HJR 2-BIENNIAL STATE BUDGET Number 1892 CHAIR COGHILL announced that the next order of business would be HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 2, Proposing amendments to the Constitution of the State of Alaska relating to the duration of regular sessions of the legislature and to a biennial state budget. Number 1937 REPRESENTATIVE LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska State Legislature, came forward to testify as sponsor of HJR 2. She said HJR 2 is different from the other resolutions before the committee that relate to shortening the length of the legislative session. House Joint Resolution 2 focuses on a biennial state budget and provides the added bonus of a shortened session in the second year. REPRESENTATIVE MURKOWSKI noted that the idea of a biennial budget is not new. The idea has been "floating around" the state legislature for years. The federal government is constantly looking at going to a biennial budget process. Twenty-odd states have either a full biennial budget process or some mixed version of it. She suggested that the change is necessary, appropriate, and would allow for greater efficiency. Number 2000 REPRESENTATIVE MURKOWSKI observed that the legislature is now 70 days into the session, and: All of us have been totally immersed in the budget process. None of us in this room is sitting on [the] Finance [Committee], and yet we're all involved in that process. The agencies have been involved with the budget nine months out of their productive work cycles.... We spend so much of our time in the budgetary process that we don't have the time to do the oversight .... We've got these great missions and measures that we've implemented, but how much time do we actually have to take a look and see is this working, do we need to do something different .... Well, I'm here to tell you [that in] the 120 days that we have, we're not very efficient with the time that we spend. So what I'm proposing is that during the ... first year of the legislative session, the governor proposes a two-year budget, we review that, and sign off on a budget that will have a two-year cycle. REPRESENTATIVE MURKOWSKI said that would let legislators spend the second year of the session on other issues. It now is impossible to focus on other substantive issues because "we're interrupted by the budget all the time," she said. Number 2136 REPRESENTATIVE MURKOWSKI said several states have phased in a biennial budget rather than implementing "the whole enchilada at once," and she thinks a phased process is worth considering. She suggested that the committee not roll HJR 2 in with other proposals for shortening the legislative session because the shortened session is not the focus, but "just a bonus" of HJR 2. She said the idea of a biennial budget makes good, common sense and has strong public support. Number 2188 CHAIR COGHILL said his intent in assigning HJR 2 to the subcommittee studying similar bills was not intended to thwart any of those bills, and any one of them that stands alone can be dealt with separately. He recognized that the biennial budget is a "stand-alone topic." REPRESENTATIVE MURKOWSKI said she understood that the legislature did not want to "load up the ballot" next year with a dozen resolutions for the voters to consider. "I think that you're absolutely right in attempting to do some consolidation here," she stated. Number 2254 REPRESENTATIVE JAMES said she wanted to put it on the record that she has historically supported the biennial budget as a way to minimize the effort and maximize the results of the budget process. However, she thinks a biennial budget is part of a long-range fiscal plan. Putting the session-shortening bills in a subcommittee is a good way to discuss those ideas, but she would prefer that those bills all become options in a long-range plan. She said she is "not ready to vote on any one of these until I see how we're going to fund ourselves over the long term." CHAIR COGHILL said one of the reasons he wanted to put the bills in a subcommittee is to begin that discussion. "It is not my intention to put these into the black hole that they never come out of," he said, but rather "to try to discover similarities or dissimilarities and then proceed from there." Number 2351 REPRESENTATIVE WILSON observed that there are a lot of things Alaska has that are better than those in the state from which she came, but the biennial budget process they had there was much more efficient and gave legislators time to think about a lot of other things.