Pipeline and pension plummet, Cox's back on the job and a floor blow-up
So, it turns out that trying to ram through a multibillion-dollar, multi-decade subsidy for a questionable pipeline project is pretty hard.
It's Tuesday, Alaska! The penultimate day of the 2026 legislative session.
In this edition: So, it turns out that trying to ram through a multibillion-dollar, multi-decade subsidy for a questionable pipeline project is pretty hard – even when the governor is dangling the long-sought-after return of public-sector pensions out like a carrot for lawmakers. The House was effectively taken over by a coalition of lawmakers well-versed on the needs of the AKLNG project on Monday for a marathon amendment session to get the bill across to the governor by the midnight deadline for the public sector pension bill to become law, but just couldn't get there. Meanwhile, the governor has a new general counsel who brings eight months of experience as one of the governor's least-qualified attorneys general, which is saying something. Also, a blow-up on the floor.
Current mood: 🙃
Preposterous push to promote pipeline project predictably plops, popping pension plan
There was very little about Monday's push to pass a massive tax break for the 800-mile pipeline project connecting the North Slope's gas fields to Southcentral that could be called good public process.
Under the gun to pass a bill by midnight or face a veto of the public pension bill – something most already assumed was destined for a veto – lawmakers in the House tried to not only slam through the AKLNG bill, but a coalition of industry-friendly legislators – Minority Republicans and a handful of centrist Majority members – were in the driver's seat for much of the process to ensure the product landed to the liking of the project backers. Over the course of the day, they rejected attempts to create price protections or close tax loopholes while approving rollbacks of transparency provisions and removing a K-12 education fund.
The on-the-floor lawmaking meant the usual process of asking questions, getting information and wordsmithing wasn't available – which, frankly, is probably the point. Lawmakers were left working on the fly, with some writing amendments by hand, as others regularly checked in with Glenfarne executives and the Dunleavy administration throughout the day.
"So, based on confirmation that this is an administrative headache to the developer, and they're very happy with this amendment, I have no problem with it," said House Majority Leader Chuck Kopp, an Anchorage Republican who caucuses with the Majority but spent much of Monday working hand-in-hand with Minority Republicans to control the process. "I support it."
That was about an amendment that shifted the administration of a $40 million community impact aid fund from Glenfarne's direct purview to the state. Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, said he worried that it'd leave too much discretion to determine what was and wasn't an eligible expense for a local community, noting that it left the money in Glenfarne's account. The amendment was accepted without a vote, but it was clear that if Glenfarne wanted to retain control of the fund, friendly lawmakers would have ensured that it was.
And while backers of the changes argued the prevailing legislation pulled from the House and Senate bills, not just the developer's wishlist, it was developer-friendly on most of the big-ticket issues, such as the tax rate and the ramp-up window.
The precarious plot eventually came crashing down after an amendment by Rep. Robyn Frier – the co-chair of the House Resources Committee, who spent much of the day watching her work be undone or ignored – restored provisions that would allow the North Slope and Kenai Peninsula boroughs to negotiate directly with the project developers for alternative tax rates. Because of prior changes to the bill, the amendment was missing key pieces to work, requiring either another amendment or the undo button. Kopp went for the undo button, seeking to reverse the amendment, but failed on a 20-20 vote after House Minority Leader DeLena Johnson, R-Palmer, broke with the industry-friendly crowd and voted against taking it up again.
Stuck with a provision the developers didn't like and the logistically technical challenge of crafting a cleanup amendment, the House eventually switched gears to other bills as the clock ticked past the point at which anything could realistically have happened.
It was always a long shot, and pro-industry lawmakers ultimately missed.
And that's not to mention the challenge of getting the whole thing through the Senate, whose input on the subsidy plan would have been reduced to a simple up-or-down concurrence vote. While Senate lawmakers tried to play along, leaving the door open until 10 p.m., they were none too pleased about the process.
"You don't circumvent the finance committees and play gamesmanship on a multibillion-dollar project and inject uncalculable risk to the investors just for some political gain on a deadline for the next two days,” Sitka Republican Sen. Bert Stedman told Alaska Public Media ahead of the vote. “That's crazy. I think they've done a lot of damage playing around with this sleazy politics.”
In its final meeting of the session, the Senate Resources Committee met to advance its version of the AKLNG project – a much less generous plan for the developers – with several members decrying developments in the House, describing them as "groping around in the dark."
"We've done our best," said Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, of the Senate bill. "I think it's a good product. It's a product I could support on the floor. The bill that's moving in the House? There's no way I could support that bill if it comes over as-is."
With lawmakers having failed to get the AKLNG bill to the governor's desk by midnight, he delivered his promised veto of House Bill 78, the public pension bill.
Why it matters
Frankly, the problem with the whole thing is that the overlap between legislators who wanted both an industry-friendly subsidy for the AKLNG project and the public pension bill was limited to Rep. Chuck Kopp and a handful of other centrists. Conservatives trust the industry, want subsidies and no pension, while progressives and moderates are pro-pension, more skeptical of the industry and lukewarm to subsidies.
Ultimately, the AKLNG backers will likely get their legislation, whether over the next few days or in a special session, but they'll hopefully have to face a little more scrutiny than this take-it-or-leave-it, fire-sale approach that was tried on Monday. It's yet to be seen where the votes are in the Senate on all of this, but it's unlikely that this approach would have won them many on-the-fence votes.
Plus, frankly, there are some legislators, like Stedman, who vehemently oppose the pension altogether and will see Monday night's failure as a win.
What's next
I doubt legislators will put much more of the remaining two days into the AKLNG bill, especially when it's already consumed a full day that could have been spent on just about anything else. There's still interest in avoiding a special session, but now that the pressure's off, I doubt the Senate will be particularly eager to rubberstamp whatever emerges from the House.
As for the pension bill, its demise was expected. After all, this is a governor who was found by the Alaska Supreme Court to be operating with "abundant evidence of anti-union animus." That it was held out as leverage is interesting, but it was always expected that pensions – as with a litany of working-class reforms in Alaska – will need to wait until the next governor.
Stay tuned.
Follow the threads: House Floor Pt. 1 (and a more readable version), House Floor Pt. 2, Senate Resources, Takeaways
More coverage: Alaska Public Media, Alaska Beacon, ADN, Juneau Independent, KTUU
No Alaska experience? No problem. Dunleavy rehires AG Cox after he's fired by legislators
Legislators have sparred with Gov. Mike Dunleavy throughout his time in office — especially when it comes to his picks for the state’s boards and commissions, where his refusal to appoint anyone who signed the 2019 recall petition against him has yielded some particularly odious appointees, including a holocaust denier and a ghost hunter — but they had never outright rejected his cabinet picks.
At least until Attorney General Stephen Cox.
Well, former Attorney General and now Counsel to the Governor Stephen Cox.
Cox, a longtime Texas attorney picked to run the Department of Law by Dunleavy ostensibly for his zealous commitment to of-the-moment conservative causes rather than his knowledge of the Alaska Constitution’s strong privacy provisions, which he told lawmakers he’s still “learning about,” became the first cabinet-level appointment rejected by legislators since Gov. Sarah Palin.
His nomination was sunk on a 31N-29Y vote during last Thursday's joint session, as legislators essentially called Cox a partisan stooge who has little knowledge of Alaska’s legal system or its values and is more focused on right-wing causes nationally.
They pointed to more than 100 amicus briefs that Cox had signed on to since taking over the Department of Law in August, many of which have nothing to do with Alaska or actually run contrary to established Alaska law, such as one brief that refused to stand up for the state’s mail-in voting system in a case seeking to effectively end mail-in voting altogether. He also lent Alaska’s name to support the case seeking to overturn birthright citizenship. His confirmation hearings before the House and Senate judiciary committees went poorly, as he demonstrated laughably poor knowledge of state laws.
“When it comes to defending Alaska against federal overreach, protecting our privacy rights and serving as Alaska’s top law officer, this appointee is sufficiently underqualified,” said Anchorage Democratic Sen. Löki Tobin during the debate. “For the past year, Mr. Cox has refused to defend Alaska against unconstitutional seizures of federal dollars for our public universities. He has not stopped the freezing of federal dollars for Alaska’s nonprofits, nor has he stopped the withholding of Title I funds for our public education system. Instead, as he shared in the Senate Judiciary, he has spent the last year fighting Lower 48 culture wars.”
And while that vote would have ended his time in state service, Dunleavy announced about two hours later that Cox already had a new job: The newly created position of legal counsel to the governor.
According to an announcement released shortly after the vote, Dunleavy said Cox would be joining his office to advise him on “a wide range of legal, regulatory and constitutional matters.” While the release offers effusive praise for Cox, it notes in passing that career state attorney Cori Mills will serve as acting Attorney General for the remainder of Dunleavy’s term.
Matt Buxton
The announcement also says Cox will continue working with the Department of Law and other departments to advise, direct and advance the governor’s policies during his last year in office.
So... an Attorney General, but with a few more steps and even less oversight.
While Cox seems to be part of Dunleavy's larger personal mission of auditioning for a role in the national conservative movement – signing onto a slew of of-the-moment right-wing causes with little relevance to Alaska – he's also done real damage to the state.
It was only after Cox's arrival that the Alaska Department of Law switched its tune on the sweeping request from Trump's Department of Justice for information on Alaska voters. The state had initially registered concerns that the request would violate the state's privacy protects, but with Cox's arrival and a threat of a Trump lawsuit, the state acquiesced to a degree that few other states did. Under Cox, the state not only sent the Trump administration confidential voter information but also signed onto an agreement inviting the DoJ to decide who can and cannot vote.
Advocates have warned that the Trump administration could use the information, which includes the addresses of people who’ve opted to keep them private, for a wide array of purposes, including feeding into the violent ICE crackdowns.
For his part, Cox conceded he has a still-basic understanding of Alaska law.
“I will concede I am learning about the right to privacy. And the Legislature has far better expertise on the right to privacy,” Cox said. “And the law department’s position is that that statute is a valid statute and that it is not unconstitutional.”
That said, he stuck to his guns and said he would do it all again. After all, he's predisposed to complying with the feds.
“And I will be candid with you,” he told lawmakers. “I have a disposition of cooperating with law enforcement.”
According to the announcement, Cox got to work for Dunleavy right away.
The vote
Yeas: Reps. Allard, Bynum, Coulombe, Elam, Johnson, Kopp, McCabe, Moore, D.Nelson, G.Nelson, Prax, Ruffridge, Saddler, Schwanke, St. Clair, Stapp, Tomaszewski, Underwood, Vance, and Sens. Bjorkman, Cronk, Hoffman, Kaufman, Merrick, Myers, Rauscher, Stedman, Tilton and Yundt
Nays: Carrick, Costello, Dibert, Edgmon, Eischeid, Fields, Foster, Frier, Galvin, Gray, Hall, Hannan, Himschoot, Holland, Jimmie, Josephson, Mears, Mina, Schrage, Story, Stutes, Claman, Dunbar, Giessel, Gray-Jackson, Kawasaki, Kiehl, Olson, Stevens, Tobin, Wielechowski
This story was edited with help from Victoria Petersen and The Alaska Current. Everything else is mine, including the typoes.
More from The Alaska Current
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Lauren Windsor
More like Rep. Maddler
It's certainly been a banner year for Eagle River Republican Rep. Dan Saddler, who has spent much of the year playing tone-police on the floor, accusing anyone and everyone of violating the floor decorum – often with the intention of curbing criticism of Dunleavy or the oil and gas industry. This exchange during Monday's AKLNG debate, where he took it upon himself to menace Rep. Andrew Gray over closing the S-Corp loophole, reverberated through the political world pretty quickly, with someone asking me if he had been ejected from the floor over "fisticuffs." If you watch closely, it looks like even Republican Rep. Jeremy Bynum catches a stray during the exchange.
No one was ejected, but we did get a "sorry if you were offended" apology.
Rules for thee, not for me.
Oh, and WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?
Hello Alaska! Episode 04 - What the Heck is Going ON? is out now!
The final days of Alaska's legislative session — the time when the biggest decisions are made — always overlap with everyone's getting out to recreate... and host comic conventions. In this episode, Matt gives Pat an update on the final session's sprint and an explainer on the AKLNG project they're trying to rush through.
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