The sun is setting on the Year of the Rooster and it’s hard to say if there’s been much to crow about. But you can already hear the howling as the Year of the Dog crawls onto the horizon.

Perhaps the most under-reported aspect of one of the most over-reported stories of 2005 was just how Alaska’s “bridges to nowhere” were actually funded. Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young sold the deal as $450 million federal dollars for the Knik and Gavina spans, as if it were all a windfall of new free money.

What they didn’t tell you in the midst of their bragging was that $350 million of those dollars weren’t looted out of the blue from liberal New Yorkers, but were instead stolen from you.

That’s right. The vast majority —more than three-quarters — of the monies for the erstwhile bridge projects were from mandatory federal highway funding formulas. Ted and Don could have slept through all the hearings and votes and that money would still have been coming to Alaska.

Essentially, the Senator-for-Life and the Congressman-for-All-Alaskans took money designed to improve the lives of all Alaskans and instead steered it toward a couple of politically well-connected projects designed to benefit very few folks.

Gov. Frank Murkowski stated to the state that Alaska was merely misunderstood Outside, that it was “special interest extremists” who ridiculed Alaska about the Knik Arm Crossing and Gavina Island bridges. He wants to hire an advertising agency to polish up The Great Land B4WEDIE a slow painful death. (He also praised Ted for “dogged devotion” to ANWR.)

Double dog dang!

But what was so “special” about those special interests that bug Frank —and Ted? They were overwhelmingly conservative voices — Taxpayers for Common Sense, Republican legislators, the Wall Street Journal editorial page —the very folks Frank, Ted, and Don purport to represent and hang out with. What’s contemptibly special about common sense, or taxpayers for that matter?

The great irony of The Two Bridges Too Far is that politicians from the other 49 states stepped in and best represented “the greatest good for the greatest number” of Alaskans.

Then Frank restored nearly $200 million in funding to the bridge projects — his spokesperson said he “continues to be a strong supporter” of the Knik Arm Crossing, for instance.

But how strong, really? Well, with a billion-dollar budget surplus this year (that’s a thousand million, if you’re counting), Frank is thinking about giving maybe $9 million toward the Knik project.

George Wuerch, ap-pointed by Murkowski to chair the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, said the state should really pitch in $200 million. So far the state has in fact contributed a grand total of $675,000, or about 1/10 of 1 percent of the project.

Is Wuerch, the former Republican mayor of Anchorage, another one of Ted and Frank’s “special interest” bogeymen?

Fact is, the current mayors of Mat-Su, Anchorage, and the Kenai Peninsula Borough have all said there are critical road projects that must to be completed before undertaking the bridge schemes.

The people of Girdwood are demanding that the State of Alaska do something about safety issues on their end of the Seward Highway — better trooper patrols, road reconstruction.

Shouldn’t Homer at least be able to get the Department of Transportation to post some signs warning drivers about the dangers on the Sterling Highway?

In a state with a Republican House, Senate and governor, Homer is represented by Republican Rep. Paul Seaton and Republican Sen. Gary Stevens. Will Paul and Gary do better than Ted and Don in genuinely representing constituent interests when it comes to the bedrock Republican issue of road funding?

The federal budget has become a cartoon of a dog chasing his tail. Ted Stevens thinks he’s foxy, sneaking half a million dollars to the Arctic Winter Games under the guise of Homeland Security.

But if Augustine Volcano were ever to deliver us a genuine disaster, how much sympathy — and money — do you think folks in Louisiana and the rest of America would have for Alaska?

Maybe, unlike the federal budget, the state budget won’t be dogearmarked in ways that shortchange Homer roads this year. Maybe it won’t be another Year of Wag the Dog.

Columnist Geo Beach can be reached at geobeach@columnist.com.