The controversial House Bill 77 was heard and held in Senate Resources by committee chair Cathy Giessel, effectively killing the bill for this legislative session.
Sen. Peter Micciche of Soldotna has worked to correct concerns with the bill from communities like his own District O that would be affected by it.
Sen. Micciche: “The symptoms that you are seeing are due to a lack of process and I think what we should do is pull back, break a bill of that size into smaller peices and then come back into the communities and have some discussions about where we want to go from here. I think there were some good things about the bill, there were some things that were easy to misunderstand, and there were still a couple of problematic areas that we needed to deal with. I have mixed feelings because of all the hard work but I think at this time it was the right thing to do.”
Since its introduction by Gov. Sean Parnell in 2013, the bill dealing permitting around community waterways quietly made its way through the House however met strong opposition this year.
We asked if a similar bill might appear in the future…
Sen. Micciche: “I think you’d see smaller bills that had a lot greater participation from communities that we’re not starting with people on the defensive. We’re starting with a more collaborative effort, better communication, and without a non-transparent process that simply makes people suspicious of their government and I’m not sure that I blame them.”