Legislature(2003 - 2004)
03/09/2004 03:40 PM Senate STA
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ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE
SENATE STATE AFFAIRS STANDING COMMITTEE
March 9, 2004
3:40 p.m.
TAPE (S) 04-16
MEMBERS PRESENT
Senator Gary Stevens, Chair
Senator John Cowdery, Vice Chair
Senator Bert Stedman
MEMBERS ABSENT
Senator Gretchen Guess
Senator Lyman Hoffman
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
SENATE BILL NO. 351
"An Act requiring the Alaska Public Offices Commission to accept
documents by nonelectronic means."
MOVED SB 351 OUT OF COMMITTEE
SENATE RESOLUTION NO. 3
Relating to commemoration of Senator Frank R. Ferguson and other
distinguished Senators.
SCHEDULED BUT NOT HEARD
SENATE BILL NO. 352
"An Act amending the Public Employment Relations Act to exclude
from collective bargaining individuals who perform confidential
or managerial duties for a public employer and relating to those
exclusions; and providing for an effective date."
SCHEDULED BUT NOT HEARD
SENATE BILL NO. 245
"An Act relating to retirement contributions and benefits under
the public employees' retirement system of certain harbor
officers."
SCHEDULED BUT NOT HEARD
CS FOR HOUSE BILL NO. 230(STA)
"An Act relating to political signs on private property."
SCHEDULED BUT NOT HEARD
PREVIOUS COMMITTEE ACTION
BILL: SB 351
SHORT TITLE: APOC REPORTS BY NONELECTRONIC MEANS
SPONSOR(s): FINANCE
02/18/04 (S) READ THE FIRST TIME - REFERRALS
02/18/04 (S) STA, FIN
03/04/04 (S) STA AT 3:30 PM BELTZ 211
03/04/04 (S) Heard & Held
03/04/04 (S) MINUTE(STA)
03/09/04 (S) STA AT 3:30 PM BELTZ 211
WITNESS REGISTER
Senator Lyda Green
Alaska State Capitol
Juneau, AK 99801-1182
POSITION STATEMENT: Sponsor of SB 351
Christina Ellingson
Assistant Director
Public Offices Commission (APOC)
Department of Administration
PO Box 110200
Juneau, AK 99811-0200
POSITION STATEMENT: Spoke in opposition to SB 351
ACTION NARRATIVE
TAPE 04-16, SIDE A
CHAIR GARY STEVENS called the Senate State Affairs Standing
Committee meeting to order at 3:40 p.m. Present were Senators
Cowdery, Stedman, and Chair Gary Stevens.
SB 351-APOC REPORTS BY NONELECTRONIC MEANS
CHAIR GARY STEVENS announced SB 351 to be up for consideration
and proceeded to recognize Senator Green.
SENATOR LYDA GREEN, Senate representative from District G and
sponsor of SB 351, stated that she introduced the bill because
she believes there was an oversight when the original
legislation was passed. She said, "Either I missed the language
when we went through the passage of this language and the
corrections to it or I misunderstood them or I was doing
something else." That legislation gives APOC the authority to
mandate electronic filing and she reported that her husband was
most unpleased when he learned that APOC is adopting the
electronic system because she and her husband don't file her
candidate paperwork electronically. She added, "We do everything
by hand still because we're out of touch, and old, and it is not
our choice to do it electronically." Noting that electronic
filing for the permanent fund has been fraught with problems she
reasoned that it's not a good idea to implement a new system
quickly without allowing time to deal with associated problems.
Continuing that line of reasoning she said, "Imagine your dismay
if you're in the middle of transmitting one of your 40 page
report of information to APOC and a similar thing happens." She
asserted that you wouldn't necessarily know that your filing was
incomplete.
She noted that very few states have opted for an electronic
mandate and according to APOC it's only the states that don't
have a mandate that have had a successful transition. That, she
said, is an indication of resistance. In light of the fact that
she and many others don't want to file electronically, she
preferred that the choice remain open for as long as possible.
SENATOR GREEN advised that APOC would probably say that the
public has a right to this information, but, she insisted, ways
to get that information are already well established.
CHAIR GARY STEVENS asked if it would be improper for a seated
legislator to use the state system for his or her electronic
filing.
SENATOR GREEN replied, "It is my understanding, that would not
be proper."
CHAIR GARY STEVENS noted that Tammy Kempton from APOC was
available for questions and Christina Ellingson from APOC would
testify.
CHRISTINA ELLINGSON, assistant director for APOC, testified via
teleconference and paraphrased her written testimony into the
record.
For the record, I need to let you know that the
commission does not support passage of this bill.
One of APOC's missions, as Senator Green said, is to
ensure there is a well-informed public regarding our
elected and appointed officials. This can only be done
by making the required financial information available
in a timely manner, not two or three years after the
fact.
Last year the Legislature, at the request of the
administration and the governor, passed a bill that
made two major changes to the reporting requirements.
The first one was full disclosure of all contributors.
Now what that means to us is that anybody who
contributes to a campaign, whether it be a penny or a
$1,000 are named, date, check number or cash and their
address must be disclosed to us. Some of you can
recall looking at reports and seeing a category that
was called under 100 and you see a number plugged in
there. For instance, you see 338 people gave a total
of $3,380. Well, now those 338 contributors have to be
detailed out. So what that means to APOC when we get
those reports then from not only candidates but also
from groups, we have to, if they're in paper format,
sit and hand enter every bit of that information.
The second major change that was passed last year was
to require the mandatory electronic filing of these
reports. This was intended to help offset one of the
major losses that APOC encountered, which was loss of
two of our key positions.
Our current staffing is at 8.5 employees - full time
employees in Anchorage and one and a half in Juneau.
I would like to take a moment and share some of the
statistics that we encounter and I know that some of
this can be kind of esoteric, but I think you need to
understand what we're dealing with - the number of
filers who are currently required to report with the
APOC. Just to extrapolate it out - in the year 2002
into the state election cycle, there were a total of
348 campaign disclosure filers. That doesn't sound
like a whole lot however, when you break it down those
348 filers were required to file a total of 2,814
reports. Those reports can go anywhere from 7 pages
and entries to 100 pages with 20 entries or more on
each page. If these are filed electronically, it would
be just a matter of uploading that information for a
database and running off a paper copy. If they are
data entered, that requires an employee sitting in
front of a computer entering the information and what
has occurred is errors are made because, after all,
like everyone else we're only human.
Then you take it and you pull it a little further.
There is the lobbying law. For this legislative
session, we are in currently - we have 313 employers
of lobbyists that are registered. These employers are
also required to file quarterly reports with our
Juneau office. The person in our Juneau office will
then sit down and hand enter that information into a
database for publication and I believe that part of
her requirement is to make this information available
to the Legislature. There are 132 registered lobbyists
and these folks file monthly reports. Again, this
information has to be hand entered and then we
generate the lobbyist and employer of lobbyist
reports.
Finally, there is the legislative financial disclosure
law (LFD), which is the one most of you are the most
familiar with, and the public financial disclosure
law. Under the LFD law, there are 69 required filers,
which would be one of you. Under the public financial
disclosure law there are approximately 550 board and
commission filers. These 550 filers encompass everyone
from the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch to
your boards and commissions. In addition, there are
approximately 1000 municipal filers. That just kind of
gives you a number of what we're facing when we're
seeing all of this in paper. I know some of the
committees that are there have been into our office
and they've seen the files that we have. Our goal is
to try and make most of this available in an
electronic format. It's a cost savings.
To speak to Senator Green's concerns about the ability
of something failing. As we all know, that is a
possibility that will occur with any type of
electronic system. However, it's not something that is
brand new to APOC. We've been working on an electronic
filing program for the campaign disclosure since
around well, we started back in 1990 to computerize
everything - up through 1997 when we started working
on a filing program for the candidates.
In the 2002 election cycle, out of 202 candidates who
were running for office, we only had 61 of them opt to
use the electronic filing program. It's not because
it's not required, it's because that the ones that
chose not to use it did not want to use it because it
would make their information available more rapidly
than their opponents.
As an electronic filing was not mandated, you can see
that most choose not to use it. Out of 143 registered
groups we had 38 use the program. Because of the
change in the statute where everything is now
disclosable, where it becomes very very problematic
for the commission staff is when we have a group that
then has a payroll deduction program to get filed.
Every one of those employees has to be disclosed
whether they contribute 74 [tape indic.] payroll to a
$500 or whatever a payroll. If you have a union that
has a payroll cycle of once a week, their name's going
to be disclosed every week from the time they start
contributing until that report [tape indic]
Just a little background, the Alaska Public Offices
Commission was conceived and brought about as a result
of the Watergate scandal. To that end, the agency has
tried to make this important information available to
the public before the elections so that the electorate
may make an informed choice. Without electronic
filing, it could be months after the election before
this information is readily available to voters.
That concludes my testimony and I would be available
to answer any questions the committee might have.
SENATOR COWDERY commented that her testimony was quite lengthy
and asked her to send him an electronic copy.
MS. ELLINGSON replied she would certainly do so.
SENATOR STEDMAN asked how many people might file electronically
compared to the number of snail mail filings.
MS. ELLINGSON replied 28 percent filed electronically in the
2002 election and the rest filed on paper.
CHAIR GARY STEVENS asked Senator Green if she had further
comments.
SENATOR GREEN reminded members that filing information is
currently available to anyone making an inquiry via FAX and
mail.
SENATOR COWDERY made a motion to move SB 351 from committee with
the attached fiscal note and unanimous consent. There being no
objection, it was so ordered.
CHAIR GARY STEVENS announced the meeting was adjourned at 4:00
pm because he no longer had a quorum.
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