The story of Rep. Paul Seaton's journey from ignored idea guy to co-chair of the Alaska House Finance Committee is a hopeful parable for solving Alaska's fiscal crisis.

Voters turned Juneau political calculations upside down. Conventional wisdom a year ago held that the safe course for legislators was to do nothing and that talking about taxes was suicidal. Now a lot of the do-nothings are gone, while those who talked taxes control the House.

Sen. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks, the new conservative Senate president, is in a box. He can't end this session without a credible solution. Besides the horrendous consequences for the state, with its 70 percent budget deficit, failure would only postpone hard votes to 2018, when he and his main Senate allies will be up for re-election.

Kelly has to make a deal with the House. With Seaton. And new political forces are in place to make that happen.

A year ago, as most Alaskans were just getting used to the abyss facing our government and economy, Seaton was already there with a solution, concepts written into proposed legislation simpler and more palatable than Gov. Bill Walker's many-part plan.

Seaton, R-Homer, had proposed an income tax in April 2015. At that time his only public ally was Rep. Bryce Edgmon, D-Dillingham.

Seaton's own majority smothered the bill. Finance Committee member Lance Pruitt, R-Anchorage, laughed at it. Minority leader Chris Tuck, D-Anchorage, said the oil companies should pay the money instead.

Now Edgmon is speaker of the House, Tuck and other House Democrats are on board with a solution that includes broad-based taxes, and Pruitt is in the minority, along with other Republicans who let the session end last year without meaningful action.

The voters made this happen. They swept away House Republicans who resisted a solution. When the Republicans targeted Seaton in the primary, he won in a landslide. Further threats have only hardened the group.

Seaton said Thursday his fiscal plan will follow a bill he introduced last year, HB 365, which would have imposed a state income tax equal to 15 percent of federal taxes but also credited the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend against the tax. The bill changes the name of the dividend to the "refundable income tax credit."

The concept takes some of the sting out of taxes, since many Alaskans would still end up in the black after the credit. Politically, it allows the Legislature to deal with taxes and the fund in a single bill, with one vote — that simplifies the deal-making.

Dividend dogmatists should get on board. Their patron saint, Gov. Jay Hammond, often talked about paying the dividend but "clawing it back" though income taxes.

Seaton talks about the dividend practically.

"Some people talk like it's not state money. It is state money," he said. "Everybody has been able to be essentially on welfare, in other words, getting lots of services and not paying for any of them."

An income tax makes sense, but if a sales tax is more popular we could end up with that, Seaton said. Some legislators have talked of enshrining the dividend in the Alaska Constitution while cutting it, offering the public confidence the dividend won't be cut further.

Whatever happens, the House is motivated to work quickly. Its majority coalition is on board for the general outlines of a plan. Many of them ran on these ideas and thus have all the political cover they need. Playing their cards first puts more pressure on the Senate.

But a solution that adds up — financially and politically — will also require reductions to oil tax credits.

Last year, Seaton's HB 247 to reform tax credits gained approval from a majority of the House over the objections of its leadership. The Senate pared back the bill to address only Cook Inlet, leaving expensive credits on the North Slope. Enough members of Seaton's coalition peeled off in the House for that version to become law.

Then came Gov. Bill Walker, vetoing the payment of the credits for the second year in a row. The liability for the credits continues to accrue but Walker can veto payment of the money every year.

Seaton will go after the credits again. Walker's vetoes give him a high card. Credits that don't get paid aren't worth much to the industry. A deal to pay out at least some of the cash might get the industry to loosen its leash on senators and allow reduction of future credits to go through.

Does that sound like the treasury paying for votes controlled by oil companies? It would be. A key Senate Finance Committee member on the issue, Peter Micciche, R-Soldotna, works for ConocoPhillips. That's the system we live in. If a deal gets a stable financial future for Alaska, so be it.

The final piece of a complete plan is budget cuts. That could be the hardest part of the session's battles.

In the House, many Democrats feel enough cuts have already been made. Cuts have helped put the state in recession. People are leaving. As my colleague Dermot Cole wrote recently, Walker has brought the budget below the goal set by Senate conservatives a year ago.

Sen. Mike Dunleavy, R-Wasilla, now wants deeper, unspecified cuts. Moderate Senate Republicans from coastal Alaska are closer to Seaton's point of view. Sen. Finance Committee Co-Chair Anna MacKinnon, R-Eagle River, straddling a divided caucus, wants to talk about cuts and then taxes.

"We have tried to keep our caucus in the loop to just keep everything on the table for a while, don't start posturing to different constituencies," she said.

MacKinnon rightly pointed out that many of the divisions in the Legislature are drawn along regional lines, with the Mat-Su delegation most conservative and opposed to taxes.

For the first time in many years, Mat-Su lacks a finance committee co-chair in either body. Paul Seaton is something new. That's cause for hope.