JUNEAU — Lawmakers on Thursday again delayed a final decision on whether they should stay in their renovated Anchorage offices or decamp to a state-owned building elsewhere downtown — prolonging an already lengthy debate over the expensive lease.
A House-Senate committee was set to decide late Thursday whether to move lawmakers to the Atwood Building from their current Anchorage legislative offices, or to accept a proposed lease reduction from the building's landlords.
Instead, they decided to hire an independent financial expert to help them sort out competing cost analyses of options offered by the landlords and legislative support staff — a process that will likely take another month.
"I've heard this from so many folks saying, 'I'm just not ready to vote on this,'" Sen. Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak and chair of the 14-member Legislative Council, said in an interview after the meeting. "There's too many questions out there."
The decision comes more than a year after lawmakers moved into the renovated Anchorage offices, which are clad with glass walls and feature glass elevators and motion-sensing trash cans.
Under the no-bid lease extension negotiated by Rep. Mike Hawker, R-Anchorage, payments for the Legislature's Anchorage offices jumped to $4 million from $682,000, prompting critics to brand it the renovated building the "Taj MaHawker." (Hawker missed Thursday's meeting.)
With the state now facing a massive budget crisis, the office building has become a political liability for legislators, though it represents only a sliver of the state budget.
Since early last year, they've been considering a move to the state-owned Atwood Building, and in December, the Legislative Council voted to defund the current lease. But they left the door open to stay in the building if landlords Mark Pfeffer and Bob Acree responded with a competitive offer within 45 days.
That deadline arrived last week, but the cost analysis attached to the landlords' offer was disputed by Pam Varni, the director of the Legislature's nonpartisan support staff — and the competing accounts apparently left lawmakers unprepared to make a decision Thursday.
A spokeswoman for Pfeffer and Acree, Amy Slinker, said in a prepared statement after Thursday's meeting that they would "continue to work with the Alaska Legislative Council and the Alaska Legislature toward finding a fair and equitable solution regarding the lease."
"We will gladly provide all the necessary information for valuation of this building allowing for a cost comparison" between the existing offices and the Atwood Building, the statement quoted Slinker as saying.
A final decision on the office relocation will now likely come in the finance committee of either the Senate or the House after the independent analysis is delivered; on Thursday, the Legislative Council moved the Legislature's own budget proposal out of the committee.
Rep. Mark Neuman, R-Big Lake and co-chair of the House Finance Committee, said lawmakers needed an analysis from someone "with absolutely no connection to nobody" before they could make up their minds.
"The legislative process is a discovery process," he said in a phone interview after the meeting. "When legislators are comfortable they've got the right answers and are making the right financial decisions, then we'll move forward."