Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy today vetoed half of the funding the Alaska Legislature put into a one-time increase for public school funding, which was aimed at avoiding or limiting the paint of the harsh financial cliff schools face around the state.
Faced with chronic flat funding of the state’s baseline contribution to public schools and expiring one-time money, legislators this session agreed to put $175 million into districts as a one-time boost with a promise to look at long-term permanent solutions. The veto by Dunleavy, who was largely absent from the school funding debate this year, cuts that amount to $87.4 million.
[More: The complete list of vetoes]
The $175 million was lower than most schools and pro-school legislators had hoped for this session but ultimately garnered broad support as a better-than-nothing approach to the immediate problems. It amounted to a roughly $680 increase in per-student funding under the state’s base student allocation formula, which determines the need for each district based on its size, location and the needs of its students. While it would meet the needs of some communities, others were expected to need still to cut.
The one-time increase will fall to an equivalent of $340 under Dunleavy, whose major contribution in the education debate this year was to push for legislation similar to Florida’s “Don’t say gay bill” that would have opened schools up to legal liability for talking about sex or gender identity without explicit written permission of parents. Dunleavy refused to say if he would make his support for education funding contingent on the passage of that bill.
The rest
The governor vetoed nearly $150 million from the state’s operating budget. The reasoning for most of the cuts was listed as “Preserve general funds for savings and fiscal stability.”
While the Dunleavy and the Dunleavy-aligned House both backed budgets that included sizeable draws on savings to cover deficits created by paying out a large dividend without making corresponding cuts or implementing new revenue, the budget that ultimately passed the Legislature was balanced. That was largely thanks to hard-ball negotiations by the bipartisan Senate that pushed for a smaller dividend, about $1,300, while keeping spending in line with the anticipated revenue for the year.
The governor’s other vetoes seem to primarily be targeting priorities added into the budget by the bipartisan Senate, which includes funding for public radio, reentry grants, early education grants, funding to address gaps in the state workforce, child care grants, funding for legal services for low-income Alaskans and increased funding for the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program.
Dunleavy has also vetoed much of the capital project spending set aside for the University of Alaska and several million dollars in capital project spending earmarked for Anchorage and Kenai, which was part of a deal between the House and Senate to get a budget passed. Notably, most of the earmarked capital projects appear to be linked to legislators who ultimately voted against the budget while the ones that were left untouched came from legislators who supported it.
What’s next
The governor’s line-item veto power is one of the strongest in the country, requiring a three-quarter majority of the Legislature to override. At 45 of 60 members needed, it is near-impossible that the Legislature could override the governor’s vetoes as he has enough loyalists to uphold them.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
