HTRA-260505-1300

This meeting of the House Transportation Committee will now come to order. It is 1:05. 2:00 PM on Tuesday, May 5th in the Kappa Room 124. Members present are Representative G. Nelson, Representative McCabe, Representative St. Clair, Co-Chair Representative Carrick, and myself, Co-Chair Representative Eichide. I do want to note that Senator Kawasaki is in the room to join us for something, but let the record reflect that we do have a quorum to conduct business.

Please silence your cell phones. I'd like to thank Jordan Nicholson from House Records as well as Susan Quigley from the Juneau LIO for staffing the committee today. And of course, our committee aides Meredith Trainor and Griffin Siqueo. Without you, we wouldn't be able to do this work. On today's agenda, we have one bill, public testimony on Senate Bill 104, Vehicles and Boats Transfer on Death Title, by Senator Kawasaki and her staff and his staffer Jenna Ms. Calhoun.

And under Bill's previous heard, we plan to bring up House Bill 317, DOT Wildland Urban Interface Maintenance Plan, by Rep. Holland and his staffer Aiden Nickel. We have public testimony on Senate Bill 104 up first today. Ms. Calhoun and Senator Kawasaki, would you like to speak to the bill before we open public testimony? And it looks like you do, so please put yourself on record, give us a brief summary, and then we'll move to public testimony. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the House Transportation Committee.

I appreciate the opportunity to present. I only have to say that it has been a long time this bill's gone through the process, several, either one chamber or the other, but never both. For the record, Scott Kawasaki, State Senator District P, representing Fairbanks, Fort Wainwright, and Badger.

And again, the bill is very— it's a very, very simple bill. And I'll end it with that, but see if there's any questions of a technical nature. Okay. And for the record, Representative Mena joined us at 1:07 p.m. Are there any quick questions before we go to public testimony? Okay.

Seeing none, we will now open public testimony on Senate Bill 104 Vehicles, Boats, Transfer on Death Title.

Public testimony is now open. Do we have any testifiers in the room? See none. I'll go online. I do not see any, any online.

So with that, I'm closing public testimony on Senate Bill 104 at 1:08 PM. PM. I had to set my clock back so I had time. And Representative Stutes has joined us at 1:08 PM. So I was going to take just a brief at ease for a moment.

So that is what I did.

Back on the record. Seeing that no committee member has indicated interest in amendments, I would accept a motion on this bill. Thank you, Mr. Co-chair. I move that Senate Bill 104, vehicle, um, boats transfer on death title, 34-LS0617/G, move out of committee with individual recommendations and attached fiscal notes. Are there any objections?

Hearing no objection, House Bill 104 moves from committee as a Excuse me, at ease.

Back on the record. Hearing no objections, Senate Bill 104 moves from committee with attached fiscal notes and individual recommendations. I authorize legislative legal to make any conforming changes. We will take a brief at ease to sign the committee report. At ease.

House Transportation is back on the record at 1:14 PM. Next, we're going to bring up Representative Holland's bill, uh, House Bill 317. Before we begin consideration of the bill, we'd like to introduce a committee substitute for House Bill 317 for the committee's consideration today. Representative Carrick, do you have a motion? Co-chair Eyeshied, I move that the House Transportation Committee adopt the draft committee substitute for House Bill 317, work order number 34-LS0765/G.

As the working document. I will object for purposes of discussion. We have Representative Holland here along with his staffer, Aiden Nickel. I also note we have staff from the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities online, Judy Chapman from the Deputy Director of Planning. Of course, Andy Mills is here in the room as well.

Representative Holland and Mr. Nickel, would you please come to the dais and walk us through the changes version G so we can better understand it.

Thank you, Chair Aishide. Kai Holland representing House District 9 and the original bill sponsor and here to help with questions. Do you want to go over the basic bill or do you want to go straight to the changes? Representative Holland, straight to the changes between the Senate version and the House version. CS and the original bill.

Perfect. Then I'll ask Staff Aiden Nichols to pick it up from there then. Thank you, Mr. Co-Chair. For the record, Aiden Nichols, staff to Representative Holland. You will find 4 changes in version G of this bill.

The first is in the duty section of Title 44. This version directs the department to develop long-term plans to ensure that its facilities remain functional both in cases of natural disasters longer-term environmental changes. The next 3 changes, Mr. Co-chair, are all to the bill's uncodified language. First, we have replaced wildland urban interface with more general language, areas of wildland fire risk. We then define these areas of risk as including both wildland urban interface areas as well as areas designed for a priority response in our statewide interagency fire management plan.

So those are areas designated for for a critical or full response. Next, we brought in the bill such that facilities off the road system that are necessary for egress are also included in the department's prioritization framework. With this change, airports that are critical for egress from villages in wildfire-prone areas will be considered for maintenance prioritization along roads— will be considered for maintenance prioritization alongside roads. More populated areas. And finally, we added tribal entities to the list of organizations that the department must consult as it develops its prioritization framework.

And together, our hope is that these changes create a more holistic approach that benefits as many residents of the state as possible. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Nichol and Representative Holland. I will entertain some brief discussion before we adopt this. Yes, I think Representative McCabe You were up first.

Thanks. Yes, through the chair. So I'm not going to object to adopting the CS if you want to do that and discuss it first. That would be great. Okay.

I just have some questions about—. Thank you. We'll get back there. That'd be great. Thank you, Representative McCabe.

Representative Stutes, are you good with that? I'm perfect with it. Okay. Seeing none, I'm going to remove my objection to adopting the committee substitute. Is there any further objection?

Without that, the committee substitute has been adopted as our working document.

So at this point, I would like to open up to discussion on the committee substitute. Representative McCabe, do you want to start? Please. Thanks. Through the chair, so Representative Hall, I'm not sure if it's you or what.

I did read this actually after we talked this morning. So I'm concerned about a couple things.

First off, future transportation facilities, and then in the uncodified language you mentioned airport, but it doesn't say whether it's a state owned airport or just any airport. So it could be a community-owned airport, such as some of the, some of the communities up in North— airparks kind of north of Willow that have their— have an airport that's kind of by a state road. So I'm a little concerned about that. And so I kind of like to see a better definition of that somehow, and maybe that's a definition section put in the into the section on 27, line 27 there, where we talk about airport. But the other thing, and I have a memo coming from DNR, I continue to believe that this is a DNR responsibility, not a DOT responsibility.

And like we talked about this morning, I'm kind of bummed that it's anybody's responsibility at all. [Speaker:CHAIR] I'm sorry. Maybe it needs to be somebody. So that's the old thing about anybody could do it, but somebody thought nobody was, you know, nobody, you know, you know what I'm talking about. So point being is I agree that it needs to be fixed, but I'm not so sure DOT is the vehicle to fix this.

So, and when I get that back from DNR, provided we still have the bill, I'll share it. Thank you, Representative McCabe. Do the bill sponsor have any comments on that, or just loud and clear? I appreciate the feedback. I would just, one, suggest maybe Mr. Nichol can respond to part of the discussion in terms of the bill, but also I don't know if we've got anybody from DNR available now, from Division of Forestry, that might respond to that question.

I think it's a fair discussion about that, but I do agree fundamentally with the problem that if it's kind of everybody— or nobody's responsibility or everybody's responsibility, then we're back to these trees not getting cut down, and that was kind of the genesis that nobody was doing this. So this is an opportunity to bring about that discussion. But, um, uh, through the co-chair, uh, Representative McCabe—. And identify yourself again for the record. Excuse me, for the record, Aiden Nickelstaff to Representative Holland.

Um, our intention was that this, uh, this bill would apply solely to state-owned facilities. Uh, we specify that on page 3, line 15. However, it's— we'd definitely be happy to speak with legal about more specific language. Follow-up? Follow-up.

Yeah, okay. So I'm thinking of one in particular through the Chair, Mr. Nichols. The Healy Airport is actually— I think it's a state airport. I think it gets a little bit of FAA funding. I'm not sure how much.

But it's on railroad property. So now you can see what I'm talking about. We need to further, tighter define this, I think, at least as far as airports are concerned. And I also think that there is some FAA guidance on trees, at least on the approach end and the wide of the runway, that probably the DOT already does in the DOT state-maintained airports. In fact, I'm almost 100% certain that the FAA has some guidance and that they follow it.

So I'm not real sure it applies too much to the state airports. It would apply more to those smaller community airports, I think, that are maybe not state-owned but they have a state road or they're attached to it, and then it would fall under the DNR. So anyways, just a— it's not really a question, it's just kind of showing you my thought process. Thank you for that. And just a reminder, we do have two DOT officials, uh, one in the room, one online.

Uh, Representative Holland. Great, thank you. Mr. Co-chair, again, Kai Holland. I just note I appreciate that feedback and to the degree that there are some different permeations of ownership maintenance criteria, that's really why this entire intent section was being offered was I found that there is a need to examine this issue to begin to sort this thing out. So the questions that Representative McCabe are asking I think are the right questions and I think that's the The entire purpose of why this was being developed was we think this needs that clarity and, you know, the opportunity to then prioritize what does need attention because we may find out that many facilities are getting proper maintenance, they're in great shape in terms of being able to function well during the time of a disaster, but we may also find that there are certain situations where depending upon ownership criteria, who's responsible for maintenance, that in fact we do need to get some criteria.

And my interest in this was I think this needs to be better understood so that we don't have to wait till we have a disaster and then find out we have a problem. Thank you. Representative Mina. Thank you, Co-Chair Eisheit. Through the chair, I think this might be for one of the DOT folks here.

I'm curious about Representative McCabe's question about DNR. And so I'm wondering, how does DNR work with DOT if they do? On wildfire management. Mr. Mills, would you like to come up and address that? And then we do have Judy Chapman, Deputy Director of Planning from DOT, also online if she has something to add.

But Mr. Mills, please put yourself on the record and answer away. For the record, Andy Mills, legislative liaison and special assistant to the Commissioner at the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. Thank you for the question. So through the chair to Representative Mena, on the specific, like, airports in particular, I'll start there first, that there is, just as confirmation, I believe it's called an ALZ or Airport Landing Zone around that is already part of a required area to keep vegetation managed. And so there certainly are FAA requirements, just confirming that.

That are— make this exercise sort of, I would say, informational, that would sit on top of the existing requirements that already manage those clear zones around airports. But specifically on your other question about interfacing with the Department of Natural Resources and DOT and fire management, DOT has a support role, really, when we're talking about wildfire management. So that means active wildfire management. Mitigation and management, not what I believe the sponsor is attempting to do, which is to, before an event, to deal with prioritization of egress and getting in and out, and also for management of certain areas to ensure that, you know, you're doing things before an event. But during active management of fire, DOT works with DNR in a support capacity, so we're sending out communications, we're restricting or closing down access in certain areas, rerouting folks, traffic.

There's a number of things that primarily our maintenance and operations, M&O staff, do in conjunction with DNR in a support role during an active wildfire event. Does that answer your question? Does—. Follow-up? Follow-up.

Through the co-chair to Mr. Mills, if DOT takes that support role, are you elucidated on DOT's support roles. What's DNR's role?

Uh, Mr. Mills? Yeah, through the chair to Representative Mena, I will let DNR represent their role. I would never want to— that anyone does speak about our department, so I'll let them speak to their role. I'm familiar certainly with what they, they do, but I would want them to fully articulate what, what their role is in that. And I, I think for the, the sponsor in any future discussion, we would want to invite make sure we have DNR on the phone.

So, Representative Stutes. Thank you, Mr. Co-chair. I'm looking at this and it looks like it essentially encompasses the whole state in different areas. Give me an idea of the fiscal note involved in something like this.

Go ahead, Mr. Nickel. ADAM NICCOL for the record. Through the co-chair, I'm pulling up the, the most recent fiscal notes so I can give you an exact number. Currently, DOT's estimate is $73,000 for this planning phase. And I spoke with Mr. Mills earlier about the potential increase that this new CS would bring about.

There's no updated fiscal note. Yet. If I may, Mr. Co-Chair, I would defer to Mr. Mills. Yes, go ahead. For the record, Andy Mills.

And so through the co-chair to Representative Stutes, thank you for that question. The fiscal note, as it represented the original language, did speak to WUI, the Wildland Urban Interface Zones. Wildland Urban Interface Zones. Thank you. Again, not our typical area of expertise.

Thank you. WUI is so much more fun to say. I would say. But for this change, we would develop a fiscal note that almost certainly would be— will be higher in that it expands the areas where we would be looking at this. Again, this has been articulated airports and the statewide nature of it.

Additionally, on, again, page 3, 7 through 9, it is that added power and duty of developing the long-term plan. It does articulate by environmental changes to improve resilience and preserve functionality during natural disasters. That's fairly wide-ranging. And so I think we would want to be sure, even though the uncodified— codified language below does speak to wildfire, that general power speaks much more broadly. And while DOT does take into account environmental changes, again, coastal erosion, and there's any number.

And we also do consult with the University of Alaska Fairbanks with their climate research to better understand what potential impacts there are and resiliency in our projects. That we would have to take the fresh look at this particular language to understand that what this could encompass and should encompass as part of the planning efforts we already have. Follow-up. Follow-up. Thank you.

Mr. Mills, how many How many state-owned airports are there in the state? Through the chair— co-chair to Representative Stutes, we have 235 state-owned airports and then 2 international airports, so we commonly say 237. Thank you. Follow-up. Thank you.

Any idea how many road miles there might be involved in something like this?

Through the co-chair to Representative Stutes, I don't know how many would be involved in this. I believe the overall lane miles in the center lane miles— not lane miles— is like 5,600 in the state, although I can validate those facts later. Compared to many other states, that's a fairly small— we're a big state with infrastructure light. We're working on that, obviously. We would obviously look at the entire network, and as I think we talked about in the last hearing on this, DOT's technical team with our GIS, or the geographic information systems that we would pull up, we would overlay those with DNR's, try to work with that agency.

And again, I don't know if they have a fiscal note associated or contemplated as part of this, but for our part, we would be working with their datasets. To sort of overlay them and understand where the overlap is and where the information would lead to prioritization under the requested report and priority list. [Speaker:COMMISSIONER ARKOOSH] Last follow-up, if I might. [Speaker:COMMISSIONER DIXON] Oh. [Speaker:COMMISSIONER ARKOOSH] Thank you, Mr.

Co-Chair. So— and maybe this would be to you— this area would encompass more than just the road mile area? And more than just the airport area, would it?

Through—. Uh, Aiden Nickel, through the co-chair Representative Stutes, that is correct. I believe it may be in the documents from a prior hearing. We have— we had a map of the areas that the Statewide Interagency Management Plan has designated for critical and full Wildfire management responses. If it's not in there, I'd be happy to send it out after the hearing.

That would give you an idea. So these are, these are areas surrounding these pieces of infrastructure where, where these efforts would be focused. Also, if I may, Mr. Co-chair, would clarify, as we did in an earlier hearing, that the fiscal note here is purely for the planning phase. The department would make its recommendations based on that planning, then the legislature would need to allocate further funds in order to do the maintenance in the prioritization order that DOT recommends. And just for the record, we did look to see if there was an updated fiscal plan today, and so far there's there is nothing, so, on a new CS.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Rep. Slamachade.

Thanks. It was so interesting, I sort of forgot my question, but— so what if we had— I guess my question for Mr. Mills was what if we— so we plan this for $70,000 or the updated plan. How much, I mean, ballpark, would it cost to do that? I mean, I've seen the DOT on the Parks Highway up, way up north, I'm sure it's a DOT, clearing so that we can see if the moose are coming into the road, right? But I think what we're talking about is roads that are maybe lower speed limit, like Clark Road, it's called, right, which is a state road, but it's got a lower speed limit, doesn't necessarily need the big clearing for the moose.

But I mean, what would that cost to go in and find all those little state roads? Big Lake Road, Hollywood Road, there's a place called Homestead Road that's one way in, one way out. They're right there by Big Lake. That goes to about 6 or 8 houses, but it is one way in, one way out, and it's a state road. So what do you suppose it would cost to do that?

Andy Mills, for the record, through the co-chair to Representative McCabe. So again, I— the way that this legislation contemplates, we'd be working down the list from the top priority. We would be identifying obviously the areas that are most at risk and that would need— that would benefit most from mitigation, from clearing first. So your question is one that would be in an order working down in a totality, which I think is what you're asking. I think last time I did mention there is an effort that we're wrapping up on the Old Glen Highway.

And again, I mentioned we had an appropriation of $1 million to clear back the right-of-way in that area because it, it had crept in. And I'll give a bit more on this example just so you understand sort of the difficulty, but that effort alone cleared a few miles of of road for $1 million, and again, it was mostly clearing, topping trees. We were trying to get the trees down with the contractor. Unfortunately, they did not do it according to contract specifications, and so there are quite a few stumps that I'm receiving reports are not very sightly and they want dealt with, but the contract is out of funding for that. So we're going to try and— we'll work towards that effort, but it's an example of one fairly small area that was about $1 million.

So it would be easy to contemplate if you were fully— once we had the information on all the areas where you would prioritize, that this would be probably not tens of millions but $100 or more million in time if you were doing all of the work. But again, you wouldn't clear it all at once, and I have no idea right now at the table what that effort would look like. And of course, you would look for efficiency and bundling packages across the state. So there's probably strategies we could do to bring it down as we prioritize that effort. Follow-up.

So the, the, uh, the follow-on question, of course, is two things. If you—. If we started down this road, we made a plan, and now we're starting to implement the plan Is that going to take equipment and men away from doing it on the Parks Highway up north where we really do need it for the moose mitigation, or are we going to have to buy a bunch of new equipment to do it? And then once you get it done, say it takes 2 years, how long— I mean, then we have to do it again in 5 years or 10 years or whatever, right? So I don't know.

I think we just ought to buy residents chainsaws and let them cut the trees down themselves, but maybe that's just me. Uh, Mr. Mills. Yeah, through the co-chair to Representative McCabe, uh, the, I, the lawyers are certainly, um, biting their nails down to the, uh, because of the liability associated with the, the force that you have empowered. Uh, but I do know, um, so from a DOT perspective, we do try to minimize costs where we can do a couple different things.

One is force accounting, where we will bring our own forces like M&O forces that have potential capacity to do that work, um, that for, uh, straight UGF funding, uh, certainly has, um, been shown to be a little bit potentially less depending on the scenario. And then also, uh, out at Hughes, we did a workforce program where we trained some, some locals to build a road out to a cemetery, uh, and that both accomplished the infrastructure improvement we were looking for and trained individuals to do additional work. So you grew the, the workforce in the area. Which, if you had a sort of an extended effort, you certainly could do training programs to add capacity to the workforce, add those types of resources to the workforce. And so it's hard to say at this point the strategies we could adopt if this was a larger effort, but certainly there are some ways that we can look at if there's some large initiative like this that we were looking to accomplish.

One more follow-up. So I think what I'm interested in hearing is from the DNR. I'd like to know if there's any federal money that they could get, grants and such, for forest fire mitigation that could be helpful in this, where we could— maybe this is worth doing, getting a plan in place so then we can prioritize and say, Clark Road, we got $2 million worth of forest fire mitigation and $500,000 needs to go to fix this road because this is the priority number one, and have a list of roads. Maybe that's a better way to do to do that. I think DNR has some money where the DOT doesn't that might be worthwhile.

It would be interesting to know that, I think. So, and I'm just going to add on to that, you know, the, you know, a road's already a fire break and DNR is interested in fire breaks, and this just makes the fire break better and maybe takes care of the evacuation issue. So I think, I think we're getting some discussion going here. Uh, Representative Nelson. Uh, thank you, Mr. Co-chair.

Just kind of a clarifying question on the, the language change from into the CS. Um, page 3, and I, I think this is for the bill sponsor or Mr. Nickel. Page 3, starting in 16, but then 17 and 18. The department shall prioritize the facilities that support communities with only one means of egress, including a road or airport. Is that— is that the facility with one means of egress or a community with one means of ingress?

Mr. Nickel.

Aiden Nickel, through the co-chair. Could I—. Through the co-chair, Representative Nelson Commissioner Nelson, could I ask you to repeat the question? I'm not entirely sure if I understand the distinction. Sure, yeah, yeah.

And maybe I just want to know what your intent is. So, the department shall prioritize facilities that communicate or that support communities with only one means of egress, including a road or airport. Are they going to prioritize the facilities that only have one means of egress or facilities that support communities with only one means of egress. Is that clear? Understood.

Uh, through the co-chair, um, Eden Nickel, for the record, our goal is that the prioritization framework prioritizes facilities, the areas where we want maintenance of facilities to be prioritized are communities with only one means of egress through the coast here. Does that make sense?

So it's, it's communities that, like, not necessarily like municipalities, but some of the examples that were given earlier, it's a community that basically has one road in and out. Because I mean, I think most airports kind of fall into that. They're at the end of the road, so they kind of default are the one means of egress. Follow-up, please? Follow-up.

Thank you. So we talked about the airports, and a clarifying question. Somebody had mentioned 5,600 miles of roads. With this, the facilities that support these communities, egress, whether it's the— well, it sounds like it's the facilities.

So we have the airports. Is that the estimation that there's an additional 50— or that there's 5,600 miles of roads that fall under this definition? Or is that— was that tied specifically to airports?

Mr. Mills. Andy Mills for the record. So through the co-chair to Representative Nelson, the response I gave to Representative Stutes' questions were to give sense of what the department has on it, call it the portfolio of infrastructure. And so the 5,600 center lane miles— there's a difference between lane miles and center lane miles— is not a representative necessarily. Obviously, that would be part of the review of state-owned facilities.

And by facilities, facilities can mean buildings, but they also do mean facilities as bridges and roads. And so again, in the planning effort, I I believe we would, unless there was specific legislative intent that narrowed it on the record, that we would come up with a planning definition as part of the activity if this passed.

One last follow-up, please. Hello. So I understand the intent, I believe, and— but right now, we really don't have any idea of how many of these single egress miles would need additional maintenance? That's a question, I guess. Does that make sense to the— maybe the bill sponsor?

Aiden Nickel. Aiden Nickel, for the record, through the co-chair, that is correct. We do not know exactly how many— how many miles of road would need this maintenance. And our goal is to, to put in the work to determine that and to determine where the consequence is highest that this maintenance has not yet been done, in order such that the legislature may then allocate dollars towards, towards getting that work done. Okay, thank you.

Then I'll put myself in the queue. The, the— I, I know this this applies to state roads, but many areas have local roads. So is there anything to keep a local RSA from doing this work as the local entity, local folks want it done, road service area? [SPEAKING CHINESE] I may invite Representative Holland up to answer that question. If I may.

You know, and the context for it is, you know, a local community that has local roads that want to do this, they can levy a higher fee on their service area folks and do this work as they want. Am I correct with that? Yeah. Kai Holland. To the co-chair, the first thought here is you are absolutely spot on with the importance of the issue going beyond state roads because there are many of these roads that connect up to these isolated communities that are actually not state roads.

In approaching this issue though, what we wanted to do was to propose a framework to do this assessment and the hope and the intent is that by the state looking at this issue, figuring out how do how do we go about this prioritization and what should the standards and work look like that we would actually be helping provide definition and clarity to what we might want to do to roads in the future so the local road service area or rural road service area would now have something to guide them on what is good practice and what are the requirements. We also hope that this prioritization characterization and the work being done would then allow the local roads or could even be, you know, private roads that are maintained by LURSSA and Rural Road Service areas to be able to qualify for more of the grants from the Community Wildfire Defense Fund and other wildfire mitigation funds because they would have some criteria to work by. So, you know, while we could have talked about the scope being all roads, that seemed seemed impractical. Um, by working with the state, we're hoping that the planners and the approach there would give us some definition to what should roads look like that go to isolated communities that will function adequately for getting emergency apparatus in and being able to also simultaneously support evacuations going out. And what we've seen in the rest of the western U.S. is many of these areas that who don't have this work done end up getting into a gridlock during a wildfire because you've got emergency apparatus with big wide rigs trying to come in, trying to set up, and then you've got folks with all their vehicles trying to come out, and at some point a bottleneck happens, a vehicle breaks down, and all of a sudden everyone is stuck, and that's the Paradise Campfire situation.

So back to your original question, the scope of this legislation is really asking the state to take the lead to assess the situation and to begin doing the work. But my hope is that their work, their criteria, their assessment process would then allow us to then take what was learned and that approach that could be then used. So take the Crow Pass— Crow Creek Road, excuse me, in Girdwood, for example. That one is, I don't know, 4 or 5 miles of state road, and then it transitions into local road. Same road, going the same road community.

This work would basically say look at the state portion of the road, but the intent would be that we would have sorted this out and that the work on the remaining section would continue on in a consistent manner. Okay, understood. Thank you. One of the visions I have in my mind from this discussion is the 2014 Sakai fire up in the Mat-Su. And there was a social media video.

Somebody was driving out from the fire and they were on like a narrow one-lane road, lane and a half. And it was pretty vivid, you know, because you can hear their fear. And it was that Paradise type thing. And they got through okay. But yeah, I know if I lived in an area I would take care of it myself.

I would get out at any time. Can I follow up? Yes, please. Thank you, Sheriff. Again, Kai Holland.

The other thing I wanted to just offer in terms of the scope of the amount of roads, we were talking a few minutes ago about, I think, 5,600 miles worth of roads. This bill does clearly begin the delineation by saying we are looking at prioritizing those areas within areas that are either designated as a wildland urban interface or are designated by the Division of Forestry for critical or full response. So that already provides a geographic delineation of where this work would begin. So it's not all state roads, it's not the entire road system, it's not all airports, it's not any airport anywhere. We would begin with this definition that's in this proposed legislation and the maps that Mr. Nickel had mentioned before we had at a prior hearing, that map provides a starting point that says these are the areas we want to work on.

And within those areas then would begin a process of trying to prioritize and assess and then prioritize the roads and facilities within that area. So there's a bunch of Alaska that would not be included in this by virtue of those simple two criteria about the wildfire susceptibility defined by either designated WUI like Anchorage has or by DOF's definition of full and critical response. Okay. Thank you. I got to say, I love the acronym WUI.

It's fun to say. You'll love our community group called the WUI CAT. Any further questions? Representative Stutes. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Didn't at one time Maybe at the last committee meeting you mentioned that it was difficult to work with DOT as a community group to maybe clear some of these areas. Am I— maybe I'm dreaming this, but, you know, I guess I'm, I'm listening to this and I'm hearing all these people that live up here fire, and this is a state road, so the state needs to take care of it. Well, as a landowner up there, if I want to get out and there's a fire or a potential of a fire, I got no problems contributing my labor and whatever else it takes to get some firewood in order to clear some of this out.

Has there been any attempt to work with DOT on state property to maybe do that kind Through the co-chair again, Kai Holland. Yeah, I appreciate the question. I want to clarify, DOT has not been difficult to work with, but they have a series of requirements that we found we had to meet. And I just want to, you know, a shout out to the Central Region, which was very cooperative. Yet in the end, the processes available to us didn't allow us to get these trees taken down, which is what taught me about the problem.

And what we ran into was— and I'm sure Mr. Mills can help fill this in or correct me— but the DOT in their right-of-way requires that if you're going to do work in that area, you've got to get a permit from them. And that permit process takes time and money to do that. And that's where we ran into trouble, was we didn't have the process to be able to get the permits that DOT wanted us to have to be able to do the work within their right-of-way. And that's where our projects got shut down because we had teams of people through Team Rubicon and a community group that was willing to do all this work for free with volunteer labor, doing it as a training activity. But we ran into the cost and time of getting permits, and then with the permits, getting the qualified individuals to do the road control work.

And it became untenable for us as a community group to be able to do this work ourselves. Now, in the end, we did work with DOT, and the regional director for that region, you know, all the way through the process was helpful in what the options were, and we did end up working out something where DOT Central Region provided the traffic control, and we used the local road service area to come in and take the trees down. We got it done, but it's the process, the permitting— the official way to get this thing done turned out to be very onerous and not as practical as it would seem from your question, which would make sense. We just go out and do it. Well, in this case, we wanted to go out and just do it, but that didn't work out that way.

And Mr. Mills, did you want to just add to that? And then I'll get to you. Yeah, Andy Mills, for the record. Um, so, um, to the committee, the chair, uh, whoever instigated the conversation. So in this case, that is an accurate portrayal.

And I just wanted to, I guess, in meager defense to the process, just so I explain it a little bit more. There are a lot of things that the permit is meant to care for, the permitting process. Representative Holland did speak to the traffic control plan, or TCP, which, of course, is essential for any work that's going into the roadway. We all get frustrated when we're stopped at some sort of traffic control, and yet it's essential to make sure that the traveling public is kept safe as things are occurring. I know in the case of areas where you may have a Representative McCabe's militia of chainsaws going and taking things down—.

Trademark—. That that is— you have to have utility line— we've seen utility lines impacted by people who have dropped things. They've gone farther than the right-of-way line and dropped people's trees that may even have economic value to them. Sometimes in certain areas, tribes have trees that have sort of sacred or cultural value. There's so many considerations when it comes— underlying easements.

Anyway, there's the permitting process, although it can be very laborious and difficult, is meant to review for those issues and coordinate mitigate those concerns. And so just to further elucidate why that permitting process is what it is. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm feeling a little frustrated.

This reminds me of both local, state, federal government. It's easier to put somebody out of business than it is to help keep them in business, and that just seems to be the process with whether it be permitting or whatever it is. It would seem to me that where there is a will, there is a way, and that there could be some sidebars put on so when people want to do this without spending 6 months trying to get a stinkin' permit from DOT, that they could work something out collectively and particularly— obviously this started out from a specific area. In specific areas where it's a threat to human health and safety, that DOT could work with the vested property owners to, to get some of these things cleared off in a, in a reasonable, fairly expedient way. I, I appreciate the fact that you have to be careful of electrical lines and property lines and everything else.

But anyway, that's my frustration, and I just would think that as Alaskans, we could come together without spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to alleviate safety for certain, um, areas.

Any Representative McCabe. Thanks. So my question's a little bit different than that, sort of the same but different. So let's, Mr. Mills, pivot a bit to Cascade Point Road. And who is opposed to cutting trees in Cascade Point because they're going to hurt the fish?

Mm-hmm. Point, point is, is you have to get, you have to get public engagement as well in some cases like that to make sure that somebody is not upset with you for cutting the trees down or you face a lawsuit, correct? Mr. Mills? Andy Mills again for the record. Through the co-chair and to the Committee, thank you for being the most fun.

So it is correct again that there is a lot of coordination necessary and— [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] —as much of a pain as permitting can be. Those are some of the coordination pieces to care for. I will mention, I dislike permitting, at least to the extent that it is what it is, as much as you. And so we've actually— the concept that I was working on last summer, and as soon as I don't have as many committee hearings, I plan to renew that effort, is to work on something called Designated Community Action Corridors. And what those would be is, rather than one-off permits, to work through SWAs, where we've pre-approved where the right-of-way line is, where the ownership is, and basically gone through those checks but in a larger area.

And that is somewhat complementary potentially to this effort in that if you can validate all of those concerns in an area, then you do— instead of a permit that takes a while to issue for an individual, you would have something akin to what at least we— I know in Juneau we have a burn permit. You go online, you give your information, you, uh, agree to the conditions, including— and the major one is indemnification. I think if, if you drop a tree and you hurt yourself or someone else, it's not on the state or the, or the city or something. That's actually the major missing piece, is that the legislature could take action to basically make liability within a right-of-way not on the state, and that would actually remove a significant roadblock that we currently face to our concerns that if anything happens in the right-of-way that we have allowed or not enforced, that does come back to the state. Which, if you pay attention to what happens in the court settings, the state has deep pockets, which people do come after.

And so we do need to care for that as policymakers, I think. So just to let you know, there, there's a conversation that I think is maturing to get to what you want, which is how can we empower citizens to go into areas that we've already vetted and permitted, but in a much larger area than one-offs, and let them sign on voluntarily to those conditions. Thank you, that's great to hear. Any further questions? Sorry about the Cascade Point.

Speaking of Cascade Point— too late, trigger, trigger. Statement. Well, I'd like to thank the bill sponsor and staff and end the discussion. I think, you know, I understand the interest and I think there's been a lot of great ideas generated and I hope that is helpful to the bill sponsor. At this point, this bill will be held.

That brings us to the end of our agenda today and potentially for the session. The meeting that was scheduled for this Thursday, April 7th, will not be held. And at this time, we don't anticipate any additional bills coming before us, even though if something comes up, we have business, we will reconvene. So I would like to just give an invitation to every member, if you have to make a final statement, realizing this might be our last meeting of the 34th Legislature in the House Transportation Committee. So would anyone like to make any final statements for the record?

I would. Representative Stifts. Imagine that. I just— you know what, Representative Eichide, this is your first committee as a new legislator, and I think you did an excellent job. It's a little daunting to have the gavel for the first time, and I think you did a real good job, and you had great help there.

And Representative Kerrek, you both did a really nice job running your meeting, and your staff was exemplary. Thank you. Any further comments? McCabe? No, thanks.

So I agree, it can't be easy to handle a couple of ornery old farts like me and Representative Stoops. Speak for yourself. So I appreciate it. I haven't been in your chair. It's sometimes it's a little bit interesting.

Thank you. Representative Keri, Co-Chair Keri. Yeah, Mr. Co-Chair, I just want to extend the thank you to, first of all, to DOT, to Andy Mills in particular, and DOT staff. A lot of people flew down for a lot of requested meetings and I just really We really, really appreciate the partnership and the ability to work with you and the staff at DOT, as well as our partners in the commerce community, aviation, the railroad, the marina highway trail systems, trucking, and more.

We've heard from a lot of folks over the last 2 years, and it's been really wonderful. I'd like to also thank our subcommittee chair, Representative Hannan, and her staff for their work. Doing the DOT subcommittee, our LIO and records staff, thank you so much. And our committee members, I'm just really grateful because I can look around this room and I think every single member of this committee just about passed a bill through this committee of their own. And I appreciate the opportunity to dialogue on things as diverse as the railroad, on learning about AWOS and ASOS systems last year.

Cascade Point. Cascade Point. Wow. Motor vehicle registration. The Northern Rail Corridor this year.

Transportation planning, and that bill's going places. The Marine Highway System. And just today, going and presenting our Transportation Committee bill, this vehicles over in the other bodies. So I'm really grateful to all of you. Um, and then I just finally really want to thank our committee aides.

Um, a lot of times I've been a former committee aide. A lot of times we think about the people sitting up chairing the meeting, and nothing that we have done this year would have been possible without Griffin and Meredith. And so I'm just so incredibly grateful. This has been a really good team of 4. And speaking of which, um, my extreme gratitude to Representative Eichide.

I wasn't necessarily expecting to co-chair the House Transportation Committee this year, but I am so incredibly grateful that I got to do that with you, and I wouldn't have picked a different person if I could go back in time. I think it's been one of the most beneficial relationships that I've ever experienced in the legislature. I'm super grateful for you. And that's all I got. Thank you, Representative Mena.

Since this might be our last meeting, uh, of, of this legislature in the House Transportation, might be, we're just giving everybody a chance to say closing statements for the record in case it is. What a pleasure to serve with you all. Go Transportation and Public Facilities! Yes. I am public official.

Okay. Well, as the person holding the gavel today, I guess I get last crack at it, literally and figuratively. So everything the co-chair said to DOT and our support staff, you know, I just echo that. I would like to make a comment of appreciation to every member. First of all, for our two newest members, Representative Garrett Nelson, uh, Representative, uh, St. Clair.

Um, you are new to the legislature but not to public service. And one of the great things that I have a strong belief in is people that are new to the table bring new fresh ideas. So I appreciate you both. I appreciate working with you both. And I look forward to continue to learn working with you.

Uh, Representative Mena, I just want to say, I, I sit on a couple of committees with you, and I've always been very impressed with your questioning. You are a master questioner. You're smart, and you ask questions I never think about, and I really appreciate that. And I appreciate you. I— Representative Stutes, Representative McCabe— so all legislature, I've been enjoying the back and forth.

I, with all due respect, I do see you as our elder statesman on the committee, and I respect the experience and, uh, institutional knowledge, uh, you both bring. Uh, you're both great public servants to the state of Alaska, and I mean that with all sincere respect, um, in, in your, your present leadership role, in your former, um, chairmanship of the House Transportation Committee, and bring a lot of experience experience and knowledge to the table. And, you know, we've had some strident conversations. The fact that we can laugh about them I think means that we've become part of a family.

So— Do not get my Bud Light. So I really appreciate you all. And I have some special words for my my co-chair. Make me cry, Ted. So, you know, this work is hard.

You know, it's hard. I don't think most people realize how hard it is. And there's a whole lot of people involved. And anytime you do this work, you're constantly reminded how hard it is.

But in this work, I try to find the rays of sunshine, and one of them is my co-chair, uh, Representative Ashley Carrick. Her intelligence and leadership and mentorship has allowed me to function in this position, and it's been really helpful. And I've learned something from every one of you to, but I work very closely with Representative Carrick, my co-chair, and it's been a really wonderful, wonderful relationship. And I just want to sincerely thank you, Representative Carrick. Um, your district and the state of Alaska is really lucky to have you, and, um, I— you were oftentimes a lifeline for me, so just thank you.

With all sincerity from the bottom of my heart.

Okay, I love having the last word.

And I also do want to just note for the record, I have really enjoyed banging the gavel. As hard as you can. It has been a pleasure serving you all. And this meeting now stands adjourned at 2:07 PM.