There is a compelling and simple reason to end the Hilcorp loophole and do it in the gasline bill, one that nearly all Republican legislators and Gov. Mike Dunleavy are either unaware of or hoping that the public will never learn about.

State income from oil and gas production taxes would take a $220 million total hit from 2029 to 2032 under the gas pipeline plan because the oil companies would be able to deduct lease expenditures from their tax bills, according to the Department of Revenue.

Closing the Hilcorp loophole would help.

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Dunleavy called Sen. Bill Wielechowski a “bullshitter” after a press conference Thursday night, following rejection of a compromise gasline bill that would have also closed the Hilcorp loophole.

Dunleavy also complained about Sen. Cathy Giessel and said those two senators are the problem.

“Wielechowski said he’d love to know specifically what the governor ‘thinks I’m bullshitting about,’’ the Anchorage Daily News said.

“Looking for a scapegoat is a normal response, so I don’t blame him for that,” Giessel told the Daily News. “Considering he’s been absent (from Juneau) this whole time, he wouldn’t know the Senate Majority views this as a priority.”

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Alaskans have had plenty of time to understand the Hilcorp loophole and how to plug it.

The compromise gas line bill up in the Legislature today would do the job. Ignore the moaning and groaning from Hilcorp and the members of oil company benevolent society.

Republican members of the Legislature are pretending that no one has studied or analyzed this matter, which is not true.

The gridlock in state government, enabled by Gov. Mike Dunleavy and his allies in the Legislature, has prevented the state from closing the loophole.

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For six years, Trump has continued to lie about the 2020 election, with the eager approval of nearly every Republican in Congress. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is an exception to the rule.

Begich will continue to lie about the election. Sullivan, if ever pressed on the topic, will not repeat his 2021 condemnation of Trump or say that Trump’s “blatant disregard” of Pence, “infuriates me.”

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Sen. Dan Sullivan didn’t make a big show of hanging out with Todd Blanche when Trump’s unqualified choice for attorney general visited Alaska last week.

Sullivan would have found a way to accompany Blanche if he were not facing a tough election fight with Mary Peltola. Sullivan is keeping his head down about Blanche, which is Sullivan’s go-to strategy on any matter that carries a political risk.

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Giving the land to AIDEA at no charge—a massive state subsidy—would make a proposed “multi-use industrial and energy development district” more likely to succeed, according to the Dunleavy analysis.

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The August primary election ballot features a campaign finance initiative that will be approved overwhelmingly, but only if Alaskans are informed about it.

But there is no big ad campaign behind it, so it will be up to individuals and organizations to spread the word about Ballot Measure No. 1.

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Roger Marks, a petroleum economist who worked for the Department of Revenue for 25 years, has an excellent column in the Anchorage Daily News about the “Build the Line!” propaganda campaign.

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Alaska entered the union in 1959 with a land grant that exceeded the size of California, more than 100 million acres.

But Republican gubernatorial candidate Shelley Hughes, 68, is claiming that Alaska got shafted under the deal negotiated over many years by Alaskans and members of congress who led the charge to create the state.

She claims that the only thing to do now is get the Trump administration to increase the land grant approved in 1958 by about 5 percent.

This is one of the issues on which she is clueless.

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