Senate Judiciary, 4/17/26, 1:30pm

Let's call this meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee to order. It is 1:30 PM on Friday, April 17, 2026. Before we begin, I want to thank Juliana Singh, the Senate Judiciary Secretary, who makes sure we have a transcript of our meetings, and Susan Quigley from the Juno Alliance, who makes sure we have sound. At this time, I want to remind committee members and all those in the room to please silence your cell phones. Present today, we have Senator Tilton, my vice chair Senator Keele, and myself, Senator Clayman, we have a quorum to conduct business.

The first item on our agenda today is confirmation hearings. The President has referred the Governor's appointment to the Judiciary Committee, State Commission on Human Rights. Members have received today's appointee's resume, and we are pleased to have Ms. Grace Salazar with us. Ms. Salazar, I see you are on the phone. And I would make sure you're not on a speakerphone because the sound is not as clear.

Please put yourself on the record and begin your testimony.

Yes, hi, good afternoon through the chair and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Grace Salazar and I'm honored to be considered for appointment as a commissioner to the State Human Rights Commission. I am a lifelong Alaskan and have great 30 years of state service with strong background in administrative and regulatory compliance through my tenure with the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the Department of Natural Resources, and the State Ombudsman's Office. I retired from state service in April 2022, and I'm honored to be able to continue serving Alaskans, especially in civil rights protection.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have, and again, thank you. Any questions for Ms. Salazar? Hearing and seeing none, I will ask the one question I seem to ask often. Is this your first appointment to the commission, or are you already serving on the commission?

I started serving in October last year when I was appointed by the governor, and I'm just waiting for the legislative confirmation, sir. Thank you very much. I don't see any other questions. Thank you very much. I'd like to open public testimony on today's appointee to the Human Rights Commission.

Is there anyone in the room who would like to provide testimony on Ms. Salazar's nomination? Hearing and seeing no one, I'll look online. I have no one online, and seeing no one here for public testimony, we'll close public testimony. Last chance for questions for the appointee. Hearing nothing, any final comments from members?

Hearing and seeing nothing, Senator Keogh, may I have a motion? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Senate Judiciary Committee, having reviewed the qualifications of the Governor's appointee, recommends her name be forwarded to a joint session for consideration. Specifically, the name of M. Grace Salazar for confirmation to the Alaska State Commission on Human Rights. This does not reflect an intent by any of the members to vote for or against the individual.

During any further sessions for the purposes of confirmation. Hearing no objection, the name will be forwarded to the joint session. We will take a brief at ease to sign the paperwork, and while we're doing— well, actually, we'll just take a brief at ease.

Second and last item on our agenda is House Bill 239, criminally negligent homicide failure to assist, sponsored by Representative Kopp. This is the 4th hearing of the bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Before hearing from the bill sponsor's office, I would like to look to the will of the committee to adopt work draft version N as our working document. Senator Keel, may I have a motion? Brief at ease, Mr. Chairman.

On record. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that the Senate Judiciary Committee adopt as our working document and bring before the committee Senate CS for CS for House Bill number 239 Judiciary. The work order is 34-LS1102/G, as in Gustavus. I'll object for purposes of discussion.

Here to explain the summary of changes is our Senate Judiciary Committee aide, Veronica Korek. Ms. Kakarek, please put yourself on the record and you may begin your summary. Good afternoon, members of the committee. For the record, my name is Brianna Kakarek and I'm staff to Senator Clayman. So I'll be going over an overview of the changes from version I to version G. I expect to be working on a more detailed sectional analysis moving forward.

But so this is an overview of the changes. So to the underlying bill of House Bill 239. Those show up in sections 47, 61, 62, and 63. And I want to recognize that we were flagged with some drafting errors before the committee. So, um, I apologize in advance for those.

Um, so there were some pretty dramatic changes. We deleted from the original House Bill 239, um, version I, sections 1 through 3, sections 5 through 6, and amended section 4. So, um, we inserted some new sections. Uh, I I don't think I'll read through the whole additional sections unless it's the will of the committee for me to go through them. Um, but those changes mirror, uh, Senator Clayman's Senate Bill 265.

And then moving on to some other changes, we incorporated House Bill 101, crimes against minors, age of consent to 18. And if you're looking at the Overview of changes that was distributed to the committee and that is uploaded on BASIS. It appears in the, the sections listed in the overview.

So it includes all of House Bill 101, version I, with the following change. We amended the close-in-age-gap exemption for 16 and 17-year-olds sending and receiving sexual or explicit text messages to 6 years. That's aligning it with the close-in-age-gap for sexual intercourse under House Bill 101. We also incorporated Senate Bill 247-generated obscene child abuse material in the listed sections. So we included all of Senate Bill 247, Version N.

Mr. Chairman, may we have a brief at ease, please? Sure.

Back on record. Thank you for that pause while we corrected technical difficulties. Ms. Kakarek. Thank you. To continue where I left off, for the record, Sabrina Kakarek, staff to Senator Clayman.

I was just finishing saying that we included all of Senate Bill 247 version N. Next, we incorporated House Bill 62, sexual assault examination kits tracking, um, in the listed sections, and we included all of House Bill 62, version A. Um, next, we incorporated House Bill 242, sexual assault by a healthcare worker, um, in the listed sections, and we included all of House Bill 242, version A. Um, we incorporated House Bill 17, crime counterfeit non-functioning airbags. N in the listed section, and that includes all of Senate Bill 17, version N. We incorporated Senate Bill 233, Controlled Substances Advisory Committee, in the listed section, and we included all of Senate Bill 233, version A, with the following change. We clarified the Controlled Substance Advisory Committee is established under the division of the Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development that the controlled substance— that with the responsibility of Corporations, Business, and Professional Licensing. Um, next we included Senate Bill 100 in the listed sections, and we included all of Senate Bill 100, Version A. Um, next we included House Bill 384, definition of victim counseling center, in the listed section, and we included all of House Bill 3.84 version A.

And then lastly, we incorporated House Bill 81, access to marijuana conviction records, in the listed section, and we included all of House Bill 81 version I. Thank you. Thank you. And I would note, for purposes of clarifying, as a result of the— your committee chair's less than perfect instructions to Ledge Legal, section 19 and section 20 of the of the CS were not part of what we— I had intended to request. We were only trying to add mail theft, which is Section 21.

So I would anticipate, unless there's interest in the committee in the course of amending, we'll likely be deleting Section 19 and Section 20. And then, as Ms. Kokarek indicated, there we did identify a drafting error in Section 63, which relates to the Title 28 provisions about failure stop after an injury or death accident. And so there's drafting errors. There's a function primarily of your committee chair that we're going to get that cleaned up through the amendment process. But those are the three sections.

If they don't seem quite right, you're— well, not— they don't seem like part of what we'd had prior discussions about, those are things that we'll be taking— touching base on.

Questions? Questions for Ms. Kakarek or for me for that matter?

Senator Keele. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Could we get just a little more explanation on the change to the age of consent law with regard to the sending of images? Just make sure I understand what the adjustment is. Thank you. Through the chair to Senator Keel, for the record, this is Brianna Kakarik, staff to Senator Clayman. So that came at a request of another legislator.

We wanted to mirror the language for sexual intercourse, which is the 6-year age gap. Like if, for example, like if someone is in a relationship and having sex, we think that they shouldn't be penalized for sending explicit messages if they're in a sexual relationship with them, because formerly it was a 2-year age gap compared to the 6-year for sex. It was a 2— yeah. I hope that answers your question. Thank you, Mr.— if I may, Mr. Chairman.

Please. Very helpful. And going from memory, because I haven't read the CS yet, but it's 6 years in one direction, and it's a shorter time I think for the close-in-age exception going down. Do we mirror that as well?

For the record, this is Brianna Kakar, staff to Senator Clayman, through the chair to Senator Keele. I'll have to check on that, but we had explicitly requested it to mirror the language for sexual intercourse, so it should. But we'll double-check and get back to you. Thank you. Actually, Senator Keele, I see Casey Schroeder is here with the Department of Law.

I don't want to ask her questions about the entire bill, but if you could— if you are available to answer questions about the— what I would call the age ranges coming down as compared to the age ranges going up in the provisions regarding age of consent.

For the record, Casey Schroeder, Senior Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division at the Department of Law. Mr. Chairman, I might need a little explanation of what the question actually is. I apologize. So let me try, try the question, and if I get it wrong, Senator Keele will correct me. There's, there's, there's an age, there's an age bracketing for people that are now, for 16 and 17-year-olds that 17-year-olds that today could consent to sex with anyone older than they are, and we're putting a 6-year age gap, or age per— there's a 6-year period in which they can still have sexual relations with somebody who's older than they are.

And, and I understand that Senator Keele's asking questions about what about when you're younger, a 13-year-old, a 14-year-old, a 15-year-old, what's happening with that in terms of consent questions. And I guess the follow-up or the part of the question is, are we changing anything in this bill? Through the Chair to Vice Chair Kiel, as far as the 13, 14, or 15, so the sub-16-year-olds, no, nothing is changing with the bill. There is a 4-year age difference in current law and it remains in the bill. Follow-up?

And thank you, Mr. Chairman. So we'll just take a look and make sure that that is also mirrored in the sending explicit images, which— but it makes sense to make them match one another. Thank you. And on that topic, Senator Gill, my perspective on that when I was talking with legislative legal, it was that if you're allowed to have sexual relations with a person who's 5 years older than you are, you shouldn't then become a sex offender because you sent images amongst yourselves. It seemed— my perspective was that That should be consistent with what one is allowed to do in person.

Not that I'm recommending sending images. Certainly not.

All right. I don't see any other questions. And hearing no other questions, I'm going to remove my objection. And seeing no other objections, House Bill 239, version G, is now adopted as our working document. Representative Kopp, thank you for Mr. Coming Day, would you like to come up and make any comments about the committee substitute?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Judiciary Committee members. So, of course, the original bill was addressing a gap in the law as we address hit-and-run fatalities. Um, in discussion of other bill sponsors and other policies that were also addressing the same thing— gaps in the law— of where, um, the Department of Law recognized areas that we weren't adequately addressing, um, this, uh, this bill has grown to gone from the sports car to the school bus, which, which it is now. And I, I see we do have several policies in here, and the policies I all support as a bill sponsor.

I, I believe the age of victim protection is absolutely critical, and I appreciate the work of Representative Gray advocating bringing that. The AI-generated child sexual abuse material is a real problem. We've heard about it extensively in the legislative process, and I think We are basing an approach on best standards nationally. The sexual offense reforms that correspondingly go with those changes in sexual assault and sexual abuse cases I think are on spot, and I'm in complete agreement with them. I do appreciate the theft and motor vehicle offenses, and now finally addressing very organized theft rings, organized retail theft, organized criminal theft.

So that an individual who's part of a larger group working collectively can be charged at a higher offense level. Law enforcement and prosecutors have been bringing this to us for a long time, saying, "Hey, it's not just the one car," or, "It's not just, you know, the $100 of tools they stole." They said they're part of a ring that's stealing hundreds of thousands, and how do we adequately address that? This bill addresses that. And then the procedural and administrative reforms with the sexual assault Kit, tracking and giving victims more notice and more sense of involvement in knowing how that process is working is good. And then finally, I think the, the piece that addresses marijuana offense conviction records that today are no longer a criminal offense but were offense a number of years back, and looking at how do we enable people to still be productive in the workforce, get a job, get housing where they could be discriminated against for something that isn't even against the law today.

It's a, it's a fair consideration. And I appreciate the opportunity to continue to get these policies through the process. So thank you, Mr. Chairman. Any questions for Representative Kopp? Hearing and seeing none.

I'm going to set this bill aside for further review and we will adjourn for the day. If you are considering an amendment to House Bill 239, Criminal Negligent Homicide Failure to Assist, sponsored by Representative Kopp, please let our office know. Submit those amendments electronically by Friday, April 24th at 5 PM. Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday, April 20th at 1:30 PM. And with that, we stand adjourned.

The time is now 1:49 PM.