Panel recommends raise for legislators but cut to living expense payments

JUNEAU (AP) — A commission tasked with reviewing legislative pay voted Jan. 18 to raise the annual salary for Alaska lawmakers but to restrict the daily allowance lawmakers can receive. The changes will go forward unless the Legislature votes to rejects them.

The Alaska State Officers Compensation Commission voted 3-1 to raise the base salary from $50,400 a year to $64,000. The recommendation would cap at $100 a day an allowance for living expenses that lawmakers could claim during regular sessions, and also require receipts for reimbursement of those expenses.

The panel also called for lawmakers to receive a state employee per diem rate plus lodging for special sessions called by a governor, according to commission secretary Kate Sheehan, who is director of the state Division of Personnel and Labor Relations. That rate is currently $60 a day, she said. There would be no per diem if lawmakers call themselves into special session, she said by email.

Most special sessions over the last decade have been called by a governor, according to records from the Legislative Affairs Agency.

Currently, the allowance lawmakers are entitled to is $307 a day, based on a federal rate, said Jessica Geary, executive director of the Legislative Affairs Agency. Receipts are not required.

The commission’s chair, former state Sen. Johnny Ellis, said he thought there was a “good likelihood” lawmakers would reject the recommendations as “inadequate and complicated.” He also said he did not think the recommended changes were durable. Nonetheless, he said he would be a “reluctant” yes, so that the commission would have a “work product” at the end of its endeavors.

The living-expense allowance is intended to help legislators with the added costs of spending part of the year in Juneau, away from their homes.

Anchorage Rep. Zack Fields, in written comments to the commission, said expenses in Juneau are “astronomical” in the summer, when special sessions are sometimes held. He said the job of being a legislator is a year-round commitment and that any changes to salary and per diem “should also take into account expenses and foregone revenue for families.”

“We have to be a place that is open to families, because parents’ perspectives are needed in the legislature,” he wrote.

By law, commission recommendations will go through unless a bill rejecting all the recommendations is enacted within 60 days of their submission.