The governor signed into law legislation that eases the residency requirements for the Permanent Fund dividend for Alaskans pursuing education, maritime careers or medical care.

Under House Bill 75, sponsored by Ketchikan Rep. Jeremy Bynum, residents who are absent from the state while undergoing training for the U.S. merchant marine will not have that absence count against them when considering their eligibility for the dividend.

The change will treat time spent at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy or other U.S. Coast Guard-approved training program the same as attendance at accredited colleges or universities, which does not count against days out of state to determine eligibility for the PFD.

The legislation also amends the law so that college students who do not come home to Alaska during holiday breaks at school will not have those days count against the limit on their out-of-state time to determine eligibility for the PFD.

The legislation changes the law so that residents employed by the federal government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Corps or serve as Public Health Service commissioned officers will not lose their eligibility if deployed out of state.

And some Alaskans who travel out of state for medical care could be allowed more time before needing to return to maintain their eligibility for the dividend.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed the bill into law on June 11. It had passed the Senate 20-0 and was approved by the House on a 30-9 vote.

Bynum, who also represents Wrangell, is in his first year in the Legislature; he was elected last November. This was his first bill. He is the first freshman of this year’s Legislature to have a bill become law.

“Elements of this legislation have been proposed for many years, and I’m grateful to have played a role in helping bring those long-discussed ideas into law,” the representative said in a prepared statement on June 17.

A provision in his original bill that was removed by the Senate would have made the names of dividend applicants confidential “to guard against identity theft and fraud,” Bynum said when he introduced the legislation in January.

He agreed to remove that provision from the legislation “because I didn’t want the bill to get held up.”

Bynum would have preferred to keep the privacy provision in the bill, but the section encountered opposition in the Senate State Affairs Committee in the next-to-last week of the legislative session.

“It wasn’t a hill worth dying on,” he said on June 19.