A conference committee met Thursday but broke no new ground after two days of behind-the-scene negotiations on a bill to change the state's retirement systems.
The most contentious items - conditions inserted to get the House votes needed to pass the bill - were passed over.
Rep. Mike Hawker, R-Anchorage, said afterward he was not sure why the meeting was called if the House and Senate negotiators were not going to lay out where they differ on the biggest issues.
"We should gavel both bodies, put a call on the House and Senate, and nail the doors shut until we're done," Hawker said.
Senate leaders and Gov. Frank Murkowski strongly support converting the teachers and public employees retirement systems over to a defined contribution system with its individual, 401(k)-type investment accounts.
It's a way to control employers' costs and risks and a first step in cutting down the systems' $5.7 billion shortfall in long-term benefit payments, supporters say.
When the bill got to the House, though, there was more division. Critics said the plan simply transferred risk to the employees, who would have to rely on the markets for their retirement security.
The House rejected it the first time the bill was on the floor, but then passed it on reconsideration after two conditions were added. First, future workers would have a choice between the new defined contribution and the more traditional pension plan public employees and teachers now have.
Second, the defined contribution plan would end if the shortfall is not addressed in the next legislative session.
The first conference committee on the bill got nowhere with those two conditions, setting up the second committee with its additional powers to amend the bill.
The committee pushed back a second meeting several times Thursday, finally postponing it until today.
House Minority Leader Ethan Berkowitz, D-Anchorage, said he believed the deadlock on Senate Bill 141 was due to Senate Republican leaders' and the governor's opposition to organized labor.
"It's nothing but flat-out union busting," Berkowitz said.
Murkowski dismissed the union remark, saying the retirement programs are going further underwater every day and a solution was needed.
One solution, Berkowitz said, would be to accept whatever comes out of the conference committee, reject it on the House floor, pass a budget and go home.
"Put 141 on the floor, strip it, kill it. I don't care what happens to it," he said.
