Editor's note: Mike Doogan is an Alaska State House Representative, author and former newspaper columnist. This commentary appeared in his legislative e-newsletter on Feb. 17.
Sean Parnell, last of the big spenders
The Parnell administration is still flailing around, trying to find a pretext for hitting the oil industry in the palm with $1 billion or $2 billion a year until the sun goes out.
The rocket surgeons at the state Department of Revenue have tried a bunch of reasons for giving our money away: more jobs, more state revenue and keeping the trans-Alaska pipeline working. Finally, they settled on – all three. Plus anything else they can think of. Why, I once heard Commissioner of Revenue Bryan Butcher say that if we didn't support the giveaway, we'd all have bad breath and dingy teeth. I immediately made a vow to switch my position on oil taxes – and floss more often.
But the truth is, every single argument in favor of the giveaway has been shot down. Leaving Parnell able to say only that he wants to give the money to Uncle Oil because – he wants to give the money to Uncle Oil. Period. End of story.
Now, some people say he wants to do that because he used to work for ConocoPhillips back in the day – 2000-2003 to be more precise.
Others point to the odd coincidence between Parnell, during the last campaign for governor, switching his tune on oil taxes and the Republican Governors Association donating more than $700,000 to him. The oil industry was, of course, a serious contributor to the association. Tinkers to Evers to Chance.
Still other people highlight the fact that, after he was elected, Parnell talked only to oil industry people about what was to become HB 110.
Whatever. Some members of the House believed what they were fed by Parnell and the industry, enough that HB 110 passed the House 22-16. I was one of the 16.
Now, I don't often write about the Alaska State Senate. The truth is, senators scare me. But that's where HB 110 went. So far, senators have proven immune to the threats and blandishments of Parnell and Big Oil. Senate members seem to be doing a workmanlike job of trying to sort out facts from public relations sloganeering.
I wish them luck. But they are going to have to fly through some heavy flak. Parnell seems to be willing to say anything, and threaten anything, to get his way. Information from the administration is at best unreliable. And oil companies and industry groups continue to thump the tub.
I can hardly wait to see what happens next.
Note to Self
I've been hanging around and observing the Legislature since the '70s, and if I've learned anything it's that you've never seen everything. On Wednesday the House floor became the stage for a kind of theater of the absurd, as it is wont to do from time to time. The only thing on the calendar that day was a resolution, HCR 19, so the expectation was for a relatively short and painless session. But giving in to frivolities, like expectations based on logic, is a huge mistake in the vaunted halls of government.
Note: A resolution is simply a message we send to someone, like Congress or the president, urging them to do something, or not do something. My experience is that Congress and the president handle our resolutions the same way I deal with an e-mail from a dethroned prince who wants to share a trapped fortune with me in exchange for my bank account information.
This resolution was a little different though. It was a message we were sending to ourselves. Rep. Bob Herron had decided we haven't gotten enough out of a little trip to Norway some legislators made last year. I'm inclined to agree with him, but I'm also pretty sure we've gotten pretty much all we're going to get. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it was a great sacrifice to travel all the way to Norway to gather a lot of information available on Google – and that will never be applied in Alaska. His resolution, like any resolution, followed a path of Whereases and Therefore be it resolveds to the conclusion that the Alaska Legislature should learn more from the Norway trip. Yeah, it was a letter to ourselves.
The Speaker was out of town – I'm pretty sure he wasn't in Norway – so the Majority Leader had the gavel. We all know what happens when a substitute teacher shows up to class. Rep. Kyle Johansen, who appears to be spending his free time assembling Molotov Cocktails in his office this session, lobbed one across Herron's bow. And so we spent the next hour-plus debating, attempting to amend, arguing about and generally eviscerating ... a letter to ourselves. Eventually, like a mercy killing, the bill was sent back to the Rules Committee "for further discussion." Even money says it'll simply die a quiet death there.
Meanwhile, a conference committee was busy trying to broker a deal between the House and Senate on another fairly simple piece of legislation, HB 311. Conference committee is what happens when the House and Senate come to loggerheads over a bill. All I can say is, if we're writing letters to ourselves about junkets to Norway, and punching our way to conference committee over simple bills in these early days of session, buckle up kids. It's going to be a bumpy ride.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch. Alaska Dispatch welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, e-mail commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.