Say it ain't so, Gene Therriault!

Dear former Senior Policy Adviser for In-state Gas Therriault,

Man, we don't know what to say. We The Concerned are still in shock. After those hiring documents were made public on a records request from political activist Andree McLeod (much-maligned, but rather effective), nearly every Alaska media outlet and pundit, plus every gubernatorial challenger -- and essentially every person who took the time to comment on a recent online news article about you -- started loudly calling for your resignation. But until Thursday, you stuck to your guns. We The Concerned loved that, and we were rooting for you, but frankly, we think your resignation is a mistake.

When we first heard of your hiring, we were concerned that Gov. Parnell would even need a special energy adviser in the first place. We thought he knew a lot about oil and natural gas from his lobbying days. But there are so many natural gas projects up in the air these days, we ended up deciding the governor can use all the help he can get right now.

Then, like most observers, We The Concerned spent a lot of time being concerned about the possibility the governor may have broken Alaska law by hiring you for a job in his administration.

Luckily, the paperwork that officially created your job was drawn up with a date that followed your official resignation date, presumably to circumvent the law's odd phrasing. So, the argument goes, technically the job wasn't created while you were a legislator, and therefore you could accept it less than a year after quitting to take it.

We didn't think it all looked very good, but we also didn't see any problem with your hiring's legality. After all, hasn't the practice been going on for generations? And so what if one of the most denigrated figures in Alaska political history, former U.S. Sen. and Gov. Frank Murkowski, practiced it more than any other Alaska governor? Alaskans post-date checks and hire friends all the time; why should the state government act differently?

The main difference, though, between your case and what some people call "the revolving door" is that instead of taking a private-sector job with one of Alaska's major industries after leaving office, you decided to stay on in government and, we assume, work for the good of all Alaska.

We must admit, that threw us for a loop. You've distinguished yourself to us as one of the Alaska Legislature's most vocal defenders of private sector business interests, so we thought for sure you'd be taking your skills to a position which would really let you spread your wings.