Frustration mounted for members of the Alaska House of Representatives as it took them 31 days to organize into the legislative session.
District 29 Representative Ben Carpenter of Nikiski spoke to KSRM explaining what’s happened, “It is a frustrating situation to see the people’s house not functional. I would make a small correction to say that we were working, it just wasn’t super productive. I been in the office here from 8:00 a.m. to after 7-8 o’clock at night most nights since I first arrived here having conversations and developing relationships and trying to find a way to get the house to organize. I kind of take exception that we weren’t working. Yes, we weren’t doing the people’s business, but we were working very hard trying to find some kind of consensus to move us forward. That finally broke, but I do want to be clear that we have been collectively working to try to find a way through this impasse.”
Rep. Carpenter knew this legislative session was going be difficult, regardless of if the Republicans were in control, because he says the house is ideologically divided. Situations like that present challenges for elected members of the House, according to Carpenter.
Two House members have implied that they don’t intend on caucusing with or are a part of the bipartisan coalition or the Republican bloc. Carpenter states, “The last couple of weeks, we’ve identified that people within our Republican caucus, here, would rather work with the Democrats and the Independents who have a different philosophical approach to government than they do with the team of 18 now. There is obviously a divide between what those Republicans think and what the 18, the majority of the Republicans think. That’s part of the challenge that we had, not only within our own caucus finding agreement on how to move forward, but within the larger house membership because we couldn’t do it ourselves. We weren’t a full 21 or 22 in agreement at the very beginning within our own caucus.”
Carpenter describes what the 18-member Republican bloc stands for during this legislative session, “Having a balanced budget this year. Having some sort of a spending cap. We are somewhat divided on how to approach the PFD. I think everybody would like to see a PFD paid it’s just the amount of the check. The larger sticking point being how does that fit in to the deficit that we have. Election integrity is another thing that we’re all very much aligned on. We want to see some reform happen to make our elections more secure. Give the people confidence that their elections are secure. Unfortunately, it’s looking like we might not be able to get that done now that the Democrats, for lack of a better description of the majority of the caucus are in control of the House.”
