SPECIAL SPECIAL SESSION EDITION

Just Seconds From a Clean Getaway

There’s a scene in a movie – I think it’s ‘Terms of Endearment’ – where Jack Nicholson is dropped at the airport by Shirley MacLaine. They say their careful good-byes but, just as Nicholson turns to go, MacLaine asks him something about the state of their relationship. Nicholson’s rueful response:  “Just seconds from a clean getaway.”

I know how he feels. For the longest time, it looked like we were going to get through the year without a special session. That would have been a first for me. I was looking forward to it. But Gov. Sarah Palin’s intransigence about $28 million in energy stimulus funds, coupled with the bit of bait-and-switch that would have left us without a confirmed lieutenant governor, forced the legislature to call itself into special session.

Darn.

The plan is to meet for a day – Aug. 10 – in Anchorage to deal with these matters. Since the veto override vote and the confirmation vote have to be held in joint session, I think the idea is to get all 60 of us – or however many can make it – into a big room in the Egan Center, hold the votes and adjourn.

Let’s hope it’s nothing more complicated than that. The one-day session we had in the Egan two years ago showed we weren’t set up to hold House and Senate sessions simultaneously; we had to queue up for the microphones  and so on. Not an ideal situation. So if anything comes unstuck – like, for example, somebody trying to bring up other, more controversial veto overrides – the whole thing can go gunnysack in a heartbeat.

And the latest idea by soon-to-be-Gov. Sean Parnell, that we move a bill out of a committee and across the floors of both the House and the Senate in a one-day session? Almost impossible to accomplish, legally or politically. Parnell, who was in the legislature himself, should know that. So let’s hope that he’s not embarking on the Sarah Palin communicating-by-press-release method of dealing with the legislature. It didn’t work so good.

A Missed Opportunity

I don’t know what we were thinking of – and by “we” I mean me, too – by not having the special session in Fairbanks. We’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of Statehood, and we really should have marked the occasion by having the session in Constitution Hall on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

My excuse? Don’t have one. I didn’t think of this until after the decision was made to have the session in Anchorage. Oops.

Second Prize is Two Days In Fairbanks

I do get a trip to Fairbanks out of the deal though. It seems the only hearing the House of Representatives is going to have into Craig Campbell's nomination to be lieutenant governor is scheduled for Monday in Fairbanks. Since the proposal would put Campbell the proverbial heartbeat from the governor’s office, I figure I should go and listen, and maybe even ask a question or two.

As before, if anything happens in the next week, you’ll get an e-news. If not, you’re off the hook.

Best wishes,