House Complains About Senate Stalling

The Capitol has been paralyzed for the second week in a row by the way the Senate majority is reacting to veto threats from Governor Sean Parnell.

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By Bill McAllister
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Story Created: Apr 27, 2011 at 5:27 PM AKDT

Story Updated: Apr 27, 2011 at 8:13 PM AKDT

As the Legislature remained gridlocked on the 10th day of the special session, members of the House majority held a press availability in which they complained about the Senate's stalling. 

But they got more than they expected from one veteran of the Capitol press corps.
 
The Capitol has been paralyzed for the second week in a row by the way the Senate majority is reacting to veto threats from Governor Sean Parnell.
 
The House majority simply wants the Senate to get moving, but one reporter told them they might have to play a mediation role.
 
Members of the Republican-led majority in the House of Representatives are calling on the Senate to follow the normal procedure and hand over a bill with more than two and a half billion dollars worth of public works projects.
 
"I never recall a time when we've been told, in any situation, that we're not sending you a bill unless you agree not to change something, and that's the situation we're in right now,” said House Rules Chair Craig Johnson, R-Anchorage.
 
The Senate Finance Committee has taken the controversial step of linking all energy-related projects to each other, in hopes that Governor Parnell would be forced to veto all of them if he vetoed any.
 
"It's a real puzzling dilemma for me to try to figure out what the state senate is thinking,” said House Finance Co-Chair Bill Stoltze, R-Chugiak. “There's been a framing of this issue as protecting the legislative appropriation powers. Well, what about the basic fundamentals of a bicameral process? That seems to be lost in the whole issue."
 
But a longtime reporter at the Capitol said the House does not have to sit on the sidelines.
 
"In this case, I think it's really an impasse between the Senate and the governor,” said Rebecca Braun, editor of the Alaska Budget Report. “Somebody needs to mediate. All I hear is fighting rhetoric out of all sides, and it strikes me that maybe the person to do the mediating is you."
 
The House opposes the Senate's attempt to thwart the governor's line-item veto authority.
 
Speaker Mike Chenault says differences between the chambers should be worked out in a conference committee, not through informal negotiations beforehand.
 
"If you reach that impasse where they can't move forward because they think we're going to strip their language out, and we're not agreeing to accept their language, if we reach that point, then you pass the bill. And the bill goes to conference."
 
Meanwhile, senators had little to say through the day ... preserving the stalemate.
 
The House Finance Committee will hold a hearing in Anchorage on Friday.

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ALASKA said on Thursday, Apr 28 at 12:13 PM

SO TYPICAL of our local government to use big words as an excuse to not get anything done.

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