Senator, my name is not Peter

The year was 1980 and Alaska was rolling in dough for the first time in its short history. One would think that the State would have been prepared for its oil bonanza - but that was really not the case. Despite the decade-long lead time from the award of the Prudhoe Bay oil leases and the start-up of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the state government was woefully unprepared for the piles of swag that would soon clog its bureaucratic arteries. The Department of Transportation, in particular, lacked sufficient projects designed and ready for construction.

Nature, as the saying goes, abhors a vacuum. And the Alaska State Legislature was more than willing to step-in with an endless parade of swell ideas to siphon-off the excess cash. If the State was unable to spend all this loot directly, then why not parcel it out to municipalities, non-profits, or some other half-organized bouquet of assholes with any plausible case to make for public funds?

Late in the 1980 legislative session as the House began mark-up of the next year's budget, a second major appropriations bill, House Bill 60, rapidly moved through the House and Senate and ultimately into a conference committee. All of the Division of Legislative Finance Fiscal Analysts were occupied in House Finance with the regular budget bill. So one day John Crandall, one of the aides to House Finance Committee Chair, Russ Meekins, had the bright idea that I should staff the conference committee for HB 60. I thought this was a swell idea and Jay Hogan agreed. So Accounting Tech Elmer became Fiscal Analyst Elmer - for a few weeks, at least. I wasn't officially awarded the title until later that year.

The bill had hundreds of sections of appropriations, written in narrative form.

For example: Sec. 200. The sum of $10,000,000 is appropriated from the general fund to the Department of Administration, for payment as a grant to the Municipality of Anchorage for construction of a community ice rink.

Someone had to create a spreadsheet that showed the differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill- some sections were identical in both versions, some were for the same purpose but for different amounts, and some sections were for completely different purposes. I strapped-on my green eyeshade and went to work. This was in the age BEFORE desktop computers - I constructed the spreadsheet the old fashioned way on lined graph paper and did all the sums with a ten key calculator. It was a masterpiece if I do say so myself.

So, the day comes when I debut in the conference committee as official referee. I sat at the end of the committee table next to Ron Lehr, Governor Hammond's idiot budget chief. The Conference Committee, three members from the Senate and three from the House, start going through the bill section-by-section. And I take notes in order to draft the conference committee version of the bill.

Almost immediately I ran into trouble - didn't understand what Senator Hohman, the Senate Co-Chair of the committee, meant in one of his proposed amendments. I raised my hand to seek clarification. This engendered the following conversation (or something very much like it).

Elmer: "Mr. Chairman. Would you please restate your motion."

Senator Hohman (looking at House Co-Chairman Meekins): "Who's that?"

Rep. Meekins: "That's Elmer Lindstrom. He works for Legislative Finance and I asked him to keep notes since all the fiscal analysts are busy in House Finance."

Senator Hohman (glaring at me over his spectacles): "Alright. What I said was ONE MILLION, FOUR HUNDED FIFTY TWO THOUSAND FOR..... Did you understand THAT?????"

Elmer (meekly): "Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman."

Don't think I've ever been so intimidated in my life. But like most things, practice makes perfect; and before long I got into the rhythm of the conference. However, for some reason, Senator Hohman got it into his mind that my name was "Peter" and he so addressed me for several days. And of course, every time he said "Peter" the House guys, who all knew me, would laugh out loud. But since I knew who he was talking to, and since I had NO interest in correcting the Senator in public after my first humiliating question, I dutifully answered to "Peter."

The conference committee went on for several weeks. It was quite the circus. Every morning a herd of lobbyists and other hangers-on would troop into the Senate Finance Committee to catch the show - and hopefully some cash. The lobbyist for the Municipality of Anchorage actually dragged a steamer trunk full of requests into the room each day.

In those days, conference committees on appropriation bills could function as "free" conference committees, that is the committee could accept either the House version of an item, the Senate version, or make-up a brand new hybrid. And they could add new projects at will.

Over the years my experience as a budget analyst has been that "analysis" rarely consists of more than some combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. For House Bill 60, I made do with only two of these analytical tools - addition and multiplication.

Several days into the conference committee I happened to come across Senator Hohman and Senator Kertulla working quietly in the Senate Finance Committee room. I went up to Senator Hohman.

Elmer: "Senator, there's one little thing I would like to mention. My name is not Peter, it's Elmer."

Senator Hohman: "You don't say! Kerttula told me your name was Peter."

Senator Kertulla (who even then was very hard of hearing, looks up): "Huh? What?"

Senator Hohman laughed and went back to his papers. Subsequently I enjoyed his company on several occasions out-on-the town. Subsequently he also earned a felony conviction for sticking money in HB 60 to purchase a water bomber to fight forest fires and went to prison. He was to earn kick-backs from the seller of said bomber. He died quite a few years ago.

House Bill 60 largely disposed of the anticipated budget surplus that year. It contained hundreds of millions of dollars in projects when it was finally signed into law by the Governor.

Coming soon: Football Fannie