Alaska News

Alaska Senate delays key vote as talks resume with offer from House minority

The Alaska Senate stopped short of a vote Monday morning that would almost certainly have prolonged the Legislature's impasse over a state budget, choosing instead to take a break and review a last-minute Democratic opening for negotiations.

The Senate finished debate Monday morning on a budget bill that would reject a $5 billion bipartisan deal that the House agreed to early Saturday morning. But just before a vote would have been called, Senate President Kevin Meyer, R-Anchorage, called for a lunch break.

As he headed into an elevator at the Legislature's Anchorage office building for a meeting with his Republican colleagues, Meyer flashed a reporter a few sheets of yellow notebook paper filled with handwritten text.

"This is what Chris gave me," Meyer said, referring to Rep. Chris Tuck, D-Anchorage, the House minority leader. "We'll discuss it."

With members of his House Democratic coalition huddled in his third-floor office immediately afterwards, Tuck wouldn't say what was in the letter, saying the group was about to start a caucus meeting.

For now, the postponed vote appeared to leave a door cracked open for a negotiated compromise between Meyer's Senate majority and Tuck's House minority that could give the state a budget deal Monday.

If the Senate majority does vote to formally reject the House compromise instead, that would almost certainly lead to the creation of a House-Senate conference committee -- a step used to resolve disputes between the two chambers that would likely require more meetings and further delays.

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Pressure has built as the Legislature approaches a July 1 deadline -- the start date for a partial state government shutdown if a deal isn't reached. Thirty-day layoff warnings were scheduled to be mailed to 10,000 state workers no later than 3 p.m. Monday, according to a spokesman for the state's Department of Administration.

Lawmakers are negotiating over how steeply to cut the state's budget in the face of a multibillion-dollar deficit stemming from a crash in oil prices. The Senate's Republican-led majority and the Democratic minority and Republican majority in the House each have different views on which programs should be scaled back, and how much -- and consent from all three caucuses is needed to authorize spending billions of dollars from a state savings account.

An impasse between them has pushed the Legislature more than 40 days past the scheduled end of its 90-day session, which moved from Juneau to Anchorage last month.

Nathaniel Herz

Anchorage-based independent journalist Nathaniel Herz has been a reporter in Alaska for nearly a decade, with stints at the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Public Media. Read his newsletter, Northern Journal, at natherz.substack.com

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