SPECIAL ADJOURNMENT EDITION!!!

What We Did

Spent money. Boy howdy, did we spend money. The numbers aren’t completely in focus yet, but it appears that we spent around $12 billion in state funds. That’s $12,000,000,000 for operating and capital budgets and bonds. Way, way, way too much money.

On the bright side, we put $4 billion into a savings account that’s somewhat protected by the state constitution, (Another $1 billion is in savings limbo, in an account the legislature can spend with a simple majority.) And more might go into savings automatically, because the state Department of Revenue is predicting we’ll get even more money due to high oil prices.

We also increased criminal penalties for a lot of things. The joke around here is that littering is now a Class C felony. Increasing criminal penalties increases jail time, which increases the cost of keeping people in the graybar hotel. And it’s pretty clear that putting people in the stoney lonesome doesn’t stop crime. We need different, less expensive alternatives, and instead of figuring out what those are we just ratchet up sentences. Not a pretty picture.

We’re now at the point on things like campaign finance and legislative ethics laws that I’m voting against them. I’m not a big fan of raising campaign money, but as long as we have a system that requires candidates to do that we shouldn’t be passing laws to restrict them in stupid ways. We’re doing that now. And an ethics law that tries to tell people who are not in the legislature what they can and can’t do is absolutely unconstitutional. We’re just pandering to the perpetually disaffected now, trying to still the voices of constant critics who will never be satisfied. That’s a no-win situation if I ever saw one.

Now don’t get me wrong. There were some good bills passed. And if you ask me in a couple of weeks, after I’ve gotten some rest, I’ll be happy to tell you what they were.

90 Day Fever! Catch It!

I’m not a big fan of the 90-day session. Less of a fan, actually, since we just finished one. The big problem of the artificially shortened session is how fast the legislature has to move to finish in 90 days.

There are two main victims of 90-day fever.

The first is the Alaska public.

Ninety days gives legislators even less time for public hearings and other forms of outside-the-building consultation. That means the legislature becomes more of a closed system, dependent almost exclusively on legislators, staff, bureaucrats, lobbyists and other interest groups for ideas and feedback. So a pretty narrow slice of Alaska is involved in law - and budget - making. I don’t see how that can be good.

The second is new ideas and difficult tasks.

HJR 28 is an example of a new idea. Rep. Ralph Samuel’s proposal to make part of the Constitutional Budget Reserve an endowment got as far as the Senate Finance Committee – a real achievement in itself for Samuels – before running out of gas. Part of the reason it didn’t pass was pure politics. But part of it was that the Senate got nervous about a new idea that they didn’t really have time to think about.

A difficult task? How about writing the state budget? Ninety days leaves just enough time to look at the increases in the budget. Almost no attention is paid to the base budget. So, this session, 20 percent of the budget took up 100 percent of the legislature’s time. What kind of sense does that make? The legislature will never be able to come to grips with the policies that underlie state spending in 90 days.

The third is the quality of the legislation itself. The end of the session was a flurry of stuffing entire bills into other bills. This was done as sloppily as I’ve ever seen it. The number of title change resolutions is one piece of evidence of that. If legislation fits under the title, you don’t need to change the title. Right? And the floor fight we had over a bill to put the extension of a fishery into extending the time of some state development councils is yet more evidence. We keep this up, and we’ll be making ugly laws.

How a Bill Becomes Law. Or Not.

My bill to put citizens in charge of the compensation for legislators and top administration officials passed the legislature in the flurry that ended the session. You won’t find the bill number, HB 260, or my name anywhere though, because it was rolled into another bill, HB 417, that increases the pay for state employees who aren’t represented by unions.

My other legislation? D-E-D, dead. It’s not easy being a freshman member of the minority. I’m particularly unhappy that my bill on sexually aggressive children didn’t make it, but the financial cost was too high to get the bill passed without a lot more work. Rep. Nancy Dahlstrom and I plan to work on it between now and next session and, hopefully, have better luck next session.

What I’m Doing

The woman who lets me live with her and I are packing up and heading back to Anchorage in a couple of days. It will be good to get home. When the computers get to Anchorage, I’ll reopen my Anchorage office. I’ll be monitoring e-mail until then – and, of course, trying to regain what little sanity I’ve got left.

See you soon.

Best wishes,