Speculating on rumors and gossip surrounding Alaska politics is a time-honored tradition best done with a heaping helping of salt. It would be time for our weekly trip through the grand, gross, weird, wild and wonderful world of Alaska politics, but this week we’re doing something different.
This week, we asked eight legislators to speak candidly about the special session and the state of the Legislature. Below, you’ll find a scrambled assortment of quotes from both Democrats and Republicans, senators and representatives, and majority and minority members.
We’ll be back next week with our regular Friday in the Sun roundup. In the mean time, you can always find me via email at matt at midnightsunak dot com.
Overall review of the special session
“It was so unnecessary.”
“I walked away disappointed. I was disappointed in the leadership of my chamber, and I was disappointed in the other chamber.”
“It was disheartening. We got called into solve the fiscal problem and threw the crime bill on there, which I thought we made worse. We turned back too many reforms and the Senate said, ‘F you’ on revenue. We wasted time in Juneau, and we took two steps backward.”
“At least we got a B, because we did what we set out to do. We did it kinda crappily, but at least it was done.”
“Well, for me I think it was remarkably successful. I had no interest in revenue.”
“It was shit. It was a shitty session, and nothing got done.”
On the crime bill
“I was happy it was added to the call, it let Anchorage legislators say, ‘We heard you,’ and address a problem.”
“I don’t care what they do in Anchorage. We took a good crime bill and made it worse, then we took a revenue bill and shitcanned it.”
“A legislator stands up on the House floor and says criminals are coming here to do their crimes. That makes no sense.”
“I think the House did a very good job.”
“How many people are not planning on committing crimes now because of SB 54. Some people think that’s how it works. Those people need to go drug rehab.”
“There were some people who just wanted something and didn’t care about what it looked like.”
“Law enforcement now has the tools to make Alaska safer.”
On the end of session
“The Democrats got outplayed.”
“I think the Senate took the coward’s route on the income tax.”
“I would’ve liked to have stayed there and had a deeper discussion on the governor’s tax. ”
“I think it makes the Senate look worse than I think they think.”
“It was asinine that the House decided to stick around. They said they wanted to work on taxes, but do you think they had the votes? House Finance spent an hour talking about Vitamin D and not a tax, what does that tell you?”
“I didn’t think the Senate was taking it serious and it’s now pretty evident they’re not. It’s disappointing.”
“The House said they stuck around to talk about taxes. That’s posturing because they couldn’t get enough members to Juneau to gavel out.”
On next session
“I think in the first 30 days we need to know where we’re going on the budget. We need to know where we’re going with the budget and knock off the special session stuff as long as it doesn’t include revenue.”
“There’s people in the state that still don’t think we’re having a fiscal crisis.”
“We’ve gotta do better, we just have to.”
“The special session is making me reconsider things.”
“I wish the governor would grow a spine because he’s not demonstrating that, and I’m a Walker supporter.”
General thoughts
“I’m not going to look back. We need to decompress for the holidays and show up with a priority on the budget on and find a way to make it work for both sides.”
“This last special session was fucked up.”
“The legacy of Bill Allen still runs in that building.”
“We divided our own people over this issue.”
This is such an awesome post!! I laughed so hard! Thanks, Matt. Also is crappily an actual word?