Assembly Diary

A Welcome Change

On Friday August 7 Governor Parnell invited the Juneau Assembly to meet with him at the Governor’s House. The meeting included of the Governor, his Chief of Staff, Legislative Liaison, Constituent Affairs coordinator and the Commissioner of Fish and Game. It was a fresh, open and extremely gratifying exchange. The governor asked about our concerns and issues and reiterated his support of Juneau as Alaska’s capital city. Yes, the proof is always in the pudding, but a governor reaching out to the Juneau Assembly is certainly a first in my tenure on the Assembly. I was impressed.

Last week members of the Assembly and the legislative delegation toured the new AEL&P Lake Dorothy project which should come on line soon. It was impressive. I think we forget how unique we are in having our electricity almost 100% renewably generated. Not only that, but unlike most dams down south, our lake-sourced hydro power does not interfere with fish migration. We are very fortunate.

Monday 8/10 is our regular Assembly meeting and there will be a public hearing and final vote on the revised animal control code, so if anyone has any comments, that is the time to make them. We’ll be introducing ordinances to put a school bond issue and raise the tobacco tax on the October ballot. The hearing on those will be August 24.

The final FY 2010 budget has been posted and I created a link on the right.

Filing for the October city election began Friday. So far no one has filed against Mayor Botelho although Mark Farmer previously announced that he would. There has been speculation that a current Assembly member (not me!) would run for the Mayoral seat. If a sitting Assembly member wants to run for Mayor, they have to resign from the Assembly. We’ll see what happens.

The filing period goes through Monday the 17th. Stephanie Madsen, who failed in her Republican primary campaign against Cathy Munoz, has filed for the District 2 (Valley) Assembly seat. I expect there will be others. No one has filed for the District 1 seat although incumbent David Stone is expected to run for re-election. Once again, if anyone you know is interested, please let them know I would be happy to talk with them.