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Leg with Louie: Partisan fighting at the risk of our rights – May 28

It is hard to focus on the lonely hours of Special Session in the AK State Legislature when out in America, the rules are actively being bent toward extreme minority rule in perpetuity based on a lie. At the same time, those who could do something about it are bound by a web of institutional processes from reacting. The new …

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Leg With Louie: Who Benefits? – May 21

Conference committees established under Legislative Uniform Rule 42 are as natural to the legislative process as cottonwood buds are to spring. The state’s operating budget always goes to the conference committee, marking the closure of the regular session. These six-member (three-House, three-Senate) committees settle disagreements between bodies on big-ticket bills. The members seated on the committee generally are not there …

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Leg With Louie: Another DNR Power Grab – April 30

Did you know that under HB 82, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) would be able to authorize lateral drilling and fracking for oil and gas development beneath all of the areas that the state legislature has specifically set aside for special protection? This includes State Game Sanctuaries, State Game Refuges, State Parks, and State Critical Habitat Areas. Lateral drilling …

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Leg with Louie: Springtime in the Legislature – April 9

It is an open question whether the winter will end this year out in the peaks and valleys and burbs and burgs and bays and straits and streams and swales of Alaska. Bills that resemble spring are few and far between in the Alaska State Legislature: buds that bring hope for a new beginning, a strong future. One such bill, …

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Leg With Louie: Recreational River Repeal – March 12

The Senate Resources Committee will hear SB 97 next week, legislation that seeks to give the Department of Natural Resources the power to authorize commercial development on any state land regardless of its status – refuge or park or otherwise – and to put a fine point on it, the bill proposes to repeal the Recreational River statutes that protect …