The Alaska Legislature has been meeting in Juneau for three months. It’s understandable that you may not have noticed. They have done their best to fly under the radar for most of the sessions and, given their output to date, that was a very good idea. Otherwise, Alaskans might ask themselves why they are spending thousands of dollars a day paying their legislators to be in Juneau.
They are on track to pass the least number of bills since the Stone Age. Now some may think that’s a positive. And, given some of the bills to come out of Juneau over the years, that is not necessarily a bad idea. But some very good bills about balancing the budget, smoke-free zones for those of us who prefer our cancer comes from eating charcoal grilled steaks, an amended crime bill based on problems with the prior year’s bill – yep, there were more than a few of these bills that probably should have been dealt with by now.
But this is the Alaska Legislature whose motto is, “Why do today what we hope they’ll forget by tomorrow”.
So once again, despite doing nothing for three months, this group of incompetents that we seem determined to send back to Juneau each year if only to get them out of our neighborhoods will now announce the need to continue for another month while they do… what? What they should have already done? What’s needed to be done for years? What their main purpose in Juneau is about?
My dream is to someday have a job like that – you know, one where you blow every deadline set, meet none of your goals, make money for doing nothing for thirty days and then get extra money for doing what you should have done in the first place. Yep, be a legislator. It’s your dream job come true.