Face Off

By Linda Kellen Biegel

The Democrats in Anchorage had their Legislative send-off Friday night at Café del Mundo in midtown. As a blogger who spent a lot of time with my fellow Democrats during the Convention in Denver as well as during the campaigns, it was nice to see a lot of folks that I hadn’t seen in awhile.

While I heard and participated in many conversations, the one that piqued my curiosity the most came from several legislators who preferred to remain anonymous. It seems that they had been unable to get a list from the Governor of the state infrastructure projects she was going to put forward as requested by President-elect Obama. She even refused to give the information to the legislators in person, saying they were “confidential,” yet she stated she was sharing them with Senator Begich’s Administration.

So why couldn’t she share them with her State Legislature?

You may remember that economic consultant Gregg Erickson’s Dec. 20th Op-Ed piece in the ADN first alluded to these items on the “infrastructure list”:

“Gov. Sarah Palin also caught the spoor of massive federal project handouts, but -- to the chagrin of road builders at the state Dept. of Transportation and Public Facilities -- she directed officials to focus all the state's efforts on getting a massive federal subsidy for the TransCanada gas pipeline.”

AndrewHalcro.com picked up this story through emails from his incredibly accurate network of sources:

“…unlike other states, the governor is limiting requests for federal economic stimulus funds, in our case to a few transportation projects which are directly related to the gasline.

I have heard also that DOT has been told not to submit a number of projects (including some that might be supported by legislators and their constituent communities) because they are non-gasline-related.”

The concerns here, according to Halcro’s post, are that Alaska would miss out on a valuable opportunity to gain much-needed infrastructure improvements (important, for Alaska’s Rural communities) plus Alaska would lose our share of some very important federal funding at the same time that our state revenue is on the decline (and, I would add, at the same time that the Alaska “brand” has been seriously damaged in Congress).

These concerns were very much reflected in the discussion with the anonymous legislators, who have been stymied at every turn by the Palin Administration in their quest to get information. I vowed to call the Begich office on Monday to find out more.

Clearly, Senator Begich is carrying his 24-7 policy into his D.C. Administration, as KTVA’s Matt Simons got this story from them Saturday:

“Wednesday, Palin sent Alaska's congressional delegation a three-page letter only requesting five stimulus package projects. The letter only added Kodiak Missile Launch Facility upgrades to the four gas pipeline road projects Palin already requested.

Begich says in an estimated $800 billion dollar economic recovery package he wants to know why Palin is only asking for about $150 million dollars.”

This is obviously not “confidential” as far as Senator Begich is concerned. This seems to be a clear statement that if Governor Palin wants to use the State of Alaska economy as her ticket to the 2012 Presidential candidacy, he’s not playing.

As a matter-of-fact, Begich and “the rest of the delegation” will even do her work for her—going so far as to compile requests from state mayors and community groups, which he plans to “sort out” with Senator Lisa Murkowski before presenting them to Palin.

In her letter, Palin claims that “it is not appropriate for the state to comment on those projects.”

So, is she refusing to comment on her refusal to include community projects desperately needed by the State of Alaska so that she can look like a “fiscal conservative” for 2012?

Our turn to get under that very-crowded bus is here, Alaska. Perhaps by not-so-subtly bringing Senator Murkowski into the discussion, Senator Begich is showing Governor Palin how it’s going to be with this new team in Washington. It gives me comfort to believe for now that Senators Begich and Murkowski will be watching over her actions on behalf of Alaska. It seems that someone has to.