Seventeen of Alaska’s 20 state senators and senator-elects have banded together to form a bipartisan majority coalition that members promise will be moderate and consensus-focused.
Sen. Gary Stevens of Kodiak, right, speaks at an Anchorage news conference on Friday announcing the formation of a 17-member bipartisan majority caucus. Stevens, a Republican, will be president of the body and Republican Cathy Giessel, sitting next to him, will be majority leader. Matt Claman, an Anchorage Democrat who is moving from the House to the Senate, will chair the Judiciary Committee, Stevens announced. In all, the caucus will hold nine Democrats and eight Republicans.
Announcement of the new organization came two days after the state Division of Election made a final count of ballots cast in the state’s new ranked choice system. That confirmed that 11 Republicans and nine Democrats will be in the Senate. For Democrats, the results represent a two-seat gain. For some Republicans, the results affirmed the value of past bipartisan work.
“I think this is a recognition of the reality of the last four years. We have not been able to get several of our senators to support the budget. We’ve had to go around them and bring the Democrats in in order to pass the budget,” he said. “Unfortunately, the new coalition is bound by terms counterproductive to what I ran on and seems to be focused on maintaining the status quo,” Myers said in the statement.
“You know, what I learned from that two-year period was that nothing gets done unless you work with everyone,” she said at the news conference, recounting later successes through cooperation with Democrats. “Over the years, my health care legislation was always passed by assistance from House Democrats.
Oil prices have fallen, and recent monthly estimates from the Department of Revenue forecast slips in expected money into the treasury over the current and coming fiscal years., released on Nov. 16, forecasts total fiscal 2023 revenue available for state spending will be $372 million less than what was expected when the year’s budget was passed last spring. The November estimate also forecasts revenue for budget that begins in July 2023 will be $580.6 million less than last spring’s estimate.
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