This meeting of the House Judiciary Committee will now come to order.
The time is now 1.01 PM on Friday, January 30th, 2026.
We are meeting in the Grunberg room, Capital Room 120.
The following members are present.
Representative Underwood, Representative Aishide,
Representative Vance,
Representative Costello,
Representative Mina, and myself.
Representative Gray, Chair.
Let the record reflect that we have a quorum
to conduct business.
I would also like to recognize the staff
supporting this meeting.
We have Sophia Tenney from House Records,
Kyle Atupo from the Juneau LIO,
and my committee, a Dylan Hitchcock Lopez.
If you need anything, please get his attention.
We had one item of business on today's agenda,
HB 47, Generated of Seeing Child Sex Abuse Material,
presented by Representative Vance.
So, at this time, we will go to that first item of business, joined by Vice Chair Chuck
Cup at 1.02 PM.
Our first Item of Business is to bring House Bill 47, generated of C and Child Sex Abuse
material for its second hearing in our committee.
Everyone should have the Working Draft CS, which was received from Ledge Legal yesterday.
for the record that would be work order 34 dash LS 0334 backslash g do i have a motion
to accept the cs as a working draft yes mr chairman mister chair at this time i move at house bill
I object for the purposes of discussion.
I believe Representative Vance wanted to give some background on the reasons for this CS.
So I'll turn it over to Representative Vance to provide that information.
And then have the committee aid walk us through the changes.
Thank you, Chair Gray.
The history of this bill has been
through your work, my work and also working with the Department of Law
to make sure that we are accurately covering every statute and scenario
that the department of law and the investigators face.
And the changes come from recommendations from the departments
the coverage of this statute and so I just want to highlight that and we do
have Ms. Casey Schroeder from the Department of Law available to answer
questions and I know that I fully support the changes in this committee
substitute and appreciate the chair just simplifying rather than having
multiple amendments decided to have it as a committee substitute.
Thank you.
At this time, I would invite my committee aid,
Dylan Hitchcock Lopez, to the witness table,
to walk us through the summary of changes
from the previous version.
Please put yourself on the record
and begin your testimony.
Good afternoon.
For the Record, Dylan Hitchhock Lopez
Committee aid to this committee,
to The Chair, do you want me to go through it right now?
So, through the chair to the committee at large, there are really just three discrete changes in the Committee substitutes.
So the first one is the addition of a new section, the section three is new, and it amends AS 1161-125E to provide that the distribution of generated obscene child sexual abuse material is a qualifying prior conviction.
that enhances the crime of distribution of child sexual material from a class
B to a Class A felony. And so you may notice it makes these two crimes
now parallel each other. So each is a qualifying prior for the other, which
the previous version omitted. Section 4,
which was the old section 3, has been renumbered from the
previous
version
Due to the addition of the new section 3 and that just is sort of has two changes in there
It amends a s11 61 127 a to clarify the cross reference to a
1141 455 a specifically refers to enumerated conduct
in it
that statute A1 through 7, and that's just clarifying,
so there's no ambiguity at which specific conduct is being discussed in the statute.
It also removes language regarding the quote is a representation that is indistinguishable
from an identifiable child under 18 years of age from AS 1161-127A2.
And that was due to the Department of Law's concern that that would, could be potentially interpreted as an additional element of the, of
the offense, and it was actually kind of not necessary based on the already existing language, so let's just clarify that a little bit.
And then section five, the previous version was deleted in its entirety and that
was the amendment to 1161-127F, which provided the definition of an identifiable child.
If it's been removed from the previous section, then the definition is removed as well.
And those are the changes, are there any questions?
Are there questions about the change in the CS, Representative Costello?
Is it possible to have the Department of Law just come up and thank you?
Well, at this time we'll have Casey Schroeder from
the department of law come forward to discuss the request for changes.
For the record, Casey Schroeder, senior assistant attorney general for the criminal division at the Department of Law,
I agree with the description provided by committee aide Hitchcock Lopez that that's the technical
The over-arching explanation was that all of the requests were with an eye towards reducing litigation.
So that more time could be spent on the actual prosecution of
the target offense that Rep. Vance is trying to address rather than litigating superfluous language or things that could
be problems.
Thank you.
Are there any other questions for the Department of Law?
Thank you so much, Ms. Schroeder.
Seeing no additional questions,
I will remove my objections.
Any other objections?
Seeing No Objections,
HB 47 Work Order 34-LS0334,
backslash G has been adopted as our working document.
Are there any final questions for the sponsor?
on HB 47, does anyone have any final comments on the bill?
Representative Costello.
Thank you, I just want to thank Representative Vance for your unwavering
dedication to this issue and others related to it.
And I'm happily on as a co-sponsor and just wanna thank you and your staff for
all the work and I'll see the co chair for the the
work that you've put into it, Representative Underwood.
Yes, thank you, Chair Gray, to Rep Vance.
I also want to mirror what Rep Costello is saying.
Just anything that we can do to protect our kids is worthy of doing at all costs.
So I just appreciate the years that you've put into advancing that cost.
So, I'm a proud co-sponsor as well, and just for all of your hard work and
dedication and a wavering to this cause,
I'd just want say thank-you as-well.
Also, I think one other thing that may be secondary to the primary intent of the bill is this could also have
a positive impact on reducing addiction to this type of
exploitation, because it is an addiction. And there's going to be more law enforcement tools
two persons that are hard to quantify today.
So, yes, thank you for being in advance for bringing this forward.
Thanks.
Do you have any final comments, sponsor?
I just want to say thank-you to the committee.
This was the easiest, the
on any of this type of legislation and I think it shows the work that we've
continued to do in partnership with the chair but also the awareness in the
public has also grown at how pervasive this issue of child sexual abuse
material is in our communities. We've seen the FBI take action on this and
I see consistent news reports about how they are addressing this
But we haven't seen it from the state because it's lacking.
And it is time that we step up and make sure that
we can provide those safe protections and not just rely on federal prosecution
and show Alaskans that
we really care about making sure we are covering all of these
avenues of protecting our kids and especially with the fast-paced
that AI generated images
are taking shape and looking more and more realistic.
the impact of, as RepCop mentioned, on the addiction is the same.
Whether it's a real child or a generated image of a child.
And this bill addresses that.
It treats them in the say manner.
And it also gives the investigators the tools to not have to dissect.
what the difference of one image first and other is that they can all just say, hey,
this is CCM and we're going to prosecute.
And I think that should give them some encouragement.
It should cut down on a lot of their time and get directly to the prosecution and hold
these people accountable who are generating and distributing this material that's harming
In some cases lead to actual physical abuse and so thank you so much for this I'm excited to move this forward
Seeing no further comments or questions do we have a motion at this time? Yes, mr. Chair at
This time I move at house bill 47 work order 34 dash LS 0334 backslash g be reported out of the judiciary committee with individual
recommendations and attached fiscal notes
Hearing no objection, House Bill 47 work order 34 dash LS 0334 backslash g is reported out of the judiciary committee with individual recommendations and attached fiscal notes.
I will ask committee members to stay after we adjourn the meeting to sign the paperwork.
That concludes today's business before the committee.
Before we adjourn, here is a preview of our next meetings.
On Monday, we will hear House Bill 81,
access to marijuana conviction records
from Representative David Nelson.
We will here an introduction of House bill four,
presidential write-in votes by Representative Dan Sadler.
On Wednesday,
we'll take up consideration of nominees
to select committee on legislative ethics,
Chase Berenson and Deborah Fancher.
We will also hear House Bill 262,
number of superior court judges from the courts.
And we will hear our second hearing on House
Bill 20 prohibition fees paper documents by Representative Sadler.
On Friday, a week from today,
we'll take, we have the second
hearing of House bill 81,
access to marijuana convention records by representative David Nelson.
We'll hear, our, second, hearing,
on House Bill 4 presidential write-in votes by Representative Sadler and our second hearing
on house bill 2 says these two number of superior court judges. The time is now 1 14 p.m.
and this hearing of the House Judiciary Committee is adjourned.