By David Whitney 
Daily News Washington Bureau 

Washington -- Alaska Sen. Frank Murkowski may have picked up a fourth Republican vote for his bill to pump $3 billion a year in offshore oil drilling receipts into parks, wildlife protection and coastal assistance programs.

But that was about the only piece of good news for the Republican chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Friday's work session on the legislation was another grueling exercise as Republican members continued to hammer at Murkowski.

Among the most controversial features of the bill is a provision that would ship the federal government $450 million a year to buy environmentally sensitive lands and send another $450 million annually to states for park additions.

The federal land purchases must be from willing sellers, but there is no such restriction on states.

Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith had offered an amendment earlier in the week to hold states to the same willing-seller standard, but Democrats raised questions about whether that would be compatible with policies that vary state by state.

Smith reached agreement Friday on a modified amendment that would discourage states "to the greatest extent practicable" from using their money to buy property through condemnation. Later, Smith said that might be enough for him to support the bill.

"I haven't come to a final decision, but I am strongly leaning toward supporting it," he said. "I wanted to strengthen property rights protections in this bill, and this amendment helps."

Alaska would get about $164 million a year under the bill; other coastal and inland states would also benefit, to greater or lesser degrees.

If Smith votes for the bill next week, he would be the fourth of the committee's 11 Republicans to support the measure. The others, in addition to Murkowski, are Sens. Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois and Jim Bunning of Kentucky. All nine Democratic members of the panel are expected to vote for the sweeping measure.

Smith's apparent conversion was a small pleasure in an otherwise painful day for Murkowski, who is under increasing attack by conservatives and property rights groups for cutting a deal with Democrats on a package critics call a big-spending entitlement program.

Murkowski reacted to some of the attacks when he opened Friday's meeting. He said he wanted to set the record straight in published comments that his bill had been denounced as "dishonest."

He was referring to remarks by Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., who had dubbed the measure a "dishonest entitlement" because it skirted Senate rules to require such spending be offset by cuts in other parts of the federal budget.

The bill gets around the rules by requiring Congress to approve the annual $450 million for federal land purchases, an action that would automatically trigger release of the remaining $2.5 billion in state assistance, wildlife conservation and other programs.

But Gorton launched into another attack on the bill's entitlement trigger. This time, he condemned the Murkowski provision as a "disingenuous" exploitation of a loophole in congressional budget rules.

Gorton's attempt to erase the triggering provision from the bill was defeated in the committee's second recorded vote on the bill. Like the first one, it placed Murkowski at odds with his party and in lockstep with the Democrats. The amendment was defeated 12-7, with all Republicans except Murkowski, Bunning and Fitzgerald voting to eliminate the trigger provision.

After three days of work on the bill, the committee still has nearly a dozen amendments to contend with next week. Murkowski has been hamstrung by the bill's critics who have used Senate rules to prohibit the committee from meeting more than a few hours a day.

The committee will return to work Monday, when Murkowski might face even tougher mischief from Republican members.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NM, has indicated that he will offer an amendment to add a provision to the bill to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. That provision would doom the bill.

While there is virtually no chance of such an amendment passing, it will put Murkowski in the embarrassing position of having to vote against his state's top legislative priority in order to keep his part of a compromise reached with Democrats.

Reporter David Whitney can be reached at dwhitney@adn.com 

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