By SUZANNE DOWNING
July 17, 2026 – Alaska’s Senate majority would rather deny Gov. Mike Dunleavy a political victory and allow Alaskans to become impoverished due to high energy costs than deliver a natural gas pipeline, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to the state and thousands of jobs to Alaskans.
That is the inescapable conclusion after the collapse of House Bill 381 this week.
The Senate majority caucus, made up of Democrats and their few Republican enablers, took a bill intended to advance the Alaska LNG project and turned it into veto bait. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Dunleavy publicly warned them that he would veto the legislation if lawmakers inserted a complicated new tax on S corporations and other pass-through businesses. The warning could not have been clearer.
The Senate pushed ahead anyway.
The Department of Revenue estimated that the S-corporation tax might raise approximately $150 million. No one really knows, because this version of the tax has never been modeled.
Yet senators were willing to jeopardize legislation estimated to produce about $800 million in revenue connected to the gasline arrangement.
They risked $800 million because they could not resist chasing maybe $150 million, and because their real target is Hilcorp.
Taxing Hilcorp has become an obsession for some members of the Senate majority. It is their white whale. They are willing to endanger Cook Inlet energy security, North Slope investment, Alaska LNG and thousands of construction jobs if it gives them another chance to harpoon the company.
That is a tax vendetta dressed up as fiscal policy.
These senators knew the S-corporation tax is unrelated to the original purpose of HB 381. They knew the governor would reject it. They knew the gasline legislation would die.
They did it anyway. On purpose.
This version of HB 381 was not a good-faith effort to negotiate a gasline bill. It was an election-year maneuver by a Senate majority that hates Dunleavy so much it cannot allow him to succeed on the largest economic development project in Alaska’s history.
That caustic coalition is also looking toward November. Its members hope Democrat Tom Begich becomes governor. They would rather stall the gasline until the election than allow Dunleavy, now term-limited, to sign a major energy bill, create jobs and claim a victory for Alaska. Tom Begich, the singer-songwriter hippie from Anchorage, would tax corporations to death.
That is the game they are playing.
Dunleavy has called another special session beginning July 27. Alaskans should not get their hopes up. The Legislature may gavel in, perform a tiny bit of political theater and gavel out. Many lawmakers are running for reelection and would rather return home to campaign than remain in Juneau to solve Alaska’s energy crisis.
Others do not have to worry about voters at all.
Senate President Gary Stevens is not returning. Neither is Lyman Hoffman. Senate Finance co-chair Bert Stedman is unopposed. Anchorage Sen. Bill Wielechowski, now widely deserving of the name “Bullshit Bill,” is also unopposed.
They can wreck the gasline bill and walk away without facing meaningful accountability at the ballot box.
Meanwhile, members are jockeying for positions in the next Senate organization, which will be assembled after the November election. Leadership posts, committee chairmanships and control of the money matter more inside the Capitol than the Alaskans who need affordable heat.
It is a clown car circling the drain that is the Alaska Capitol, with every passenger fighting over who gets to sit in front. At the wheel is a low-t Senate majority that has repeatedly demonstrated its hostility toward real progress in Alaska’s energy sector. After all, the Democrats’ own platform is in strident opposition to petroleum energy.
Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel signaled her attitude early in the session when she raised her personal fears that gasline construction could bring human trafficking and substance abuse to Alaska. Instead of beginning with the jobs, economic growth, energy security and opportunity the project could provide, she began by searching for reasons to block it.
Giessel has opposed progress on the gasline from the start, and this year she has stooped to new lows.
These senators imagine themselves to be Alaska’s institutional adults, the wise custodians protecting the state from an unruly governor and an impatient public.
They are not our betters. Not even close.
They are degenerates who appear indifferent to the workers who need jobs, the families who need affordable energy and the children and grandchildren who will inherit whatever remains of Alaska’s economy after this crowd is finished managing its decline.
The Alaska LNG project is not merely another bill moving through another legislative session. It is a generational opportunity to monetize North Slope gas, stabilize energy supplies, support Cook Inlet communities and create thousands of jobs.
No project is guaranteed. No revenue estimate is certain. Legitimate questions about costs, contracts and risk must be asked.
But that is not what happened here.
The Senate majority did not kill HB 381 because it had discovered a fatal flaw in the gasline proposal. It killed the bill by loading it with an inadequately examined tax that the governor had already promised to veto.
Alaskans should remember the arithmetic: The Senate majority was willing to put an estimated $800 million at risk in pursuit of a tax estimated to raise just $150 million.
And they should remember the motive: denying Dunleavy and Republicans a win in an election year.
The next time these senators claim they are protecting Alaska’s future, look at the gasline bill they wrecked. Look at the jobs they endangered. Look at the energy crisis they left unresolved.
Then look at who is in charge of the future of our state: It is the Democrat (and Giessel) members of the Senate clown car, still fighting over the front seat while Alaska’s economy runs out of gas.
Suzanne Downing is founder and editor of The Alaska Story and is a longtime Alaskan who lived in the state before the Trans Alaska Pipeline System was built.
One thought on “Suzanne Downing: The Alaska Senate’s $800 million temper tantrum”
That’s what you get when an office nurse, pretending to be a Republican, thinks she knows how to run the states’ affairs and is an expert on resource development.
If we didn’t have a Democrat run coalition legislature, Glenfare would be breaking ground on the pipeline this year. These types of projects need to be undertaken when the going is good, We’ve had a couple of good chances to get a gas pipeline and it seems state government fumbles every time, we are running out of chances. The stars are aligned, Juneau get off your butts and make it happen!