Stevens, who was first elected to the state House in 2000 and has represented Senate District R since 2003, was selected by his colleagues to serve as president of the Senate.
Seaton, who was re-elected to his fourth term as representative for House District 35 on Nov. 4, will serve as chairman of the House Education Committee.
That committee, said Seaton, was established by the 25th legislature just last year - it was formerly part of the House Education and Social Services committee - and he will be its first ever chairman.
"Last year, we decided that education, from pre-kindergarten to university and adult education, was such a broad and important subject, that it deserved its own committee," said Seaton.
The committee is a standing committee, meaning that it has its authority in state statute and has a counterpart committee in the senate. It will have seven members, said Seaton, but house members are waiting for official results of the Nov. 4 general election to be finalized before they name those members.
Much work was done in the area of education by last year's legislature, said Seaton, including forward funding of school districts statewide, but there is still more to do.
Seaton would like to see the new committee focus on early childhood education, for instance, and on adult workforce training and vocational education. An increase in adult workforce training would help residents in rural parts of the state, said Seaton, and help them find well-paying jobs in the oil and gas industry, public safety and the legal system.
"We need to develop interest and training in the local communities for these jobs," said Seaton. "We're hoping to get current residents educated for numerous jobs in rural Alaska."
Stevens said he was honored to have been chosen by his colleagues to lead the senate.
"It's pretty exciting stuff, at least when you've been around as long as I have," he said. "It's going to be a challenge."
The job of senate president is similar to being a "traffic cop," said Seaton. The primary official responsibility of the office is to guide bills through the legislature by assigning them to various committees. Past senate presidents, said Stevens, have assigned bills they didn't like to numerous committees, assuring that they will never make it to the senate floor.
The unofficial part of his new job, said Stevens, is leading the senate majority caucus.
"It's sort of a management job," he said. "Mainly it's about trust. I'd like to think that's the reason they picked me."
Leading the current majority caucus might be particularly challenging, Stevens added.
"The real issue for the senate is we wound up with 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats," he said. "It really is a little problematic because you simply can't have a caucus without crossing party lines. It takes a little time to do that, but I expect there will ultimately be a few more Republicans in the majority caucus."
Presently, all 10 senate Democrats are members of the caucus but only three Republicans, including Stevens, have joined the group. Last year, the Senate majority group was formed by nine Democrats and six Republicans and was led by Sen. Lyda Green (R-Wasilla), who decided not to run for reelection this year. It marked the first time in 15 years the Alaska senate was led by a bipartisan majority.
"It was controversial but it did work," said Stevens. "It really does mean that you don't deal so much with those issues on the extreme right or far left - you deal with issues that Alaskans are really concerned with."
Stevens and Seaton agreed that improved communication with the governor's office should be a top priority for the next legislative session.
"There were many conflicts with the governor and the senate president last year," said Stevens, referring to an often publicly tense relationship between Green and Gov. Sarah Palin. "We need to find ways we can work with her and make sure that the directions we want are the same. We should have better communications"
"She's been a quick study and the public is behind her," said Seaton. "The way we worked so well in the past is to concentrate on issues that are good for Alaska. If she still picks issues like that we'll all be working on the same page again."
Aaron Selbig can be reached at aaron.selbig@homernews.com.
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Homer Alaska - News -
Story last updated at
9:39 PM on
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Homer's reps get leadership posts in Juneau
By Aaron Selbig
Staff Writer
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