FAIRBANKS -- Three mayors from the Fairbanks area have asked Anchorage Rep. Mike Hawker and other state House leaders to "cease and desist" from efforts the municipal leaders say will stall a project to get natural gas to Fairbanks.
Hawker, with the backing of key House majority leaders, championed a series of amendments in the House Resources Committee House Wednesday that would handcuff the state plan to get natural gas to Fairbanks and create a delay of one year or more, Gov. Bill Walker said. The changes would require legislative approval in the future for any agreement backed by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and prevent the agency from lining up gas contracts and taking other steps in putting a package together.
Hawker said he was not trying to stall the project or force the state to backtrack. He said he wants more involvement by the Legislature in setting policies for the Walker administration and a reduced role for AIDEA.
"Our job as a Legislature is to draw a box around the policy we want -- I call it the policy box. We provide the parameters around how we wish the policy to be developed and executed," he said. "I'm very concerned that we do not micromanage what goes on inside that policy box."
The mayors said Hawker actually is trying to put Fairbanks in a box. Agreeing with Walker, who called the Hawker amendments unacceptable, the mayors said that the extra legislative review and other restrictions adopted by the committee would penalize Fairbanksans with high energy prices that damage the economy and high pollution levels that damage public health.
"In short, sir, we respectfully ask that you cease and desist from any further attempts to delay, halt or in any other way obstruct the progress of the Interior Energy Project," they said in a Friday letter to Hawker.
"Attempts to disguise these actions as concern for our community ring hollow, and we again respectfully request that you — and the other leaders of our Legislature in Juneau — cease obstructing this project and return to a constructive, collaborative effort to bring lower-cost energy to Interior Alaska," said Fairbanks North Star Borough Mayor Luke Hopkins, Fairbanks Mayor John Eberhart and North Pole Mayor Bryce Ward.
House Bill 105 is now in the finance committee, where Fairbanks legislators plan to try to remove the Hawker policy amendments. One key argument from Fairbanks is that the state continues to subsidize Southcentral Alaska oil and gas development with tax credits aimed at increasing the regional gas supply, not adding to the state treasury.
The state paid nearly $700 million in Cook Inlet credits from 2006 to 2014 and expects to pay about $1 billion more in non-North Slope credits from 2015 to 2018, allowing for the flow of low-cost energy to the Anchorage area, the mayors said. Hawker's policies would keep Fairbanks out of the loop, they contend.
"It is difficult for us to see these efforts as anything other than an attempt to maintain a state-funded energy monopoly on Alaska's gas -- for the sole benefit of the residents of Southcentral Alaska," the mayors said.
Hawker, who mentioned during a hearing Tuesday that his wife's late father was John Carlson, a former mayor of the borough, said he is concerned about Fairbanks and keeping previous commitments to get lower cost energy to that city. He wants the project defined and subject to legislative approval.
"I understand the Interior of Alaska. I want to see the right thing done for the Interior of Alaska and not the wrong thing happen in our best efforts to do the right thing," said Hawker.
Anchorage Democratic Rep. Geran Tarr said if she represented Fairbanks, she'd be "sick to (her) stomach" over the policy plans Hawker pushed through. Hawker responded by chastising Tarr for "suggesting there is a sickening character to anything that's being done here."