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Gold/Mining/Energy : Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Snowshoe who wrote (244)	11/11/2006 7:25:45 PM
From: Snowshoe	Respond to of 570

ADN Opinion: Governor, give it up - Murkowski gas line contract talk does much more harm than good adn.com Published: November 11, 2006 Last Modified: November 11, 2006 at 01:53 AM Gov. Frank Murkowski wants a North Slope gas line deal maybe more than anything else he has ever wanted in his political life. But wanting his gas line deal too much is hurting Alaska. He wants it so much that legislators got worried the governor might actually sign a gas line contract without their approval, as required by law. So they went to court and convinced a judge to issue an injunction, barring Gov. Murkowski from signing a deal. How embarrassing -- for everyone. Every time the governor talks about his unpopular gas line contract, every time he calls for legislators coming back into session to approve the deal, every time he lectures the public on how much Alaska needs the project, it reminds people how much they don't like some of the contract terms and don't like Gov. Murkowski. It only serves to solidify opposition to the deal. It's time for Gov. Murkowski to promise he will not sign a gas line contract during his final three weeks in office. It's time to promise he will not appeal the court order. Alaskans need those promises because Gov. Murkowski is avoiding them. Let the new governor fix the problems with the contract and then go for public and legislative approval. The governor so far has refused to say what he will do. He is defiantly trying to keep his options open, perhaps in hopes of pushing through his deal before leaving office. But legislators are right. No Alaska governor has any business unilaterally signing such a huge, long-term deal, chock full of binding promises about future taxes, regulations and the jurisdiction of Alaska courts. True, Alaska's governor has considerable latitude to sign contracts dealing with routine operations of government. The state could not function if every purchase for pencils and file cabinets required legislative approval. But Gov. Murkowski's gas line contract ranges far beyond routine executive functions. He wants to lock in oil and gas taxes for years, maybe decades. Setting tax rates is a job the Alaska Constitution gives to the Legislature, not the governor. The governor's proposed deal also strays onto dicey constitutional turf on another front. It strips the state court system of jurisdiction over gas line contract disputes, which instead would go to arbitration. The Alaska Constitution does not give the governor the power to define court jurisdiction; only the Legislature can do that. In the successful fight against the natural gas reserves tax, opponents repeatedly claimed the tax would produce endless litigation that would only delay construction. The same is true about any move Gov. Murkowski might make to sign a gas line contract without legislative approval. That contract would almost certainly be struck down as unconstitutional, and the state would have to do what it should have done in the first place, namely backtrack and renegotiate a more legally defensible and better deal. BOTTOM LINE: Gov. Murkowski tried, but now it's time to back off and let the new governor take over.