Alaska Attorney General Jahna Lindemuth announced Monday that she'll ask the Legislature for money to hire five more prosecutors next year, as part of a wide-ranging new "public safety action plan."
The 10-page action plan, unveiled at a Juneau news conference by Gov. Bill Walker, proposes new initiatives in criminal justice, public safety, mental health and substance abuse treatment as well as steps to fight the spread of addictive opioid painkillers.
Among them is the state Department of Law's proposal to hire a new statewide drug prosecutor, as well as one new prosecutor in both Bethel and Kotzebue — among the five Lindemuth referenced. Lindemuth has said that recent budget cuts to her department have caused a sharp drop in the number of misdemeanors it can prosecute, which would include crimes like petty theft.
But many of the public safety plan's components encompass efforts already underway, or require more work before a new program can get off the ground.
Among them, for example, is the upcoming launch of a new Department of Corrections unit that will supervise defendants who are out on bail before trial. That unit, which is hiring 60 new "pre-trial officers," was established by criminal justice overhaul legislation, Senate Bill 91, that the Legislature passed and Walker signed last year.
Other elements of the plan involve asking state lawmakers to pass new public safety legislation, and asking the federal government for more resources to support state and local public safety programs.
Walker, flanked by two blue-shirted state troopers, announced the plan Monday morning at the Capitol, where a House committee was scheduled to hold a hearing on legislation revising SB 91 later in the day.
Lawmakers are in Juneau because Walker called them into a special session that began last week, in which he's asked them to focus on the crime legislation — as well as on a tax bill that would help reduce the state's massive deficit.
Some lawmakers, and members of the public, have blamed a years-long rise in crime on sentencing reductions included in last year's criminal justice overhaul package.
[Read our series on Senate Bill 91]
But Walker and other defenders of the overhaul have suggested that part of the problem stems from sharp budget cuts to the state's public safety agencies — with reductions slicing more than 20 prosecutors from the state law department, contributing to a one-third drop in the number of misdemeanor prosecutions.
Walker, at his news conference Monday, pushed back against conservatives who have resisted his tax proposals and are still calling for deeper budget reductions.
"We cannot cut our way to a safer Alaska," Walker said.
House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, D-Dillingham, agreed, writing in a text message that "more budget cuts will only hinder our ability to make our communities more safe."
Edgmon's largely-Democratic House majority approved a bill earlier this year to resurrect Alaska's long-dead income tax. But the Republican-led Senate majority voted against the legislation.
Senate President Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks, provided his own prepared statement in which he said his chamber would "stand with the governor as he searches for answers to the crime wave."
"However, it is inappropriate to link crime to his persistent desire to tax working Alaskans," the statement said.
Jake Metcalfe, who directs the public employee union that represents state troopers, said in a phone interview that he's happy to see Walker's administration making public safety a priority — even if he thought the new plan was lacking some details.
"I take that for being a big effort on Walker's part to say to the public, 'We're in a crisis, we have to have a fiscal plan to deal with this, and we have to act now rather than wait until January,'" Metcalfe said.
But Metcalfe still wanted to know, for example, exactly how many new public safety jobs would be created by the plan.
The plan said broadly that it aims to "increase trooper presence and improve response times" by "filling trooper vacancies." But Walker's administration didn't say how many trooper vacancies would be filled, or outline the specific steps it would take to do so.
Reporter Devin Kelly contributed.