In Juneau this week: budgets, taxes and a concert with the Alaska House speaker

This is our weekly newsletter from reporter Nathaniel Herz in Juneau. Sign up to have it delivered to your in-box each Monday morning. 

Good morning from Juneau,

We're up to Day 77 of the legislative session and, as we explored in today's newspaper, the outlook for a 90-day adjournment is looking pretty bleak.

On the plus side, there's still a bunch of snow at the city-run ski hill and this week is the annual Juneau folk music festival.

A few political performers are slotted in for 15-minute gigs on the main stage at Centennial Hall. Anchorage Democratic Sen. Tom Begich will help close out the festival at 8:15 p.m. Sunday, while House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, D-Dillingham, is scheduled at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. Edgmon's band — "The Speakers," of course — also features Fairbanks Democratic Rep. Adam Wool on drums and the state's commerce commissioner, Chris Hladick.

Alaska House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a lifelong musician, with an acoustic guitar at his home in Dillingham last year. (Erik Hill / Alaska Dispatch News)

There's a lot of legislative business scheduled for this week, too. First, here's a recap of the past week's Alaska Dispatch News political coverage:

—On Tuesday, a legislative committee approved new restrictions on lawmakers' state-paid moving expenses — a decision that came after a report that Golovin Democratic Sen. Donny Olson charged the state to ship a piano and power tools to his rural Norton Sound village.

—Also Tuesday, with lawmakers appearing poised to head to overtime again, we examined whether the 90-day session limit — narrowly approved by voters in 2006 — is defunct, given the blown deadlines of the past two years.

—On Wednesday, we wrote about a new ad campaign by the Alaska state chamber of commerce opposing the income tax proposal under consideration in the House. Click here to see the ad.

—On Sunday, we published portraits and lighthearted interviews of each of the Legislature's 15 freshmen. Facts you can absorb include the age of Juneau Democratic Rep. Justin Parish's beard, Anchorage Republican Rep. Chris Birch's second-favorite kind of tree and the last time that Sutton GOP Rep. George Rauscher talked to the Alaska Republican Party chairman.

—On Monday, we described how the wide ideological gulf between the House and Senate over Alaska's budget gap isn't getting any smaller.

—Also Monday, we covered a new gig for former Gov. Frank Murkowski: working for current Gov. Bill Walker as an unpaid "special envoy" exploring a rail link between Alaska and Canada.

The coming week looks like a busy one, with action on the state operating and capital budgets in the Senate and more hearings on the House's income- and oil-tax proposals.

The Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to take up the operating budget proposal at a Monday meeting. That chamber has said it intends to make a 5 percent cut to education but hasn't formalized that proposal yet — that's one big question likely to be resolved this week after the finance committee canceled a slew of budget hearings last week.

The Senate's capital budget proposal is also up in the finance committee Thursday, with public testimony set for 1:30 p.m.

The House, meanwhile, is starting the week with finance committee hearings on House Bill 115 — its deficit-reduction proposal to restructure the Permanent Fund while levying a state income tax. Monday's finance committee will be for amendments — and among the amendments will likely be one from Ketchikan independent Rep. Dan Ortiz.

Ortiz, in a recent letter to the Ketchikan Daily News — published behind the KDN's paywall — wrote that he wants Alaskans who pay property taxes to be able to deduct half their tax bills against their potential state income tax.

The exemption, he said, would "give credit" to people who live in the state's organized boroughs.

"I'm not yet sold on an income tax," Ortiz wrote, though he noted he's heard more support for it from his constituents than for a sales tax.

The letter is a preview of what's likely to be contentious debate over the income tax proposal this week, and it seems to support arguments from some opponents that the 22-member House majority is struggling to find the 21 votes needed to approve the tax measure.

Also on tap this week: a string of meetings Tuesday on "hybrid airships," which are a lot like blimps. Alaska is being eyed as a proving ground for the new modern aircraft built by Lockheed Martin, which my colleague Alex DeMarban wrote about in September. And the company has apparently seen fit to dispatch one of its officials to Alaska this week to brief lawmakers.

The official's slide show has already been posted to a legislative website — check it out here.

Keep in touch and let me know what questions you have as the end-of-session negotiations heat up: nherz@alaskadispatch.com, @nat_herz on Twitter and 907-793-0312 — a phone number that will also work with the encrypted messaging app Signal.

Have a great week,

Nat

Read previous newsletters here. 

Correction: This article originally identified Anchorage Republican Rep. Chris Birch as a Democrat.