We are a month into the legislative session and, until Wednesday, the vibe in the Capitol was calm and subdued. It was so boring that things felt out of place, especially in the House.

It was starting to feel like the days of Republican protest sit-ins on the House floor, David Eastman and Josh Revak trying to swear in Sharon Jackson at the court house across from the Capitol, House Democrats fleeing the Capitol en masse (which was close to resulting in the troopers being activated), representatives challenging one another to “take it outside,” and bills passing at 1 am – after the clearly defined constitutional end of session – were behind us.

But, and I say this with excitement, we are back! 

It all started on Wednesday morning. After a normal start to the House floor session, Representative Chuck Kopp (R – Anchorage), the majority leader, made a motion to discharge House Bill 69 from the House Education Committee. If you are not familiar with the ins and outs of Juneau, you may be asking yourself what the hell that means.  

First, HB 69 is a bill from Representative Rebecca Himschoot (I – Sitka) that aims to massively increase per student funding in Alaska, known as the Base Student Allocation. The bill would raise it $1,800 over three years and index it for inflation.

For context, last year the House and Senate agreed to raise it by $680 with no inflation adjuster. Governor Mike Dunleavy (R – Alaska) vetoed that bill, which included other education reforms, and the Legislature failed by one vote to override his veto. As is, HB 69 would end up costing half a billion dollars a year. That’s around 10% of our current budget! 

Bills have to go through one or more committees before they advance to the House or Senate floor for a vote. If they have a fiscal note, they have to go to the finance committee. But HB 69 had been stuck in the House Education Committee for weeks. Representative Maxine Dibert (D – Fairbanks), a member of the education committee, has been absent due to being hospitalized for a respiratory infection.

The House Education Committee has seven members. Because the majority only has 21 members (the bare minimum), the 19-member Republican minority gets three of the seven seats. It takes four votes to move a bill out of that committee. With Dibert being gone, the Republicans were in a position to prevent it from moving onto the next committee, the House Finance Committee. 

Why, you might be asking yourself, just not replace Dibert with another majority member? Because to do that would require the Committee on Committees (yes, that’s what it’s called) to meet and replace her. But the report they would issue would then need to be adopted by 21 members. With Dibert gone, the majority is one vote short. The House Republicans smell blood in the water.

So instead of waiting for Dibert to get better and come back (she may be sicker than they are leading on), the House majority decided to get a bit loose. The Legislature’s rules allow for bills to be discharged from a committee by a majority vote of all the members. It usually happens when a committee chair refuses to move a bill. But it requires the majority to do it, so it’s rare because it means the majority is undermining one of its own. 

After Kopp made the motion to discharge HB 69, things got rather loose. After the objection of several House Republicans, Speaker Bryce Edgmon (I – Dillingham) called an at ease. Both caucuses went to their respective corners of the Capitol to talk. They came back to the floor 45 minutes later. This is when things started really cooking!

Nearly every member spoke about the motion. The majority in favor and the minority against. But then something weird happened. Representative Louise Stutes (R – Kodiak), the rules chair, said the bill could be discharged with a majority of members present rather than the majority of the House. With Dibert being gone, there were 39 members present. So Stutes was saying it could be discharged with 20 votes rather than 21. 

Stutes referenced a legal opinion from the Legislature’s lawyer, Megan Wallace, to back up her ruling. But Megan Wallace would tell the majority the sky is green if they asked her to. Keep in mind it would take 21 votes to replace Dibert. So, at best, this is a manufactured loophole.

There’s something referred to as the “rule of 21,” which means if you have 21 votes in the House you can pretty much do whatever you want. But with Dibert’s absence, the majority only has 20. 

At one point, Kopp read from Wallace’s legal opinion, and then made a bizarre statement about HB 69 and increasing education funding, “Mr. Speaker, I believe the citizens of the State of Alaska are gonna see that the justice of our cause is shining like the noonday sun. This is what they sent us here to do. This motion to discharge to the next committee of referral does not undermine or hamper the democratic process.”

But then, after all the posturing and grandstanding, the motion passed with 21 votes. Representative Mike Prax (R – North Pole) voted with the majority to discharge the bill! His minority colleagues looked as bewildered as the majority. After, when asked by members of the media why he voted yes, Prax said, “I pressed the wrong button.”

I suspect Prax may have had ulterior motives. Last year, former Representative Jesse Sumner moved a bunch of bills out of the House Health and Social Services Committee, which Prax then chaired. Prax had refused to move the bills, but he was at another meeting when Sumner made his move. The next committee stop for the bills was a committee that Sumner chaired. So Sumner did what Sumner does. Representative Justin Ruffridge (R – Soldotna) was chairing the committee and just went along with it. To be fair, he probably had no idea what Sumner was doing. It pissed off Prax something awful. I think this may have been Prax’s revenge!   

Now that the $500 million a year bill was in the House Finance Committee, surely more rational heads would prevail. Not so fast!

HB 69 had its first finance hearing today. Himschoot presented the bill to the committee and took questions. Representative Will Stapp (R – Fairbanks) asked Himschoot how she planned on paying for the huge price tag. She weirdly responded by calling Stapp “Representative Stapposaurus,” whatever that means. Himschoot gave a long answer, spoke passionately about how kids are our future, but offered no ideas for revenues or cuts to pay for the bill. She ended by saying, “We’re gonna have to figure it out.”

Stapp, visibly pissed off, basically said “fuck it” and made a motion to move the bill out of the committee. Stapp told the Landmine he made the motion because, “If I have no way of paying for a bill there is no point in talking about it.” 

Representative Neal Foster (D – Nome), who co-chairs the committee, didn’t really know what to do. So he called an at ease. When the committee came back, Representative Andy Josephson (D – Anchorage), the other co-chair, spoke in favor of Stapp’s motion to move the bill. Keep in mind the finance committee was not 45 minutes into its first hearing of this bill. 

After a much longer at ease, this time with Speaker Edgmon coming in to talk to his people, Foster called the committee back on the record. Representative Calvin Schrage (I – Anchorage), the other co-chair, was clearly caught off guard with Stapp’s motion. He noted that its important to pay for the bill but, like Himschoot, spoke about the kids! Schrage acknowledged the bill as written won’t be the final outcome, thanked Stapp for “prompting action,” and essentially said “we’ll do it live!” on the House floor. 

And then the finance committee moved HB 69 unanimously out of the committee. Yes, a $500 million dollar a year bill was moved out of the finance committee less than an hour after its first hearing with no opportunities for amendments or public comment. Folks, we are back! 

The bill is now in the rules committee. It will be interesting to see if Stutes calendars the bill or asks her majority friends on the finance committee just what the hell were they thinking. If this bill makes it to the House floor as is, that is one show you will not want to miss. 

Oh, and Governor Dunleavy, who has been largely absent this session (as usual), said he would veto the bill. He has a bill that would cost nearly $200 million a year more than what the House majority wants to do. No one tell Will Stapp!