JUNEAU — The Alaska Legislature on Sunday blew past the deadline to finish its session on time, with only a hint of progress on Gov. Bill Walker's deficit-reduction package aimed at closing the state's $4 billion budget gap.
Lawmakers finished their 90th day and headed into their 91st with the state's operating and capital budgets still outstanding, as well as Walker's legislation to reform Alaska's oil tax credit subsidy program, to restructure the Permanent Fund to help pay for state government, and to institute a personal income tax.
The House and Senate each charged its way through stacks of less-contentious bills, working past midnight on subjects ranging from texting-while-driving to Medicaid reform to the state's assistance payments to municipalities. And small steps forward on the Permanent Fund and income tax legislation came in the House Finance Committee, which unveiled tweaks to limit the volatility of oil revenue in the Permanent Fund bill and to delay the onset of the income tax by two years.
But lawmakers said they would need more time to resolve their differences over the major bills, and were planning to hunker down in Juneau for at least a few more days of work that they hope can result in an overarching compromise.
"What you don't see is the behind-the-scenes negotiations going on," Rep. Charisse Millett, R-Anchorage and the House majority leader, said in an interview Sunday afternoon. "We're moving."
Nonetheless, lawmakers Sunday managed to find time for a hearing on a resolution opposing genetically modified salmon, a vote on a bill to create a water and sewer advisory committee and a retirement party for Sen. Bill Stoltze, R-Chugiak, at the home of a prominent Republican donor — with several oil company lobbyists in attendance.
Not every legislator was as optimistic about the prospects for a quick adjournment as Millett. Rep. Adam Wool, D-Fairbanks, described the Legislature's efforts over the weekend as "punting" and "stalling." His metaphor for the slow progress at the end-of-session was a T-shirt he'd seen with an upside-down Nike "swoosh" logo and a caption that's the opposite of the company's "Just Do It" tagline: "Didn't Get Around To It."
"I'm not sure anyone really has a plan," Wool said. "There's little pieces floating around, but I'm not sure there's any kind of orchestration."
Legislative leaders midday Sunday announced the cancellation of a key 4 p.m. committee meeting that was set to resolve some of the differences between the operating budgets passed by the House and Senate. By the end of the day, five hearings were scheduled for Monday.
A 2006 voter initiative limits the legislative session to 90 days — a window that closed Sunday at midnight. But lawmakers can and often do simply continue for longer, with a hard deadline set by the state Constitution at 121 days.
A renovation and retrofitting project is set to start at the Capitol on Monday, though lawmakers say they can remain at the building — albeit with some construction noise — until they're forced out May 2.
The key holdup for lawmakers Sunday remained the same as it had been all week: a lack of consensus in the House on Walker's legislation to reform the state's oil tax system. Under the current regime, the state next year is projected to pay out $775 million in cash tax credit subsidies to small oil and gas companies.
House minority Democrats — whose votes are needed to access a savings account expected to be needed to cover next year's budget gap — want the subsidies sharply reduced, while the Republican-led majority wants to phase them out more gradually, saying they're fearful of scaring away investors.
Until an oil tax compromise emerges, "everything else kind of sits in line waiting for this action to be taken," said Rep. Tammie Wilson, R-North Pole, whose own House majority is divided about how quickly to scale back the cash tax credits.
Legislators said closed-door discussions were still happening on the oil tax bill. And House lawmakers are also hoping the Senate could broker a deal on the legislation, since the Senate Finance Committee has been holding oil tax hearings over the last few days and the House version has not seen any action in the rules committee.
"We're looking at the Senate to see if they come up with something we have not thought of," Wilson said.
In the meantime, the House and Senate on Sunday spent hours debating and voting on more than 15 different bills. Many were substantive, though none were the critical pieces of legislation expected to be at the center of a session-ending deal.
Some Democratic minority legislators said the time spent on the floor was distracting from the negotiations needed to finish their work.
"A lot of these are not very controversial issues. They just eat up time and energy on the last day of session," Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, said in an interview. "Why didn't we hear these bills this whole past week? It just kind of boggles my mind."
Asked about the Senate's Sunday schedule — and his Republican-led majority's decision to take time out for Stoltze's retirement celebration — Sen. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks and co-chairman of the Senate Finance committee, said his chamber had time.
"There's a lot of stuff that the House has that we're kind of waiting for," he said. "And they're critical pieces and we've just got to get them over here."
Millett, the House majority leader, also said the floor votes and debate weren't stopping progress on the oil tax bill. She said putting together a deal on the complex legislation takes time because of back-and-forth needed with subject experts.
"What we're doing on the floor can go on without interrupting conversations," she said. "There's some good legislation out there — it's not holding up anything."