Peggy's Corner of the House

By Representative

Peggy Wilson

Hello and welcome to Peggy’s Corner of the House.

It was great to be able to get to Ketchikan to meet with folks. It did my heart good! The sunshine that Ketchikan enjoyed followed me to Juneau and now I’m enjoying it again.

This week at the Capitol has been like old home week. I had constituents drop in from Coffman Cove, City of Ketchikan, City of Saxman, Ketchikan Gateway Borough and Thorne Bay. Additionally several other business folks made the effort to come to Juneau to provide me with their perspective on bills going through the Legislature. I very much appreciate everyone that contacts me with their view on bills as it helps to provide me with well-rounded information. The Ketchikan fly-in reception was enjoyed by many although the House of Representative’s opportunity to attend was curtailed by a late House Floor Session.

I’d like to give you updates on a few additional bills that my staff and I monitor to determine if there could be effects on District 33.

HB300 (of which I am a co-sponsor) is currently in Labor and Commerce and is dear to all of us in Southeast. This bill will make a slight correction to current statute to allow Airlift Northwest (and other similar programs) to continue to provide their insurance membership program for medevac services. I would like to make sure everyone understands one thing as there has been some misinformation going around regarding medevac services. Although Airlift Northwest has had to discontinue selling their membership program, this does NOT affect their ability to provide emergency medevac services to Alaskans. Senator Stedman’s companion bill SB 159 was voted on the Senate floor on Friday and passed unanimously. I fully expect one of the bill versions to pass through the Legislature this session.

Military & Veteran Affairs heard HB286 which will provide hiring preference equally to all Alaskan veterans. Current law is restricted to Korean and Vietnam veterans. I expect this bill to make it out of session as well.

HB79 is a bill proposed by the Administration to create a Susitna State Forest and will expand the ability of Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to offer negotiated timber sales in Southeast Alaska as well. Under existing statute, DNR may not offer negotiated timber sales greater than 500,000 board feet unless the sale area has high unemployment, underutilized manufacturing capacity, and an underutilized timber supply that will lose value due to insects, disease and fire. All of these criteria have to be met before DNR can negotiate large timber sales. This bill would allow DNR to offer negotiated sales statewide subject to Best Interest Findings. I am hopeful this will allow more timber sales in Southeast Alaska.

HB 314 clarifies and amends the rental vehicle tax to make it clear that the vehicle rental tax does not apply to Alaskan businesses making long-term vehicle rentals to other Alaskan businesses.

Fisheries House Bill 204 is extending the ability of industry to use the herring and salmon credit until 2020 and expands the credit for herring value-added processing. Herring is an established fishery and is a prime candidate to expand out of only roe harvesting and more fully into a food fishery. Up until now, this fishery has used only 10 percent of the fish they harvest. The hope is to utilize up to 90 percent of the herring by expanding into a food-based fishery. House Bill 204 will further encourage in-state processing and expand market opportunities to processors.

This week was also the final close-out of all finance budget sub-committees that evaluate the governors’ operating budget which made an especially hectic week! The sub-committee budgets (with our recommendations) are then presented to Finance and they will be working next week to make amendments to the governors operating budget and hearing testimony from the public.

That’s all for now from Peggy’s Corner of the House – talk with you next week!