Side-by-side signs for competing legislative candidates, Walter Featherly and incumbent Rep. Julie Coulombe, R-Anchorage, are displayed on Sept. 5, 2024, at a shopping mall in South Anchorage. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
While incumbent Republican Rep. Julie Coulombe sees the last legislative session as a success, her challenger, unaffiliated candidate Walter Featherly, wants to take House District 11 in a new direction.
This year’s election is a rematch of the 2022 contest for the seat representing Anchorage’s Lower Hillside neighborhood. It is among the state’s most affluent districts; most residents have health care and few are reliant on social safety nets like food stamps.
In this year’s primary election, Coulombe received about 52% of the vote to Featherly’s 48%. In 2022, Featherly garnered 45% of the first-preference votes to Coulombe’s nearly 39%, but she edged him out for the win in the ranked choice voting retabulation.
Despite this history, she supports Ballot Measure 2, a repeal of the ranked choice voting system, and he opposes it. Featherly said that even though he was a “victim, to some extent” of ranked choice voting, he still thinks it “gives voters the chance to express their full will.” Coulombe said her constituents say the system is confusing and she doesn’t want voting to be hard.
Coulombe is running on her record in the Capitol this year. She said she got things done for her district, like bringing home state dollars for fire evacuation routes in the Hillside neighborhood and for O’Malley Elementary School. She also pointed to several pieces of legislation she sponsored, including a child care bill that became law, and a bill that would have eased the requirements for commercial drivers licenses that did not become law.
“I do the work to get stuff done. I reach across the aisle. I meet with other legislators. All my bills were bipartisan bills, all of them. And so I can work with anybody, and I advocated for the district,” she said.
Featherly has taken aim at that record, and challenged Coulombe on her response to what he calls crises in the state’s education system and for Railbelt energy.
About the candidates
Coulombe, 58, has lived in Alaska for 38 years in the communities of Eagle River and Anchorage, as well as on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. She represented District 11 the past two years.
Featherly, 69, has spent 58 years in Alaska and lived in the villages of Kwethluk and Ackichak as a child before moving to Anchorage. He is currently employed as general counsel for Calista Corp., one of the Alaska Native regional corporations created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
On energy
Coulombe and Featherly disagree on the success of the last legislative session in regards to addressing the state’s energy needs, especially in regards to the energy crunch in Southcentral.
Coulombe said lawmakers have more work to do, but pointed to the passage of a number of bills.
“I thought the Legislature did a good job. We had a successful Legislature around energy,” she said, pointing to an energy bill that combines carbon storage, new natural gas storage regulations and state financing for new Cook Inlet natural gas development.
She said the energy transmission bill, which is intended to unify Railbelt energy transmission, was another achievement.
Rep. Julie Coulombe, R-Anchorage, talks with Rep. Frank Tomaszewski, R-Fairbanks, during a break in debate Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024, in the Alaska House. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
Featherly said his opinion is that the last Legislature passed “no meaningful legislation whatsoever to address that energy crisis.”
He said he wants to see the state provide royalty and tax relief to current oil and natural gas leaseholders in Cook Inlet. “It’s just inexcusable that that lever wasn’t pulled, that that bill died, and my opponent bears — in my view — bears direct responsibility for that, because she was in the majority in the House,” he said.
The House approved a royalty relief bill that did not make it to the Senate floor for a vote before adjournment.
Featherly proposed that the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority should become directly involved in resource development in joint ventures with current leaseholders.
On education and pensions
The two candidates have different approaches to education, which was a prime issue in last year’s legislative session.
Coulombe supported a wide-ranging education bill early in the session that included a permanent increase to the state’s per pupil school funding formula. After Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed the bill, she voted against an override of the veto.
She said she wanted to see a funding increase because she knew inflation had driven up districts’ fixed costs, but she wanted to see targeted changes. They include a reevaluation of the school funding formula that determines the per-student funding known as the base student allocation.
“I don’t think it’s working for Anchorage or the rural districts. So that’s a more foundational issue than just fighting over the BSA number. We need to make sure the formula is up to date,” she said.
Featherly said he would have voted to override Dunleavy’s veto and called the lack of a permanent increase to the funding formula a “huge missed opportunity” and a “crying shame.”
He agreed that inflation has been hard on districts and said the $680 per pupil increase contained in the ultimately vetoed education bill was the bare minimum of what the state’s education system needs.
“Infusions of one-time money are unhelpful in addressing the real issues and the real needs of our schools, and that is teachers,” he said. He said schools cannot raise wages for teachers, who are generally on multiyear contracts, when they do not have financial certainty.
Walter Featherly is seen in an undated photo. (Photo courtesy of Walter Featherly)
He said Alaska students don’t get second chances if the state fails them on education. “There’s no excuse for it. It can’t be justified. It’s easily fixed. We need to fix it,” he said.
Featherly said that a permanent increase to the funding formula is his first priority to solve the issues he sees, but he would also like to see a pension program for teachers and other state employees. He said that schools and positions with the state are understaffed, which results in the loss of institutional knowledge.
Coulombe acknowledged an issue with workforce retention, but was noncommittal on pensions, instead focusing on other issues, such as the fact that Alaska teachers do not participate in Social Security.
“There’s fixes that don’t have to be a defined benefit. I believe the state could have raised their contribution. The school districts could review joining Social Security. There’s things that we can do to fill in the holes,” she said. “I don’t deny that there’s a problem, but … I don’t want anything that will really hurt the state long term, fiscally.”
Ballot measures
Featherly said he supports Ballot Measure 1, which would raise the minimum wage and provide workers with paid sick leave, as well as protect workers from practices that violate their constitutional rights. “That’s un-Alaskan, to expect people to be working for such a pittance,” he said.
Coulombe expressed doubts about the measure and seemed to be leaning against it.
“My concern around that is the government telling businesses what they have to do. I’m not big on that,” she said. “Most people are not making minimum wage. Most people are above. I don’t think the minimum wage thing is the bigger issue — it’s the benefits, it’s the paid time off … I think that’s going to crush small businesses.”
Coulombe said she plans to vote for Ballot Measure 2, the repeal of ranked choice voting and open primaries; Featherly will vote against it.
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