Governor Whiplash

At the end of the recent legislative session, Governor Murkowski stated that he did not intend to call the legislature back into a special session to work on fiscal issues. Yesterday, he announced a 180 degree turn and called for just such a session.

Why this change? There has been no material change in the state's fiscal condition to prompt this about-face by the Governor. It is also highly doubtful that an increased number of Kremlin Republicans are willing to support POMV.

So what gives? Three options present themselves:

1)Murkowski hopes (or knows) that Sen. Pres. Gene Therriault is willing to suspend the usually applied (and utterly illegal) caucus rule that states that significant fiscal and constitutional matters can only go to the Senate floor for consideration by the whole body if either a majority or super-majority of Republican senators agree. In other words, Therriault is going to run the Senate as if the duly elected Democratic members were actually authorized by the Alaskan Constitution to represent their constituents and wield power in proportion to their numbers. If Therriault does this, then the moderate Republicans and the Democrats could, together, pass a fiscal plan acceptible to the House.

2) Murkowski is annoyed that an insufficient number of Senate Democrats chose not to fall for state Sen. Ben Steven's insincere call for a state income tax, and he hopes to give the Democrats enough rope during the session to hang themselves politically.

3) A combination of (1) and (2).

Despite the fact that the most cynical option is usually the explanatory choice for AK legislative action, I honestly doubt that option (2) is what is driving Murkowski. A special session will require some extra work on the Governor's part, and, as anyone familiar with his twenty-two years of service in the US Senate can attest, Frank Murkowski is not the sort of man who casually gives himself extra work to do. (If God intended Frank Murkowski to earn his living, He would not have given Sen. Ted Stevens such an excellent staff.) I think Murkowski actually wants the legislature to solve the problem of Alaska's structural deficit.

Of course, you can count on him to structure his proposal so that it causes the maximum pain to the middle-class and lets the wealthy off very lightly.