Alaska Politics Blog : Volcano strands legislators

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Contributors

Sean Cockerham

Sean Cockerham writes about Alaska state politics. He's worked for the ADN in Anchorage and Juneau, covered the legislature for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, and covered Washington state politics for the Tacoma News Tribune. E-mail Sean at scockerham@adn.com

Kyle Hopkins

Kyle Hopkins covers rural affairs, general assignments and politics for the ADN. He covered the 2006 campaign for governor, has blogged extensively about Alaska politics, covered Anchorage city government and was a reporter based in the Mat-Su. He grew up in Southeast Alaska and previously wrote for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and Anchorage Press. E-mail Kyle at khopkins@adn.com and also find him on our rural Alaska blog, The Village.

David Hulen

David Hulen, the ADN's state and local news editor, is responsible for political coverage. He has been an editor and reporter at the ADN for more than 20 years. E-mail David at dhulen@adn.com

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Alaska political corruption

When the FBI raided state legislature offices in Aug. 2006, it publicly launched an investigation that ultimately reached the highest levels of Alaska politics, and continues to this day.

Volcano strands legislators

Posted by Alaska_Politics

Anchorage Daily News

Posted: March 23, 2009 - 12:25 pm

From Sean Cockerham in Anchorage –

Alaska Airlines canceled this morning’s Anchorage to Juneau flights because of the Mt. Redoubt eruption. That’s left legislators (and one ADN reporter who came home for the weekend) stuck in Southcentral.

At least sixteen legislators are missing session. There’s talk of maybe canceling some committee meetings this afternoon for lack of a quorum.

(Update -- the Senate Resources Committee went ahead and canceled.)

The number of absent legislators also apparently caused the state Senate to postpone passing its resolution to accept all the economic stimulus money. The resolution is really just a stopgap to get around the April 3 federal deadline.

Both the state House and the Senate plan to pass the resolution as a formality and then work on whether they’re actually going to accept the all the money.