SPECIAL 60 DAYS AND COUNTING EDITION

We don’t have to pass any stinking bills

Today is the 60th day of the legislative session. We are, in theory anyway, two-thirds done. But the calendar is only one measuring stick. Here’s another. As of today, the legislature has passed two joint resolutions, one Senate bill and three House bills. And that’s it.

So we’re going to have to get to stepping in the next 30 days or we’ll go down as the least productive legislative session since the Long Parliament.

Not everyone believes that this dearth of bills passing is a bad thing. Those who do – often, people who want a particular bill or bills passed – blame the length of the session. I agree the thing is too short to do everything we need to do and do it well – but there’s got to be more to it than that.  The number of bills stacking up in the House and Senate Finance committees has reached Homeric proportions. There are 87 bills and nine resolutions languishing in House Finance, and even more in Senate Finance – 115 bills and five resolutions.  Makes you think there might be a strategy involved.

Whatever. We know we’ll pass at least a few more bills. If we don’t, there will be no budgets and state government will come to a complete halt. (No cheering, please.) And we won’t get to build anything. That’s an insupportable state of affairs. I mean, why be in the legislature if you can’t spend money that doesn’t come out of your own pocket?

Scrambling to keep up

One thing about being a member of the powerful House Finance Committee is that you have to be a quick study. Any bill that has a dollar sign attached to it – even if the dollar sign is followed by a zero – will find its way to Finance.

So this week we heard bills about ballot initiatives, the Board of Optometry, gas storage in Cook Inlet, the way the state buys things, building an in-state gas pipeline, and another plan to keep the state – the legislature, actually – from spending every dime and then doing an Idi Amin on the state budget.

I know nothing about Optometry and less than I should about the rest of those subjects. So I have to be able to get at least enough information – somehow – to decide if I think that a bill should leave Finance for the next stop in its journey.

Fortunately, there’s help. There’s usually an advocate for each bill, and often an opponent, too. In most cases, the bill has already been through a committee or six. I have staff to help me and, as I’ve said in the past, they are smarter than I am. And if push comes to shove, I can always read the bill and think about it. (Yeah, I know that’s old-fashioned. But then, I’m no spring chicken.)

But I have surprisingly little time for the reading and thinking. In addition to time spent in committee, I’ve got people who want to see me, floor sessions to attend, meetings to take with my colleagues, questions from the press to dodge – er, I mean, answer – and so on. Throw in a couple of meals and a few hours sleep and it makes for full days.

So a lot of the time I’m scrambling to keep up with the new bills as they are fired at committee members like fastballs in a batting cage.

How am I doing?  To be honest, about half the time I don’t feel completely competent to make the decisions I’m required to make.

What do I do? I try. That’s all I can do, really. And come November the voters will let me know how well I’m doing it.

Odds & Ends

• Larry Persily has left the building. Persily, who has been working for Rep. Mike Hawker, has gone off to D.C. to become the federal government’s gas pipeline czar. I’m not sure how long I’ve known Larry. More than 20 years, anyway. He was, like me, an ink-stained wretch who wandered into government work. He is smart, works hard and still speaks and writes in regular English most of the time. He’s even got a good, if mordant, sense of humor. So I think it is a good choice by the Obama Administration. I think he’ll do a good job for Alaska and hope the job will do good things for him. Like convincing him to lose the funky saddle shoes he habitually wears.
   
• I had a bill moved from one committee to the next this week. If you are a minority member, that’s the equivalent of hitting the jackpot in Vegas. A small jackpot, anyway. It’s way too late for my cell phone bill to get through another House committee, across the floor to the Senate, through a Senate committee or three and across the Senate floor. Still, you take your small victories where you can find them. Another bill of mine had its second hearing in the first committee it was assigned to and stayed right where it was.

That’s it for this week. Keep in touch.

Best wishes,