Alaska Legislators face hundreds of bills,

state budget and a 90 Day deadline…

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TLHR for Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012

Tuesday is slated to be the first day of the new legislative session. Alaska lawmakers have 90 days to finish their work which includes approving a budget for next fiscal year and consideration of a number of contentious measures.

And if that wasn’t enough, last Friday the second batch of prefiled bills was presented and includes another 28 new bills to add to the burgeoning stack of measures the Alaska Legislature is already working its way through.

Included in the most recent prefilled bill release are 21 bills from the house and 7 from the senate.

Topics include: Oil and gas credits, a permanent absentee voting option, loans for commercial fishing permits, changes to commercial motor vehicle permits, and changes to regulations concerning natural gas storage.

You may recall last year that Representative Sharon Cissna of Anchorage was late in getting to the opening of the legislative session because she refused to submit to an invasive body search by TSA. Instead she instead opted to arrive by land and sea transport only, bypassing TSA altogether.

Rep. Sharon Cissna

Cissna said at the time she did not take TSA’s actions lightly, and would fight for the right to dignity when traveling, especially for those who’s physical or medical condition sets them up as potential targets for TSA searches.

Now, she’s put her legislative power behind it and has introduced a measure that takes on TSA and their invasive body scanners.

House Bill 262 would make it an offense of interference with access to public buildings or transportation facilities if access requires consent to physical contact or to an electronic process that produces a picture of a private exposure of the person.

A related measure, co-sponsored with Representative Max Gurenberg of Anchorage, would require airports to post warning signs outside of security screening areas warning passengers that they are subject to searches of their bodies by physical touching and by electronic devices that emit radiation.

That bill is HB270.

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Resources:

Below are links to both sets of prefiled bills. They come from the Alaska Legislature’s official site which is www.legis.state.ak.us.

http://w3.legis.state.ak.us/docs/pdf/2012_1stPrefiles.pdf

http://w3.legis.state.ak.us/docs/pdf/2012_2ndPrefiles.pdf

For more on TSA…Click on link below to read Rep. Cissna’s comments on TSA’s invasive searches and legislation in Texas against it. This will take you to Cissna’s webpage on the House Minority’s website which is akdemocrats.org.

Unlike the Alaska Legislature’s official site, this link takes you to a partisan site.

http://akdemocrats.org/rep_cissna/2011/05/14/rep-sharon-cissna-statement-on-texas-tsa-law/