Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed three pieces of legislation into law – two of them support the state’s military and veteran community, and a third to modernize the state’s coordinate system.
Senate Bill 203, sponsored by Sen. Josh Revak, extends the Purple Heart Trail designation. Revak said:
“So this is now going to be the biggest Purple Heart Trail in the country by far. This was a very collaborative effort in the legislature. It went through the committee process and it just becoming a better bill. The Purple Heart Trail, it got to a committee, and they said, ‘this just isn’t big enough, it already goes from the border of Canada all the way down to Homer, that’s just not big enough. We want to make the whole Marine Highway a Purple Heart Highway, and just blow every other state out of the water. So, that’s what they did!”
House Bill 125, sponsored by Rep. David Nelson, adds employment preferences for military spouses and their dependents. Nelson said:
“What a lot of people don’t realize if they’re outside of the military is that the soldier may move every two to three years, but that spouse is moving along with them. Looking at any resume, one may see an employment for two to three years and then they move across the state or across the country and that’s not necessarily that great for employment so that’s where you see very high unemployment rates for military spouses and the dependents. I wanted to make sure, not only do we say thank you to the military soldiers, but we also look after the miliary spouses and their dependents to make sure they are covered, and we say thank you to them.”
House Bill 148, sponsored by Rep. Laddie Shaw, updates the Alaska Coordinate System. He said:
“What this will do is put Alaska on the map. We’re closer to mean tide elevation. It’ll pinpoint a lot of what we do in the infrastructure community. It will help us put infrastructure projects together, its satellite base. It makes a difference in pinpointing specific locations in the state, which is going to be good for everything from search and rescue to building projects. Considering how large our state is, it’s going to be very meaningful to literally everything we do in the state.”
The bills were signed into law at the American Legion Jack Henry Post 1.
NOTE: Click the blue hyperlinks for more information on the pieces of legislation.