Alaska News

Gas line officials endure tough questioning; Senate insists it's not 'torture'

JUNEAU -- Gov. Bill Walker's administration and employees at a state-owned gas pipeline corporation endured hours of grueling questioning Wednesday in meetings of the Senate Finance Committee, where one lawmaker accused them of playing a "shell game."

Walker convened the special legislative session here to ask lawmakers to approve spending about $150 million to buy out one of the state's partners in a $55 billion natural gas pipeline from the North Slope, increasing Alaska's stake in the project.

But rather than focusing on the complex details of the buyout deal, the finance committee has been scrutinizing the organizational structure that the state has set up to manage its role in the project, peppering officials with questions about who's in charge and who reports to whom.

Wednesday afternoon's hearing was so tense that Sen. Peter Micciche, R-Soldotna, twice insisted that lawmakers were not intentionally making administration officials uncomfortable.

"It might seem like we're torturing you," Micciche at one point told two officials from the Alaska Gasline Development Corp. "We're not."

Over the last few days, the finance committee has reviewed an organizational chart with 100 different boxes. It's called in Attorney General Craig Richards to address a statement that he barred another state official from appearing in Juneau. And it halted mid-meeting Wednesday until that official, AGDC President Dan Fauske, could be reached by phone to offer testimony.

In spite of the strain, Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, said members of his committee are ready to sign off on Walker's request.

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"They just want to know, with the buyout, that the state is there for a successful project," he said.

One of the finance committee co-chairs blamed politics for what she deemed unsatisfactory answers from the Walker administration.

"I feel like I'm still back in November and it's an election. I think there is a trust issue," Sen. Anna MacKinnon, R-Eagle River, said in an interview. "We've been at arm's length."

Both MacKinnon and Micciche, in a separate interview, said they want Walker to succeed. But Micciche expressed his own consternation at the sprawling bureaucracy laid out in the organizational chart, saying that it appeared Alaska was trying to replicate the structure and expertise of the three oil companies that have partnered with the state on the pipeline.

He had a print-out of his own version of the chart on his desk in Juneau, which featured a knot of squiggly, meandering lines between boxes instead of the straight ones on the Walker administration's version. (Micciche stressed that the print-out was a lighthearted joke.)

The state, Micciche said, doesn't need to "mirror" the oil companies' expertise.

"We need a team that simply validates that the decisions that are made are best for the state," he said. "The organizational chart that was presented to us does not make me any more comfortable."

The senators were also incensed Wednesday when they were told that Fauske, the AGDC president, had been instructed by Richards not to appear in Juneau.

Lawmakers have long respected Fauske as a kind of fiscal fixer; when he ran the Alaska Housing Finance Corp., legislators gave him the task of developing the state's pipeline before creating the AGDC.

But Fauske's annual salary, at $366,000, drew criticism from Walker during his gubernatorial campaign, and it's since been outstripped by the $120,000 monthly payments being earned by an AGDC attorney on contract, Rigdon Boykin.

After being told Wednesday that Fauske had been instructed not to appear in Juneau, Sen. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks, responded that Fauske is a "talented, respected guy."

"I think I speak for a lot of legislators when I say the name Dan Fauske carries a lot of weight in this building," Kelly said.

Later, once Fauske had called into the hearing, Kelly asked him: "Can you fire Rigdon Boykin?"

"Yes, I can," Fauske responded.

In his own appearance before the committee Wednesday, Richards said that the Walker administration coordinated testimony so lawmakers could hear from presenters who were "the most technically knowledgeable on the subject."

"I don't believe I, or anybody else to my knowledge, has given direction for people not to appear on phone or anything like that," Richards said.

Nathaniel Herz

Anchorage-based independent journalist Nathaniel Herz has been a reporter in Alaska for nearly a decade, with stints at the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Public Media. Read his newsletter, Northern Journal, at natherz.substack.com

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