Alaska’s prosecutors, police and rape victims are getting some extra help from the Alaska Legislature.
In one of its final actions of the regular session, the Legislature approved a series of technical and consensus changes to last year’s criminal justice reform effort. Included within the just-passed Senate Bill 55 is a provision calling for a statewide audit of the state’s untested sexual assault kits.
“Our system of processing sexual assault examination kits is confusing and broken. These kits include valuable DNA evidence that can bring criminals to justice, but far too many of the kits are never inventoried or analyzed,” said Rep. Geran Tarr, D-Anchorage and the author of the section, in a prepared statement.
SB 55 passed the House in a 37-2 vote on Wednesday and was confirmed by the Senate with a 17-0 vote later that day.
SB 55 was brought forward by Sen. John Coghill, R-North Pole, to make technical and consensus changes to the criminal justice reform bill known as Senate Bill 91.
That measure, approved by the Legislature in 2016, has attracted vocal detractors who blame it for what they see as a rise in crime. Statistics are mixed.
A Coghill staffer said most of the measures within SB 55 will be unnoticed by more than a few hundred Alaskans; they matter mostly to judges and work behind the scenes of the criminal justice system.
One measure requested by the City and Borough of Juneau allows municipalities to impose larger fines for violations of local ordinances. SB 91 had inadvertently blocked cities and boroughs from levying larger fines for non-criminal problems than the state does.
Like many bills at the end of the regular session, SB 55 picked up riders along the way, and those riders may matter to more Alaskans than the original bill.
There is a tradition in the Legislature of attaching slow-moving bills to measures bound for passage. That move has two purposes: It can speed time-sensitive legislation or it can break free items that are otherwise stymied.
Tarr had introduced House Bill 31 earlier this year to require an audit of the state’s inventory of rape kits. The kits are used by police to collect physical evidence when a victim says he or she has been raped. Those kits sometimes go forensically untested, based on the needs and abilities of prosecutors and police.
Only a portion of HB 31 was included in HB 55, but it wasn’t the only bill to benefit from the passage of SB 55 this week. House Bill 8, sponsored by Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, D-Dillingham, makes Alaska compliant with the federal Violence against Women Act.
All of that bill, which requires the enforcement of protective orders by local police, was included in SB 55 after HB 8 failed to move from the Senate Rules Committee in late April.
“Rolling bills into others is a practice that happens often in the last weeks of session,” said Rep. Lora Reinbold, R-Eagle River, by text message. “It happened a few times the last day of session.”
As lawmakers prepared to hold their final vote on SB 55, Reinbold attempted to amend the measure with elements of Senate Bill 54, a larger, more comprehensive rollback of some elements of SB 91.
Edgmon, from the Speaker’s chair, ruled Reinbold’s amendments out of order.
Reinbold and other members of the Republican House Minority loudly protested that ruling Wednesday and again Thursday, at times pounding their desks in frustration.
Reinbold said she was attempting to meet the requests of her constituents, who want to see tougher criminal penalties for some crimes. By email, she called SB 91 “the worst piece of legislation that has ever been passed in Alaska.”
She called her amendments her top priority of the year and said she was frustrated when Edgmon “hypocritically” ruled them out of order because they are addressed by a separate bill.
SB 54, the larger criminal justice rollback, remains stalled in the House Community and Regional Affairs Committee. SB 55 awaits the signature of Gov. Bill Walker to become law. Reinbold has introduced separate measures to partially or completely repeal SB 91.
In its final regular week, the Legislature also:
• Approved a land grant of 14,666 state acres to the new Petersburg Borough;
• Clarified the duties of the ombudsman who investigates the state’s long-term care facilities for seniors and the disabled;
• Reduced the education requirements for a nail technician license;
• Extended the board of veterinary examiners through 2025;
• Named a Capitol conference room after former Sen. Al Adams;
• Renewed a wastewater discharge exemption for small cruise ships and the state’s ferries.
Senate Bill 3, Senate Bill 28, Senate Bill 51, and Senate Bill 83 now go to the governor.
