capital focus

The Senate minority passed out an “AGIA timeline” at their morning presser, which raised a good question — What is the plan?
The public comment period on the TransCanada pipeline proposal runs through March 6. After that, the administration has as long as it needs or wants to decide whether to recommend issuing a license to TransCanada. Once the administration announces it wants to issue a license (assuming it does), lawmakers will have 60 days to vote on it.
The public comment period started weeks ago, so where are the public hearings?
Joe Balash, Palin’s special assistant on oil and gas, said the gas team was planning to hold them during the week of Feb. 4, but will probably push them back to later in the month because of the Alaska Gasline Port Authority’s request for reconsideration, which he said kind of threw them for a loop. (The administration turned down AGPA’s application for being a combination of incomplete and late.)
The plan is to start with a big meeting in Anchorage, he said, then have three teams fan out across the state for hearings. Balash said he’d be on a team heading to Fairbanks, Delta, Tok, Barrow, Kotzebue, and Nome.
As for what happens after that, Balash said the administration (under AGIA, it’s the commissioners of revenue and natural resources) will review the public comments, consult with people studying commercial, technical, and legal aspects of the proposal, and then write a finding explaining their decision, which he said would be a “rather large document.”
Balash wouldn’t give a date for presenting a decision to the Legislature, but said the team expected it would be “on the order of weeks, not months” after the March 6 end of public comment, and before the April 13 end of the session.
Three weeks for Galvin and Irwin would leave about two weeks for lawmakers, who could always extend the session or call themselves back in later.
For those eager to comment, there’s always the gov’s AGIA Web site.