And Now For Something…

Completely different. That’s what the narrator used to say during the old Monty Python comedy show when the writers couldn’t come up with any other segue between one sketch and the next.

After observing the legislature for something like 30 years, I don’t expect to see much that’s completely different. But I did on Thursday, when Gov. Sarah Palin and her chief of staff, Mike Tibbles, came down to talk to the entire House of Representatives in the big room that’s part of the office of Speaker of the House John Harris.

The governor and the state Senate are at loggerheads over capital projects she vetoed last year. They put a bunch of them back into a budget bill that is supposed to pay this year’s unanticipated expenses and sent it to the House. The House Finance Committee put even more vetoed projects into the bill and sent it to the House floor.

Enter Palin, with a compromise: Take the projects out of this bill, and come to an understanding about spending with me, and I’ll be nicer to you about what are called district priorities, exactly the sort of projects that she vetoed in the first place.

The proposal delayed action on the supplemental bill until at least Monday. Will consultation and compromise prevail? I don’t know. I’m just waiting until something gets to the floor, which is my only opportunity to weigh in.

The Beginning of the End?

The square-off with Palin and the stop-and-start pace of this week has some speculating that we are at the beginning of the end of the session. I’m hoping that’s wrong.

Why? Because the end of the session is a period of unpredictable starts and stops, advances and retreats, alarms and excursions that, frankly, try my patience. Some people say I’m not the most patient guy in the first place, so it’s not my favorite time. But it usually lasts only a week or 10 days. We’ve got 30 days left in this session. I really don’t want an end-of-session that’s 30 days long. And I don’t think anybody else does, either.

Changing the CBR?

Rep. Ralph Samuels has a resolution to change the Constitutional Budget Reserve. Since the reserve is, well, constitutional, the voters will get the final say on the change if the resolution passes the legislature.

Samuels’ proposal is to put the tax money that comes to the state when oil prices are really high into the reserve, invest it, and use part of the earnings to pay for government. A percentage of the value of the investments, called a Percent of Market Value, or POMV would dictate how much would be paid out each year. The POMV approach is used by big educational endowments, among others, and has been proposed as a way of using Permanent Fund earnings to pay for government.

Needless to say, I prefer Samuels’ approach to using Permanent Fund earnings. And it solves some current problems with the CBR, mainly the political maneuvering that accompanies getting the three-quarters vote necessary to tap the fund. So I am a co-sponsor of the resolution. So is Rep. Harry Crawford, who sponsored similar resolutions in the past.

That’s So Last Session

The legislature loved ethics legislation last session. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. This session? Not so much. I’ve got a couple of little ethics-related bills, and they are going nowhere. One would change the way we deal with conflicts of interest on the House floor. The other would force members of boards and commissions to resign when they file for elective office. Both bills have been stuck in House State Affairs. Actually, they appear to be super-glued there. Now, though, I’m told that the subcommittee that has my conflict-of-interest bill, along with half-a-dozen others, is going to meet next week. Probably much too late to get anything passed in the legislature this session.

As Promised, Poll Results

One hundred and forty people responded to my mailer-online poll about economic conditions. They were almost evenly split between people who live in House District 25 and people who don’t. Twelve percent of them said they were better off economically than last year, 26 percent said they were about the same and 62 percent said they were worse off.

Two thirds of those who think they’re worse off believe the state should do something about it. They ranked their preference for aid as an energy rebate, a cash payment and help finding a job. But even more people picked the “other” category to tell me things like “give state employees raises” and “quit fighting with the oil industry.”

As always, be aware that this is very much not a scientific poll. But it’s still interesting to hear what people think, and I thank those who took the time to respond.

More later.