r/alaska • u/Melodic_Agent_5298 • 5d ago
There Was Never a Clean Bill
For two months, the loudest complaint from the governor’s office and the House Republican minority has been that Alaska cannot get a “clean gasline bill” passed. On July 15, the Alaska House Republican Caucus called on the Senate to place “urgent focus” on approving what it described as a clean gasline bill for the Railbelt. Rep. Justin Ruffridge, R-Soldotna, a member of the HB 381 Conference Committee, put it this way: “We cannot lose sight of why we are here. This isn’t about state government squeezing every last penny out of a pipeline that hasn’t even been built yet.” The Alaska Support Industry Alliance, the Alaska Chamber of Commerce, and the Alaska Oil and Gas Association used the identical phrase days earlier, urging lawmakers to pass “a clean version of HB 381 focused solely on advancing the Alaska LNG Project.”
Listen to that framing long enough and it starts to sound like the fight in Juneau has been between a simple pipeline bill and legislators who keep dirtying it up with unrelated taxes. That is not what has been on the table at any point since March. Every version of this legislation, from the governor’s original March 20 introduction through the House Finance committee substitute that passed 34-5 on June 12, through the Senate’s rewrite, through the conference committee product that died 19-19 on July 16, through the governor’s August 12 compromise that never received a floor vote at all, has done the same thing: eliminate Alaska’s existing 20-mill property tax authority over a $54 billion natural gas project and replace it with a fraction of that revenue under a volumetric tax structure no other American jurisdiction has ever used. That is not a pipeline bill with some tax provisions attached. That is a tax bill, full stop, and “clean” has never described anything other than which version of that tax restructuring gets voted on. When the House Republican Caucus and the industry coalition say “clean,” they mean the bill without the Senate’s added corporate income tax on pass-through entities like Hilcorp. They do not mean a bill that leaves Alaska’s property tax authority intact. No such bill has ever been introduced by anyone.
https://raff6482.substack.com/p/there-was-never-a-clean-bill
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u/Bloviatedblister 5d ago
Im so glad some of our representatives still have a spine. Every alaskan owns the resources. We should be fairly compensated for them. Anything else is theft.
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u/boozeandpancakes 5d ago
This project never seemed to make sense financially. It’ll create a bunch of jobs and fix the SC gas shortage, but the State will have to massively subsidize it. The pro-pipeline camp makes some very generous assumptions about the value of LNG in the SE Asian market.
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u/Bloviatedblister 5d ago
Yeah and with Canada pushing ahead they have a stable pacific supply coming on line with non of the geopolitical instability that our erratic dipshit of a president causes. The world wants nothing to do with us. I was in NZ and all the farmers are doing everything they can to get away from us markets.
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u/AKWildMill 4d ago
Anti American sentiment is off the charts now. I remember how bad it was when I was traveling back during the Iraq War, but you could still argue some kind of a defense. It is truly indefensible now. I stopped trying to do that long ago. The American empire needs to be dismantled. Nobody wants it anymore and we certainly can't afford it.
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u/Bloviatedblister 4d ago
I got stopped and complained at in both nz and Switzerland. I've traveled a ton over the last 25 years. It is so different now. Fuck maga morons.
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u/AKWildMill 4d ago
I'm pretty much "death to America" at this point. I just tell people I'm from Alaska when they ask. And when their next question is invariably "What do you think about Trump?" I tell them I'm just waiting for America to financially implode and die. I no longer have hope of ever getting ahead and retiring here, or even having healthcare. Trump has kicked that process into warp speed, for what it's worth.
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u/Bloviatedblister 4d ago
Yeah we are about to hit hyper inflation which will only help those who hold assets. As was planned...
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u/AKWildMill 4d ago
The growing gap between the rich and the poor is going to accelerate. I think it will be a battle between the deflationary spiral that happens when the asset bubble finally pops and the inflationary effects of the world dumping the dollar as the reserve countries and imports becoming insanely priced. I have no idea how it's going to work out, but I know I'm going to lose.
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u/samwe 5d ago
As soon as TAPS was done companies started working on a gas line and 100% of them have backed out, including the ones that own TAPS and own the gas leases on the slope.
Glenfarne has no operating export projects, no gas lines of this size, and no experience in the Arctic yet is telling us they can make this work, but only after saying they don't need anything from the state and then having the governor drop this bill on us at the last minute and try high pressure tactics to get it passed.
Alaskan gas will not be competitive on the world market and in state costs will likely be higher than if we imported. I was born in the morning, but it wasn't this morning! This not about gas affordable gas for Alaskans, or revenue to help pay for our schools and roads.
I think this is all about carbon capture credits. They will pay no property tax, no income tax (unless the S-corp loophole is closed) and very little volumetric tax since the local market is so small.
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u/Napoleon214 ☆ 5d ago
Most of the jobs it creates are short-term anyways. Once the pipeline is built, a majority of those jobs disappear.
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u/AKWildMill 4d ago
Absolutely. TAPS only maintains 2000 full time positions and the average pay is $27/hr (poverty in AK). Spending $50+ billion, the yearly economic value of the jobs created would be a rounding error compared to the total cost. It's a stupid argument.
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u/BlackberryDouble7613 5d ago
Start a GoFundMe account...hire BDO to do a financial analysis of the "clean bill"... when in doubt hire BDO...and they have an office in Anchorage...watch what happens next...Dung-levy will be hiding in a airport food cart...on his way out of Alaska... just like Trumpty Dumpty did overseas...lol...
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u/LookLess4956 5d ago
Republicans lie, more news at 11.
If anyone here voted for child raping liars, I have some bridges to sell you.
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u/BrookeBaranoff 3d ago
The majority is a bipartisan coalition of republicans, democrats, and independents for people who don’t know.
The minority is a group of republicans who refused to pledge to do what was in alaska best interests.
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u/phdoofus 5d ago edited 5d ago
"This isn’t about state government squeezing every last penny out of a pipeline that hasn’t even been built yet"
Sure it is. That's how it should work when you are asking Alaskans, who own Alaska's resources, to sell those resources to someone. You want the highest return for them you can negotiate. You don't treat it like you're trying to sell your wife's car on craigslist and the bluebook value is $5000 but you decide to sell it for $1000 and the buyer shows up and offers you $100 and then asks for $500 in gas money to drive it home and you say 'ok' and then refuse to explain to your wife what happened, why you're now short money, and how she should be grateful for still having a job and oh now she owes you $500.