Editor's note: Mike Doogan is an Alaska State House Representative, author and former newspaper columnist. This is an excerpt from his legislative e-newsletter sent out March 16.
It appears that serving in the Alaska State House of Representatives could be bad for your health.
And not just your mental health, either. (Although some of these committee meetings do leave me even more befuddled than usual.) I'm talking physical health.
To begin with, there's the Freshman 15, which you will remember from college as the weight you gain when your diet changes from mom's home cooking to Domino's topped off with Twinkies. Then add another 15 for the food in the legislative lounge, which serves a scrumptious, but not necessarily slimming, breakfast and lunch, not to mention pastries and snacks, and the receptions, which, I am told, shovel out as many coconut shrimp and Swedish meatballs as you can eat. As if that's not enough, at some of them, the booze is free.
(I'm taking the description of the receptions second hand. I don't attend them myself, for various reasons. One of the reasons is that I'd end up with Wimpy's silhouette. Not that I'm so far from that already.)
Add to that diet long hours, stress and genetic dispositions, and you end up with the 40 people we've got: four with cancer in various stages, a couple with pretty serious diabetes, one with nerve damage, one with a serious, but as yet not fully diagnosed, brain problem and yours truly, who recently had a tumor the size of a small car removed from his brain.
And that's not even counting the guys with bellies so big you could rent signs on them that say: I'm just a heart attack waiting to happen.
Are all of these health problems caused by being in the Leg? Of course not. But they aren't helped, either. What legislators need is a regimen of restrained eating, temperate drinking and regular exercise. Say a five-mile jog every morning.
I hope they will heed my words. I'll even help them. I'll be happy to wave my doughnut at them as they jog by.
Its madness, I tell ya
It's that time of year again. Everybody's talking about rankings, statistics, upsets and crunch time. I'm talking about budget time in the Alaska State Legislature, of course -- or what I like to call March Madness. It's not only that the operating budget moved out of the House last night, but also that this is the time of session when the big bills start moving.
As for the budget, we passed an operating budget with a measly $7.5 billion in state funds -- about 4.2 percent growth over last year's budget. Sure, that's a little less than Kobe Bryant's shoe allowance, but in Alaska that's real money. Trouble is, we're spending money like the North Slope is a golden goose. In fact, it's just a big puddle of oil, and it's not going to last forever. Even worse, if the price of oil wasn't higher than Pedro van Meurs' speaking fee our declining production would have us in the red already.
I tried to do my part. I ran an amendment that would have gotten Alaska's failing Aerospace Corporation out of our back pocket; one that would have gotten us out of paying for the failing statewide communications system the feds stuck us with, and one that would have told the cruise industry if they want more marketing dollars from us, they better meet us halfway.
Oh, and I ran another little amendment that would have taken $2 billion of our surplus and tucked it safely away in the Permanent Fund. That way the people would get the benefit, and the government would have to keep its grubby paws off it.
Notice I said "would have" in each of those cases.
Telling politicians they can't spend money is like telling Dick Vitale he has to use his inside voice. My amendments didn't pass. I didn't think they would. In any case, now we'll wait for the Senate to send over the capital budget, so we can spend some real money.
In the meantime, it looks to me like the speaker's bill to create an all-powerful in-state gasline agency is on a collision course with the Senate's oil tax bill. You remember this opera from last year. The House leadership will send their bill over to the Senate, and the Senate leadership will send theirs over to the House. A hostage situation will ensue. My guess is this session will end like the last one.
If you've seen the last scene in "Reservoir Dogs" you'll be well prepared.
Oh, and as for the other March Madness … Go Lobos!
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