Legislation aimed at encouraging affordable housing has passed the Alaska House.
Juneau Rep. Cathy Muñoz sponsored HB 264 at the request of local contractors and the Alaska State Home Building Association who say current tax laws hinder development.
The bill would allow municipalities to defer property tax increases on subdivided lots until they are sold or have commercial value. Munoz says taxes can be five to 10 times higher as soon as the land is subdivided.
“In communities like Juneau that experience a limited land base and high housing costs, that extra carrying cost is a huge deterrent to new subdivision and housing development,” Munoz says. “So this is meant to defer the increasing tax burden, but ultimately the cities benefit because they get that tax burden back, plus extra tax due to new housing in their communities.”
The legislation also allows local governments to negotiate payment terms when the deferred taxes are due.
Quinhagak's sanitation system, part of the Village Safe Water Program. Photo courtesy CRW Engineering
A measure helping villages set up safe water and sewer systems is getting some attention in the Legislature.
The bill would create a task force that would collect information and look into simple systems that could work in rural communities. It would also come up with a list of the most-needed projects.
The measure passed out of the House Community and Regional Affairs Committee on Friday (March 23rd.) It’s a companion bill similar to one in the Senate sponsored by Angoon Democratic Senator Albert Kookesh.
“We’ve got numbers that show that there are 6,000 homes that are without water and sewer in rural Alaska. Nobody seems to be paying a lot of attention to them. So we’re concentrated on it and hopefully we can put that together and people will pay attention to that,” he says.
The Senate measure made it out of the chamber’s Community and Regional Affairs Committee around the beginning of March. Both bills next go to their chambers’ Finance Committees.
If passed, the nine-member task force would research water and sewer systems in other northern nations. It would also work with state and federal agencies to streamline regulations and fund programs that could speed development.
Fiscal notes estimate the task force would need about $100,000 for its one year of work.
With less than three weeks remaining in the legislative session, it’s looking unlikely lawmakers will pass a bill to re-establish the Alaska Coastal Management Program.
A citizens’ initiative setting up program has been approved for a statewide vote later this year. But lawmakers could pre-empt the measure with “substantially similar” legislation.
Kodiak Republican Alan Austerman – the House Majority Leader – introduced a bill that closely mirrors the initiative. But Austerman says he’s aware some House members oppose legislative action on the coastal management issue.
“We heard one of the sponsors of the initiative on the discussion at the one hearing we had talking about something that works,” Austerman told reporters Monday. “And so that’s really where our goal is, to find something that works and that’s acceptable to the legislature. Can we get there? We don’t know yet.”
Austerman’s bill had one hearing in the House Resources Committee two weeks ago. A legislative legal advisor testified that lawmakers would have significant leeway to decide what “substantially similar” means.
The group behind the initiative – the Alaska Sea Party – supports legislative action. Sea Party Chairman and Juneau Mayor Bruce Botelho has said a bill passed this session would get a coastal management program up and running sooner, and avoid a costly and potentially contentious campaign to get voters to approve the initiative.
Before closing last year, the Alaska Coastal Management Program allowed the state and local communities to have greater input into federal permitting decisions along Alaska’s coastline. It also helped developers by streamlining the regulatory processes of various state and federal agencies.
The legislature failed to reauthorize it after the Parnell administration and some House Republicans fought efforts to expand the role of local communities.
Twenty young activists from around the state gathered in Juneau this week for the 12th annual Civics and Conservation Summit, sponsored by Alaska Youth for Environmental Action.
The week-long conference teaches teens about the legislative process and how to talk to lawmakers about their issues.
Senators Donny Olson and Hollis French grab some salmon at the Alaska Youth for Environmental Action rally Thursday in Juneau. (Photo by Casey Kelly/KTOO)
Fresh king salmon on the grill is one way to get legislators to your event in Juneau. Not that the Alaska Youth for Environmental Action needed much help at a reception across the street from the capitol building on Thursday. The young conservationists – ages 13 to 18 – spent most of the week meeting with lawmakers to promote AYEA’s legislative agenda.
Emily Brease is an 18-year-old senior at Tri-Valley School in Healy. This is her second year attending the Civics and Conservation Summit.
“Last year was just life changing,” says Brease. “You just don’t realize how much of a difference you can really make, how much you can really be involved in the process, and how much it means to the representatives when you come and you sit down and you talk about the issues you care about .”
Early in the week, the teens split into groups and choose the bills they want to urge lawmakers to support. Brease’s group worked on legislation that would ban certain chemicals from being used as fire retardants in household products sold in Alaska. The chemicals are known as PBDEs.
“Polybrominated diphenylethers, so it’s a mouthful,” Brease says. “It was chosen, because I think a lot of people don’t know about it and it’s these toxic flame retardants are used in everything – your electronics, your furniture, your upholstery – and they are shown to have medical effects. Thyroid, reproductive, and possibly carcinogenic.”
Fourteen-year-old Barrow High School freshman Jonathan Nelson worked with his group to promote a bill that would require legislative approval for large scale sulfide mining activity in the Bristol Bay watershed. It’s an attempt to slow down or stall the controversial Pebble Mine project. Bristol Bay is a long way from Barrow, but Nelson says the mine’s affects could be felt around the state.
“A person from, like, New York hears that a fish in Alaska got mercury in it. He’s not going to say it’s only Bristol Bay – he’s going to say Alaska,” Nelson says. “And, that’s going to basically tarnish the whole entire salmon name in Alaska.”
For Nelson, attending his first Civics and Conservation Summit included an important lesson about the realities of the legislative process.
“The only sponsor for my bill – SB 152 – is Hollis French, Senator French,” he says. “We went and talked to him. He knew that the bill wasn’t going to pass.”
Senator French says that’s just the way it goes sometimes in Juneau.
“You know, we may have had a frank conversation about it, and it’s probably not going to pass,” French says with a laugh. “But it’s an important conversation starter. It’s important for them to know that they have people in the building who are willing to advance ideas that may not always get there. But you have to have the dialog, you have to have the debate, and so I’m proud to be a part of that.”
French, along with Senators Bill Wielechowski and Gary Stevens were honored as AYEA’s Legislators of the Year on Thursday.
Wielechowski, who sponsored the bill banning PBDEs, says he was impressed by the students’ knowledge of the issue.
“They knew what they were talking about. They had done a lot of research,” Wielechowski says. “They asked me some very pointed questions about it, which showed they really had been studying it.”
Wielechowski’s bill is currently in the Senate Rules Committee, usually the last stop before legislation goes to the full Senate for a vote.
Senator Stevens was honored for working to re-establish the Alaska Coastal Management Program. That legislation is currently working its way through the House.
Other bills supported by AYEA this session include Senate Bill 3, which would provide state matching funds for the federal school meals program, and House Bill 100, which would ban genetically modified fish in Alaska.
A village corporation’s petition to manage a Chatham Strait fishery goes before the Federal Subsistence Board this week.
Kootznoowoo Incorporated says state-managed commercial fishing is hurting subsistence harvests near Angoon. It has petitioned the board to assert authority over waters near the west Admiralty Island community.
Ten years in prison for a Juneau man arrested at SeaTac trying to transport methamphetamine to Juneau. Ryan Budd Barnett, 30, was sentenced in U-S District Court in Juneau on Friday. Investigators say he and another transporter were caught with 11 ounces of meth when they were stopped. Burnett was convicted by a jury last March.
U.S. District Court Judge Tim Burgess said he thought that ten years was too much, but noted that he was constrained by mandatory sentence guidelines set by Congress. Defense attorney Kirsten Swanson said Burnett has essentially been scared straight since his arrest and wants to get his life on track. Burgess made a special note to have Burnett incarcerated in federal facility with an electrician’s or other vocational training program. Burnett will also be on probation for five years.
Also on Friday, Sacramento, California resident Jessica Nashea Cooper, 22, was sentenced to time already served for attempting to transport oxycodone to Juneau. She was also stopped at SeaTac in possession of 667 80-milligram pills. Burgess said that Cooper has “excellent prospects for turning her life around” and noted her attempts to stay employed and pursue an education.
Cooper has already been incarcerated for about 14 months in six different facilities in four different states. Her sentence on Friday meant that she was due to be released over the weekend.
Burgess told Cooper that she got a huge break in this case, and hoped that she took advantage of that and do something with her life.
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