It’s A Mess

As I write this, the legislation that some people call energy relief and others call a pork barrel is in danger of self destructing.

Yesterday, the Senate sent across SB 4002, which throws money at all sorts of energy costs, including some that are among the lowest in the nation. The bill is, in the parlance of legislative politics, a Christmas tree, a bill onto which sponsors keep adding ever-shinier ornaments in an effort to attract enough votes for passage.

The problem with a Christmas tree is that it soon becomes more ornaments than tree and at some point the process works in reverse: the more you add, the more votes you lose.

What the Senate sponsors did was keep adding ornaments until they had enough votes to send the bill to the House. In the process, though, they lost the House leadership, which is now proposing a stripped-down bill that doesn’t do much but throw money at people – a la the original Sarah Palin proposal.

How much of this difference is sincere, and how much just bargaining positions, isn’t clear here in the back of the bus.

What is clear is that we are now at a point where a real dispute could run out the remaining time and leave us having done nothing on energy.

And considering some of the ornaments on this particular Christmas tree that might not be such a bad result.

Less is More

Also in the unfinished file is the appropriation to pay for AGIA, and what the Palin administration claims are AGIA-related expenses. Some of those items don’t look so AGIA-related. Many, including the $500 million for TransCanada, are multi-year appropriations. Legislators don’t like multi-year appropriations. We like to dole the money out a year at a time.

So this bill got a shave and a haircut, and the money got rolled in with the energy appropriations. All of that is now on the House floor, with action scheduled for later today. But with the specifics of the energy bill up in the air, we just may not be able to get to the appropriations today.

The 90-Day Session

I’ve now spent 148 days in session this year. If you add in the governor’s AGIA license briefing and meetings of the powerful Legislative Budget and Audit Committee, of which I am a powerful member, and Cook Inlet Fisheries Task Force, that number is closer to 160 full days of legislating.

So if you were one of those who voted to limit legislative sessions to 90 days, I can tell you this: It isn’t working. All the 90-day limit does is force difficult questions into special session.

And before you start in on how if we were just more efficient we could do it all in 90 days, let me say this: We ain’t making widgets here. Each and every piece of legislation carries its own combination of policy, politics and personalities. Some are relatively easy to deal with: Pass it or kill it, the decision doesn’t take long. But bills that are technically complex, or involve well-entrenched special interests, or attract the attention of powerful legislators are anything but simple. When the bill has all of those elements, like the AGIA license, it’s a show-stopper.

Dudley Who?

My senator, Hollis French, brought down the house – er, the Senate – by comparing TransCanada VP Tony Palmer, who has been patiently dealing with us for months, with the cartoon Mountie Dudley Do-Right. One of the reasons the gag worked is, of course, that there is a family resemblance between the two Canadians.

See for yourself:

What’s Next

Not counting today, which is half-over already, we’ve got two days left in this special session. Nothing bad could happen in so short a time. Could it?

Later,