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Like an exhausted salmon unable to reach its redd, a report on the disbanded Cook Inlet Salmon Task Force continues to flounder in the slack water two months after the the committee was to report to the Legislature.

The task force was created during the 2008 legislative session when Matanuska-Susitna lawmakers argued that commercial fishermen in the inlet were intercepting fish heading to the Susitna and Yentna rivers and that the Board of Fisheries and Department of Fish and Game were not doing a good job of allocating resources equitably.

A report, and recommendations from the committee were due on Jan. 20, the first day of the 2009 legislative session. That report was pushed back a month with a 30-day extension, but Feb. 20 came and went, and a report remains to be seen two months into the session.

According to the office of Rep. Craig Johnson, R-Klatt, who chaired the task force, a pared down report is still due, perhaps by early next week.

The beleaguered report has lost heft however, both because of pending copyright issues and because it's now unlikely to feature any recommendations; a aspect specifically written into the basis of its creation.

Sen. Wagoner, R-Kenai, the only peninsula legislator who sits on the committee, opposed its creation last year.

He remains unimpressed.

"You would think someone could write a report," Wagoner said. "I think they don't have anything to report other than they want to go for another year and spend more time and more money."

Wagoner referred to Johnson's submission of House Concurrent Resolution 6, Recreating the Cook Inlet Salmon Task Force as a joint legislative task force.

The resolution would extend the life of the task force until March of 2010, however, afer one hearing it remains in the House Special Committee on Fisheries and the Resources and Finance Committees.

"If you can't write a report after all that time and money, I think it begs the question, why would the Legislature extend this thing for another year?" Wagoner said.

At the heart of the issue Wagoner said, is an allocation fight between sport and commercial fishermen.

He said that's an issue that needs to be addressed through the Board of Fisheries, not the Legislature.

"That's the worst thing that could ever happen is to have the Legislature getting into these situations," Wagoner said.

Wagoner reported that at the end of the last committee meeting he attended telephonically, he asked to see just how much the task force had cost.

"There's got to be documentation on how much this has cost Alaska tax payers for as little as they've accomplished," he said. "It's a big expenditure."

Dante Petri can be reached at dante.petri@peninsulaclarion.com.