Senate Finance, 4/21/26, 9am

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Committee to order. Couple minutes after 9:00 a.m., April 21st, State Capitol, Senate Finance Room. With us today, Chairman Steadman. Chairman Olson is excused today. We have Senator Kiel, Senator Merrick, Senator Kaufman, Senator Cronk, and myself, Senator Hoffman.

We have one item on today's agenda. That's HB 23, State Commission for Civil Rights. This is the first hearing on this bill. I invite Senator— Representative Josephson to the table along with his staff to introduce the bill to the committee. Representative.

Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I'm Andy Josephson, House District 13, South Midtown Anchorage. With me is Ken Alper, who handles much of my personal legislation, and that's why we're together on this. The bill before you is a reform of the Human Rights Commission, and I'm happy to report that Although I encourage you to make a real searching inquiry into what it does, of course. The bill passed 39-0 on the House floor and has met largely with broad support.

I'm struggling to find any opponents. The bill does 4 principal things. It renames the Human Rights Commission the Civil Rights Commission. That is a title used around the country. The very brief version of why we do that in the bill is that the HRC gets contacts, phone calls from, for example, people with international human rights concerns, or they could be incarcerated in a state prison and the HRC simply doesn't have jurisdiction over them.

And it stems— that term Human Rights Commission comes out of the 1960s and some sort of, I think, UN declaration at the time. And so that reform is made calling this body the Civil Rights Commission. The next thing the bill does, and Mr. Corbusier, the director who's sitting behind me, can give you more detail if you're interested, but there was a bill from Representative Prox that would make the annual report electronic rather than paper. And it moves up the deadline from, I think, early in the session, sort of in the January timeframe, to around— I think it's November 15th. And the benefit of that is the language currently is sort of arcane.

It says that Mr. Corbusier is supposed to send a report to the Legislative Affairs Agency, which would then copy 40 copies to the 60 legislators, which doesn't make sense because there's 60 legislators. And it's sort of a cleanup of how the report would happen. The third part— now we get into a little bit of the more meaty part— is that the commission members— and by the way, the commission unanimously supports all 4 parts— they want to be removed only for cause. We have a legal memo. It's on BASIS, but we can make sure you have it.

And essentially, the Human Rights Commission is a regulatory or quasi-judicial body. It's—. In effect, the members act as judges in some capacity. And similar to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which those members can only be removed for cause. This is reform the members seek.

I don't think it's a kind of self-aggrandizement. I don't want you to worry about that. We think the administration may like it because members in a staggered term would carry over to the future governor. And but the benefit is that there were some events, we'll call them in the late teens, so 6, 7, 8 years ago, where there was some— there was some turmoil, we'll call it, over membership. And at one point, for example, for example, a commissioner disappeared for a year.

And so it brought up the whole issue of how are they seated, what is the length of their terms, all of that sort of thing. And for the sake of continuity, if no other reason, they would like to be selected and then be in the just cause category on the subject of termination. The most important thing the bill does, in my view, is that it would give the Commission jurisdiction over nonprofits other than religiously affiliated nonprofits and fraternal and similar organizations. The reason for this is that— and this is something the Commission has wanted for at least 6 years formally— is that there are about 5,800 nonprofits, there are about 40,000 humans, Alaskans, that are not subject to the jurisdiction. So if we play that out, the way this works is if you don't live within the Municipality of Anchorage where we do have a formal Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, so you live in say Palmer and you have a human, a complaint based on civil rights category.

So this would be, you know, workplace discrimination, housing discrimination, that sort of thing. You would only be able to contact— well, you could contact the HRC if your complaint relates to a for-profit business, but if your complaint relates to a nonprofit business, you'd be relegated to contacting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is very busy in Seattle. And if your enterprise, if it was employment for example, had more than 15 employees, the EEOC might take it up and handle it out of Seattle. I don't know what their timeline is. I bet it's not as fast as ours.

If you were in a smaller office, the EEOC would decline that altogether. So the bill is designed to say we need to bring fairness and an anti-discrimination policy to all of our citizens equally. And noteworthy, the contract— because we're in effect like a delegate of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission— pays us $800 each time a case is brought to conclusion. So that's why you have the unusual and wonderful feature of having a positive fiscal note to the state.

Those are the principal things. One thing I wanted to remind the members, because I forget this myself, and then I'll stand down on my comments, but in our Constitution, in the Declaration of Rights, in the inherent rights section, there is a requirement that there be essentially a civil rights commission. So this is a constitutional requirement. With that, I'll try to answer any questions you might have, Mr. Chairman, or Thank you, Representative Josephson.

Do members of the Finance Committee have questions of the prime sponsor at this time?

Seeing none, we will go to invited testimony. Invite Rob Corbusier to the table. He is the executive director for the State Commission on Human Rights. Please identify yourself and present your, um, invited testimony. My name is Rob Corbusier.

I'm the executive director for the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Yeah, these reforms are all requested by the commission, and in fact, the, uh, the nonprofit jurisdiction component— I agree with Representative Josephson— is the most meaty and probably the most significant component of this legislation. And this has been a long-standing ask for the commission that spans at least a decade. And it's not a whole lot of money, but the fact is we do have a workshare agreement with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And so there is an opportunity to bring in, and it's now $850 per case, of additional revenue to the state by having jurisdiction over nonprofits.

The nonprofit world is also one of the largest industries in the state. And I think that's something that is often overlooked. So there's a significant hole in that jurisdiction right now. So if you're working for a small nonprofit outside of Anchorage, and you're being sexually harassed, small nonprofit, less than 15 employees, you have no recourse other than to file your own private lawsuit. And yeah, you can bring your own private lawsuit, but you should probably go get a lawyer to do that.

And how much is it gonna cost for a retainer for private counsel. You're gonna be looking at $3,000 to $5,000 just to walk in the door. And let's say, you know, you get a new job within a couple of weeks. What are your compensatory damages there? It's only gonna be a few thousand dollars of damages.

You're never gonna find a lawyer that's gonna take that case just because it's not worth it. And so that is the kind of case that is Asher's bread and butter. We routinely handle these less than $10,000 to $15,000 cases. The really big cases where there's potential for contract damages, potential punitive damages, yeah, if you're gonna get $100,000, a private lawyer will take that case and you won't have any issues.

But you really end up with no recourse if you are living outside of Anchorage in that circumstance.

The for-cause removal provision, Commissioner William Craig from Sitka, when he was first appointed to the commission, brought this up, that there was a— one of his fellow commissioners that was appointed prior to him had just disappeared. The staff didn't know what to do. The other commissioners didn't know what to do, because there's no provision in statute. And because of the somewhat strange position that ASHER is in, where we are administratively a unit of the governor's office, We kind of sit off to the side, because we've got jurisdiction over the executive branch, as well as the legislative branch, and the judicial branch. They didn't really know what to do with this commissioner that had just gone AWOL.

So eventually, the position just termed out, and the governor was able to make a new appointment. But the commissioner said, you know what, we are a quasi-judicial entity. There should be a for-cause removal provision. Division. This governor is also the first governor, to my knowledge, that has removed a commissioner.

And so we don't see this as a— the commissioners don't see this as a thumb in the eye of the governor. They are all his appointees and they would end up being his legacy to the next administration.

The name change. So the UN Declaration on Human Rights was passed in the 1940s. 40S, and then in like the '50s and '60s, there was kind of a debate in the human rights, civil rights world as to what the phraseology should be. Should it be human rights? Should it be civil rights?

Should it be equal rights? And it's just kind of all across the board. Now, ASHER was one of the very first state entities that was created. We predate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and the legislature at the time decided it should be the Human Rights Act. Well, the provision in our Constitution that we enforce states civil rights, and we do think it would cut down on confusion not only amongst the public but even among cabinet members, legislators, exactly what it is that ASHER does.

We think civil rights is more succinct and it aligns with what the Constitution states. And we do get— we get calls from people who want us to get involved in, like, environmental causes. 'Cause they feel like, you know, I should have a human right to breathe clean air. And it's like, well, maybe you do, but that is well outside of ASHER's jurisdiction. And we do pretty routinely get calls of prisoners who want us to file habeas corpus petitions on their behalf, and we just, we can't do that.

The last provision is changing the date for our annual report. And this is just, again, administrative cleanup. You know, in 1963, when ASHER was created, there was only a couple of cases. And sure, they could type those out on, the annual report out on a typewriter, and deliver it to the legislature pretty quickly. But we have a lot more cases now.

I cannot get our, I mean, I can't even begin synthesizing our data until January 1st. And the way the statute is currently written, it gives me roughly 5 to 7 business days every single year to synthesize the data, write the vignettes, get it to a publisher, have the layout done, printed, and then delivered here. And that task is just impossible. Additionally, in 1963, there were not 60 legislators. And so I'm to deliver 40 copies to the Legislative Library.

And the Legislative Library very much wants to be out of that distribution chain. When Representative Prox introduced this legislation for us a few years ago, they came out of the woodwork testified and said, yes, please change the annual report date. Representative Allard suggested that it just go to a digital version as well and notify the legislature, hey, it's online now. Now, there have been some concern that we should still print some copies. We do intend to print a few copies.

We use them for outreach. There are certainly people that want to have a paper copy. So we will still print at least a few. But we expect to see a little bit of a savings by by not printing a lot and delivering them. While we were discussing that bill, again, legislators said, well, why don't you just align it with the fiscal year?

Everybody else does things on the fiscal year. Why are you doing this on the calendar year? And so by moving the dates to November, not only does that give us the opportunity to do the data on the fiscal year, but every 3 years in statute, I'm required to do an EEO assessment. Assessment of the executive branch. And I like to meet with the cabinet members, their admin services directors, their HR business professionals, so that way I can get the stories behind their numbers for their employment data.

And there's no way that I can get— and I'm supposed to include that in the annual report. There's no way that I can get that done in 2 weeks at the beginning of session when cabinet members are trying to get their budget prepared and their legislative agenda to put all this together. So by moving the annual report date to November, that then gives us the opportunity to actually compile, analyze that data, meet with the cabinet members, and provide a comprehensive report on the EEO data every year. So thank you very much. Thank you.

Mr. Alper, you have a presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the record, my name is Ken Alper, staff to Representative Josephson. My boss and Mr. Kobusi have gone through the information in some detail, so what— I have a handful of slides, but they'll mostly refresh what you've already heard. I'll go through them fairly quickly. Currently in Alaska, it is illegal to discriminate employment, public accommodation, financing, credit, that sort of thing, on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability.

That is the law. The organization that is charged to enforce that is the Alaska State Commission on Human Rights. That's a governor-appointed commission. There's 7 of them. They're approved by the legislature.

They have a small staff and an office in Anchorage, and they have these statewide powers. Complaints are brought to them by various aggrieved individuals throughout the state. Their official mission statement is to eliminate and prevent discrimination for all Alaskans. So, uh, The bill before you, Mr. Chairman, House Bill 23, does two main things. The original bill that was introduced at the beginning of last year by Representative Josephson was limited to the nonprofit employer issue, that their current purview only covered for-profit employers.

That was the only item. There was a major rewrite. The committee substitute from the House Labor and Commerce Committee is the actual bill before you. The other changes that were discussed about the dates of the report and the naming of the organization were added, and those were, as referred to, from other legislation that got rolled together with this bill over in the other body. So the issue here, on the— specifically on the nonprofits, is that federally, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission protects nonprofit employees if it's a larger organization, 15 or more people.

Larger communities in Alaska, Anchorage, Juneau, have their own employment and local commissions that cover these nonprofit employees. The state has no jurisdiction to accept or pursue discrimination cases brought to them by nonprofit employees. And this has to do— there's a statutory reference there, it's Section 5, I believe, of the bill— is the definition of employer was written such that it did not covered nonprofit employers. So what you see here on slide number, uh, whatever this is here, Mr. Chairman, is from their own annual report, the Commission's annual report, their goal to work with the legislature to add nonprofits to their jurisdiction to protect the approximately 44,000 current unprotected workers. That has been their goal for Mr. Korbisky has said 10 or more years.

This is from 2020, so I was aware of at least 6 years. So that's the primary change, exactly what they asked for. It changes the definition of employer to include nonprofit organizations. That change is very narrow. It only applies to this organization and this coverage for purposes of discrimination.

It doesn't change the definition of employer anywhere in the labor statutes or anything like that, Mr. Chairman. And it retains the exception for religious and fraternal organizations. There's a whole different set of rules. No one is going to make anyone hire female priests, for example, Mr. Chairman. This is data from the Foraker Group.

The Foraker Group tracks nonprofits and their work around the state of Alaska, showing who are these people. The primary employers of not— that are nonprofits are really the large healthcare organizations. And then social assistance, other public services, finances. But we're talking about 35,000 people. And this chart, 44,000 referenced in the other chart from the, or commission, somewhere in there are the number of nonprofit employees in the state of Alaska, with probably half of them in the healthcare field.

The other changes made in the bill that have been already described to you, the clarifying language in the definition of employer. There's a section in the bill clarifying with religious organizations. You can— you can't— they're allowed to discriminate if it's in the ecclesiastical side, but you— they are covered as a religious employer if you're hiring a coach or a janitor or something like that. The name change to civil rights, the removal for cause, and the timing of their annual report. And you've heard all of that.

And if you're looking for the historic legislation where those other sections came from, it's there at the bottom from 2023. Finally, Mr. Chairman, and I know here we are in Senate Finance, this bill will make a little bit of money for the state of Alaska. The organization will absorb all costs associated with their larger caseload. They don't think they will need any more staff or anything like that. But because they do work on contract with the federal government and they will be taking on a larger number of these nonprofit cases that otherwise might have gone to the federal Equal Opportunity— Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, at $800 a case, which was the number last year when I first wrote this slide deck, the fiscal note says we are going to bring in about $32,000 a year of additional federal receipt authority.

And now that I've just learned it's $850, that is now $34,000, Mr. Chairman. So let's call it a double good for us all. And that's all I have. I'm happy to take any more questions. Thank you, Mr. Alpert.

Do members of the Finance Committee have questions on the slide presentation? Seeing none, Representative Josephson, do you have comments before we review the fiscal note and set this bill aside. I don't, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for calendaring this. Thank you, Representative.

Senator Keele, additional comments on this massive revenue bill here? Mr. Chairman, the bill has one fiscal note. The Office of the Governor of the Human Rights Commission submits a fiscal note. It reflects $32,000 of expenditures in the personal services line. The fund source being federal receipts as discussed, it could be as much as 34.

Thank you, Senator Kiel. Do members have questions on the fiscal note? Seeing none, we'll set this bill aside. Thank you, Representative Johnson, for bringing this legislation before the Finance Committee. That concludes our meeting this morning.

Our next meeting is scheduled for This afternoon at 1:30 we will be hearing HB 280, appropriation tax, taxable income. Anything else to come before the committee?

With that, we are adjourned.