Senators Joe Paskvan, Dennis Egan, and Gary Stevens during the closeout hearing of the Senate Finance DEED Subcommittee, March 20, 2012
This blog contains highlights from the Alaska Education Update. The update is issued daily during session and contains detailed summaries of education issues under consideration by the Alaska State Legislature. If there is a hearing on a Monday, a report will, with few exceptions, be released by Tuesday morning. There is also a weekly edition of the update. During interim, reports are issued only when there has been action. Interim action may include hearings, bill signings, the release of the Governor's proposed budget for the next fiscal year, and other items that may be of interest to the education community.

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Friday, April 29, 2011

No News/Nothing New

Okay, I have pretty much stopped posting since the end of the regular session.  Sorry.  Lost my momentum.  I really can't tell you if special session is going to wrap up by sometime next week (best case scenario), or will go thirty days with no resolution (worst case scenario). However, I find it almost unimaginable that they wouldn't reach consensus within the special session. I just can't imagine that occuring. That would be some sort of a major breakdown of government. 

According to the House Minority, one thing there may not be resolution on during the special session is long-term funding for merit scholarships, since there are so many differing positions on HB 104, the bill establishing a funding mechansim for the scholarship program (http://www.legis.state.ak.us/basis/get_bill.asp?bill=HB%20104&session=27).

It is always interesting to watch the process. Sen. Paskvan brought up an interesting point on the floor Thursday, and that was that Alaska is a young state, and there is not yet a lot of legal precedent. At some point earlier in the special session, someone referred to the governor as having a big stick. So I imagine the governor with his big stick, 20 senators with 20 smaller sticks, and 40 house members with yet 40 smaller sticks, and that the total mass of each group's sticks was equal to the mass of the next group's sticks, even though they weren't equal in number. And the supreme court has a ruler, a saw, and bits of wood and glue, and when asked, can measure the different sticks, and add to or take away from them.

Okay, my imagination is getting the best of me. I liked Steve Haycox's recent editorial in the Anchorage Daily News explaining the process better than my visualization: http://www.adn.com/2011/04/28/1834699/juneau-struggle-an-excellent-civics.html