Homer Representative Sarah Vance (R) of District 6 shared her experience of this year’s Legislative session on KSRM’s Sound Off with Duane Bannock.
Considering that funding needs to be determined early in the session, Vance said that the House of Republicans wanted to address education issues as soon as possible.
“We worked really hard to try and address that by addressing the correspondence, the charter school, transportation and funding inside the formula. As you well know, there was a snafu. And the governor vetoed that and said, You know what, we can do better. We need to do better for our teachers, and we need to do better for our charter schools. And I agreed with him. So we went back to the drawing board,” said Vance.
The Legislature provided one year of financial stability for the homeschool correspondence.
Vance also says that a crime package was passed, which would strengthen the crime against drug dealers who distribute fentanyl. She also had another one of her bills passed, which changed the term child pornography to child sexual abuse material.
Vance also shared that they passed a bill that no longer requires duplicate registration for fishing vessels. The bill took six years to enact.
“And then in fisheries we did a variety of fisheries provide more stability to our commercial fishermen, allowing them the ability to get loans, eliminating the risks the registration requirement with the DMV for boats,” said Vance.
Members of the House and Senate alike are curious about one big concern: A number of bills did not get passed until after midnight. Vance says that she spoke with the majority leader to see if a situation like this is even legal.
The majority leader said they didn’t know.
Vance explains that prior precedent sometimes forces that law to say that a legislative day does not end until the work is done. But it makes individuals wonder just how legal it was.
“And that’s why it’s like, well, if it is we don’t want it to backfire, but if it’s not… so some we’re calling our Representative Carpenter, then called Legislative Legal and asked, ‘Where are we at on that because we’re hearing conflicting messages.’ And then that’s when you heard his speech, claiming, ‘hey, this is what they’re saying. We need to put a stop to this.’ So it becomes a messy process. You get more than one attorney in the room, you get more than one answer,” said Vance.
Because of this, word on the street is that Governor Mike Dunleavy will veto the bills passed after midnight. If this were to be the decision and Vance felt it was the case, she would say she respects a “safer way to go.”
“I respect the law and our Constitution that says, ‘hey, this is when it ends.’ We’ll see how that goes. I’m not going to challenge the veto on that because, you know, most of those are not life-threatening pieces of legislation. We can address them again next session,” said Vance.
