Here’s a prediction: before too long, someone out in our great state who is tired of this self-imposed budget calamity will file a citizen’s initiative to change the oil tax structure. The oil industry will charge this Alaskan citizen with playing unfairly – pulling the rug out from under them, not being a good partner, creating an unstable investment …
Leg with Louie: The Illusion of a process
Senate Bill 51 (SB 51) creates the illusion of a process for citizens to nominate waters in Alaska for special protection. It is a response to the mandate under the Federal Clean Water Act that all states must provide a way for citizens to nominate high-value waters (Tier III waters) for protection in each state. Because it was written with …
Leg With Louie: Why the Rush, Pebble?
The federal environmental review of Pebble mine is an obvious rush job and Pebble is throwing millions and millions of lobbying dollars on the dumpster fire of politics in order to ensure the mine receives its critical federal permits before the 2020 presidential election. Alaska departments charged with reviewing the Pebble Mine Environmental Impact Statement have already been cut to …
Leg with Louie: The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades
Our U.S. Senators were before the Alaska legislature this week to deliver their annual addresses and reassure Alaska that they are battling in the national fracas so our state is not steamrolled or otherwise transformed by the demands and philosophies of our lower 48 brethren. These annual addresses before the state legislature are by design parochial and inspiring, and …
Leg with Louie: MAGA! 45!
When you hear me shout “MAGA, 45!” know that I don’t intend to conjure the hot passions of a Trump rally. Instead, I employ this acronym and number for its it’s more practical use – to politely remind readers that 45 of our legislators together have the power to “Make Alaska’s Government Adequate.” A three quarter vote is needed under …
Leg With Louie: Negotiating with a Tourist
Each day of this AK Legislative session is a slow-moving catastrophe at which one cannot stop rubbernecking. The Dunleavy Administration is paying a tourist from Michigan with deep Republican ties one of the highest salaries in state government ($195,000) to do the dirty work that apparently no-one who actually lives in Alaska is qualified for, or wants to do …
Leg with Louie: It was a dark and stormy Juneau….
The sun came out in Juneau today, ominous and strange after days of rain. By noon the temperature was plunging toward a projected single-digit nadir and the wind was pushing snow off the peak of Mt. Juneau. Flags – Alaskan, American – went haywire in the wind. In contrast to the outdoors, the hallways of the state capitol were warm …
Leg with Louie: Live in Juneau!
Hello Friends! Juneau is the very best location for the Alaska State Capitol. It rains here all day and all night and all day and all night – completely taking away the guilt one might feel about spending an entire day inside of a building, instead of say, outside of a building – walking, running, skiing, bungee jumping, or merely …
House Majority Fantasy Football
Dear Friends, It is the start of the 2019 Legislative session – and no House Majority has formed. The state-level legislative impasse combined with the federal impasse begs the question: where have all the great Politicians gone? The Negotiators, the Wheelers and Dealers, the Knee-Cappers! Has our collective disdain of Politics led us to the point where we have no …