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Or lack thereof. The Senate minority Republicans make the capital budget process one of their main issues today at their weekly presser, with Sen. Fred Dyson calling for clearer criteria for evaluating state spending on capital projects. The process has become something of a hot topic this session, and not just with the minority.

Some lawmakers are still irked by Gov. Sarah Palin's vetoing a good chunk of last year's capital budget. There's talk in the building of putting some or all of those capital items into this year's supplemental budget. Sen. Gene Therriault today suggested the motivation wasn't to fund the projects but to force Palin to make an unpopular decision all over again for "senseless political gain."

In response to last year's vetoes, lawmakers have been nagging Palin for some clear criteria so they know what to expect. The gov's budget director responded in writing earlier this month, but without a whole lot of detail. Funding priorities are the "basic government services," she wrote, including life, health, safety; transportation; infrastructure; and education.

Dyson said today he's been working for years to try to make the criteria clearer, and he rolled out his own thoughts for evaluating capital projects, which ran a whole typed page. First, figure out whether the project is a state responsibility or belongs to someone else. Then figure out if it meets health, public safety, or infrastructure needs. See if there are matching grants that would make state dollars go further. And then add in any number of "mitigating factors," like the health of the community, the wealth of its people, how much it got from the state in previous years, etc. (I simplify, but that's the idea.) Dyson said he's trying to built support for his ideas from Finance Committee members and the administration, with little luck. "The silence is deafening," he said of the administration's response.

Dyson also argued the whole budgeting process is being done "absolutely backward." He's been calling for a while to get some experts in to figure out how much big a rainy day fund the state should have to deal with its regular revenue fluctuations and the expected deficits leading up to a gas pipeline. Only when lawmakers know how much they should save and how much they should use to pay down debt can they know how much to spend in this year's capital budget, he argues.

Last week, Sen. Gary Wilken made his own recommendations in a letter to the Finance Committee co-chairs. He called for agreeing on a spending limit, alternating the body of introduction, and labeling all state money "Alaska Funds." Wilken said today he hadn't heard anything yet, aside from Sen. Bert Stedman's comment to me, that if the ideas were so good, Why didn't Wilken implement them when he was co-chair? After seeing what happened in the last three years, Wilken said, "I wish I would have."