capital focus

There’s been a lot of talk down here about airing out the gas line proposals that didn’t make it. Senate Resources will kick things off with a presentation this afternoon by ConocoPhillips, and House Republicans are also planning meetings.
Some of the impetus is to learn everything possible about pipeline economics and so on, but some is clearly to compare Conoco’s and other companies’ proposals against TransCanada’s, the only one that passed the AGIA test.
The hearings could be expected, but they also seem to reflect something of a distrust in the AGIA process.
My bad, said Joe Balash on Monday.
Balash, a special assistant to the governor, said Palin’s gas line team has thoroughly studied Conoco’s proposal and the others, and has a really clear understanding of where those projects come up short.
“What we have not done is kept the Legislature up to date,” he said. “And that’s something that we need to remedy.”
Palin herself wasn’t ready to admit any failures Tuesday, even one of communication, but offered a sort of “mistakes were made” explanation. The administration assumed that when it released its explanations of why other applications failed, lawmakers would read them. She said it was clear some had not, and added that her administration was more than willing to sit down with individual lawmakers and talk things over, and already had with several.
Palin said she wasn’t concerned about the amount of the attention the other proposals were getting, and would be doing the same thing if she were in the Legislature.
“They should be asking those questions,” she said.