SPECIAL THINGS SLOW DOWN A BIT EDITION

Back to Stop-and-Go Legislating

All that complaining I’ve been doing about how hard we’ve been working? Forget it. The session slowed down a lot this week.

Not that I’ve been bone idle.

For one thing, I’ve even had enough time to do laundry, which I’m sure has made people who have to work with me grateful.

For another, the subcommittees of the Finance Committee are getting ready to put together a version of the operating budget. I’ve been spending quite a bit time on the budgets for the departments of Administration, Military and Veterans’ Affairs and Natural Resources. Not to mention working on the University budget, which is being written by a subcommittee composed of all the members of the full committee. (Why do it that way? Got me.) And the Fiscal Policy subcommittee, which is trying to puzzle its way through the combination we seem to have of revenues that shrink and spending that grows.

So there’s been quite a bit of work going on.

What hasn’t been going on is passing a lot of bills. At last count, we’ve got 65 bills stacked up in the Finance Committee. Senate Finance has even more – 90. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since there are some bills that just need nice, quiet burials. But for every day that goes by without movement, the chances of a bill passing shrink. Even a bill most people would like to see pass.

As a result, the powerful House Finance Committee, of which I am not a very powerful member, met only once so far this week. And I’m just going to enjoy the break. Because I’m pretty sure we’ll be hard at it again – and soon.

Creating rights hither and yon

My bill to ban cell phones while driving got a hearing this week in the powerful House Transportation Committee, of which I was once a powerful member. The bill didn’t move on to the next committee, no doubt so the powerful members of Transportation can make it even better. That’s what the committee process does. Actually, what the process does is make bills different, and you have to hope that more changes are good than bad.

The bill, HB 257, has been getting some press play and, as a result, I’ve been getting mail about it. A lot of people support the bill because they have seen with their own eyes how bad most drivers get when they pick up their cell phones. (There’s something like 30 studies on drivers using cell phones, and they all say the same thing: People who are talking on cell phones are bad, bad drivers.)

I’m also hearing from people who don’t like the bill. A surprising number think I am trying to take away their right to talk on cell phones while driving. Only problem is, of course, they don’t have a right to drive at all. Driving is a privilege people get only in return for obeying a surprising number of laws: the law that requires you to pass knowledge and skills tests; the law that requires you to follow the speed limit; the law that says you can’t drive drunk and so on. The knee-jerk accusation that a driving law is a violation of someone’s rights is just that, a knee-jerk reaction.

I don’t know if this bill will pass, or what condition it will be in if it does. But the people who oppose it are going to have to come up with something other than a mythical rights violation to get their way.

The next hearing for HB 257 will be next Tuesday, February 23rd at 1:00 pm.

Oil taxes: The saga continues

The rush to hand money back to the oil companies slowed and speeded up this week, both at the same time.

What can I tell you? It’s the legislature. Anything’s possible.

Rep. Craig Johnson's bill, HB 308, slowed down for a lamentable reason: Johnson’s mom died, and he’s been home in Anchorage tending to that. Without Johnson in the Capitol, the bill is stalled in the committee he shares the chairmanship of, Resources. Johnson’s bill would pay oil companies to hire Alaskans.

On the speeded up front, a companion bill to Johnson’s in the Senate, SB 267, was introduced by Sen. Lesil McGuire this week. And Rep. Mike Kelly has introduced a bill, HB 351, which would give a 10-year production tax holiday for newly produced oil and gas.

Why are Republican legislators rushing to hand money back to some of the most profitable businesses on the planet, instead of salting it away for when we need it to pay for schools, cops and so on? Stay tuned, and I’m sure the reasons will emerge.

Use the permanent fund for what?

And while we are on the subject of resource revenue, there’s Rep. Mike Chenault’s bill to use permanent fund earnings to build a so-called bullet line to move natural gas from the North Slope to southcentral Alaska.

So much for the Republican belief in free market economics.

Best wishes,