Last minute replacement Governor Sean Parnell introduces his very first state budget.

Gov. Sean Parnell is proposing an 8.6 percent increase in state general fund spending next year, to be paid for with projected high oil prices.

Fairbanks Democratic Sen. Joe Paskvan said Parnell is not making investments where he should. Paskvan said the governor would be asking to spend far more than $15 million on the Dalton Highway if he thought a natural gas pipeline to the Lower 48 was really happening. It's a signal that Parnell may not have much confidence in the TransCanada project and the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, Paskvan said.

He said Parnell's own transportation department said it needed nearly $2 billion in infrastructure work over the next six years to be ready for construction to start on either the TransCanada line or the Conoco Phillips and BP project. That included $250 million next year to get going, and Paskvan said virtually none of that is in the budget.

"I think it unfortunately means that the governor has a belief that neither large diameter line is likely to be built within the next six years," Paskvan said.

It appears that Parnell has realized AGIA is going to be a political albatross in the 2010 election and is attempting to distance himself from it without completely losing left over Palin supporters who might consider him a traitor to her legacy.

I believe that to be a fairly intelligent, yet ultimately doomed plan. Parnell is too tainted by the stench of Palin to garner any support from those who don't like her, and he has none of the "attributes" that sister Sarah used to attract her supporters.

I mean I have never seen him try them on, but I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that as effeminate as Sean Parnell is he simply cannot pull off the Naughty Monkey pumps. He also seems to do his parenting without cameras present, which led me to believe at first that he did not even have a family. But apparently he does and they are completely unsupportive of his political career as evidenced by their refusal to seek the limelight or get impregnated to boost his Alaska gubernatorial cred. So poor Sean is left to cling to his dominionist beliefs and crazy right wing agenda in the hope of retaining some of Palin's fan base.

Sorry Parnell but let's just say that you are not "equipped" to get the kind of overblown attention that Sarah Palin enjoyed.

Now I am certainly not a fan of Parnell's, he being a little too soft and squishy to effectively represent Alaska Republicans and too married to the oil company interests to adequately protect the interests of his constituents, but I do like at least one of his ideas.

His budget also calls for financing two new buildings outside of the general fund, a new $75 million state crime lab in Anchorage and $109 million for a life sciences building at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The state scaled back on big projects this year.

Back when I did my report on the ungodly high number of rapes in this state, one of the stunning things that I learned was evidence collected in Alaska is sent to an outside lab for processing which can take months and sometimes years to complete. In the meantime the victims are left waiting for their day in court while their attackers roam free on bail. A crime lab in Anchorage could have a real impact on how quickly justice is meted out in assault cases as well as other criminal cases in our state.

So I am very much in support of at least that part of Parnell's budget plan.