Big questions were on the table for House District 6 candidates at a forum hosted at Kachemak Bay Campus on Monday by the Homer Chamber of Commerce. Incumbent Sarah Vance and challengers Brent Johnson and Dawson Slaughter grappled with some key issues that the district has been facing, including education funding, fisheries, energy shortages and the local and state economy.

The forum was moderated by chamber Executive Director Brad Anderson. Questions for the forum were submitted by members of the chamber board of directors and local member businesses. Audience members attending in person on Monday also had the opportunity during the forum to write in questions for the candidates.

The way forward on education

The forum started off with what Vance called “a loaded question” — what are the candidates’ plans to fund Alaska’s education system, other than increasing the base student allocation?

Vance reminded the audience that the base student allocation is the mechanism by which money is distributed to each school on an equal footing, and that the Legislature this year “fully funded” the BSA and added an additional $322 million to that budget.

“There’s been a lot of controversy over me not overriding the governor’s veto, and the reason I chose not to do that is because I was fighting for three things — specifically, additional teacher bonuses, 100% correspondence funding to homeschools and an easier path for charter schools,” she said. “Charter schools are public schools in Alaska, and I believe that they should have an opportunity.”

Vance said she was also the “final vote” on the Alaska Reads Act — which directed the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development to establish a reading program to provide direct support for and intervention services for the lowest-performing 25% of schools.

“There were questions about that being an unfunded mandate, so we gave additional funding to be able to help with that,” she said. “There are many other measures … I look forward to further conversation.”

Johnson said one of the biggest needs is to fund the BSA in time for school districts to know how much money they’ll receive to fund teacher positions and more before setting their own budgets, “so they don’t give pink slips when pink slips aren’t necessary.”

Slaughter said that it’s necessary to spend money to make sure children have opportunities in school, but the state can also consider an efficiency audit when dispersing funding “to make sure we’re getting the results we need.”

He also iterated the state constitution’s stance that public money must stay within the public school system.

“We cannot use public funds for private or religious institutions,” he said. “I believe that parents can choose what school options for your kids, and that’s absolutely fine, but when it comes to public dollars, they need to stay within the public realms.”

Workforce retention

The next question asked the candidates their stances on defined benefits for government employees.

Johnson said that the current lack of defined benefits contributes to the state’s difficulties retaining government employees and teachers, and that he’s in favor of increasing retirement programs for teachers and public employees.

Slaughter also equated having a defined benefits package to employee retention.

“As an employer, I look at this from the standpoint that it costs too much in the long run to keep retraining and hiring new people,” he said. “If we want good quality people across our education, our fire and EMS, our police force, we need to look at the benefit package we’re going to provide for them so that they will stay here.”

Vance said that the previous defined benefits programs ended in 2016 because it became “a huge burden to the state.”

“We still owe anywhere between $6-8 billion on that original defined benefits package. I oppose the current rendition of it once again — we currently have a defined contribution plan, and the complaint is that we’re not recruiting and retaining enough people because of the benefits,” she said.

Vance, who sits on the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee, said that the audits show that the state is losing employees because they “don’t have enough proper training.”

“We have failed as a state to look at ourselves in a way that is supporting the employees that we have by properly training them. A lot of the complaints are not coming from the benefits package, it’s that they need help with their current job title and the support to be able to carry out that job,” she said. “We also need to help be able to offset the workload, and that’s an issue that isn’t going to go away with a defined benefits package.”

PFD divisions

Anderson followed up with a question on how each candidate thought the Alaska PFD should be set.

Vance said she previously voted that the PFD should be set according to law, “as it currently is,” but that the Legislature should enshrine it in the constitution.

“That way it’s guaranteed every year, and you know that the Legislature cannot ignore that statute,” she said. “That’s been a controversial item for quite some time, but I believe in it because I don’t believe the original formula is broken.”

Johnson said that the Legislature needs to be “realistic and honest” about the budget.

“To fully fund the PFD is going to cost over $3,500 a year. It is not in the budget to do that. So what needs to happen, to keep the PFD from deteriorating any further, you’re going to have to do things like increasing oil tax,” he said.

Slaughter agreed with Vance that the formula works, and that “we need to make sure the legislators don’t touch it.”

“The money’s there, I think we can give a full PFD if we wanted to. But we also need to make sure the revenue still stays in there and we invest wisely — and I’ll touch a little on what Brent said, we’re giving companies big incentives for doing business here, and when we’re giving away these incentives to the oil companies, we need to really look at restructuring the incentives we give to them,” he said.

On to fishing

Anderson introduced a question from the audience that cited the recent incident of Kodiak trawlers unintentionally catching more than 2,000 king salmon in federal waters, and asked the candidates what they could do to ensure this type of bycatch is no longer permitted.

Johnson said that the state of Alaska doesn’t have direct oversight over the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, but the governor can be lobbied to make “better recommendations” for future council members. Additionally, he said, studies need to be conducted “that are going to tell us what kings the trawlers are catching and move (the trawlers) out of areas where they’re catching the kings.”

“So far we know that western Alaska, Yukon River, is getting hit hard by the trawlers. We don’t know where Kenai River and Cook Inlet king salmon go,” he said. “We need to know where they go. We know that British Columbia king salmon come here to Kachemak Bay, and they seem quite happy — we want our kings to go somewhere and be happy, and obviously, in a trawl net is not a place to be happy.”

Slaughter agreed that it’s necessary to “keep our resources and sustain them.” He said to do that, he would use his resources and work with experts in the industry to find the best way to move forward.

Vance cited her previous work on getting the NPFMC to adopt abundance-based management, which is a means of establishing harvest levels based on the current abundance of each species. She said the council didn’t reduce bycatch as much as the Legislature had wanted, but it was “a step in the right direction.”

“I did that through advocating directly to the governor that his influence with the people he appointed does matter. I’ve continued to write letters to the NPFMC. … I’ve also recently written a letter on the definition of pelagic trawl,” she said.

Talking local

Candidates were next asked what they saw as the current needs or issues for District 6.

Slaughter’s answer was “infrastructure” — including roads, health care and addressing the ongoing opioid crisis, and education funding and services.

Vance said that the Kenai Peninsula needs a “strong and stable economy,” and that the three needs factoring into that are affordable housing, affordable child care and transportation.

Johnson answered that the district needs “energy we can afford,” which can include such measures as implementing alternative energy sources like solar, wind and tidal power, or importing natural gas. He also suggested addressing the setnet fishery on the peninsula, and funding roads.

The three candidates debated how to address the projected natural gas shortage in the Cook Inlet.

Slaughter said he didn’t think it was necessary to import natural gas “right now,” and that he would consult experts in the field to find the best solution.

“I think that we can safely explore our area here and try to get the resources out … and that’s a public-private partnership, and (we need to) make sure that we don’t endanger our other resources, such as our fishing industry,” he said.

Vance said that one of the needed solutions, which she fought for in the last legislative session, was to equalize royalties and make it more economically viable for smaller companies, such as Furie Operating Alaska, LLC, to be able to produce natural gas.

“Gas is there — there’s not a flood of it in Cook Inlet, but it’s still there. We’re not running dry, but it’s just not economically viable,” she said. “I believe we can do that, but it’s going to take a little more work in the Legislature.”

She also said that she’s a “big proponent” of the natural gas line from the North Slope.

Johnson refuted the idea of the North Slope pipeline, saying that “private enterprise has not come up with the money, nor do they even have anywhere on the horizon to come up with the money to build a pipeline.”

“We’re going to deal with realities in my camp. So far, what I’m hearing is that importing natural gas is going to be far cheaper than any other method,” he said. “Like Dawson, I’m going to be depending on what experts tell me. I do know this — under me, we’re also going to be looking for ways to do things like the Nikiski solar farm and tidal power.”

Anderson next asked whether the candidates felt the state should operate under a meaningful spending cap on budget expenditures. All three agreed that the state should.

To rank or not?

The candidates were asked their opinions on ranked choice voting — a hot topic with the upcoming Ballot Measure 2, which will ask voters in the Nov. 5 election whether to eliminate top-four primaries and ranked-choice voting general elections in Alaska, which were adopted in 2020.

Both Johnson and Slaughter said they will vote no on Ballot Measure 2.

“It turns out that quite often I want to vote on both sides,” Johnson said. “I think that’s the way it should be, that we should be able to vote on both sides.”

Vance said she opposes ranked choice voting and will vote yes on Ballot Measure 2.

Living and working in Alaska

Anderson introduced another audience question asking the candidates what they would do in office to improve the availability and affordability of child care and housing.

On child care, Vance cited the task force instituted by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, which she said has been working with the administration to “reduce the red tape” on allowing people to come into the child care workforce more easily.

Johnson said that “this is one of those areas where government can help.”

Slaughter agreed that the government “does have to provide some service,” and reducing “red tape to fast-track some of the process to move forward” is a direction the Legislature can go.

On housing, and how the candidates would work to avoid conflicts between private sector and state development, Johnson said he would rely on experts for help finding solutions. He cited the recent borough-sponsored land auction that aimed to help local residents purchase land, rather than outside investors.

Slaughter said part of the solution might be found in working with the private sector.

“The developers, the contractors — they’re all here to make money, and I get that. But I think if we work with having some kind of incentive program, working with the government and local contractors to put up some lower income housing, that might help out,” he said.

Vance cited the Legislature’s recent passing of a lumber grading bill that she said would encourage more responsible forest management and allow lumber to be developed locally.

“If we can have our own building materials, that’s going to save us immensely on shipping costs,” she said. “We need to reduce the cost of doing business in Alaska instead of increasing the fees and regulations. We need proper regulations to make things safe, but not those that are going to be continually burdensome and cause the cost of housing to go up.”

She also said that the state needs more trained members in the workforce and continued investment in tech schools in the state.

Spurring the economy

One of the final questions asked candidates how they proposed to bring new revenue into the state.

Vance said she believed the state should do anything it can do to stimulate the economy and bring industry and businesses to Alaska, including developing the state’s natural resources. She also spoke on Alaskans as entrepreneurs with creating small businesses, which she said have “more online opportunities and better broadband.”

“If we continue with our creativity and empowering the free market, we’re going to increase the revenue into the state,” she said.

Johnson agreed, citing the borough assembly’s previous allowance for marijuana growers to operate within the Kenai Peninsula Borough as a new revenue source. He also suggested “tweaking the oil tax” and being open about other taxes for industries such as mining as ways to produce more revenue.

Slaughter said that there might be taxes and incentives that could be tweaked, but “taxing ourselves or implementing another one is not the move that we need to make right now.”

“What we need to do, and this is my opinion, is reduce some of the red tape that we have in the government to allow businesses to come in … to stimulate our economy. When that happens, we create more jobs, we create more revenue here in the state, and we’re all better for that,” he said.

Find the full forum recording on the Homer Chamber of Commerce website at www.homeralaska.org/chamber/resources/discussions/, or on their Facebook page.

Anchor Point Chamber of Commerce president Dawson Slaughter gives his opening statement during a forum hosted by the Homer Chamber of Commerce for Alaska State House District 6 candidates on Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, at Kachemak Bay Campus in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)

Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly President Brent Johnson speaks during a forum hosted by the Homer Chamber of Commerce for Alaska State House District 6 candidates on Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, at Kachemak Bay Campus in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)

Homer Chamber of Commerce executive director Brad Anderson moderates a forum for the Alaska State House District 6 candidates on Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, at Kachemak Bay Campus in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)