Because the Alaska House of Representatives began the 32nd Alaska Legislature at a delay due to the House failing to select leadership on time, some speculate that the legislative session could last much longer than originally anticipated.
Senate President Peter Micciche expresses frustration at how much the State House has delayed the Senate’s work, “Here’s the reality, the Senate organized and came to work on day one. We are, at least five weeks ahead of the house, but unfortunately the way the Legislature works is you are only as fast as your slowest body. We are way ahead of schedule in the Senate. Our subcommittee work is done. We are ready to pass a budget and move on, but the other body being the House, they’re not there yet. We are moving forward on polishing our changes to the budget so that when they pass it over, that’s how it works, the House passes the budget first, and sends it to the Senate, we’ll be ready to drop ours in immediately and work towards finding a resolution to the budget. Our goal is that they expedite their schedule like we did ours so that we can get out on time. It would be very nice to be done in 90 days. We are certainly on schedule to do that. In fact, we thought we’d be out early, but again it’s yet to be determined if they’re capable of moving at an expedited manner and getting a budget across to us so that we can close out.”
The 32nd Legislature is scheduled to convene on April 18th, a limit by statute of 90 days, but Article 2, Section 8 of the state constitution allows for 121 days. Micciche says that the Senate’s goal is to get their work done on time but he questions the likelihood of that happening when it took the State House to organize 30 days late.
