It's back to summer school for naughty legislators

Frontiersman editorial board

When you spend the regular school year messing around and focusing your energies on lower priorities, you're likely to fall behind. Fall behind far enough, and you'll land in summer school for part of your vacation. It's bad enough when you ruin your own summer, but if your shenanigans bring the whole class inside for the warm months, nobody's going to be your friend.

Some big Alaskan kids have found themselves in such a mess, as the teacher has called them back to finish the work they left undone during the allotted time. Gov. Frank Murkowski, playing the role of teacher, has called the Legislature back for a special summer session, and he says he won't let them go fishing until they've completed the assignment he's given them -- namely to pass a fiscal plan that includes a spending cap and with his Percent of Market Value formula for generating general fund capital from the Permanent Fund.

The House reached agreement on a fiscal plan during the regular session, but the fiscally-conservative Senate chose to wait to see if Alaska's fiscal dilemma might solve itself. After all, some senators said, oil prices are high, and it looks like our fiscal problems are all imagined. Of course, since then, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, has promised to increase production, and the price of U.S. crude has already begun to fall. Go figure. That's never happened before.

So far, legislators seem to feel that little has changed since the end of the session, and many are saying neither a POMV plan nor a spending cap is likely to find its way out of the Senate and onto Murkowski's desk. That's all well and good. If the Legislature doesn't find merit in that solution, we don't expect the proposal to pass.

What's frustrating is that there doesn't seem to be a reasonable effort to work out an alternate solution. If the Senate believes Murkowski's plan is not the answer, then it's incumbent upon that body to propose a plan that is the answer -- or at least a plan a majority of senators can agree upon. Education is in trouble, and we're paying a lot of attention to it because the danger is immediate, and because it affects so many people. There are other serious problems looming if the state can't get its fiscal house in order, though. Voters deserve a solution from their legislators, and they should accept nothing less. The Legislature will be back in session later this month. Voters will be heading to the polls in November. Each group has some important decisions to make. How legislators handle the special session may give voters some good data to consider before casting those votes.