Calling for Senate Bill 94 to be heard in the House Judiciary Committee This Session

JUNEAU-On Friday, March 30^th, a crowd will gather on the front steps of the Capitol building in Juneau from 12:00-1:00 p.m. to call for the hearing of Senate Bill 94in the House Judiciary Committee this Session.

This bill has been a presence in the legislature since 1987, when Representative Fran Ulmer introduced it in an attempt to formally adopt the verse written by Carol Beery Davis, poet laureate for Alaska. Since its introduction by Representative Ulmer, there have been many attempts to pass this bill, mostly generated from the House of Representatives. For many years the bill would pass through the House and stall in the Senate. In recent years, this phenomenon has reversed. Last session, the bill was introduced by Senator Linda Menard (R-Wasilla) and passed the Senate, but stalled in the House. This session, the bill sponsored by Senator Bettye Davis (D-Anchorage), SB 94, has passed the Senate and all of its original committees of referral in the House, but was placed in the House Judiciary Committee at the request of the committee chair, Representative Carl Gatto (R-Palmer).

Since it was requested by the House Judiciary Committee Chair in April of 2011, SB 94 has not been scheduled for a hearing in the committee. Friday’s rally is an effort to express the desire of the bill’s supporters for a hearing to be held for SB 94 before the end of this legislative session, so that it at least has a chance to go to the floor for a vote.

The Second Verse of the Alaska Flag Song pays tribute to Benny Benson, an Aleut boy who designed the flag of the State of Alaska, and expresses an appreciation for the Native cultures of Alaska, such as that of Benny Benson himself. It also includes language that expresses a hope that all of the people of Alaska, with their many different cultures both Native and non-Native, can live together harmoniously. In 2001, the Commission on Tolerance instated by Governor Tony Knowles recommended the adoption of the Second Verse of the Alaska Flag Song to help heal racial divides within the state.

The proposed Second Verse reads as follows:

A native lad chose our dipper’s stars/for Alaska’s flag that there be no bars/among our cultures. Be it known/through years our natives’ past has grown/to share our treasures, hand in hand,/to keep Alaska our Great Land./We love the northern midnight sky,/our mountains, lakes and the streams nearby;/Our Great North Star with its steady light/will guide our cultures clear and bright/with Nature’s flag to Alaskans dear-/The simple flag of the last Frontier.