Latest news with #SB113
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Alaska Legislature overrides Gov. Dunleavy's veto of public school funding bill
Rep. Neal Foster, D-Nome, votes in favor of overriding Gov. Mike Dunleavy's veto of House Bill 57 on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon) For the first time since 2002, the Alaska Legislature has overridden the veto of a sitting governor. With a 46-14 vote, lawmakers enacted a significant increase to Alaska's per-student public funding formula, overriding Gov. Mike Dunleavy's decision to reject House Bill 57. Forty votes were needed for an override. It was the third time in two years that the governor vetoed a significant education funding bill; lawmakers failed by a single vote to override the governor last year. A second veto earlier this year was sustained by a larger margin. Tuesday's vote may be the first chapter in a longer struggle between the governor and the Legislature. HB 57 prescribes an increase to the state's public school funding formula, but that formula is subject to appropriations in the annual state budget. To use an analogy: If the formula is a bucket, the budget fills that bucket. Dunleavy has previously said he may veto some education money from the state budget, leaving the formula only partially funded. In addition, parts of HB 57 are contingent upon the enactment of Senate Bill 113, a bill adjusting the state's corporate income taxes. On Monday, Dunleavy implied that he will veto SB 113. Overriding either a funding veto or a veto of SB 113 would require 45 votes. Some legislators who voted to override the governor on Monday declined to confirm that they would override vetoes on the two funding mechanisms. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Corporate tax update, passed by Alaska Senate, could generate millions for dividends, services
Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, speaks Tuesday, April 15, 2025, on the floor of the Alaska Senate. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon) A change to Alaska's corporate income tax structure is expected to add as much as $65 million per year to the state treasury by diverting money from other states. The Alaska Senate voted 16-4 on Tuesday to approve Senate Bill 113, which clarifies that online sales to Alaskans amount to business activity within the state. If passed by the House and approved by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, it would be the state's first new revenue-generating law in years. Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage and the sponsor of the bill, said that without the change, businesses can say that the location of an online sale is a server farm or warehouse outside of the state, making it ineligible for Alaska taxation. Passing the bill is a step toward resolving a major budget deficit, he said, adding that the change won't have an impact on Alaskans and isn't a tax increase. Thirty-six other states have adopted similar tax rules. 'It's about as close as you can get to a unicorn bill to raise money for the state of Alaska,' he said during a news conference on Tuesday. 'It's a bill that doesn't raise taxes on Alaskans, doesn't raise taxes on Alaskan businesses. It's not going to cost any more simply changing the structure of our corporate income tax. It will probably, quite frankly, shift money from other states to the state of Alaska, and so it'll be a unicorn. It's kind of a rarity. There's probably not too many of these out there,' Wielechowski said. Sen. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage, said the bill is necessary to modernize the state's tax system. 'You can get pretty much anything online and it comes to your door, and many of these companies that are doing business here in Alaska pay a little or no corporate income tax due due to what has become, I think, an outdated structure for how we assess companies that are primarily located out of state,' he said. Opposition came from four Republican members of the Senate minority, including Sen. Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer, who said she believes it is inappropriate to pass a new revenue measure without also considering changes to the state's spending cap. Senate Minority Leader Mike Shower, R-Wasilla, also voted against the bill, saying he doubts Wielechowski's claims and believes costs will be passed to Alaskans. 'Somewhere, somebody's paying more money if we're raising taxes. The businesses are not charities,' he said. SB 113 has been referred to the House Finance Committee for further hearings. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Alabama Senate committee approves $10 billion education budget
Senate Finance and Taxation Education committee Chair Arthur Orr leads the committee's meeting opn April 9, 2025 in Montgomery, Ala. (Alander Rocha/Alabama Reflector) An Alabama Senate committee Wednesday approved a nearly $10 billion education budget for 2026 that increases funding in some areas and prepares for an attempt to overhaul how state schools get money. SB 112, the main budget bill sponsored by Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, would increase the education budget for the fiscal year 2026, which begins October 1, by $543.3 million, or 5.81%, to $9.89 billion. 'We're still in a good place with resources for our public educational institutions, be they universities, colleges, junior colleges, and K-12, Pre-K and other elements,' Orr said, though he added that they have 'to be very mindful going forward' not only due to future economic uncertainty but also because of efforts to create a new funding formula. The budget includes $9.6 million to fund a new parental leave law for state and education employees, as well as $15.6 million for an injury compensation program for education employees awaiting legislative approval. The budget also appropriates $2.5 million for a pilot project to provide teletherapy, or mental health counseling via phone or video, in schools and increased funding for prison education by $3.7 million, or a 19.3% increase, for a total of $22.8 million. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'We know that there's a lot of mental health challenges in our schools today. Well, there are companies that do via video telecounseling, and because it's so hard, as you heard in the committee, to find school counselors, this will be an assist,' Orr said. The Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative (AMSTI) would receive an increase of 31%, increasing it's funding by $32.2 million under the Senate committee substitute. The Alabama Reading Initiative'sfunding would increase by 6.4% percent, a $9 million increase. Transportation funding would be increased by about 9.1%, or about $40 million. The state's share that it pays for state and education employees is also increasing. PEEHIP would have to contribute $904 to each education employee's health insurance premiums, up fron $800, while SEIB would have to contribute $1,025 to their state employee's health insurance premiums. The Alabama Public Library Service would keep their funding level from the current fiscal year. The budget does not include a $100 million supplemental appropriation to transition the state's student funding formula to a hybrid model from the Education Opportunities Reserve Fund for the same fiscal year. SB 111, also sponsored by Orr, would appropriate $375 million over three years for that transition, which aims to get more money to students with particular needs, including children in poverty and English Language Learners. The committee also approved SB 113, sponsored by Orr, which appropriates an additional $524.3 million to schools in the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30. That includes $100 million to local school boards for new school buses and $166 million to the State Department of Education for one-time expenses, such as college and career readiness grants and providing additional school safety training and services. Orr said that higher education institutions received additional funding in the supplemental to keep the current funding ratio between K-12 and higher education due to an increase from the student funding formula changes. 'Colleges and universities usually get around 25%, 27% of whatever the K-12 world gets, so they're going to be getting additional resources in this budget because we remove $375 [million] from the savings account [and] put it towards K-12,' Orr said. SB 114, also sponsored by Orr, is another supplemental appropriation bill that would allocate $1.25 billion from the Education Trust Fund Advancement and Technology Fund for the current fiscal year, ending September 30. That supplemental also includes about $908 million for the Department of Education to be distributed to local school boards and other education state entities, such as the Board of Trustees of the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind and the Board of Youth Services School Districts. The committee also approved separate funding bills for Tuskegee University, totaling $15.8 million, Talladega College with $1.33 million, and Southern Preparatory Academy, a boarding school in Camp Hill, totaling $450,000. Orr said he expects the Senate to consider the funding bills Thursday. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Uncompromising sponsor sees parent-rights bill die
PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — Republican Sen. Tamara Grove wouldn't give in. Instead, the first-year lawmaker could only watch on Wednesday as the South Dakota House of Representatives debated whether to kill her Senate Bill 113 that would protect parents' rights to raise their children as they see fit. Grove stook in the back of the House chamber and later paced the legislators-only hallway as one after another representative stood to speak. County officials differ on new property tax bill She had refused to accept a House version that added a sentence saying state laws on child abuse and juvenile courts would still apply, regardless of the rest of her bill's content. The House sentence specifically said, 'No person may use this section to challenge a proceeding under chapters 26-7A or 26-8A.' Grove found that sentence unacceptable. The stand-off led to the appointment of a conference committee. Its members on Wednesday morning recommended 5-1 removing the sentence added by the House and returning the bill to the Senate version. When the House considered whether to accept the conference report on Wednesday afternoon, Republican Rep. Tim Reisch called for the bill's rejection. 'It's very troubling that the bill's sponsor doesn't want to include a simple sentence of clarification that our laws against child abuse and neglect are not to be impacted by this,' Reisch said. A former Miner County sheriff and a former state secretary of corrections, Reisch had called for the addition of the sentence when SB 113 came through the House the first time. The vote on the amendment that day was 37-32. On Wednesday, Reisch cast the nay during the conference vote. The hour-long debate among House members that followed saw several opponents of the bill deliver emotional speeches about their experiences in law enforcement and the Department of Social Services, interspersed by comments from supporters such as Republican Rep. Travis Ismay, who was a foster parent for seven years. 'The system is broke. Parents need to have parental rights and have it in law like this,' Ismay said. In the end, the House followed Reisch's lead and voted 39-31 for a double-barreled motion to not accept the conference committee's report and to not appoint a new committee. And with that, SB 113 was dead. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
