Opinion ID: 2638277
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The text of the statute supports the council policy.

Text: The parties offer competing interpretations of AS 24.10.130. The statute provides: (a) A member of the legislature is entitled to reimbursement for the expenses of moving between the member's place of residence and the capital city for the purpose of attending a regular session of the legislature. (b) Legislators and officers and employees of the legislative branch of government are entitled to a per diem allowance. (c) The Alaska Legislative Council shall adopt a policy regarding reimbursement for moving expenses applicable to all legislators and an applicable per diem allowance policy. The policy must set conditions for the reimbursement for moving expenses and payment of per diem and prescribe the amounts of reimbursement adapted to the special needs of the legislative branch as determined by the council. The council's policy provides legislators with a per diem allowance during the legislative session but does not provide this allowance to legislative employees. Legislative employees only receive per diem if traveling on state business other than to the legislative session. Benavides argues that, because the statute mentions legislators, officers, and employees in the same breath, each of these classes of people should be entitled to the same per diem allowance. Therefore, he argues, if the Legislative Council's policy grants per diem payments to legislators during their time in Juneau, the statute requires that the same payments be made to legislative staff. The state argues that the policy that the council adopted satisfies the statutory mandate because the statute only requires that legislative employees be provided with a per diem allowance, not that they be provided with the same allowance that is provided to legislators. Benavides concedes that the state's reading has a thin veneer of plausibility. Our inquiry into whether the council's policy satisfies AS 24.10.130 begins with the text of the statute. We interpret Alaska law according to reason, practicality, and common sense, taking into account the plain meaning and purpose of the law as well as the intent of the drafters. [8] When we interpret a statute's language, unless words have acquired a peculiar meaning, by virtue of statutory definition or judicial construction, they are to be construed in accordance with their common usage. [9] Black's Law Dictionary has defined per diem as an allowance or amount of so much per day. [10] Benavides's interpretation of the language of the statute seems strained at best. He argues that the use of the language a per diem allowance in AS 24.10.130(b), and the language an applicable per diem allowance policy in AS 24.10.130(c), should be read to require that a unitary system must apply to legislators and staff, and thus that session per diem should be granted to staff if it is granted to legislators. But subsection (a) of the statute provides that legislators  but not staff  will be entitled to relocation expense reimbursement; [11] thus the statute clearly contemplates different reimbursement arrangements for legislators and their staff. The statute is vague in that it requires only a per diem allowance; it does not require that both legislators and staff receive session per diem. Defining the level of compensation is statutorily delegated to the council. The council has decided that although legislators may receive an allowance during the session, reimbursement for travel back to their districts during the session, and reimbursement for other business travel, legislative staff may only receive an allowance for the latter category. Although legislative staff do not receive the full allowance accorded legislators, it does not follow that they have been denied a per diem allowance that is required by the statute. The state recites a litany of past practices consistent with the current council policy. Most importantly, it notes that session per diem for legislators has a constitutional basis [12] and that the Legislature has viewed legislators' receipt of session per diem as a trade-off for an annual salary on the low end of the salary schedule. This dovetails with our conclusion in Laborers and Hod Carriers Union, Local 341 v. Groothuis [13] that per diem and salary are merely two sides of the same coin of total compensation. [14] The council and legislature have decided that the compensation mix will be tilted toward per diem in the case of legislators but mostly made up of salary in the case of legislative employees. Benavides takes issue with the fairness of the Legislative Council policy, declaring that legislators have made nothing more than a gratuitous payment to themselves that is arbitrary and unreasonable. The fairness or wisdom of the policy, however, is not for a court to determine; we consider only compliance with the statute. As the superior court noted, we have held that [i]t is not a court's role to decide whether a particular statute or ordinance is a wise one; the choice between competing notions of public policy is to be made by elected representatives of the people. [15] This holds especially true where the policy in question is a creature of the legislature's internal affairs.