Legislature passes two bills in first 78 days NO BLIZZARD: Oil taxes, budgets among remaining priorities.

JUNEAU -- Twelve days remain before Alaska's legislative session ends for the year and just two bills have passed, one of which is a set of guidelines for how to best handle the state flag.
Legislative leaders say not to expect the usual blizzard of bills passing in the final days, either. There aren't that many things lawmakers say are priorities to get finished before they head home.
The House wants to cut oil taxes but the Senate won't. The budgets need to be finished and there's a dispute over giving more money to schools. Arctic coastal communities are pressing for more oversight of development projects in their areas.
Top lawmakers say those are the major things remaining and other issues are optional for this year.
"I don't think we're going to see a big flurry of bills passed," said House Speaker Mike Chenault, a Republican from Nikiski. "I think we'll see more legislation passed but not a whole bunch."
Senate President Gary Stevens agreed.
"We're all just stuck on this issue of oil taxes. That has really sucked the life out of the Legislature this year," said the Republican from Kodiak.
The 90-day legislative session began Jan. 18. Lawmakers introduced 346 bills for consideration.
By the end of February, the House and Senate had unanimously passed a bill allowing service members to designate who would handle their remains.
The only other bill to pass the full Legislature, on handling the state flag, was unanimously approved March 25. (When one person presents the folded flag to another, the flag should be turned so that the North Star is nearest the receiver.)
"It just depends on what your idea of pace is," said Chenault. "If success of a good legislative session means you pass a bunch of new laws, then you probably don't think this session has been very productive."
Chenault said it's more important to have good laws than to have a lot of them. The focus in the House has been on cutting oil taxes. Representatives last week passed a bill to lower state taxes on oil companies by billions of dollars. Supporters say the goal is to encourage more oil drilling in the state.
But the Senate is not convinced. Leaders of the bipartisan majority in the Senate repeated on Tuesday that they have no intention of passing the bill this year, much to the frustration of House Republicans such as Anchorage Rep. Craig Johnson.
"I've been a little frustrated by the pace. The (Senate) is not moving very quickly on anything," he said.
Gov. Sean Parnell, who sponsored the bill to slash oil company taxes, called it a "do nothing" Senate.
Senators responded that Parnell hasn't made the case for the oil tax cut and they won't give up billions of dollars without more information.
"My point is to do nothing to hurt Alaskans," said Stevens, the Republican Senate president from Kodiak.
Individual legislators have bills they think are important.
Some want to ban driving while talking on a cell phone, or to increase health coverage for low-income kids. There's an effort to lengthen the legislative session to 120 days. Some legislators in the House say they suspect that Islamic religious law will gain a foothold in Alaska courts and they think a law needs to deal with it.
But bills don't become priorities unless the majority caucuses in the House and Senate get behind them. One reason for the lack of urgency is that the Legislature operates on a two-year cycle.
So bills that don't get passed will still be alive next year.
Another dynamic is the bipartisan majority coalition in the Senate. Republicans and Democrats both control levers of power within the Senate. That tends to prevent hot-button issues on the left or the right from getting much traction.
Spending is likely to be the central issue in the final days. Lawmakers have yet to reveal their budget plan for spending on hometown projects, and indications are they will spend a lot. Questions also need to be resolved about funding for tourism marketing, the governor's proposed merit scholarships and whether school districts will see any increase in state dollars. "We've got time to do whatever we really want to do," Stevens said. "It's not as if we're under the gun right now."