Recently, KTNA’s Phillip Manning spoke with Rep. Kevin McCabe about bills he recently introduced in the Alaska House as well as the status of major discussions like education funding. The complete transcript follows.
Note: This transcript was produced using AI tools. While some corrections have been made, there may still be errors present. KTNA is continuing to explore ways for our audience to experience our coverage in as many ways as possible.
Phillip Manning
There’s been quite a bit going on down there in Juneau. So I do want to get to a couple of specific bills. But now that I think of it, I guess it’s been a minute since we talked so can you give us kind of a feel for how things are proceeding down there? I know the education package got passed. The governor is now holding that up. So where do we stand on some of those bigger discussion items?
Rep. Kevin McCabe
Yeah, so there’s there’s lots going on. You know, the education package, I mean on its face is about is worth about $242 million, which is a significant number of these. If you’re a person full of the person. So there’s really nowhere else to take that amount of money from other than the the PFA. So it’s unfortunate, although, you know, the House Republicans, we we value our kids education as much or more than anyone else. And the other problem is that we have seen the education outcomes decrease. It seems like the more money we throw at education, the less the outcomes are. And in a BSA has has not been education funding for a great number of years. It’s school district funding districts needed for roofs for new schools, for energy, which is the very big one that’s been increasing. And we totally understand that. But most of it, or a great majority of it does not trickle down to the classroom like the governor wanted with his with his teacher bonus bill that got left out of the SB 140 compromise. So, yes, there’s still there’s still lots going on with that. Lots of discussion with that between the governor and in the House and the Senate. So we’ll just have to see what happens. There still is a governor budget or I’m sorry, a governor’s bonus retention bonus bill in play that we could put through and see if we can can fix that. The problem is, is it’s another $80 million or so on top of what we’ve already spent. I think our total education spend for this budget is like 2.7 or north of $2.7 billion, which is amazing.
Phillip Manning
Yeah. So I do want to get on to a couple of bills that you’ve introduced very recently. So one has to do with changes to power cost equalization. I believe you talked to talk about that a little bit.
Rep. Kevin McCabe
Sure. So that was that was originally envisioned as an amendment to SB 140. The bill we were just talking about, and it was my attempt to reduce the energy costs to some of the village schools. So the village school districts are screaming about a bigger BSA for for in large part because of the cost of energy to do their for their schools. So some villages are paying a dollar a kilowatt hour for energy. I heard of one village that says every time we turn the lights on in the gym for a PE class for the day, it costs us a thousand bucks. So huge energy costs. It was my attempt. I was going to put it in as an an amendment. And when they said, Hey, we don’t want to put too many amendments in this bill, it’ll get too top heavy. I decided to run it as a bill. So that’s that’s what that’s designed to do, is to help the schools, to put the schools back on the PCV. They used to be. And that’s you know, there’s almost $1,000,000,000 in the PCV fund right now. So why wouldn’t we do that during these times of high energy until we can resolve the energy costs in the villages? Okay.
Phillip Manning
And the other bill I wanted to talk about was an expansion of the VPI So program. And I know that discussions of law enforcement presence in the northern part of the valley here and in rural parts of the valley in general has been a big topic of conversation in and a lot of local meetings over the past couple of years, frankly. So what would this proposal look like and what, if any, impact would it have on the communities here in the northern valley Willow, Talkeetna, Trapper Creek.
Rep. Kevin McCabe
Right. So this is just intended to start a conversation. You know, Trapper Creek had some issues and they were worried about it. There was a couple of murders or the murder victims were dumped in Trapper Creek. And people were very concerned and rightly so, frankly. And they they were talking to me and I was reacting. And I Commissioner Cockrell actually went to a Trapper Creek Community Council meeting along with the I’m not sure a sergeant, you know, a couple other troopers, a sergeant and one of the local troopers, I think, to talk to those folks. And I’ve been talking to the commissioner on and off, a man I greatly respect, by the way, about a path forward in this. He’s not real enthused with my idea, which is to allow the bureau to contribute money to the D.O.T., to train a VPSO person. And remember, some people say, well, VPSO, those aren’t armed. They can be armed if they take the that portion of the Alaska State Trooper class. It’s a two week class, not all episodes want to be armed and not all villagers want them armed. But you certainly could be armed if you wanted to. So let’s put that part aside. I’ve heard several people say, Well, we don’t want a VPSO because they’re not armed. But my idea is, hey, you know, it’s it’s got to be a mighty lonely feeling when you’re given a when you’re a trooper and you’re the you’re the only one in the northern part of the valley and you get a call about a shooting in Trapper Creek and you’re driving up the road knowing that you don’t really have much backup. You know, maybe the troopers coming down from Cantwell or something like that. But, you know, if there was a VPSO right there in Trapper Creek or Talkeetna or somewhere near the road system that could respond with you, or you might even be there to, you know, negotiate or take care of some of the smaller things. It just seemed to me to make sense. And it’s a path forward from this sort of lack of law enforcement we have in the northern valley because of the far reaches of of the northern Mat-Su from Willow north to the to the borough border. So just my attempt to open a conversation and see if we can fix the law enforcement issue without, you know, raising the property taxes in the in the borough and raising our own police borough police force. So, you know, the commissioner committed to me. He told me that they’re looking very seriously and reopening the in the trooper posts somehow. And I think that’s a fabulous step forward. Um but you know, it’s it’s certainly worth a discussion and I would value anybody that cares to write me and let me know I’ll put it in with the bill packet. And you know, when it comes to public testimony, I’ll call them and invite them. I’d really like to know the community’s thoughts about it. Truthfully, I know Trapper Creek has a lot of the Trapper Creek folks have talked to me already and they are for it. So.
Phillip Manning
Okay. All right. Well, I know you’ve got a lot a lot going on today, so I won’t keep you too much longer. But before I let you go, anything else that’s happening down in Juneau that you want to make sure folks here know about?
Rep. Kevin McCabe
Oh, yeah. You know, there’s a couple of resolutions coming out. There’s there might be some action pretty quickly on the Port Mackenzie rail extension and Port Mackenzie, lots going on in the resource development issue. There is one of the mining groups up north at the top of western Sydney. Access actually has found one of the largest finds of antimony in the United States right now. Russia and China control all our antimony. There is none mined in the United States and antimony is used for so many things with regard to lead, hardening, lead in and that sort of thing. The covers that go over your iPhones and iPads, you know, the screens themselves have antimony and lots of things there. This is a huge find for Alaska. We just have to be able to get to it and transport it out of there. So lots of lots of that kind of thing going on. Transportation is a big thing with the federal government in the step right there in fact, I have a hearing here in about 6 minutes with Dottie that they’re going to talk about the progress we’ve made on bringing the step out of the limbo that the federal government put it in. So we’re working on that pretty hard. And yeah, there’s lots and lots going on, lots more than I figured would be going on at this time of the of the session. So.
Phillip Manning
All right. Well, thank you for your time, sir. I’ll let you I’ll let you get to that hearing and we’ll be in touch.
