Anchorage legislators are on the move again starting this weekend, fleeing the "Taj MaHawker" for a new home on Benson Boulevard, with dreams of leaving all the political baggage behind.

It's won't be that simple. The Legislature can't end its three-year imbroglio with landlords Mark Pfeffer and Bob Acree without paying for the privilege.

We don't know how much it will cost the state, but the owners have filed a claim for $37 million, charging the Legislature abdicated its responsibilities.

Ultimately, the developers will make a case in court legislators gave the go-ahead for tens of millions in construction work, approved the lease and then refused to honor the deal.

The legislative rationale for evicting itself is a court decision that said legislators did not follow their own contracting rules, therefore the deal they made doesn't exist.

This is a little like stopping payment because you had your fingers crossed behind your back.

Months or years will pass before we know the final price tag for the sequence of events that began when the Legislative Council eagerly approved renovation and expansion of its Anchorage offices in 2013.

"I appreciate, being an Anchorage legislator, that we've opted to extend and renovate rather than buy another building or build a new building," Anchorage Sen. Kevin Meyer said at that June 7, 2013 meeting.

Anchorage Sen. Lesil McGuire agreed: "Purchasing a new building at this stage, having lived with the controversy of the last 10 years that the Legislature went through, simply is not something that this Legislative Council wants to go through."

"That takes care of the beginning of a fabulous project," Rep. Mike Hawker said after the council approved a set of motions some of its members didn't understand.

Sixteen months later, with bad publicity building and oil prices tanking, legislators started running for the fabulous exits.

It's true Hawker made numerous ill-advised comments in emails with the project developers, documents that came to light because of Jim Gottstein's lawsuit in which Hawker sometimes seemed to be working against the state's interests, but the entire Legislative Council had a hand in this.

Over the past two years, the building has become an exaggerated symbol of bad budgeting in Alaska, mentioned countless times at public hearings. With the oil price collapse, legislators picked the wrong time to approve a fivefold rent increase.

The publicity, plus the emails disclosed in the court fight brought by Gottstein, owner of the adjacent property, has created an intense desire in the legislative branch to make this go away.

The legislative budget for this fiscal year shows the new building at Benson and Minnesota will bring in more than it costs to operate, as Wells Fargo is leasing nearly half of the first floor for 10 years, along with space on the third floor for 18 months. The operating cost is a minus 16 cents per square foot, the best deal since Seward's Purchase.

But that requires accepting the state budgeting fantasy that the $11,850,000 purchase doesn't count as an operating cost.

The Legislature has to be out of the downtown LIO by Oct. 16, with moving set to begin this weekend.

Anchorage Superior Court Judge Patrick McKay ruled in March the lease was invalid because the Legislature did not follow its procurement rules.

Legislators are clinging to the court ruling in Gottstein's lawsuit to defend the decision to skedaddle, but the move is really about politics. The untested premise is the court decision takes the Legislature off the hook and transfers the entire risk to the private developers.

The problem for the state is that the developers did not create and approve the flawed process, the Legislative Council did.

A lawyer for the landlords was correct when he complained about "erratic conduct" on the part of the Legislature.

In the $37 million claim filed in July, an attorney wrote the limited liability company "will lose title to the property through foreclosure" after the state stops it lease payments, as there won't be time to find new tenants.

"Public policy and the need for the public to have faith in the state's contracting obligations require that the Legislature bear the cost and consequences of its decision to abandon the LIO building," the complaint said.

Before anyone uses the words "save money" to justify the purchase of the new LIO building at Benson and Minnesota, the unknown cost of ending the downtown lease has to be included along with whatever renovation expenses will be required.

Only then will we know if the new building was a smart purchase or the most costly option yet for legislative office space in Anchorage.

Columnist Dermot Cole can be reached at dermot@alaskadispatch.com.