Despite belonging to the same party, Heath Smith and Louise Stutes and Carrie Harris — the three candidates vying for the state Senate District C seat, covering the southern Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak and Cordova — demonstrated sharp divides on some key state issues during a forum hosted by the Homer Chamber of Commerce Tuesday.

Smith is a lifelong Alaskan and former Homer City Council member. He currently sits on the Homer Advisory Planning Commission. He said he’s concerned about younger generations’ future in Alaska and is “here to institute some change.”

Stutes represented House District 5, covering Kodiak, Cordova and the eastern Kenai Peninsula, for 12 years. 

“I’ve had several different positions in the Legislature. I’m proud of our record … we’ve managed to hold the line on a lot of things,” she said. 

Harris, an Anchor Point resident, previously ran for Senate in 2016 on a write-in campaign. She said she’s making another bid for the Legislature because she doesn’t feel the people are being represented.

In the August primary, Stutes gained the most votes for Senate District C, with 49% of the total vote. Smith trailed with 37% of the vote, and Harris received 12% of the vote. 

In Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, in the general election if a candidate receives 50% plus one vote, they win without going to the ranked-choice calculation tally.

All three candidates agreed that Alaska desperately needs a long-term fiscal plan, but clashed on their respective approaches. 

Stutes said the state needs to increase revenue through such avenues as requiring large S corporations, like Hilcorp, to pay corporate state income taxes; reevaluating the tax structure for legacy oil fields; or instituting an internet corporate tax such as what the Legislature passed this year before Gov. Dunleavy vetoed it.

Harris said she does not support closing the S corp loophole. She stood firm on maintaining a full Permanent Fund Dividend under the current statutory formula. She also called for “dramatically” cutting the state budget. 

“We have so many redundancies. We have 53 school districts with 53 superintendents, (human resources) departments (and) payroll departments. Those can be consolidated down to 10, and it doesn’t touch the classroom funding,” she said. 

Stutes said the state should reformat the dividend formula, not least to quash the annual argument over how large a PFD the state can afford to pay out to residents.

“We’re working on a 40-year-old statute. It just isn’t applicable anymore,” she said. “You want a statutory PFD? The way we are right now, you’re going to get a statutory PFD for maybe two, three years, and then your PFD is going to be zero because the money is going to be gone.” 

Smith said any changes to the PFD formula must be tied to a broader fiscal plan, and he would still like to see the state work toward returning to a full PFD. He agreed the state must increase revenue by incentivising the private sector — giving the proposed North Slope Alaska LNG pipeline as an example — and should also evaluate its expenses.

All three favored the gas line to support long-term demand, but said that more immediate solutions were needed to stave off an impending Cook Inlet gas shortage. 

Answers again differed on education funding and retirement benefits for public employees.

 

Stutes said she supported not only inflation-proofing the base student allocation, or per-student state funding, but forward-funding education to decrease budgeting uncertainty year after year for school districts. She added she supports restoring a defined benefits retirement plan for teachers and public employees to increase teacher retention. 

Smith suggested “getting creative” with the BSA by pulling out the cost of operating brick-and-mortar facilities and handling it separately from per-student funding.

“Chapman (School) lost almost 60 kids this year. What do you think that’s going to do to their BSA next year? Do you think the cost of running that facility has gone down? Probably not,” he said.

He was wary about reinstating a defined benefits plan because of the state’s remaining $7 billion debt from the previous system. 

“We have to be very careful on how that gets structured, if it does,” he said.

Harris again called for cutting school district administration costs and passing on those savings to the classroom.

“Now, as far as defined benefits, absolutely not,” she said. 

“Just because you have the defined benefits retirement doesn’t mean it has to break the state and it doesn’t mean we have to go back to the old way,” Stutes said, adding the state is paying off the debt incurred by the old system.

The Legislature passed a bill this spring reinstating a “modest” pension system for Alaska public employees, with guardrails to prevent it from going underfunded. It was vetoed by the governor.

Candidates were asked their stance on regulating artificial intelligence data centers in Alaska in response to opposition against an East Coast company’s proposal to build one in Cook Inlet, as well as recent policy preemptively adopted in Anchorage.

All three opposed data centers in Cook Inlet. Stutes supported preemptive regulation; Harris called for a moratorium on data centers “until we know more about them.”

In November, voters will decide whether the state should keep or repeal open primaries, ranked-choice voting general elections, and campaign finance provisions that require candidates to disclose sources of political contributions. A “yes” vote repeals the current system and a “no” vote keeps it in place.

Smith said he will vote “yes” to repeal Ballot Measure 2. Stutes said she will vote “no.”

Harris said she doesn’t support the ballot measure, but won’t vote against it.

“I think the election reform should happen. It just should happen differently,” she said. 

Watch the full forum recording on the Homer Chamber of Commerce website. The final candidate forum, for the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly District 8 seat, is 5:30-7 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 19.

Election day is Tuesday, Nov. 3. Early voting opens Oct. 20 in Homer.