SPECIAL PIZZA, CHEESE & $8 BILLION EDITION

Real people, real politics, real pizza

Think Sunday. That’s when Sen. Hollis French, Rep. Lindsey Holmes and I will be at Romig Middle School from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. to hand out pizza and talk politics with any of our constituents who show up. It’s a chance for us to see real people, and get a real take on what we’ve been doing in Juneau and what you are seeing in the district. Plus, there’s a professional clown. So come out.

On voting for the operating budget

I voted for the state operating budget for the first time on Thursday. Here’s why.

Things look pretty good right now. If we don’t go crazy on capital spending this year, the projections are that we’ll have enough money to pay for the current budget, including some extra spending – what we call supplementals – and next year’s budget – including a healthy chunk for construction spending. Plus we’ll have some money left over in case oil prices slide. (If oil prices really crater, all bets are off.)

That’s the good news. The bad news is that spending keeps going up and oil revenue keeps going down. For the past half-dozen years or so, the spending has risen around 10 percent a year while oil production has gone around 6 percent a year.  You don’t have to be, as someone said to me the other day, a rocket surgeon to know that this state of affairs can’t continue indefinitely.

What should we do about this? I’m not sure. Members of the House Finance Committee, convening as a subcommittee on fiscal policy, are trying to find out what, if anything, we can do about it. I think we’re going to have to figure out how to lower the rate of growth in spending, if not reverse it. This is going to be hard to do. Really hard. Hard enough that all of you are going to have to be involved. This is not something a handful of politicians is going to do on their own.

But in the meantime, we’ve got a state to run. Schools and roads and cops and thousands of other goods and services have to be paid for.

Is this the perfect budget I would have written on my own? No. It has, in my opinion, many flaws. But that’s something every single one of the 40 House members would say. In the end, each of us had to decide if, on balance, the budget is good enough. This year, I decided that it is.

A Special Report on Cheese

Even I can’t be everywhere at once. I know, I know, but ever since that Kryptonite incident, that’s the way it is. So sometimes I have to dispatch a member of the crack Doogan team to report back on some important Capitol doing that I cannot attend myself. Thus it is that the lovely and talented Charles Boyle delivers this important report on the state of Alaska cheese.

Crafting good public policy is a tricky business. After the Legislature passes a bill—and the Governor completes the constitutionally mandated task of signing his own name—it falls to state departments to implement the law by creating regulations. Legislative oversight of the regulatory process is the job of the little-known but up-and-coming Joint Committee on Administrative Regulation Review.

It was at this intersection of legislative intent and public policy that I found myself on Monday afternoon. While waiting to hear the committee discuss personal use cabin regulations, I found my daydreams interrupted by the deliberations of the committee on another subject: cheese. My pulse quickened. Finally, after 49 days at work, we were getting to the people’s business.

As a native son of the Matanuska Valley, I’ve always been a fan of local dairy products. I think most Alaskans would stand with me in supporting local dairy—except of course for those dairy discriminators, the lactose intolerants.

On Monday, though, I learned that we Alaskan cheese lovers might be eating at our own (very small) risk. You see, we’re still relatively new to mass-producing cheese in Alaska, so few cheese regulations exist. Now, however, Matanuska Creamery has begun to step up their Alaskan cheese production, so our cheese regulations need updating. Seeking to guarantee cheese safety for all is the intrepid Department of Environmental Conservation.

Caught in the crossfire is—as always—the little guy. The mom and pop cheese maker. The families raising a small number of cows (or goats) to feed themselves with fresh, homemade cheese.  

There are more Alaskans doing so than you might think. For two hours, the committee was inundated by the vox populi—small-scale cheese makers from across the state who worried that they were soon to become dairy outlaws. Sen. Donny Olson, who has attended law school, medical school, and is a reindeer farmer—a veritable food regulation triple threat—rose to the defense of the everyman cheese maker, asking if there were rampant outbreaks of homemade cheese-related food poisoning in Alaska that we haven’t been hearing about. 

Kristin Ryan, Director of the Division of Environmental Health, responded that most of the new regulations did not apply to cheese production for private consumption. She also highlighted the importance of preventing food poisoning from salmonella, e. coli, and the other unsavory byproducts of modern agriculture.

After two hours of passionate testimony, Monday’s Great Cheese Debate ended.  DEC will continue to work on the new regulations, taking Monday’s public testimony into account. And, one day, we may just live in an Alaska where some people can make their own cheese, and others can buy properly regulated, locally made dairy products. 

What happens next? Stay tuned to the deliberations of the Curds, Wheys & Means Committee—which meets Mondays at 3 p.m.

Spring forward? Are you sure?

In fact, I am. On 2 a.m. Sunday, we are all commanded to move our clocks forward one hour or suffer the consequences. The main one being an hour late to everything. So spring forward.

I can’t, however, resist the temptations to point out that the far-sighted members of the Alaska House of Representatives have already voted to quit messing with the clock and get rid of Daylight Savings Time. But the slowpokes on the Senate side have refused to make the change embodied in HB 19, perhaps because they were too busy working out the kinks in the second version – or is it the third verse – of the Alaska Flag Song.

What ever. Spring forward, and let’s all hope the Senate sees the light.

Best wishes,