Running In Place

We are 11 days into the 90-day session and we are busy, busy, busy. Committees are meeting on week-ends and holidays. Bills are moving. We’re having floor sessions even when there’s nothing on the calendar. There’s no doubt that we are working harder, sooner.

We are also cutting corners. The House Judiciary Committee passed a ban on an abortion procedure in a brisk 45 minutes, just a smidge faster than many people are comfortable with, especially since HB 301 doesn’t go to any other committee. And Rep. Bill Stoltze brushed off an end-of-session tactic and tried to graft a law on a completely different subject onto Rep. Paul Seaton’s bill on fisheries board conflicts of interest. If we’re this kind of legislative legerdemain so early, it’s going to get wild and wooly before this session is over.

Sideshows

As I’ve said before, the real show for this session is what we’re going to do with all the money we’re expecting. That doesn’t mean there aren’t sideshows. In Week #1, there was the Lyda-Sarah contretemps. This week, we saw the closure of the House leadership-Gabrielle LeDouxdustup, when LeDoux announced she would quit raising funds during the session for her attempt to win the U.S. House seat.

Our fund-raising rules don’t make much sense. I can’t raise money during the session – can’t even open an envelope that might have a check in it – under the theory that a campaign check I get in February has more powerful mojo than one I get in December or June. The fact is that if I were of a mind to rent my vote for a campaign contribution, when I get the contribution is immaterial. But we have a law against in-session fund-raising because it “looks bad.”

Oh, well. Rep. Reggie Joule’s first rule of life in the legislature is, “It doesn’t have to make sense.”

The law only covers fund-raising for legislative races, so what LeDoux was doing was perfectly legal. But the House leadership was threatening to do mean things to her. Why? Lots of speculation about that, not all of it connected to a concern about ethics. But it’s over, so why don’t we let that particular sleeping dog lie.

The sideshow that isn’t over is Gov. Sarah Palin’s continuing attempt to use magic budget numbers to make her spending proposals look smaller than they really are. This time-honored sleight of hand, used by governors back as far as Jay Hammond in my personal experience. I wrote about the particulars a couple of e-newses ago, but the yes-you-did, no-I-didn’t continued this week after a hearing in which a couple of figure filberts parsed the governor’s proposal and discovered – lo and behold! – she’s really increasing the operating budget 14 percent instead of 4 percent.

What I’m Doing

Spending a heck of a lot of time in the powerful House Transportation Committee, of which I am a powerful member, learning about the planning and budgeting processes the state Department of Transportation uses to get their hands on federal money. Talk about complicated. If explaining this stuff to prisoners of war isn’t against the Geneva Conventions, it should be. There have been several points when I’ve almost asked to be excused because my brain was full.

I’m also filing bills. Since the start of the session, I’ve filed bills to:

• Put about $5 billion in our savings account, the Constitutional Budget Reserve (HB 328).

• Require abortion providers to notify the parents of women younger than 16 when they request an abortion (HB 329). (More on this in a minute.)

• Force a member of a state board or commission to resign when he or she files for office (HB 282).

And today I filed HB 341 to eliminate most of the separate funds in the state general fund, and wipe out what are called program receipts. These are two ways to get money to programs and projects without having it pass through the general fund itself, at least on paper, making it look like we are spending less. So much of this is going on that the bill is 44 pages long.

Hey, what do you know? Governors aren’t the only ones who use magic numbers.

The A Word

I’ve gotten some smokin’ e-mails since introducing a parental notification bill on abortion. The smokingest have been from people who didn’t understand that the bill requires NOTIFICATION, not CONSENT. And/or didn’t notice that there’s an exception in the bill in cases of incest. Before you write me a smokin’ e-mail about it, I’d appreciate it if you actually read the bill first.

Not that I expect these facts will cause everyone in Alaska to say, Well, okay then, I support the bill. Few political issues are as explosive as abortion. So why did I stick my nose in the hornet’s nest? To be honest, I only did it because it looked like my choices were going to be (1) vote to amend the state constitution to allow parental consent, the position Rep. John Coghill takes in his bill or (2) support the position that minors should have surgery without consulting their parents. The first offends the civil libertarian in me. The second makes the father in me shake his head.

So read the bill. Then send me a smokin’ e-mail if you are so moved.

More Later .