There won’t be airport-style security checks at the Alaska State Capitol anytime in the near future after the Legislative Council tabled a proposal for such screenings Thursday, but lawmakers did approve other measures intended to boost security and are likely to revisit the screening issue during the coming months.
The proposal considered by the council would have established separate entrances at the front of the Capitol for visitors and for legislators/staff, and hired a private company to “conduct security screening of visitors and visitors’ belongings.” Sen. Jesse Kiehl, a Juneau Democrat and member of the council, said in an interview Thursday evening “there were a lot of question marks about the draft policies.”
“I think there were a lot of concerns about screening people who have come into the Capitol for years and years and years,” he said. Also “I had concerns about about how if we were making the Capitol inaccessible to the general public. There are certainly some things that we can change with security, with the building. But the proposals that we set aside today were not the right answers.”
Seven states, including Alaska, weren’t using any security screening in their capitols as of February of 2024, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The council did approve starting the process to move the Capitol mailroom to an offsite location that offers screening for hazardous materials, which was recommended in a recent security assessment, and a new key system where electronic fobs will replace physical locks on office doors. The estimated $617,500 cost of moving and staffing the mailroom is scheduled to be considered in the budget for the 2026 fiscal year that starts next July 1.
Recommendations considered Thursday were based on a security assessment by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which performs similar assessments at facilities nationwide, Kiehl said.
“Several of their recommendations have already been implemented,” he said. “Several of their recommendations will never be implemented because they’re both wildly expensive and bananas. But others are really serious conversations we genuinely need to continue having.”
“I expect that we’ll probably renew this conversation over the coming months and try and figure out, once we have a new Legislative Council, just how much people think we need for safety to deter any bad things versus what it would take to stop anything from ever going bump in the night.”
When asked about recommendations unlikely to be implemented, Kiehl said Alaska’s Capitol doesn’t need buffer zones and security barriers around the building to protect it from incidents such as the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing at the federal building in that city.
“You couldn’t buy enough fertilizer to fill a Ryder truck physically present in Juneau,” he said.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
