The Hitchhikers Guide to the Legislature traditionally presents questions and answers with the governor. However, Gov. Frank Murkowski declined an interview after several requests. His staff instead offered Chief of Staff Jim Clark to answer questions about the administration's agenda for the legislative session.

Q: What are the top priorities for the administration this session?

A: I think there's several things. A priority will be to increase oil and gas development. We want to streamline the permitting process, and we would like to find ways that we could get more out of a barrel of oil up on the North Slope, so we are going to be focusing very heavily on increasing revenue on the North Slope.

Q: During the campaign the governor identified several resource and transportation infrastructure projects that he would push if elected. One example is an oil development project at the McCovey site in the Beaufort Sea. What other oil fields do you think show promise?

A: Well let me just be more general because we are looking across the board. ... We're looking at all of the various sites throughout Alaska, including Cook Inlet, where we can increase oil and gas development and streamline the permitting process so we can get that oil and gas on stream more quickly. And these principals will apply to any specific project around the state, those that are currently ongoing that we can speed up and increase the production of oil, those that will come on in the future. ... So we're looking at things like what we can do to increase heavy oil production, what we can do to increase the wells from which we are presently producing. ... We're just looking at whatever we can do to speed up the oil and gas development, particularly oil, to fill up the excess capacity in the pipeline.

Q: What are some of the ways you go about streamlining the process?

A: Well, we're again being more general than getting into specific details. ... As you know, environmental laws get enacted piecemeal. In other words a law will be enacted, and then another law will be enacted, and then another law will be enacted. And each of them are focused in a different area, but they are never looked at in terms of their synergistic effect upon a process. So you'll often have overlapping, intertwining processes, each coming from a slightly different direction. ... What we want to be looking at is what we can do in order to, without giving up any of the environmental analyses or the benefit of those environmental analyses or the benefits of those environmental analyses, try to streamline the processes. We don't need an extra process where you can do the same thing with one process.

Q: Gov. Murkowski put a strong emphasis on road construction during the campaign. What road projects top the administration's priority list?

A: He has restarted the Juneau Access road and he started the (environmental impact study) in that regard. He hasn't made any decisions about how it ought to come out. He thinks that ought to be looked at. And we will be looking at increasing access all over the state, particularly where we can look at access that will increase jobs. So the Juneau thing is something he ran on. He thought it would be good to link up the state capital with the rest of the state. A bunch of these other projects, we are looking at what can we do to increase jobs through road construction. An example of that is the Donlin Creek Mine (northwest of Bethel in the Kuskokwim Mountains). Is this a road that if we construct it we could we produce natural resource jobs in Alaska? We'd accomplish several things at the same time with such a road. It's the same kind of results we got from building the Red Dog road (near Kotzebue).

Q: How much funding is necessary to complete the environmental impact statement for Juneau Access?

A: We're going to have to probably, as I understand it, prepare a supplemental EIS to restart the process because it's been languishing for more than three years. And so as a consequence of that we'll need to come up with a draft, and we're preparing the paperwork right now to figure out what it would take to supplement the EIS.

Q: How do you see Gov. Murkowski using his ties in Washington and with the Congressional delegation to appropriate money for the projects laid out in your campaign?

A: I think there will be intense discussions between the governor and his colleagues in the Senate and in the House, first starting with (the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) and the gasline, to push on that early on in the administration. ... That's the very first thing we're doing out of the box is working with our friends in D.C. to see how we can get a better opportunity to get ANWR and to do the same with the gasline.

Q: The latest state revenue projections estimate that the Constitutional Budget Reserve will run out of money in June 2005. Do you think there's anything the administration or the Legislature can do anything to extend the life of the reserve fund?

A: To the extent that we work from day one to speed up production, streamline the permitting process and get the oil into the pipeline. That's going to be our focus, and we've got to take that generalization ... and apply that project by project. We are going to be very focused on increasing the flows through the pipeline, small amount by small amount. That's the way it's got to be done. There's not a silver bullet here.

Q: Do you anticipate any cuts in the budget this year, and if so what cuts would the administration support?

A: We're just at the front end of that process ... so it's really too early to comment on that other than to generalize. And as a generality we are looking to see what kind of efficiencies we can obtain. We might get a better bang for the state general fund dollars in leveraging federal dollars or in just simply saving general fund dollars. We are looking to see what we can do on the procurement side of the house. We're looking to see what we can do on the efficiency side of the house. So we're in our homework phase right now, and it's going to be a couple of months before we're really prepared to say with specificity what specifically we are going to do.

Q: The Legislature passed a tax on alcohol last session. Do you anticipate any other new taxes within the next two to four years?

A: We're looking down the road on the budgeting on what we're going to do on a four-year cycle. That's what the governor was elected for. ... Cheryl Frasca who is our budget director is doing a great job. She and Jay Hogan (deputy director for the Office of Management and Budget) are a great team. And they're going through the budget right now. They are analyzing the requests that were made from all the departments in the outgoing administration, and we're looking at what we're going to have to do as a process to analyze all of these expenditures in excess of $2 billion. So we are going to spend our time, and I don't want to get us into any course of action until we've done our homework.

Q: There have been six special sessions called on subsistence by three different administrations. If the Legislature fails to pass a constitutional amendment on subsistence, will the governor call a special session to try to resolve the issue?

A: That's very premature. That's a hypothetical situation that I don't want to be commenting on. The governor is going to be talking with the legislators here starting in the next couple of weeks. We anticipate a good working relationship with them. We'll be putting our priorities on the table and so will they. It's just far too early to be talking about special sessions for anything.

Q: Is he committed to trying to resolve the subsistence issue in his first session in office or is this more of a long-term goal for the administration?

A: He wants to resolve it. Whether it's the first term or when it is going to depend on these initial meetings that we haven't had yet with the legislators. But he's going to explain his commitment to them. He'll work with them, they'll work with him. And we will have to find a mutual way forward. We're looking forward to a good working relationship on subsistence and all issues.

Q: In recent years, local governments have complained that the state cuts support for programs it still mandates. An example is the senior citizen property tax exemption, which used to be supported by state funds. What is the administration's perspective on unfunded mandates, and is it a goal of the administration to try to remove unfunded mandates?

A: The governor doesn't like unfunded mandates. So we'll take a look at that, whether it's being applied by the federal government to the state or by the state to local governments. So we'll be looking at that across the board.

Q: Voters recently approved a ballot initiative that would provide funding for a study of an all-Alaska gas pipeline. Backers of the measure say the study would cost between $3 million and $5 million. Will the Murkowski administration provide funding for a gasline authority?

A: We have begun the process of looking at what the law requires. In other words, what have the voters approved, what do we need to do to meet those obligations? We're still on this issue at the front end of our homework process. So we're definitely pulling back the covers on it, taking a look at it and seeing what the law requires. And we will follow the law, but at this point I really just can't tell you what our course of action is going to be.

Q: Does the administration have a preference on which direction the gas pipeline might go?

A: I think the governor has always been in favor of the all-Alaska route. But the law here requires that we take a look at some other options and we're going to do it.

Q: Juneau officials have, at times, proposed building a new Capitol or expanding the current one. Does the administration think either proposal is a good one. If so, would the administration commit state funds to it?

A: This is kind of a hypothetical situation because we have not gotten any proposal from anybody in Juneau about what they might want to do with respect to a new Capitol. So, unless we do and until we see what it is, we really don't have anything to say on the subject.

Q: There have been efforts in recent legislative sessions to build a private prison in Alaska to address the issues of overcrowding and relocation of prisoners to Arizona. Do you expect the issue to return this session?

A: I think the issue remains, so we've asked our corrections people to look at this issue and give us their best advice.

Q: Does the administration have a position on this at all?

A: I hate to sound like Johnny One-Note here, but we're just one month into the administration. We're being very serious and deliberate about this. We have a long list of issues at which we're trying to take a good, hard look and try to gather some understanding.

Q: How soon do you expect the governor to appoint the rest of his commissioners? Is that going to happen fairly soon?

A: I hope so. As you know it's been my job as transition director to get those issues resolved, and I'm very committed to having that happen as soon as possible.

Q: The Murkowski administration is negotiating with the state's 12 labor unions over three-year contracts that are set to expire in June 2003. How are the negotiations going, and have any decisions been made yet?

A: I think the negotiations have been going very well. I don't want to get into the details of it. I think the governor did the right thing by appointing Bill Hudson and Andy Warwick, the former commissioners of the Department of Administration who have been through this before, to work with the various unions. And they have had the initial meetings. They're going to be continuing to meet, and I think the thing we've tried to signal from day one, and I think the governor has done a very good job of doing it, is to indicate that we care deeply about our public employees and to recognize that we can't achieve the goals we're after without them and that we need to treat them with respect and dignity. And that's what we've been trying to do in the negotiations.