School choice issues took center stage in Juneau today with the first hearing on HB 145, designed to provide funding for student enrollment in charter, alternative and private schools statewide.
Introduced by Wasilla Rep. Wes Keller, the measure would establish a “parental choice scholarship program” allowing parents to use state education funds outside of traditional public [...]

Now in the third week of hearings, the debate over the controversial oil tax overhaul became polemic today as lawmakers continued their interviews with both industry insiders and major producers.
“Removing the upside to the degree the progrecivity feature does makes it much more difficult to compete for investment dollars,” said Marilyn Crockett, Executive Director of [...]

The oil tax debate made its way to Anchorage today, with the House Finance Committee hearing invited testimony from native corporations, business leaders and oil and gas producers.
The bill has passed the House Resources Committee, and would provide up to $2 billion in tax credits annually while slashing production taxes by as much as 50 [...]

After approving a multi-billion dollar operating budget late last week, today legislators turned their sites to Gov. Sean Parnell’s $1.7 billion proposed capital budget.
Hearings on the budget bill are scheduled this week in the Senate, and Sen. Bert Stedman said he expects the final bill to top $2 billion after a last minute, $200 million [...]

While legislators continue their review of Gov. Sean Parnell’s oil and gas tax overhaul, eleventh hour revisions to a smaller proposed bill would provide $10 million in tax credits with no disclosure requirements.
House Bill 118 would provide the annual corporate tax credits for qualifying research and development costs, including oil and gas exploration and production.
The [...]

The House passed an $8.9 billion operating budget today by a landslide 36-3, opposed only by Democrats Lindsey Holmes, Scott Kawasaki and Pete Petersen.
The final budget was roughly $16 million less than Gov. Sean Parnell’s original proposed budget, and would be more than 30 percent funded by federal dollars.
“We took the Governor’s budget proposals, they [...]

The Senate is considering a bill today designed to increase oil production, but local utilities have a different concern: natural gas.
As oil field development decreases, producers said they are having an increasingly difficult time extracting enough natural gas to fuel Alaska and fulfill gas supply contracts both at home and abroad.
“This is a complex business,” [...]

In a resolution scheduled for a vote at tonight’s Anchorage Assembly meeting, Chairman Dick Traini is taking a stand against pending legislation that would create property tax exemptions for volunteer firefighters or other emergency personnel.
House Bill 170 would require cities across Alaska to implement the exemptions, but Traini said the bill is nothing more [...]

The local debate over federal healthcare reforms reached new levels yesterday as Florida Judge Richard Vinson stayed his original ruling that the 2010 Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional.
Following the ruling, Governor Sean Parnell had taken a firm stance against the overhaul, refusing federal grants to implement the programs and joining more than 20 other states [...]

Anchorage residents with traffic tickets may have caught a break recently after an internal audit report revealed problems with the department’s online payment system.
City audit staff reported the system was not connected to the department’s traffic ticket database, and there was nothing to insure payments were in the correct amount.
While the initial report did not [...]