A Citizen’s Guide

It seems that legislators might be able to come up for air in Juneau later this week after having been submerged in reams of material about oil taxes and the draft agreement with Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and BP on fiscal terms for construction of a natural gas pipeline contract.

Gov. Frank Murkowski has for a long time been expected to call legislators right back into special session if they don’t finish their work on the oil and gas tax bills by the end of the current 30-day session, which by law cannot go beyond Thursday, but now it appears that the governor might be ready to take the advice of many people and allow legislators to come home for a month or so.

If that’s true, it’s a good move by the governor.

If it’s not true now, it ought to become true soon.

The idea apparently making the rounds has the governor calling the Legislature back into a second special session in mid-July so it can finish the bills that it most likely won’t finish by Thursday’s end of the current special session. Passage of those bills is needed for the pipeline agreement to advance to the next step—a final, up or down, vote. That final vote will come after the administration takes the content of those bills and rolls them into the draft contract.

Once it convenes in mid-July, so the idea goes, the Legislature would work two or three weeks and then adjourn. That would give legislators roughly two weeks or so to campaign before the Aug. 22 primary. And that’s an important consideration with many legislators facing challenges from within their own party and with their votes on oil and gas bills likely to be campaign issues. The governor has little choice but to accept the influence of the election cycle on legislative behavior.

With the August primary over, the governor would summon the Legislature back to work, possibly right away in September, for the final vote on the contract.

That’s the idea that’s out there.

Legislators, above all, need to take a break. They need to rest their brains and to allow the unbelievable amount of information that has come up so far to percolate. And the added time will allow the Legislature’s consultants to continue their work and to answer further questions from legislators.

Some will argue that even greater delay is needed—and that’s a possibility that must be held open, depending on what refreshed legislative minds and further analysis of the gas agreement produce.

But, for now, taking a break until July seems a necessary action.