One Day Wonder Edition!

Here we come

The legislature met for the first time ever outside Juneau yesterday to deal with the issue of senior assistance. (You can read background on the issue here and here.) The session was a jury-rigged affair in a room in the basement of the Egan Convention Center.  The House and Senate took turns meeting. The House led off at 10 a.m. and finished up at 5 p.m., and in between the House Finance Committee met (a couple of blocks away in the legislative offices on Fourth Avenue), pictures were taken and there was lots of to-ing and fro-ing.

The debate quickly focused on how much money the state was going to give poor senior citizens.

One group wanted a smaller program that paid less. Rep. Mike Kelly of Fairbanks was their spokesman, and at one point actually invoked the Yoyo Philosophy that I mentioned in a previous e-news by saying that unless you are really sick or really poor, the legislature’s message to you should be “You’re on your own.”

Don’t expect Kelly to be nominated for the Older Persons Action Group’s Legislator of the Year award anytime soon.

A second group wanted a larger program that paid more to the poorest Alaska seniors. I was a member of that group, as was every other member of the House Democratic caucus. Several Republicans were as well, most notably Rep. Mike Hawker, whose bill (HB 198) provided the framework for that position.

A third group took a middle position. Some politicians seek the middle ground the way homing pigeons seek their coops.

The middle-grounders prevailed in the Finance Committee, but the more-for-the-really-poor group won out where it really counted, on the House floor. The Senate quickly concurred, and we were done in a day.

The program we approved will pay $250 a month for a senior who makes less than $9,578 a year; $175 a month for a senior who makes between $9,578 and $12,770; $125 a month for s senior who makes between $12,770 and $22,348. There is no assets test. The cost estimate for that is about $19.4 million.

There we go

What’s next?

Well, Gov. Sarah Palin has stopped talking about the necessity of a fall special session to review the state’s Petroleum Profits Tax (PPT). Back around indictment time, Palin was gung-ho for a special session on oil taxes. But in the past couple of weeks, administration spokescritters have been very non-committal.

There are two possible reasons for review.

The first is that initial payments under the tax fell short of expectations, which may mean that critics of a net profits tax are right: Letting the oil industry’s accountants fiddle with the numbers isn’t a good idea.

The second is that four members of the group that passed the PPT two sessions ago have been indicted, three of them on charges directly related to the PPT bill. In fact, people have pleaded guilty to bribing the three in return for their support on the issue.

Reason#2 is enough for me. Even if we pass exactly the same bill, we should do what we can to eliminate the odor that surrounds it. (In the interests of full disclose, I have to say that my knee jerks toward moving to a tax on the gross value of the oil.)

Is Palin interested in erasing the odor? I guess we’ll find out.

A dubious record

One result of the just-concluded special session is that I now hold the record for shortest-lived bill. I introduced a bill to appropriate the money for senior assistance. The legislature decided that it wasn’t necessary right then – and that they didn’t want to wait the extra three days it would have taken to pass it. So the bill died at the end of the special session. Total life span: Two and one half hours.

Best wishes,