|
House committee moves ACMP rewrite Coastal zone bill scheduled for second Senate committee; governor’s ANGDA, in-state gas bills not yet scheduled for hearings Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Alaska Legislature has passed the midway point of this year’s session, and bills reworking the Alaska Coastal Management Program have yet to be heard in second committees of referral, while bills introduced by Gov. Sarah Palin March 2 to expand the authority of the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority and revise the Alaska Pipeline Act and the Alaska Right-of-Way Leasing Act have yet to see a first hearing.
A bill from the governor to create the Greater Railbelt Energy and Transmission Corp., Senate Bill 143 introduced March 9, also awaits scheduling for a first hearing.
These are among the energy-related bills before the Legislature. This session ends April 19.
House Rules Chair John Coghill, R-North Pole, said he expects legislators to work on policy this session that will allow the state to meet immediate short-term energy needs while working on long-term solutions such as a Susitna dam — and that doesn’t necessarily make for fast action, he said at the House Majority press briefing March 9.
As for the governor’s in-state gas and utility bills, she may plan to discuss those with legislators over the interim, Coghill said, adding that if the bills are “must pass” items, the governor hasn’t told legislators that. He advised watching what the administration says in front of committees. If the bills are described as “must do” they are “pretty heavy lifts” for one session, and being introduced in the middle of the session doesn’t make it any easier, Coghill said.
Work for next session Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, said March 10 in the Senate majority press availability that he does not believe there is time to complete work on the governor’s bills, given the time requirements of the budget and the stimulus package.
The in-state gas bills and the Railbelt utilities are “big issues,” he said. “I personally do not believe that we will complete those before the end of the session, but we’ll make progress on them and be ready to begin again when we come back in January of next year.”
Sen. Charlie Huggins, R-Wasilla, the Senate Rules chairman, said he’d been encouraged by members of the Alaska Power Authority to “go about it very deliberately” when working on the Railbelt utilities bill because of the long-term impacts. The infrastructure consolidation approach has to be thought through, he said: “I’m one of those that says we should talk about it; we should study it; we should hear from the experts,” but not try to move a bill through quickly.
The governor’s transmittal letter for Senate Bill 143 says the bill would create the Greater Railbelt Energy and Transportation Corp. and empower the corporation “to plan for the financing, acquisition, construction, ownership and operation of necessary electric power generation and transmission assets and services that would be necessary to provide the Railbelt with adequate, reliable, safe and stable electric power and transmission services, at the lowest feasible long-term cost.”
ACMP substitute bill The House Community and Regional Affairs Committee moved a committee substitute for House Bill 74, the Alaska Coastal Management Program rewrite, out of committee March 3. The bill’s next committee is House Resources, where no hearing was scheduled as of March 11.
Senate Community and Regional Affairs moved a committee substitute of Senate Bill 4, the companion legislation, on Feb. 6. The bill is scheduled to be heard in Senate Resources March 16.
House Community and Regional Affairs made a final amendment to the committee substitute before passage, changing one of the requirements for enforceable policies from “supported by evidence, including contemporary or traditional local knowledge, if the policies are more specific than state or federal statutes or regulations” by eliminating the word “traditional” and replacing contemporary with “scientific.”
Randy Bates, director of the Division of Coastal and Ocean Management in the Department of Natural Resources, told the committee in testimony in February that there was no definition of contemporary local knowledge in the ACMP: “Contemporary is a new term that we don’t have in our current coastal program so I think that that would take a little bit of effort to define exactly what the intention was,” he said. Traditional local knowledge is a term used in the coastal program, Bates said.
“We do consider traditional local knowledge; we consider local usage, which is another term of art within the regulations.”
The committee had approved several sponsor-suggested amendments Feb. 24, amendments designed to address some lack of clarity in the original bill as well as remove, where possible, objections to the bill.
DNR opposes the bill; Bates told the committee in February that the program was designed as a state program with local input; the bill proposes a program with local control, he said.
| 