Major legislation wreck predicted

This won’t be pretty. The session’s three biggest issues – the budget, the gas pipeline and ethics legislation – are headed for a collision next week. The question is: Will all of them survive the crash?

The people who run this place say the legislature can’t do much about writing a budget until Gov. Sarah Palin submits all of her budget amendments. The deadline for that is Thursday. Palin has targeted the next day, Friday, as the day she will submit the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act.

And ethics?

There are a couple of Senate bills (SB 19 and SB 20) that are ready to go to the Senate floor. The House is taking a different approach, rolling all the ethics legislation into a single bill. That bill, still in draft form, has grown to 22 pages and will likely move along from the state affairs committee to the judiciary committee sometime next week.

Can we deal with three big issues and still get out on time? Today is the 39 th legislative day. I’m thinking not.

More on aid for senior citizens

I made a mistake in writing about the longevity bonus last week by failing to mention the SeniorCare program, intended to replace part of the longevity bonus program. (Thanks to Howard Louderback for reminding me.) And, thank you for the fifty or so responses I received from other readers.

SeniorCare pays a monthly cash benefit of $120 for seniors with incomes under $16,133. It also pays premiums and deductibles of Medicare Prescription Drug Plan or other comparable insurance for eligible seniors with incomes up to $20,913.

Gov. Sarah Palin has introduced a bill (HB 148) to change the program. She wants to increase the amount you can earn and still get the check to $17,240 and eliminate the drug benefit. Under her plan, if the longevity bonus is restored and you get one, you’d be disqualified from SeniorCare.

I like SeniorCare. Unlike the longevity bonus, it targets seniors who actually need the money and it doesn’t have some arbitrary cutoff date for qualifying.  But I don’t think the governor is going far enough.

If we don’t restore the longevity bonus, we’ll save $32 million. We could increase the amount you can earn and still qualify for SeniorCare to $19,155 and the whole program would cost just $13.6 million. That’d be an increase of only $3.5 million over the current cost of the program. (This and other estimates of the cost of changes are just that, estimates. We won’t really know until people start applying.) We’d have a net savings of almost $30 million and we’d be paying money only to seniors who need it.

If we left the income level at the current number and increased the payment to $150 a month, the program would cost $12.7 million, an increase over the current SeniorCare program of $2.6 million. Again, our net savings over restarting the longevity bonus would be almost $30 million.

And if we did both, the whole program would cost $17.1 million, an increase of $7 million. We’d still have a net savings of $25 million.

You get the idea. There are lots of ways to improve SeniorCare and still save money over restarting the longevity bonus. That’s because SeniorCare only gives money to people who need it.

Here’s what I’ve been doing…

to earn my big paycheck.

The powerful Transportation Committee, of which I am a powerful member, has been hearing testimony about the Ocean Ranger program that is required by the cruise ship initiative passed last August. The cruise ship industry doesn’t like it, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation doesn’t seem very fond of it either. I don’t know what changes might be attempted, but I’m going to be reluctant to make any changes in something the voters passed.

And in the powerful Oil and Gas Committee, we’re working on a bill to prevent oil companies from deducting from their taxes the costs of damage to their facilities caused by improper maintenance. It won’t surprise you to learn the oil companies don’t like that.

Are you having problems with state government?

No matter where you live in Alaska, you can contact an office that investigates complaints against state government agencies and employees. The Alaska Legislature created the Office of the Ombudsman to make sure that government follows the rules and treats all citizens fairly and reasonably.

The Ombudsman is a non-partisan, neutral fact-finder. The Ombudsman takes no sides in a dispute, but if she finds a problem, she will confront the agency and recommend a solution.

To reach the ombudsman by phone, dial 1-800-478-2624 toll-free anywhere in Alaska. You can also contact the office at www.state.ak.us/ombud, by writing to Post Office Box 102636, Anchorage, 99510-2636, or fax at (907) 269-5291.

Best Wishes,