CSSB 259(TRA) am - METROPOLITAN PLANNING AUTHORITY Number 011 Chairman KOTT announced the first order of business would be CSSB 259(TRA) am, "An Act relating to the membership of a metropolitan highway planning organization," sponsored by Senator Donley. He noted the bill had been heard previously. SENATOR DAVE DONLEY came before the committee. He said he has had ongoing discussions with the Anchorage Assembly and mayor on this issue. He said the bill addresses the restructuring of local metropolitan planning organizations for transportation purposes. The only one currently in Alaska is the Anchorage area. He said the bill would specify that it applies only to communities over 200,000. For a long time, it would only apply to Anchorage. That is consistent with some of the break points in the federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) as far as planning certain levels of local municipal planning that needs to go on. Senator Donley said, "One of the concerns that has been raised -- and remember this was kind of a close question with the assembly. There was a vote that was 7 to 4, and since that time I think there has been even a closer meeting of the minds. Against the earlier version was that it disrupted the balance of power between the city and the state and made the state more powerful. In an effort to alleviate that concern, we have a proposed CS (committee substitute), I hope the committee will entertain, to have three assembly people appointed by the assembly and three people appointed by the mayor on AMATS (Anchorage Metropolitan Area Transportation Study) - one from the Senate, one from the House, one from the Governor. (Indisc.) even making the city even stronger than it's been in the past, making it a 2 to 1 ratio rather than the current 3 to 2 ratio of city control over the planning process, which is one of the key points we heard in the public testimony. They wanted to make sure it remained local control. That's always been fine with the Anchorage Caucus. The Anchorage Caucus is simply looking at a better way of coordinating the AMATS process. And the example - what happened last week with the capital budget is a good example of why that could really payoff down here. When we were doing the capital budget in the Senate, DOT (Department of Transportation), on behalf of AMATS, submitted the AMATS projects. They didn't submit all the AMATS projects. They failed to do that and when we, in the Senate, over the weekend, were trying to inquire about why projects were missing, nobody could answer our questions. And since nobody in the Senate or the House had any say or any involvement in the actual development process or how they voted, why they chose what projects they did, we didn't know what had happened and why DOT didn't submit certain projects. And we took about two or three days to get any kind of answers and it turned out that it was a faxing glitch. DOT failed to fax the complete list. So it was quite a scramble to try to restore the $3 million project, that had been left out, into the budget and it wasn't easy. There was a lot of work for me that night trying to explain that to the people on the Finance Committee - how to restore a $3 million project that had magically disappeared during the fax transmission. But it really pointed out to me the difficulty in not having anybody (indisc.) involved in the actual budget process have any knowledge of how the projects were chosen and what priority they were given and why. And it's never been the intent of the Anchorage Caucus to dominate this process in any way, or have the state dominate the process. We just wanted to have a level of expertise to be able to facilitate our constitutional function within that process, which is to develop the state budget and have a level of knowledge on why things are there and how they got there and what is, in fact, actually there -- because you might remember the AMATS was seriously delayed this year - much more than usual for I don't know why. But we didn't get the rewrites until about a week ago or ten days ago, which made our job really a scramble here. So additionally, I would think that, you know, it would be good to bump up that process to where (indisc.) be done. It was usually done by January of the year, it was usually completed." Representative Donley urged the committee to pass the proposed CS that says 3 and 3. Number 115 CHAIRMAN KOTT explained there is a draft CS, Version X, dated 5/6/98. REPRESENTATIVE GAIL PHILLIPS moved to adopt the draft CS, Version X. There being no objection, Version X was before the committee. REPRESENTATIVE BRIAN PORTER made a motion to move HCSCSSB 259(RLS) out of committee. There being no objection, HCSCSSB 259(RLS) moved out of the House Rules Standing Committee.