Ready or not, here comes special session number four.<\/p>\n
At 12:01 a.m. Thursday, Gov. Bill Walker signed a proclamation calling the Legislature back to work, almost immediately after the House and Senate adjourned late Wednesday when it became apparent a budget deal could not be struck.<\/p>\n
The 30-day special session, which will be the fourth for this Legislature and the governor, officially begins in Juneau Monday at 11:00 a.m.<\/p>\n
The special session will include 10 items: notably, the state operating and capital budgets, oil and gas tax credit reform, legislation establishing an annual draw from the earnings of the Permanent Fund to pay for government, a tax package, and several non-revenue issues such as forming a state health care reinsurance program and insurance for families of emergency responders killed in the line of duty.<\/p>\n
With the regular session over, all bills that didn\u2019t pass died. The items on the special session call either have to be redrafted and go through the committee process once more or the Legislature can resurrect the bills it was working on through joint House-Senate resolutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not submitting anything that\u2019s brand new, that hasn\u2019t been seen,\u201d Walker said at a Thursday morning press briefing.<\/p>\n
He decided to let everyone \u201ctake a deep breath\u201d and come back Monday morning after discussing the special session with House and Senate majority leadership late Wednesday, Walker said.<\/p>\n
Several legislators said they plan to head home over the weekend for the first time in weeks or months.<\/p>\n
Much like last year, the administration will be forced to issue \u201cpink slips\u201d to all state employees if the operating budget is not passed and funded by June 1. The current budget funds operations through June 30, the end of the 2016 state fiscal year. Without an approved 2017 fiscal year budget, government will shut down July 1 and all non-essential government workers would be laid off. The state is required to give its workers 30 days notice of pending layoffs.<\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s two spring special sessions stemmed strictly from wrangling over budget cuts; Democrats in the House Minority caucus leveraged their votes needed to approve a draw from the Constitutional Budget Reserve savings account to add back funding for education and the Alaska Marine Highway System.<\/p>\n
This year, the House Minority is the group advocating for budget cuts \u2014 to the much debated, publicized, scrutinized, and defended oil and gas tax credit program. Needing special sessions to pass budgets means Alaska\u2019s 29th Legislature failed both times to meet its only constitutional requirement in regular time \u2014 passing a funded budget.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the governor continues to push for installation of his New Sustainable Alaska Plan to eliminate the states\u2019 $4 billion budget deficit by fiscal year 2019.<\/p>\n
Walker said that without a fiscal plan the special session d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu will continue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were here last year; we\u2019re here this year and we never want to be here again and that\u2019s why we went out to Alaska in a very broad way to put together the plan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s painful to be where we are today but I guess the point is to make sure we\u2019re not here again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Legislators had the option to extend the already extended session for up to 10 more days to resolve the tax credits and budgets, but Walker had said previously he would call a special session to address the revenue bills if they were not passed in some form.<\/p>\n
When the House \u2014 with a split Republican-led majority \u2014 did not concur with the Senate\u2019s version of the tax credit legislation House Bill 247 late Wednesday night, the Senate adjourned, leaving the House little option but to follow suit.<\/p>\n
The governor has been fairly quiet during the first two regular legislative sessions of his term, for the most part staying out of debates even on his own bills. Walker said Thursday that he and members of his administration will spend the weekend trying to draft a compromise oil and gas tax credit bill and that his presence will be more noticeable in trying to reach agreements in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow it\u2019s a process that I\u2019ve created in some respects. I will be much more involved with legislators,\u201d the governor said.<\/p>\n
Chenault said repeatedly at a press briefing just after midnight Wednesday that he was frustrated \u201cthe goal posts kept changing\u201d during the last days of the session regarding what the minority needed for a budget compromise.<\/p>\n
Getting the budget done and \u201coff the table\u201d so it can\u2019t be used as a leverage item is key in finishing the rest of the Legislature\u2019s work, he said.<\/p>\n
House Minority Leader Rep. Chris Tuck was positive about how things went with the House Majority and commended the governor for continuing to push a comprehensive fiscal plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cMike Chenault did a really good job of trying to pull things together in the end,\u201d Tuck said.<\/p>\n
He was less eager to spread praise to the other chamber, however. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ready or not, here comes special session number four. At 12:01 a.m. Thursday, Gov. Bill Walker signed a proclamation calling the Legislature back to work, almost immediately after the House […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[216],"class_list":["post-4476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-government"],"yoast_head":"\n