Rep. Mike Doogan in Juneau - Legislative Newsletter

As I have gotten older, my allergy to work has increased. Even in its advanced state, it’s true, my work allergy doesn’t rival that of my boyhood idol, Maynard G. Krebs, who had what looked, on television anyway, like he was having a grand mal seizure every time he heard the word “work”.

But still. The past week has been too much. Here’s a truncated account of the work I’ve done just in the powerful House Finance Committee.

· HB 142: Presumption that AGIA Project is Uneconomical – Certain members of the House have been steamed since the rest of us voted to give a $500,000,000 contract to a Canadian outfit, TransCanada, to try to make a gas pipeline happen. We kicked around a bill to short-circuit that process for a few hours without accomplishing anything.

· HB 121: Loan funds: Charters/Mariculture/Microloan – The state already has eleventy billion loan funds, but that clearly isn’t enough, so we passed a bill financing three more to the tune of $14.5 million.

· HB 80: Self Defense – Smile when you say that, stranger.

· HB 30/31 Transportation Fund – These bills to put $1,000,000,000 into a fund to pay for transportation projects were put into a subcommittee to meet over the summer. I foolishly made eye contact with the Finance Committee Chairman and now I’m on the subcommittee.

· HB 197 Home Energy Rating Systems – Apparently we needed to designate an official Alaska home energy rating system. So we did.

· HB 173 Sport Fishing Guiding Services – This is a one-year extension of a program nobody likes very much.

· HCR 9 State Energy Production Working Group – It’s a resolution, so who cares?

· HB 206 Extend Alcoholic Beverage Control Board – The name says it all.

· HB 146 Land Transfer From State and Alaska RR – It’s a long, sad story of a handful of landowners getting caught in the transfer of the railroad from federal ownership to quasi-state ownership. This bill might do something good for these people someday.

Now, we worked on more bills than this. But this should give you some idea of life inside the machine while it’s grinding sausage.

Normally I’d put commissioner confirmations on the list of least exciting things I get to do as a powerful member of the Alaska State Legislature. But lately things around here are anything but normal. It won’t be easy to top Sarah Palin’s attorney general nomination of Wayne Anthony Ross (self-identified as WAR), but Gov. Sean Parnell apparently isn’t going down without a fight. There are a lot of designees to go through this year, and most of them are the usual fare. A few have tended toward the un-usual though.

So far my favorite is Donald Haase, nominated to head the Alaska Judicial Council. It appears that his top priority is to eliminate the council. I’m tempted to admire a guy who prioritizes his convictions so far above his job security, but I’m also tempted to give him the name of my brain doctor. The job of the council is to assess the qualification of judges around the state, so it’s kind of important. Among some of the opinions Haase has shared during the confirmation process are his belief that pre-marital affairs, as well as the post-marital kind, should be criminalized.

I understand that Mr. Haase was also an officer in the Eagle Forum. It’s not a bird-watching club, if you’re wondering. The Eagle Forum is a right-wing group that advocates for the removal of liberal judges. Call me picky, but that doesn’t sound like the fountain of objectivity to me. I’m probably going to have to vote ‘no’ and wish Mr. Haase good luck on his next endeavor.

A few eyebrows were raised when the governor selected Cora Campbell for the unenviable perch atop the Department of Fish and Game. If you know anything about fish issues in Alaska, you know if you ask any two people their opinion on any one issue, they’re almost guaranteed to get their lines crossed. Campbell is in her early 30s, and that made some people wonder if she had the experience or the toughness for the job. I met with Campbell earlier this week, and my impression is she has the intelligence, the toughness and the experience to handle it. I have no doubt half the fishing world will be angry with her at any given time, and half will be happy with her. All I can say to that is, better her than me.

And then there’s the case of Bryan Butcher. He wants to be commissioner of revenue. Since that puts him in charge of the state’s bank book, it’s a fairly important job, right?

So why is he unable, after two weeks, to say who he and others in the government talked to about the oil tax bill and when they talked to them?

I don’t know. I really don’t. But two weeks of his dodging and weaving have convinced me that he is not the man for the job. So I am voting against him.

There are only nine days left in the legislative session, and, as you might imagine with committees churning away to wrap up their business, things are starting to move quickly here in the Capitol.

But not as quickly as you might think.

So far, the legislature has passed only two bills and everything else—somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 bills all told—is gummed up in the legislative process.

Why aren’t we passing out more bills, you ask?

The truth is, not all bills should pass. Not all ideas are good ideas, and some ideas are quite a bit more expensive than others.

In addition, it takes a while to make sure that bills have received the proper amount of scrutiny during the process, and that enough time has been allowed for public comment.

The sad reality is also that, this time of year, politics and gamesmanship can affect a bill’s chances for success more than its individual merits. (Politicians playing politics, a shock I know.) Powerful committee chairs bottle up the priority legislation of other powerful committee chairs (plus all the bills of the not-so-powerful legislators) until deals can be struck about who will get what.

The end result is, after 81 days, we’ve only passed two bills. Is that a good or a bad thing? You’ll just have to decide for yourself.

And stay tuned—at the end of session, a lot can happen in nine days.

The end of session, sadly, also means that it is almost time for this e-newsletter to go on hiatus for the summer. (There just isn’t a whole lot of legislative action to report on once we leave Juneau.)

Next week’s e-newsletter should be the last of the session. After that, I can be reached, as always, by email at Rep.Mike.Doogan@legis.state.ak.us. Or, you can call my office—for the next nine days in Juneau at 465-4998, and after that in Anchorage at 269-0216.