Juneau’s three Democratic state lawmakers met with constituents downtown on Wednesday for a mid-session town hall event at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé.
The Alaska Legislature’s 2026 regular session is more than halfway done. Sen. Jesse Kiehl said so far, it’s been an interesting one amid the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
“We live in this bizarre world in Alaska where a huge chunk of our budget is dependent on the price of oil,” he said. “And, so — with the caveat that war is bad — it did raise the price of oil, which is good for the state budget.”
State revenue forecasters revised their revenue forecast in March, adding more than half a billion dollars because of the war-induced oil price spike. But they cautioned that the market is volatile.
All that extra money in the budget has some lawmakers clamoring to spend it. The House Finance Committee added a mega $3,800 Permanent Fund dividend to the latest draft of the budget earlier this month. But, Kiehl told constituents not to go on a spending spree quite yet.
“I don’t think it’s an affordable amount,” he said. “… We are extremely unlikely to dip deep into savings to pay a very large PFD.”
Rep. Andi Story said education funding remains a priority for Juneau’s delegation. Last year, lawmakers passed a historic raise in per-student funding, but Story said schools are still struggling to maintain facilities and hire and retain teachers. This session, she introduced a bill aimed at stabilizing school districts’ budgeting processes.
“It’s a different way to set the education funding timeline. You know, it’s been broken for a long time,” she said. “We do not know our district’s budgets until well after the school year has started. It changes how we do the student count.”
Story’s bill passed out of the House education committee earlier this month. Its next stop is the House Finance Committee.
Audience members asked Rep. Sara Hannan about a bill she introduced this session that seeks to ban law enforcement officers from wearing face masks on duty in Alaska.
Hannan said opponents of the bill have mischaracterized it as an attack on police. She said she thinks it is unlikely to pass this session because of that.
“I want to assure you, the goal of it is to make sure that the policing standards the Alaskan law enforcement use now, where we know them, they’re our neighbors, that that’s what continues,” she said.
This year’s regular session is scheduled to end on May 20.
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