Committee recommends parole-board and police-standards appointees be forwarded to joint session

The Alaska House State Affairs Committee on April 7 recommended that two governor appointees — Steve Meyer to the State Board of Parole and Annika Lambertson to the Alaska Police Standards Council — be forwarded to a joint session for consideration.

Meyer, calling in from Kenai, said he has served two prior terms on the parole board and spent most of his career with the Department of Corrections. He told the committee that discretionary grant rates fell after the repeal of SB 91 and during COVID when programming was interrupted, but said "in recent times our grant rate has ... gone up. I don't have a statistic to share with you, but we're in full hearings this week and in the last few days we've granted probably 85% of the people that applied for discretionary," attributing changes to case-by-case assessments and available programming.

Chair Kerrick opened the meeting and introduced the appointees. The appointee introduced herself as Annika Lambertson and said she was appointed by Governor Dunleavy to a public, small-town seat on the Alaska Police Standards Council; earlier in the hearing Chair Kerrick referred to her with a different given name. Lambertson said she does not have active law-enforcement experience but brings years of community interaction with local police and said she hopes to contribute a citizen perspective, including on training.

Committee members asked Meyer about parole procedures, special medical parole and deliberation practices; Meyer described monthly discretionary-parole hearings, pre-hearing packets, interviews and majority-vote deliberations. Members asked Lambertson about the composition of the Police Standards Council and whether public members may take training after confirmation; she said public seats do not require prior police training but that she would consider taking standard training if confirmed.

No members of the public signed up or appeared to testify on either appointee. The committee recorded its recommendation to forward the two names to a joint session and took a brief recess to sign the report. The committee did not take a confirmation vote; the recommendation sends the nominations forward for consideration in joint session.