Rep. Mike Doogan in Juneau - Legislative Newsletter

Now playing at your local LIO: The Further Adventures of Sean Parnell, Governor Extraordinaire.

Starring Parnell as, God help us, himself. With special appearances by the Mikes (Chenault and Hawker, that is). Produced by the friendly folks at BP, Conoco and Exxon, and assistant producers AOGA, the Alliance and the “Make Alaska Competitive Coalition.”

OK, enough of that. This isn’t a joke. So wipe that smile (or grimace, as the case might be) off your face and listen up.

On Day 2 of the special session, we passed a simple bill. (No, stop. The applause is deafening.) The legislation, HB 359, is an anti-sex trafficking bill. It was unanimously supported in both the House and Senate but got tied up in the end-of-session hi-jinx. We made short work of passing it.

That leaves two bills that are anything but simple.

One, HB 9, would create a no-holds-barred agency to build a so-called bullet line to move gas from the North Slope to Nikiski. Aside from the idea being tres expensive – maybe $6 billion, maybe more – and maybe resulting in $20-per-million-cubic-foot gas (that’s more than twice the cost in Anchorage right now), the bill wipes out almost all checks and balances that would keep the super agency from going gonzo with the state treasury.

Not surprisingly, the bill is meeting stiff resistance among legislators who do not represent the Kenai Peninsula.

The other is the latest version of a bill to give the big oil companies a couple of billion dollars a year to do the work they should already be doing. If you have heard about this before, that’s because it used to be HB 110. It is back as HB 3001. Parnell’s boys claim it will only cost $1.2 billion this time.

Of course, that is what Parnell and his Department of Revenue first claimed about HB 110. Turned out that – oops – it cost $2 billion a year. I learned two things from that. First, never – and I mean never ever – trust anything the Department of Revenue tells you. Second, don’t count your chickens before the last golden egg is hatched.

So it will be hearings in the House (HB 3001) and the Senate (HB 9) until who knows when.

That’s it for now. The weather is gorgeous, the building is quiet and I’ve got a big, dense oil tax bill to go over.