Time out.

• Author: McCorkle, Vern C.
• Position: From the Publisher

The first of what may be two or more special sessions of the Alaska legislature adjourned I just as this edition of Alaska Business Monthly went to press. Both Senate and House of Representatives, exhausted and doing their best to avoid flare-ups of tempers stretched to breaking points, put the PPT (percentage of profits tax) and a 45-year-long gas line contract on indefinite hold, and went home, sine die *.

In our view that is the best thing that could have happened. According to seasoned observers, Alaska escaped by the skin of its teeth from what they say could have been certain disaster by agreeing to flawed legislation and an imperfect contract to build North America's history-making huge construction project transporting Alaska's natural gas to Canada and Mid America.

There is no compelling urgency for the legislature to adopt legislation or ratify contractual commitments that nobody yet fully understands except the proposing, internationally powerful North Slope producers and Governor Murkowski, his skillful staff and horrendously expensive consulting strategists.

JUMP, FROG!

It has taken the Governor's staff nearly a year to put together a contract that commits the state. With supporting documentation it runs to more than 1,000 pages. At adjournment the legislature had seen the complex proposal for only about two weeks, but the coup d'etat came only a few days before expiration of the special session: a 100 page revision that started legislative review all over again. In the end, when the Governor called "Frog!" the legislature choose not to jump.

Truth be told, there were gallant efforts by a conference committee to reach a compromise up until the last tick before the clock finally ran out.

RUMPLESTILTSKIN

Experts in both houses of the legislature recognize that the Governor's package of documents are full of IEDs, ** chief among them, aside from a non-negotiable, binding 45-year agreement, is the strategy to...