Alaska House’s special session debate over crime bill starts with focus on schedule

JUNEAU — Alaska House members are already so divided over the legislation to scale back last year's big criminal justice reform overhaul that they can't even agree on a schedule for debating it — let alone on what's in it.

Monday was the first day of the Legislature's special session in Juneau, which Gov. Bill Walker convened to take up a tax proposal and the criminal justice legislation, Senate Bill 54.

Before the House even gaveled in for its 11 a.m. floor session, Republican minority members who want more substantial revisions to the original overhaul were already sparring with members of the largely-Democratic majority, who set a tight schedule for public testimony and amendments to SB 54.

The majority also voted Monday to allow SB 54 to bypass one of the three committees to which it had previously been assigned, a move that most minority Republicans opposed.

"If you're a defender of SB 91, you shouldn't have any problem with a lengthy amendment process because you should be able to bring out opposition to every single one. If you're afraid of my amendments and you're afraid of SB 91, you put a limit on time," said Anchorage Republican Rep. Charisse Millett.

Millett supports repealing SB 91 outright — with the exception of provisions that lengthened murder sentences. But she originally sponsored the House's companion version of the overhaul before voting against it on the floor last year.

[Read our series: Alaskans are fed up with crime. Did SB 91 make it worse?]

In the year since the package was approved, some lawmakers, echoing complaints from constituents and business owners, have blamed SB 91 for what they perceive as a rise in crime.

Supporters of the law, which reduced prison sentences for all but the most serious violent crimes, say there hasn't been enough time to assess its effects. And they point to law enforcement data that shows a sharp drop in nearly all categories of crime since the first pieces of SB 91 went into effect last year.

In the special session that started Monday, House members are taking up SB 54, which has already been approved by the Senate and would reverse some of the pieces of last year's overhaul.

One section would toughen penalties for people convicted of first-time, low-level felonies, including car theft, to up to a year in jail. Another would reinstate jail time as a possible punishment for a second or third shoplifting conviction.

Millett was objecting to the timeline set by Anchorage Democratic Rep. Matt Claman, a supporter of SB 91 who helped shape the overhaul last year as a minority member of the House Judiciary Committee.

Claman is now part of the majority and chairs the judiciary committee. He scheduled the only round of public testimony on SB 54 for 1 p.m. Monday, the same day the committee was set to get its first presentation on the bill.

And he previously set a deadline of Tuesday morning for committee members to submit their amendments to the bill — less than a day after the special session convened.

Claman, in an interview Monday, pointed out that SB 54 was introduced during the regular session earlier this year. He said he set his committee's schedule in response to feedback from constituents that legislators should spend as little time in Juneau as possible, and he added that Walker announced the special session a month ago.

"This bill has been out there for months," Claman said.

Millett, the GOP leader, said she'd met Monday with House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, D-Dillingham, and asked for more time.

And Edgmon, in a brief interview afterward, said he thought Millett's concern was "legitimate" and that "we're working on it."

"Hopefully we'll have a resolution here soon," he said.

Afterward, Claman relented, announcing that the judiciary committee would take a second round of public testimony at 6 p.m. Tuesday. (Contact your local legislative information office for information about how to testify; a list of locations is available at http://akleg.gov/lios.php. Or, call 907-465-4648.)

And at the end of Claman's committee hearing Monday evening, he said the deadline for amendments would be extended until 5 p.m. Tuesday.

Republicans like Millett want to make SB 54 more extensive.

Claman, meanwhile, suggested that he doesn't want SB 54 to get any bigger. He said reinstating up to a year of prison time for first-time, low-level felonies already represents a "significant compromise" to last year's criminal justice overhaul.

Another Republican minority member, Anchorage Rep. Chuck Kopp, said there's a balance between advancing the legislation to a vote on a tight schedule and "loving it to death."

Kopp, a former police chief who sits on the judiciary committee, said he doesn't object to Claman's schedule, noting that colleagues can always offer more amendments when SB 54 gets to the House floor.

"It's not like this is the drop-dead moment," he said.