Legislature schedules Anchorage hearing today

The Legislature's special session is coming to Anchorage today, but House Democrats say it's a ploy and are mostly boycotting the daylong hearing.
"They're just throwing gasoline on the fire; that's all this is going to be," said Anchorage Democratic Rep. Mike Doogan. "They've decided the (Capitol-based press) didn't do the job they wanted done and so they're going to go to Anchorage and see if they can get their pals in talk radio to help them out."
The Republicans who lead the House Finance Committee scheduled today's Anchorage hearing.
The rest of the Legislature is supposed to remain in Juneau while the committee heads up to Southcentral for the one-day event. Chugiak Republican Rep. Bill Stoltze described the relocation as "another venue to discuss the issue, maybe a different set of fresh eyes and press on it."
House Republican leaders allege the Senate and the news media have wrongly portrayed the special session fight as being about oil taxes. They say it's about the Senate trying to force the House to accept budget language it doesn't want.
The language says if Parnell vetoes a single energy project, none of the energy projects get funded. The Senate refuses to pass the capital budget to the House until there's an agreement on it.
Senators say they put the language in the budget because Parnell threatened vetoes if the Legislature didn't pass his bill to slash oil taxes. The oil tax bill was squashed in the Senate and is not part of the special session that's now in its 12th day.
Today's House Finance Committee hearing in Anchorage will have Parnell administration testimony in the morning from the Alaska Energy Authority and the Alaska Housing Finance Corp. about some of the energy projects in the budget. The afternoon is going to feature Attorney General John Burns, a Parnell appointee, discussing his memo that the Senate language represents an unconstitutional attack on the governor's line-item veto authority. It's a view that the Legislature's top lawyer says he's not sure about.
House Minority Leader Beth Kerttula on Thursday said it's an unnecessary trip. The Juneau Democrat said most of those testifying have to travel from Juneau.
"We also think that besides being expensive it's pretty exclusive. Rather than opening up a hearing to the public and having testimony across the board ... they are having limited testimony and only taking one side of things," she said.
Kerttula said the House Democratic caucus believes the 11 members of the House Finance committee should stay in Juneau during the special session with the rest of the legislators. She said she suspected little would get done this weekend with finance members gone.
She said her caucus is just sending one of its members to the committee hearing, Anchorage Democratic Rep. Les Gara. The other two Democrats on the Finance Committee, Doogan and Fairbanks Rep. David Guttenberg, are planning to stay in Juneau and join the hearing by teleconference.
Chugiak Rep. Stoltze, who organized the hearing, said the House is frustrated by waiting for the Senate to give it the budget. He said the projects should stand on their own merits and the hearing will discuss "the constitutionality of the language the Senate is proposing, which jeopardizes the funding of all the energy projects."
Stoltze said the finance committee has held hearings in Anchorage in the past and that he didn't see a reason to continue to sit tight in Juneau. "There's not a lot going on around here, quite frankly," he said.

IS THERE A SOLUTION?
House Democrats said they have a simple plan for ending the special session. They said the governor needs to "renounce his threat" to veto projects in retaliation for the oil tax issue. Then the Senate needs to remove the disputed budget language challenging Parnell on vetoes. Finally, they said, the House, Senate and Parnell need to agree on what projects should be in the budget.
Parnell has refused to tell legislators what projects he may or may not veto, saying the Senate needs to simply follow the legislative process and pass a budget.
Senators point to Parnell's statement this spring that he'd need to cut capital spending if the oil tax cut didn't pass. Parnell said the Legislature would be dooming the state to a future of lower oil production and therefore less tax money over the long term. Senators said that didn't make sense and Parnell's bill would give away billions. Now they say they are afraid he's going to retaliate.
Parnell has been saying this week he wouldn't abuse his veto authority or "target anybody for their stand on a particular issue." Parnell said he repeated that pledge to Senate leaders and at venues including a dinner with lawmakers from both parties at the governor's mansion. But he turned down an invitation to talk about it to the bipartisan Senate majority.
Parnell said he "wouldn't appear in caucus to say in secret what I have been saying publicly."
Senate President Gary Stevens told The Associated Press on Thursday that Parnell has "removed himself" from efforts to reach a compromise.
Stevens, a Kodiak Republican, said Parnell expressed fear the caucus meeting would turn confrontational, particularly with the Democratic members, or into a form of "kabuki theater."
"What he said is that if they want to know what I think, all they have to do is read my press releases, which, again, seems to be a distancing from the legislative process, you know, unnecessarily," Stevens said.
Today's House Finance Committee hearing will be at the Anchorage Legislative Information Office at 716 W. Fourth Ave. Suite 220. It will run from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and then pick up again in the afternoon from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

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