Rep. Mike Doogan in Juneau - Legislative Newsletter

We’ve been in special session since Monday morning. In that time, the House has met four times. The powerful House Finance Committee, of which I am a weary member, has met three times. And the House and Senate have sent three bills (HB 126, SB 42 and SB 84) to the governor.

One way to look at that is this: We should meet in special session all the time. Our bill-production rate is three times the rate of the regular session.

Of course, there’s another way to look at it. (Us legislators always have more than one way to look at anything.) How? Well, you could say that we are shooting the sitting ducks. The tough bills – coastal zone management, the scholarship program and, particularly, the capital budget – are still ahead of us.

Not every bill has to pass, of course. Only the operating and mental health budgets really have to. But it is hard to imagine us not passing a capital budget. It would be like children eating their vegetables and passing up the chocolate cake.

At the moment, the capital budget is balled up in a series of strategems and miscalculations, with Sen. Bert Stedman in one corner, House Speaker Mike Chenault in the other and Gov. Sean Parnell making the situation worse every time he opens his mouth.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are spending most of our time waiting. There is just one bill left to go through the House Finance Committee: SB46, the capital budget. We pass that, and we’re home free.

Soon, I hope. Very, very soon.

When you are just marking time in Juneau, waiting for the three-headed monster – governorHouseSenate – to set you free, you spend an inordinate amount of time watching Hall-cam.

Hall-cam is, as its name implies, a camera that’s set up in the second floor of the Capitol. There, it shows the comings and goings of the denizens, and the occasional soundless performance put on for the benefit of the audience.

One of the best performances, year in and year out, is by James Armstrong. Armstrong is the House Finance aide who oversees the writing of its version of the capital budget.

This is a painstaking job with more than its fair share of tense moments. So it is small wonder that Armstrong provides Hall-cam watchers with one of the best bits of theater they’ll see.

I’m not talking about an oops-pick-me-up stumble. I’m talking about a full tilt, he-must-have-broken-something, Chevy-Chase-quality fall. Afficianados of the fall claim this year’s wasn’t the best, but enjoyed the fact that Armstrong followed it up with an encore on crutches.

This year’s Hall-cam Oscar, though, belongs to the Senate floor staff. This group of young men and women spend the session passing the Senate’s notes, distributing its amendments and filling its water glasses. This year, set the Hall-cam on fire, they mimed their way through a number of entertaining bits, performing as a railroad train, a flock of birds and waltzers. Much, much more entertaining than legislators walking this way and that, looking lost.