Legislature(1997 - 1998)
02/11/1997 03:05 PM Senate HES
| Audio | Topic |
|---|
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
JOINT SENATE/HOUSE HEALTH, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL
SERVICES STANDING COMMITTEE
February 11, 1997
3:05 p.m.
SENATE MEMBERS PRESENT
Senator Gary Wilken, Chairman
Senator Loren Leman, Vice Chairman
Senator Johnny Ellis
SENATE MEMBERS ABSENT
Senator Lyda Green
Senator Jerry Ward
HOUSE MEMBERS PRESENT
Representative Con Bunde, Chairman
Representative Joe Green, Vice Chairman
Representative Al Vezey
Representative Brian Porter
Representative Fred Dyson
Representative J. Allen Kemplen
HOUSE MEMBERS ABSENT
Representative Tom Brice
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
ALASKAN CHILDREN'S TRUST FUND UPDATE
WITNESS REGISTER
ARLISS STURGULEWSKI
7957 Sheldon Jackson
Anchorage, Alaska 99508
Telephone: (907) 561-5286
POSITION STATEMENT: Presented update on the Alaska Children's
Trust.
MORRIS THOMPSON
2008 Capitol Avenue
Fairbanks, Alaska
Telephone: (907) 452-4955
POSITION STATEMENT: Presented update on the Alaska Children's
Trust.
CAROL H. BRICE, President
Family Training Associates
P.O. Box 81016
Fairbanks, Alaska 99708
Telephone: (907) 479-7461
POSITION STATEMENT: Presented update on the Alaska Children's
Trust
KAREN PERDUE, Commissioner
Department of Health and Social Services
P.O. Box 110601
Juneau, Alaska 99811-0601
Telephone: (907) 465-3030
POSITION STATEMENT: Presented update on the Alaska Children's
Trust.
ACTION NARRATIVE
TAPE 97-8, SIDE A
Number 0000
CHAIRMAN CON BUNDE called the Joint House and Senate Health,
Education and Social Services Committee meeting to order at 3:05
p.m. Senate members present at the call to order were Senators
Wilken, Ellis and Leman. Representative members present at the call
to order were Representatives Bunde, Green, Vezey, Porter, Kemplen
and Brice. Representative Dyson joined the committee meeting at
3:13 p.m. Senator Ward, Senator Green and Representative Brice
were absent. A quorum was present. This meeting was
teleconferenced to Homer, Dillingham, Sitka, Fairbanks, Anchorage
and Kenai.
CHAIRMAN BUNDE said the Joint committee would receive an update on
the Alaska Children's Trust Fund and afterward the House committee
would address a subcommittee report on HB 54 and then address HB 1.
ALASKAN CHILDREN'S TRUST FUND UPDATE
Number 0108
ARLISS STURGULEWSKI said the members of the Alaska Children's Trust
were here today to ask for the committee's general support for
issues affecting children, not to make a specific request. She
said members of the trust include; Carol H. Brice, Family Training
Associates; Morris Thompson, President and CEO of Doyon Limited;
Mark Williams, Alaska Children's Trust Chair, Vice-Chair of Carr
Gottstein Foods Company; Attorney General Bruce M. Botelho;
Commissioner Shirley Holloway of the Department of Education; and
Commissioner Karen Perdue of the Department of Health and Social
Services. She said Nila Rinehart serves half time as staff for the
Children's Cabinet and half time as staff for the Alaska Children's
Trust and that she was here at today's meeting. She said it is
great to have Ms. Rinehart work in the two sectors because it gives
an inter-relationship between the various programs.
Number 0233
MS. STURGULEWSKI said the Alaska Children's Trust was formed back
in 1988, but it had a quiet life as it had no money. Last year $6
million was made available to the trust and is now being managed by
the Department of Revenue (DOR) with Wilson Condon acting as
treasurer for the Alaska Children's Trust. She said the
legislation mandates, through the retention of capital, that the
fund be inflation-proof. The method DOR is using in investing will
give the Alaska Children's Trust slightly better interest than the
rate of inflation. She said the corpus of the trust will be
available for expenditure.
MS. STURGULEWSKI said the primary purpose is to work in partnership
and collaboration with communities, private business and government
to reduce and prevent child abuse as well as promoting healthy
families and communities. The Alaska Children's Trust will be
looking at collaborative efforts. She said she would not go into
a lot of detail about the goals and how they were achieved, but
mentioned that a lot of thought was spent on what to do. She said
the Alaska Children's Trust will be a year old in April and it has
taken a lot of time to get to this point. The trust members were
careful as to selecting where the Alaska Children's Trust would be
heading and what they would do.
Number 0353
MS. STURGULEWSKI said currently under formation now, working for a
5013 status, is a group called the Friends of the Alaska Children's
Trust. This group will be the major fundraising arm for the trust
and they have already received some private corporate grants;
$50,000 in two year increments from Sohio and BP (Alaska) Inc. She
said there is hope that this group will be able to raise major,
private funds from individuals, corporations and various endowment
trusts throughout the country. This is an area where the
legislature could assist the Alaska Children's Trust if there are
other additional funds that could be made available. She said the
Alaska Children's Trust's budget will be proposed during this
legislative session. They are looking at $250,000 to $290,000
which will be put out in grants, but it will need action of the
legislative body as well as of the operating budget.
Number 0458
MORRIS THOMPSON , President and CEO, Doyon Limited, spoke briefly
about why we need the Alaska Children's Trust and cited some
statistics. He said these numbers were unfortunate, but very real
and need to be addressed by communities, by families, individuals,
by leaders and hopefully by the state. He referred to a handout,
located in the committee file, titled, "Alaska Children's Trust,
Annual Report 1996." He said in the three categories of physical,
sexual abuse and neglect the state of Alaska is so far out in front
that it is horrendous. He read, "In children substantiated
indicated reports of abuse and neglect, Alaska is 36.6 per thousand
children in the population. The median is 14, the low is 2."
MR. THOMPSON said it is clear that this is a problem that needs to
be fixed by families, by communities, by citizens, by
municipalities and by leaders. He said every year 1,400 children
are arrested for offenses including assault, rape, robbery and drug
sales. He said 2,200 children drop out of school and more than
10,000 preschoolers live below the poverty level. Alaska leads the
nation in per capita cases of child sexual abuse and neglect. He
said we must work collectively, hopefully with other agencies, to
reduce those numbers. He said on social indicators, we do not want
to be constantly leading the nation in these areas.
MR. THOMPSON said thanks to the legislature there is $6 million in
the corpus to be managed by the DOR as a trust fund.
Number 0673
MS. STURGULEWSKI mentioned that Robert Storer, the investment
officer for the DOR, was available to provide information on the
management of the trust fund.
Number 0682
CAROL H. BRICE , President, Family Training Associates, said she has
been involved in parenting issues for almost 15 years and added
that it is the toughest job in town with little training available.
She said she is excited about where the Alaska Children's Trust can
go and wanted to tell the committee where they are today and what
they see happening in the next couple of months. By March 1, 1997,
the first proposal, the first request for proposal (RFP), the first
invitation for people to look carefully at what is going on in your
community, what do you see that might be a solution dealing with
issues related to children and whether you want to talk with the
Alaska Children's Trust about them will occur. She said the
proposal is only going to be ten pages long, which is very
different from a lot of RFPs.
Ms. Brice said Alaska Children's Trust hopes to reach out to the
smaller communities, to the people that are right there in the
community, who are able to say what is going on with their kids and
what they think might be able to be done to help. If it is a small
project, the Alaska Children's Trust is willing to give anywhere
from $10,000 to $50,000 to support it. She said the Alaska
Children's Trust will have between $250,000 and $290,000 to award.
She said they expected to have the RFPs back by mid-May, take a
look at them, address the issues, consider them and by July 1,
1997, the trust will give their first awards. She said the Alaska
Children's Trust is not in competition with the state and other
programs. Hopefully the Alaska Children's Trust will be
supplemental by looking at issues that have never been able to be
funded and help people think creatively about what can happen.
Number 0811
Ms. Brice remembered, as an example, a situation that occurred when
she was serving on the Health and Social Services Commission in
Fairbanks a few years ago. A young man came to their office and
said for almost a year he had been teaching school children boxing
in the Northrup Building. He requested $10,000 to send some of
those kids to Juneau to compete in a boxing tournament. It was a
very non-traditional proposal that he made, the paper work was not
adequate at all, but they went into session, considered it and gave
him his $10,000. She said this is an example of somebody dealing,
in a practical way, with youth. Youth that otherwise were on the
streets. She said, today, that is an up and going organization
that has a lot of community support.
Number 0870
Ms. Brice said the Alaska Children's Trust will not fund any
program 100 percent. They will fund it 75 percent the first year.
If they come back to the Alaska Children's Trust for a second year
with another level of their program that they want the trust to
consider, again the trust will fund 75 percent. The third and
fourth year the funding is down to 50 percent and the fifth and
sixth year the funding is down to 25 percent. She said there is
going to have to be collaboration, networking in the programs and
that the Alaska Children's Trust is not a give-away program. She
said there are people out there doing good things and we need to
collaborate and build on services that are already being offered.
Number 0911
Ms. Brice said, in her mind, children are the indicators of the
health of a community. The statistics, Mr. Thompson referred to,
show us that we don't have a very healthy community and said it is
of great concern to her. She hoped that when she came to Juneau in
succeeding years to talk about children's issues that when she
meets people in the hall they also are talking about children's
issues.
Number 0916
MS. STURGULEWSKI said the Alaska Children's Trust is on their way,
but want to keep in frequent communication with the legislature so
that it is known what is being done. She said they don't want the
work of the Alaska Children's Trust duplicated in the
Administration. She said they'd like to see some innovative
programs, people reaching out and finding ways to deal with some of
these issues. She referred to articles in "Time", "U.S. News and
World Report" and said there is an explosion of what happens to
kids in that zero to two years of age. She said these years
determine what they are going to be intellectually for their life.
Number 0962
CHAIRMAN BUNDE thanked the witnesses and said the committee is
often faced with problems and challenges. He said it is nice that
someone has taken the ball and started to run with it. He added
that the committee is pleased that the trust is coming back in just
a year and given the committee some positive results. He said, as
the legislature often does, the trust will be rewarded by being
given even higher expectations.
Number 0989
MS. STURGULEWSKI said in many of the communities, certainly in the
community that she is from, organizations are not seeing as many
federal or state dollars coming through. She said, as a result,
there is a lot more collaboration and working together happening in
the community where the need is, a better utilization of resources.
She said the biggest challenge is how to get people more involved,
whether it is people in schools or getting them to help with other
existing programs.
Number 1027
CHAIRMAN BUNDE thanked all three of the people who made the
presentation for their time and energy because they have hit the
nail on the head when they said you do not solve these problems by
throwing money on them. He said the personal involvement and the
buy-in is going to make progress in these type of problems.
Number 1042
CHAIRMAN GARY WILKEN said he has been briefed on a lot of things
since November 5, 1996, and one of the most exciting ones was when
Ms. Brice came to him and discussed the Alaska Children's Trust.
He said he embraced the trust as an Alaskan and hoped that, through
the legislature, he can help. He hoped that sometime in the future
he would be able to embrace the results as well. He said he would
admonish them and encourage them, as they go through the selection
process for the first couple of years, to make sure that they make
the right choices. He said the way we're going to measure the
results and the worth of their project is by what happens in those
first few years. He said the first decisions will be the most
difficult as you are laying some new foundations for youth. It is
an exciting concept and a lot of good things will come out of it if
it is handled right.
Number 1095
MS. STURGULEWSKI said there is a self-evaluation within the Alaska
Children's Trust. She said the toughest thing will be to prove
that the Alaska Children's Trust works because they are doing
little things, spread broadly which can be more effective.
Number 1115
REPRESENTATIVE FRED DYSON referred to the presentation done by the
Alaska Children's Trust at the Children's Caucus. He wanted to
identify with both chairs' comments.
Number 1137
REPRESENTATIVE BRIAN PORTER also wanted to identify with the
chairs' comments.
Number 1165
REPRESENTATIVE JOE GREEN said he hoped that in the Alaska
Children's Trust presentation to the Children's Caucus the lack of
majority members was not a deterrent and said there was a prior
commitment. He said the legislature takes these issues seriously.
REPRESENTATIVE GREEN said he watched a film by a psychologist which
said if we can change or help a child during their formative years,
we can save tons and tons of money because that child won't get
into a problem lifestyle.
Number 1202
MS. STURGULEWSKI said the chairman of the Children's Caucus was
careful to point out that fact that not all of the legislators
could be there. She said she was impressed by the number that
attended the caucus and added that it is a good way to get into a
number of these issues, not just the issues involving the Alaska
Children's Trust.
Number 1228
CHAIRMAN BUNDE recognized Commissioner Perdue and asked her if she
wanted to make some comments.
Number 1243
KAREN PERDUE , Commissioner, Department of Health and Social
Services, said, because of her position, she appreciates the
members of the Alaska Children's Trust and their efforts. She said
the fact that the money is going to the communities instead of
state entities is doubly important. She wanted to thank them for
all their work and apologized for not being at the Children's
Caucus because there was a bomb scare at the state office building.
Number 1280
CHAIRMAN BUNDE thanked the trust members again and adjourned the
Joint House/Senate Health, Education and Social Services Committee
meeting at 3:27 p.m.
| Document Name | Date/Time | Subjects |
|---|