The Alaska Legislature returns with a new House majority, but it faces the same old budget problem
This year's annual legislative session in Juneau brings change from the past two years: a big class of freshmen, a Democratic coalition taking charge of the state House, and new urgency stemming from the state's fast-emptying budget reserves.
But with that comes the same old political conundrum: how to assemble the 21 votes in the House and 11 in the Senate to pass legislation to fix the state's huge budget problem.
Sharp ideological differences persist among the groups of legislators that will lead the two chambers. The new House speaker, Dillingham Rep. Bryce Edgmon, is a Democrat who's co-sponsored income tax legislation and fears further spending cuts would hurt his rural district.
The incoming Senate president, Fairbanks Sen. Pete Kelly, is a fiscal- and social-conservative Republican who warns the state is drifting toward socialism, and who last year vowed to stay away from the "tax business."
Read more: https://www.adn.com/politics/2017/01/14/the-alaska-legislature-returns-with-a-new-house-majority-but-it-faces-the-same-old-budget-problem/