saying that $800 million a year for the state is not enough revenue. That's a concern. We've heard concern from industry on a provision of that bill that would not let you deduct your production costs on gas from your oil taxes. Because if you did that, you immediately— once you have wells that are producing both gas and oil, immediately you take a lot of those wells and make them uneconomical for producing just the oil, let alone the gas portion of it.

So, um, and we've, we've even heard from our consultants, uh, that most LNG projects around the world have some sort of tax break or a PILT pass in order to make them economical to proceed. But then in 275, we're talking about adding taxes. That seems like we're going in the wrong direction. So, you know, we've got a lot of issues to deal with in there, and I'm trying to make sure that we're keeping the long-term focus in front of us. So sorry if I went a little bit long.

I get passionate about that one. Thank you, Senator Myers. And Senator Tilton's up with maybe some judiciary items that you could talk to us about. Thank you. So I was asked today to talk about what is happening in judiciary, and there is some, some very sensitive but very important issues that we are looking at right now.

And I think that many out there are aware of HB 101, which is the age of consent bill, which would raise the age of consent to 18. There's a concern that that bill has been sitting in the House Judiciary. It had 3 hearings and it hasn't been moved out, and I am a co-sponsor on the bill or cross-sponsor on the bill, and I would like to see the bill move as well. I will tell you what I have found is that there was an amendment deadline that was yesterday. So I can understand that.

And then there is the potential of an, of a consolidated crime bill. And I don't know what is in that particular bill, but from the conversation that I've had with the chair of judiciary, it sounds like this bill, the age of consent bill, could be one of the bills that is in his consolidated crime bill. He indicated that the bills he would be adding would all be bills that have passed in the other body with at least, you know, a 39 to 0 or 39, excuse me, or one absent or what have you. So that would lead me to move to SB 247 or HB 47, which is the Senator Kiel and Representative Vance both have bills that are CSAM bills. Those are for generated obscene child sexual abuse material.

We already have a CSAM bill, but we don't have one for generated, um, things that are generated via, um, um, AI generation of images of a child, whether it's the actual child that has been modified or a complete image of that is totally made out of AI. These bills would cover those, those instances. And so SB 247, which is Senator Kills' bill, has been heard in Judiciary, and HB 47 passed the House 39 to 1, maybe absent. The other bill that I think is interesting we're working on is HB 239, which is Representative Copps' bill, which is crime criminal negligence homicide, but that it adds a failure to assist. So there in Alaska, we are a state where you are required to assist.

If you hit someone, you are required to stop and to provide assistance to that individual. What this bill would do is it would, it would combine criminal negligence with failure to assist and move that to a higher level of, of crime. So that may also be another bill that you might see in this consolidated. Again, I'm not putting the bill together, so I'm not positive what will be in there. I won't go on and on too much in judiciary.

We're also hearing the guardianship and conservator bill, which I think a lot of people are very interested in. And I have to put a little plug-in for the bill that I've been working on, has been working on elder fraud and crimes and scams. And my bill is SB 249. It's a cryptocurrency kiosk bill. It's not regulating cryptocurrency at all.

It's, it's, it's putting some guardrails on the kiosk because the kiosks are being used now as the form of how money is getting to the scammers. And the— with 2025 from the FBI, we have learned that in Alaska, the scams have gone up over 43% just here in Alaska in one year. So many people have had this happen to them. They, I think there isn't anybody in the room that hasn't had something, somebody that's received some kind of a, um, a scam on your phone probably daily. But in, in this case, um, they are preying on our elder, our elders, our seniors, and, um, many of them has lost, um, lost good sums of money, uh, in last year in 2025, 16, over $16 million just for the senior portion of losses.

Anyway, I can go on about that, but I won't. Last, I'll just, uh, talk about in state affairs today, something that might be interesting for folks is that we are having a joint state affairs meeting that will look at all the initiatives that are in front of us coming up for election this year in November. There are 25 USCV is United States Citizen Voters, 23 RCF2 is campaign contribution limits, and 24 ESEG is the repeal ranked choice voting. That, that I am hoping will be a very informative committee meeting here today. Thank you.

Mr. Chair. Thank you, Senator Tilton. Thanks to all of our senators here with their nice detailed descriptions of what's going on in some of their committees. And obviously there's some bills moving.

Personally, I have a bill, SB 63, the Local Boundary Commission bill. Senator Myers, go ahead and talk about your bill real quick. Oh yeah, my baby box bill. We got passed through the Senate a couple of weeks ago, which I appreciate that. I've talked to Representative Gray.

It's over in House Judiciary right now. He's very supportive of it. We were going to have a hearing yesterday, but just due to some scheduling conflicts, he's pushed us out. We're hoping for Monday next week, but it's looking like it's in good shape as well. Thank you, Senator Martin.

And Senator Young and Senator Rauscher both have bills, but I figure we can wait. When we have another press conference, they're here, they can fill people in with what's in their bills. Obviously, we have the budget It's moving on both sides. The House did pass the operating budget, and the Senate will have the capital budget on the floor Tuesday, I believe. We'll read it across Monday.

So, and with that, I guess we're ready for any questions that we have. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Yeah, the person's online. Okay, go ahead. Yes, Mari Kanagi with the Anchorage Daily News. Mari, can you hear me?

I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Take it away. All right, thank you, Senators.

Um, thanks for your time today. Um, Senator Cronk, I have a question for you on the capital budget. Um, can you speak to the minority's perspective there, particularly spending priority on school maintenance. And then with operating budget passing the House, what changes do you foresee minority will be advocating to that budget as well? Yeah, thanks for the question.

Um, obviously, you know, we are in the minority, um, and the capital budget is through Senator Steadman. And, and I believe the focus this year really has been on, um, school maintenance, whether that's Mount Edgecomb or going down the major maintenance list. And And following the list, it's as fair as possible. It wasn't like they picked and choose, you know, any random things. They just kind of followed that list down.

And some districts may have a little bit more in there, some districts may have a little bit less, but that's the way it's set up right now. And I'll let Senator Kaufman add anything since he works with that with me. Thanks, Seth. I'll just add that That when you have an influx of revenue as we've had with the recent increase in oil prices, that one of the better ways to spend that, if you're going to spend, is with capital projects that have been deferred. So deferred maintenance is a very reasonable thing to put on the list.

It's better for stability purposes than if we were to expand programs in the operating budget and hire people for programs that then maybe later If the price of oil goes down, we're struggling to keep them in those positions. So I think looking at deferred maintenance needs is a very reasonable approach to the windfall revenue that we've seen from oil prices. Yeah, and just to add to Senator Kaufman, there has been, you know, a few issues, specifically one that was in the House operating budget that was left out, and it would have affected our Fairbanks Hatchery, which is a really big deal for the Interior because that's the only hatchery that stocks our lakes and provides a little bit of food security up there. And so working with the, you know, the Senate Majority, we made sure that they adopted the governor's ask in the Fish and Game budget. So that funding is there.

It will be up to the conference committee to, you know, accept it or reject it, but at least we have that funding there, that opportunity with that. Is there anything else anybody else wants to add? No? Okay. Thank you.

Mari, do you have any more?

That's all I got for now. Thank you. Good. Okay. I guess we'll call it good.

All right. Well, you know what? Short and sweet. Well, you know, we appreciate everybody taking their time to come to the press conference and the senators here. Hopefully everything's going to be busy here, you know, from here on out.

I'm sure we'll be having probably a press conference realistically every week from now on, um, just to keep people up to date and see how things roll. So with that, um, thank you everyone for coming and until next time. Thank you.