Alaska lawmakers adjourned their annual session Monday, only to have Gov. Sean Parnell call them back to Juneau for a special session that began Wednesday.
The Republican governor wants lawmakers to finish legislation on sex trafficking, an in-state natural gas pipeline, and tax breaks for oil producers.
Parnell, in a statement, commended lawmakers for getting a lot of things done during the regular session, including more than $1 billion in capital funding for highways, aviation, marine highways, harbors, village safe water, and municipal water and sewer projects.
He also lauded the Legislature’s approval of a $453.5 million general obligation bond measure for statewide transportation projects that will go before voters in November.
Lawmakers also sent the governor a bill that establishes a new fund within the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority for the purpose of financing or facilitating the financing of energy projects in Alaska. The bill allows the AIDEA to enter into public-private partnerships, guarantee loans and bonds, and defer principal payments.
In the special session, lawmakers will try to continue work on financing for a proposed in-state pipeline to carry natural gas from the North Slope to consumers in the Anchorage area, and on Parnell’s main objective, a bill to provide tax breaks for oil producers.
“Alaskans are well aware that oil production is declining from our legacy fields,” the governor said in a statement Wednesday. “Without meaningful tax change for legacy fields as well as new fields, a larger percentage of Alaskans’ resources will remain locked in the ground.”
