State Government

A bill revising state regulations for real estate activity passed the House of Representatives this morning (Friday).

House Bill 267 – sponsored by Juneau Republican Cathy Munoz – allows realtors to donate a portion of their commission to charity, or waive it altogether if they’re handling a transaction for a non-profit. The bill also clarifies that licensed assistants are only allowed to work at one brokerage to avoid the sharing of proprietary information. Finally, it lets the Alaska Real Estate Commission designate a licensee to close down a brokerage for medical or legal reasons if an authorized broker is not available to perform the task.

Munoz says the bill was requested by the Alaska Association of Realtors.

It unanimously passed the House and now heads the Alaska Senate.

The portrait of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, commissioned by the Alaska Legislature, now hangs outside the House Speaker’s office on the second floor of the State Capitol. It was put up Wednesday morning.

The oil painting, by Alaskan artist Dean Larson, was unveiled two weeks ago in a ceremony at the Alaska State Museum, attended by Stevens’ widow, Catherine.

Larson, who studied under renowned Alaska artist Fred Machetanz, once worked in Stevens’ Washington, D.C. office.

The idea for a Stevens’ portrait came from Juneau resident and long-time legislative staffer John Manly, who took it to Juneau Rep. Cathy Munoz. It wasn’t long before the joint Legislative Council approved the project, which cost about $11,000.

State Capitol building manager Don Johnston says the portrait must still be protected. It will soon be encased in a Honduras mahogany frame and shielded with vandal-proof satefy glass. Stevens’ portrait is hanging in the vicinity of two other U.S. senators who left a significant imprint on Alaska history: Bob Bartlett and Ernest Gruening.

Stevens was the longest serving Republican in the U.S. Senate, having represented Alaska for 40 years. He was a member of the Alaska House of Representatives from 1965 through 1968.

He died in a plane crash in Southwest Alaska in 2010.

The state is negotiating a new lease for the Department of Labor building in Juneau, even as employees who work there continue to suffer ill health effects.

Water damage, mold, and air quality issues have long plagued the structure, known as the Plywood Palace. But under the current lease terms, the state is limited in the improvements it can require the building’s absentee landlord to make.

The two parties have now agreed to mediated negotiations that some employees hope will address the cause of their health problems.

Casey Kelly has more.

Jade Bickmore dreads going to work every day at the Department of Labor building. She likes her job, but hates the environment.

“Start out with sneezing, headaches, burning eyes, sinus pain and pressure, difficulty breathing, pressure on the chest, light-headedness, kind of almost a brain fog,” says Bickmore.

State Wage and Hour Investigator Mike Notar has had some symptoms, though he says not as bad as many of his co-workers. He says the building definitely seems to be the culprit.

“I had a co-worker who had to go home the other day. He was coughing violently and when he got home he called me and he said, ‘I’m not coughing anymore,'” Notar says.

And they’re not alone. Earlier this month, more than 40 members of the Alaska State Employees Association attended a union sponsored meeting for any worker who believes the building may be causing health problems. Supervisors, who spoke on background, report daily absenteeism rates around 20 percent for some divisions in the building. Bickmore, who also suffers from chronic sinus infections, says it got so bad that she and her co-workers in the Employment Security Technical Unit were moved to another part of the facility.

“A separate room that is on a separate air system,” Bickmore says. “So it’s certainly better there, but of course if you walk down the hall, get a drink of water, something like that, people are still affected just being in the building.”

State Chief Procurement Officer Vern Jones told lawmakers in a recent House Finance Subcommittee hearing that the state has entered into mediated negotiations with the Labor building’s private owners in hopes of forcing them to address any mold or air quality issues.

“The HVAC problems that some of the employees have reported – heating, ventilation, air conditioning – as well as there had been in the past organic growth, mold found in the building,” Jones testified. “We’re in negotiations with the owners to open up the walls, examine what’s there, and if there’s any mold or other substances that shouldn’t be there, to have them remediated and cleaned up.”

In an interview with KTOO, Jones declined to be more specific, citing a confidentiality agreement as part of the terms of the mediated negotiations. But he acknowledged the two sides are far apart on a number of issues.

“We’ve actually engaged a mediator to help bridge the gap and come to a mediated settlement for a lease extension,” Jones said.

Built in the early 1980s, the Labor building has been rapidly deteriorating in recent years. A water leak in 2005 prompted replacement of some carpet. A downspout burst in 2008, flooding part of the first floor. Continued complaints about water leakage eventually led the owners to re-side the exterior, which was completed in 2009.

But Jones says past lease terms did not allow the state to request specific improvements.

“The state’s leases generally have performance specifications in them,” he says. “So we describe how the building has to perform, the conditions that must be present in the building without really getting into design or technical details.”

Late last year, the state hired a consultant from Seattle to prepare a report on the conditions. The firm recommended inspection of the roof to determine the source of various leaks, opening walls to determine the nature of the organic growth seen throughout the facility, as well as air quality testing. The consultant noted several areas of cracked wallboard in the building, as well as a pungent odor in at least one room.

Building Operations Manager Bill Endicott, who led the consultant on the tour, declined to be interviewed for this story, but said in an e-mail that employee health and safety is “paramount.”

Juneau Republican Representative Cathy Munoz sponsored legislation three years ago that could have led to construction of a new state office complex in the Capital City for employees from the departments of Labor, Public Safety, and Fish and Game. The bill died in the Senate in 2010. Then last year, the Parnell administration announced it was scrapping plans for a new building, in favor of renovating the Fish and Game offices in Douglas. In her talks with the administration, Munoz says officials have committed to “major upgrades” to the Labor building.

“We need to deal with the problems in that building,” says Munoz. “There’s no question about that. That needs to happen.”

Long term, Juneau’s legislative delegation have said they’re not giving up on a new state office building, though it will be significantly scaled-down from the original proposal.

Labor Department employee Jade Bickmore says a new building would be the best solution. But until then, the least the state can do is move the affected employees out of the Labor building while it investigates the cause of the health problems.

“As they’re trying to get into the walls, maybe look at the air handling system, take the people that are affected out of the building, so they’re not having to be in the building while the work is being done,” Bickmore says.

State Chief Procurement Officer Vern Jones says Labor Department officials tell him they would move employees around within the building during remediation and make an effort to seal off the areas that are under construction. Jones expects the mediated negotiations with the building’s owners to be complete before the current lease expires at the end of June. He declined to say how long the state is seeking to extend the agreement.

House Majority Leader Alan Austerman says he’s open to changes to a bill that would re-establish an Alaska Coastal Management Program.

House Bill 325 was introduced Friday with Austerman as primary sponsor. Six other members of the House Majority caucus – four Democrats and two Republicans – co-sponsored the bill. Minority Leader, Juneau Democrat Beth Kerttula signed on as a co-sponsor immediately after its introduction on the House floor.

The bill was referred to the House Resources and Finance Committees. Austerman says he’ll request a hearing as soon as possible.

“We will request a hearing on it. We will suggest changes that may or may not need to be made,” says Austerman. “And we will deal with any changes that people suggest as far as the process is concerned and what the bill should look like.”

HB 325 closely mirrors a citizen’s initiative on track for a statewide vote later this year. Lawmakers can pre-empt the measure with substantially similar legislation, and would have a lot of leeway in doing so. The initiative proposes a coastal management program that gives local communities quite a bit more input than a bill that failed in the House last year.

Austerman says the fact that initiative backers collected the required signatures in less than a month shows there’s strong support for that version of the program.

“If I look at just the initiative process and the amount of people and time frame that it took to generate those signatures to get it on the ballot, I think it shows a lot of support in reference to recreating the program,” Austerman says.

Juneau Mayor Bruce Botelho is prime sponsor of the initiative and chairman of the Alaska Sea Party, the group behind the signature gathering effort. Botelho has said the Sea Party prefers to have the legislature take action, because it would help the program get up and running faster and avoid a costly campaign to convince voters to approve the measure.

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.

Governor Sean Parnell has signed a bill easing the state’s requirement for certain political candidates to file electronic disclosure information electronically.

The governor signed House Bill 311 on Monday, five days after it passed both chambers of the Alaska Legislature.

The bill provides an exemption to the electronic reporting rule for candidates who have no broadband Internet access or personal computer at their primary residence. It also delays the requirement from taking effect for one year – until February 2013 – and prevents the Alaska Public Offices Commission from changing requirements in the middle of an election cycle.

The electronic reporting requirement only applies to candidates for state office and municipal candidates in communities of 15-thousand or more people.

The bill breezed through the legislature last week ahead of Wednesday deadline for candidates to file their first disclosure reports of 2012 and their final reports of 2011. Many lawmakers expressed frustration at the online filing system developed by the Public Offices Commission, calling it slow, clunky and hard to use.

HB 311 modifies regulations the legislature adopted in 2007, in response to a federal corruption probe that ensnared several sitting lawmakers.

A bill re-establishing an Alaska Coastal Management Program has been introduced in the state House of Representatives.

House Bill 325 is largely the same as a citizen’s initiative on track for a statewide vote later this year. Lawmakers can pre-empt the measure by passing substantially similar legislation.

The bill was introduced by seven members of the House Majority caucus, including Kodiak Republican and Majority Leader Alan Austerman as primary sponsor. Austerman could not be reached for comment this afternoon (Friday).

Minority Leader, Juneau Democrat Beth Kerttula signed on as a co-sponsor as soon as the bill was introduced.

“For me, it’s maintaining people’s ability to be part of the process and for Alaskans to be able to have the right to speak up against federal government on its activities and projects in Alaska,” Kerttula says.

For more than 30 years, the coastal management program gave the state and local communities 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 program closed last year after lawmakers and the Parnell administration failed to reach a deal to reauthorize it. The administration and some House Republicans fought efforts by rural lawmakers and Democrats to expand the role of local communities.

Kerttula, who once worked as a coastal management lawyer for the state, says the program gave ordinary Alaskans a voice they now lack.

“It’s the program that makes all of the agencies and the people involved and communities sit down at that table and work things out. And while the huge companies might have a whole permitting department and it may not be quite so difficult for them. It’s pretty hard on the smaller companies or individuals who want to go get permits that affect the coastal zone,” says Kerttula.

Juneau Mayor Bruce Botelho is a prime sponsor of the coastal management citizen’s initiative and chairman of the Alaska Sea Party, which has been advocating for its passage. He says the group would prefer the legislature take action. If lawmakers wait to see if voters pass the initiative, Botelho says the proposed program would not get up and running until at least the summer of 2013.

“It speeds up the process by at least a year,” says Botelho. “Legislation that’s enacted now could be in place in the FY13 budget cycle, which is to say after July 1st 2012.”

Botelho admits the Sea Party also would like to avoid a costly and potentially divisive campaign to pass the initiative. He says the group would need to raise at least half a million dollars to challenge any opponents and convince voters of the need for a program.

While HB 325 closely mirrors the initiative’s language, lawmakers will have significant leeway to enact “substantially similar” legislation. Botelho expects some changes as the bill moves through the committee process, but says the Sea Party believes certain provisions must remain part of the final legislation.

“One is to make sure that all permitting agencies are part of the coastal management process,” says Botelho. “And second, we view the re-establishment of a coastal policy board as an important means by which local districts have meaningful input into the shaping of statewide standards.”

Governor Sean Parnell this week (Tuesday) said he prefers a public vote on the coastal management initiative.

Technically, the initiative is still under review by the Division of Elections. But Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell – who oversees elections – said recently the Sea Party appears to have collected enough valid signatures to certify the measure.

The Sea Party has challenged the administration’s cost estimate for the proposed program, which would increase the state budget by 5.4-million dollars per year. The previous coastal management program was largely funded by the federal government, but the administration says the state can only expect 2-million dollars per year in federal support for the new program.