JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - The Alaska Legislature adjourned Tuesday without ever addressing the importation of crocodiles.
Nor had it discussed legislation dealing with daylight-savings time, fluoridation and renaming Fairbanks.
Those measures died, unheard, in their first committee of referral. Others followed a more circuitous path to their demise.
Despite hours of hearings as they journeyed through committees, hot-button issues like ethics reform and a constitutional amendment to deny benefits for same-sex partners fared no better in the end than a law concerning giant reptiles.
They are among some 70 percent of the 982 measures introduced over the two-year course of the 24th Alaska Legislature that died with the session.
Some come as a surprise.
Fifteen months ago, when former Attorney General Greg Renkes resigned under a cloud of conflict-of-interest allegations, it seemed more likely lawmakers would be overhauling the state's ethics laws than the state's oil taxes.
But they failed to agree on a fix.
Renkes' problems arose over stock he owned in a private company that would have benefited from a development agreement he helped write.
The House and Senate both introduced legislation that would set limits on the amount of stock a state employee can own and still conduct official business with the company.
As the Senate took the lead on the issue, it added a provision that made it a misdemeanor, subject to a fine and jail sentence, to blab about a filed ethics complaint. Proponents said the intent was to protect the reputation of the person being charged.
The fine was removed in the House, though the provision was kept.
Bill sponsor Sen. Ralph Seekins, R-Fairbanks, opposed that change, and others made in the House. But, he said, there was never time to work out the differences once lawmakers became immersed in a massive rewrite of the state's oil tax laws.
"I think it would have gotten a whole lot more discussion if we weren't dealing with, well, with a historically vital issue," said Seekins.
Critics called the provision "a poison pill." Rep. Les Gara, D-Anchorage, said it turned a simple issue, that everyone agreed on, into a political hot potato.
"The way the bill works, a citizen can't talk about government misconduct unless the government tells them it's OK, that's the big problem with the bill," Gara said.
Seekins, however, said without a crisis propelling the issue, there is plenty of time to bring the measure back next year.
"We'll just reintroduce sections of it, if not all of it, in the next Legislature," he said.
A measure regarding gay benefits also died Tuesday.
The proposed constitutional amendment sought to withhold the court-ordered spousal-type benefits for same-sex partners of government workers.
The state Supreme Court last fall ruled unanimously that denying the benefits was unconstitutional.
Alaska was one of the first states to pass a constitutional ban on homosexual marriage in 1998. But the court said that prohibition runs afoul of the constitution's equal protection clause because it bars gay couples from receiving benefits enjoyed by their straight counterparts.
Conservatives vowed to overturn the ruling and resolutions introduced in the House and Senate would have allowed voters to do just that.
The measure made it as far as the Senate Finance Committee but never arrived on the floor for a vote.
A constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to pass and Rep. John Coghill, R-North Pole, who sponsored the House version of the bill, said the requirement was too high a hurdle.
"They (the Senate) agreed not to put it on the floor, which doesn't give me anyplace to move," he said in frustration earlier this week. His own bill never made it out of the House Judiciary Committee.
But Coghill said he doesn't believe the issue is dead.
And in the meantime, the benefits plan appears a long way from reality. The state still awaits a court order to guide implementation. Attorneys say it will require not only statutory changes by the Legislature, but new regulations promulgated by the executive branch and changes in the collective bargaining agreements.
Other legislation that expired at midnight Tuesday:
- a Senate bill sponsored by Seekins to remove a prohibition on the use of snowmachines and four-wheelers in a five-mile corridor along the Dalton Highway. The ban has been in place since the road was built.
- a House bill that would allow the state's largest communities to bid on building a new legislative hall made it to the House Finance Committee but never had a hearing. Rep. Norm Rokeberg, R-Anchorage, has introduced either a similar bill or one that would move the Legislature to Anchorage in each of the last five Legislatures. Most never made it out of their first committee.
- almost a dozen House and Senate measures from both parties regarding municipal revenue sharing. Communities were hoping lawmakers would reinstate the state's annual subsidy. The 50-year old program was eliminated two years ago in a budget-cutting measure.
Lawmakers did provide about $68 million in relief to communities through energy assistance and retirement system funding in the state capital budget.
Alaska Municipal League Executive Director Kevin Ritchie said it was a step in the right direction.
"All in all it will allows communities to, maybe not move forward, but, at least survive," he said.
