Lawmakers consider education reimbursement for hard-to-fill jobs

State lawmakers are considering a measure that would help pay education costs for workers in hard-to-fill jobs.

Rep. Craig Johnson, an Anchorage Republican, is pushing a bill that would cover up to $37,500 in individual debt for student loans owed by people working in professions where there are severe employee shortages.

An Alaskan employed in one of those professions likely including health care, engineering and teaching would qualify for as much as $7,500 a year for five years.

The grant would not be more than half the worker's total student debt. It would apply only if the schooling was needed for the profession and if the worker had already been employed in the state for a year.

In a sponsor statement, Johnson noted problems finding qualified workers. He said the state's growing economy and large projects would only make the situation worse.

The House Health, Education, and Social Services Committee held a second hearing on the bill Thursday.

Committee chair Peggy Wilson, R-Wrangell expressed support for the bill in an interview before the hearing. She said that when she and her husband moved to Alaska 15 years ago, the higher wages in the state made the move attractive.

"There was really something to lure us up here," she said.

Wages in Alaska have since stayed relatively flat while they've increased elsewhere in the nation, she said.

Wilson said the loans could apply to such workers as certain teachers, language therapists, nurses, doctors, lab technicians and X-ray technicians.

Under the proposal, the loan repayment program would be administered by the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education, within the state's department of education.

A profession would qualify if the vacancy rate of trained workers was determined to be 15 percent or more.

The program would help address two problems the needs of the state's work force and the high cost of education, Jeanne Ostnes, a staff member for Johnson, said during the hearing.

The program also would help reverse the "brain drain phenomenon" because it would provide an incentive for skilled workers to move to the state, or remain there.

It's unclear how much the program would cost the state. Johnson's idea, however, is to fund it with earnings from a $100 million endowment fund. The House Finance Committee is reviewing a separate bill establishing the fund.

Discussion during the hearing raised a number of questions and Wilson held the bill over.

The underlying question was whether the program would attract new workers to places where they were needed.

Rep. Berta Gardner, R-Anchorage, said many nurses in training now would stay in the state anyway once they were finished with their education.

Rep. Paul Seaton, R-Homer, asked how the program would address regional shortages, such as teachers in rural Alaska. The bill currently applies to statewide shortages.

Information from: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, http://www.newsminer.com