Entries in Capital Focus for January, 2008
The Mogel memo
Don’t people read my stories?
Sen. Charlie Huggins brought up the Mogel memo on TransCanada’s application at today’s floor session as if it was hot news. Actually, Sen. Gene Therriault mentioned it on the floor last week, and I wrote a story about it this weekend.
Three-legged stool to come in one piece
Remember last year how lawmakers described education funding, the PERS/TRS fix, and revenue sharing as three legs of one stool? The idea was that each component was more or less important depending on where you lived — the PERS/TRS fix would really help urban areas, for instance — so lawmakers looked for ways to balance the benefits in the separate bills, and stopped short of passing one without the others lest lawmakers lose interest once they got the part they liked.
So . . . the three pieces are back this year.
Susitna: Long term savior or boondoggle?
The Anchorage Daily News this morning blasted the Susitna dam project, calling it a “boondoggle” and recommending it “be put back in the crypt where it belongs.”
Ouch.
Budget 101
I don’t remember there being this much trouble last year.
Lawmakers and now the governor are in something of a tiff over her budget proposal, how she’s portrayed it, and, ultimately, how big it is. Or rather, how much bigger it is than last year’s.
AGIA timeline
The Senate minority passed out an “AGIA timeline” at their morning presser, which raised a good question — What is the plan?
BIOS vs. crime lab
Sen. Gary Wilken of Fairbanks says he’ll encourage members of the Interior delegation to say No to a $100 million state crime lab unless lawmakers also get behind the $113 million biological sciences facility proposed for the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus.
Conoco asks for 20 to 25 years
Brian Wenzel of ConocoPhillips told the House Resources Committee this afternoon that his company was looking for 20 to 25 years of certainty on gas taxes to get a gas line going. The length of time is based on the expectation that gas leaseholders would have to commit to ship their gas for that long to enable the project financing.
“Riddled with detriments”: Administration responds to Conoco proposal
Gov. Sarah Palin has responded to ConocoPhillips’ gas line proposal with a series of documents prepared by her gas line team and provided to lawmakers on the Senate Resources Committee. The documents include an overview of the proposal, a 17-page critique of it, and a list of nine “Questions Alaskans should ask ConocoPhillips.”
A failure to communicate?
There’s been a lot of talk down here about airing out the gas line proposals that didn’t make it. Senate Resources will kick things off with a presentation this afternoon by ConocoPhillips, and House Republicans are also planning meetings.
When things can’t wait, skip Wal-Mart and go for McDonald’s
Last year, Rep. Jay Ramras was a Wal-Mart kind of gas line guy.
Cookie man in Juneau
If you walk upstairs to the first floor of the Capitol and turn left right now, you’ll smell chocolate chip cookies. And I mean fresh chocolate chip cookies, baking.
The perfect time to build a pipeline is . . .
I have to admit my enthusiam was not great for a Friday afternoon Senate Resources hearing on gas offtake rules, but it actually turned out to be fairly interesting.
Quotable: Wilken
“This is not buying toilet paper. This is a hundred-year decision.”
Funding education early
I just met with Bill Bjork of NEA-Alaska, and I gotta say it felt a little weird. I’ve had a few calls from various groups in my first days here asking to meet with me and discuss things like education funding and tourism. There’s nothing wrong with it, and I likely would have called these groups on my own if they hadn’t called me, but it sure feels like lobbying.
The meaning of competition
It might be a little early for sweeping assessments, but here’s mine.
Two days into the session, lawmakers are already split on the meaning of competition under AGIA, the gas line process the governor proposed last year and lawmakers approved nearly unanimously.
What, no iPhones?
All of a sudden lawmakers are walking around with Blackberry phones on their hips. This is the first year the state has provided them, and already they’re causing something of a problem, or at least raising an issue.
Remember this?
Gov. Sarah Palin will give her second state of the state address to the Legislature this afternoon. Here’s a few graphs from the story I wrote about her first one, which I must say seems like it happened more than a year ago.
90 days and a gas line
I’ve only been in Alaska for three legislative sessions, but it seems like every one is so chock-full of stuff it’s a struggle to finish in time.
This one is no different. At kick-off news conferences this morning, House Reps and Dems both spelled out long lists of goals, and even supporters of the shorter, 90-day session expressed doubts about whether it would be long enough this year, the first year it goes into effect.
Welcome to Capital Focus!
Greetings from Juneau! And welcome to the News-Miner’s new blog on state politics, the Interior delegation, and oil and gas issues.