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All-Alaska Gasline initiative could be pulled from ballot If Legislature passes bill creating a state pipeline authority, Fran Ulmer could remove initiative from November vote Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
There are bills in the Legislature which would create a state corporation to build a gas pipeline. And an initiative for an All-Alaska Gasline has been certified by the lieutenant governor for the November ballot.
Similar legislation could supplant the initiative, which would be withdrawn from the ballot, the House Special Committee on Oil and Gas was told April 5.
The House Special Committee on Oil and Gas heard testimony April 5 on what would happen if the Legislature passes, and the governor signs, a bill creating a state pipeline authority.
The decision as to whether or not legislation displaces an initiative — removing it from the ballot — is up to the lieutenant governor, in consultation with the Department of Law, attorney Jack Chenoweth of Legislative Legal Services told the committee.
The committee was discussing House Bill 302, sponsored by Rep. Jim Whitaker, R-Fairbanks, which creates the Alaska Gas Corp. HB 302, Whitaker told the committee, differs from the initiative: it does not specify routing and it does not specify a project.
The initiative, he noted, specifies a North Slope to Valdez route and conversion of Alaska natural gas to liquefied natural gas.
“As we all know,” Whitaker said, “and this committee in particular, this is not the preferred alternative of many of the players in this issue.” Initiative versus HB 302 Commissioner Wilson Condon of the Department of Revenue told the committee that there are three major differences between HB 302 and the initiative and HB 410, introduced by Rep. Scott Ogan, R-Palmer, in House oil and gas in March.
The initiative and HB 410, Condon said, “both restrict the activity of the organization they would establish to the promotion and development of a project that would take gas to Prince William Sound, turn it into LNG and market it somewhere.
“And Rep. Whitaker’s bill is available for whatever project will work best for taking North Slope gas to market.”
HB 302 has no target date; both HB 410 and the initiative have a 2007 target date for getting gas to market.
HB 302 assigns up-front feasibility study responsibility to the Joint Committee on Natural Gas Pipelines and the initiative and HB 410, Condon said, “put that responsibility on the Department of Revenue until a corporation’s actually set up and functioning…” And that 2007 market date, he said, “necessarily means you need to spend lots of money relatively soon in our judgment.” Legal challenge? Rep. Hugh Fate, R-Fairbanks, asked about the prospect of a legal challenge on the similarity of Whitaker’s bill to the initiative.
Chenoweth told the committee that he didn’t think any differences he’d identified — or that had been identified by Condon — “necessarily compel the conclusion that the two are not substantially the same.”
Chenoweth said he thought the lieutenant governor could find that the adoption of Whitaker’s bill, or one substantially similar to it, “is substantially the same as the initiative as presented and could displace the initiative from the November ballot” if enacted.
He said he recognized that there are differences in “the magnitude and the direction of the project” between Whitaker’s bill and the initiative.
“But I think that’s a function of time and the passage of time and of activity taking place outside of Alaska, particularly in the Congress.” Chenoweth said he thinks the Legislature has latitude in developing a bill “with an eye on the initiative.”
He said case law on the issue indicates that “if the subject matter is very technical, very large in size, then the Legislature has more latitude to shape legislation and have that legislation accepted as being substantially the same as the initiative…” What next? “My guess is that the authors of the initiative will challenge this is court,” Rep. Fred Dyson, R-Eagle River, told Chenoweth. How much delay could be caused if this were challenged in court? he asked. Chenoweth said that depending on how authors of the initiative present their arguments, the court would probably put a hold on the lieutenant governor’s decision. The initiative would go on the ballot and it would be sorted out later.
If the court eventually decided that the lieutenant governor’s decision to remove the initiative from the ballot was correct, the results would be set aside, he said.
“If they decide that there are points that she didn’t consider properly and that she should have allowed it to be on the ballot, the results would stand as certified.”
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