After blocking a vote on the first day of the legislative session, the Republican-led Alaska House Majority reversed course on Thursday and called a joint session to consider an override of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of education funding.
While a majority of legislators ultimately voted in favor of the override, they fell well short of the three-quarter vote needed under the Alaska Constitution to restore $87 million in K-12 funding. The vote was 33-26.
Notably, the vote saw several Republicans in both the House and Senate who had supported the funding as part of last year’s budget reverse course, effectively cutting off any possibility that additional education funding could be restored for the current budget year. House Republicans have argued that a sweeping education package that contains a permanent increase to funding — albeit a far smaller increase — is a better approach.
Other legislators weren’t so convinced.
Anchorage Democratic Rep. Andy Josephson told the Anchorage Daily News he believed they put their allegiance with Dunleavy, who has a habit of blacklisting or retaliating against legislators deemed disloyal, over their local school districts.
“The only thing that makes sense is that they’re honoring his veto. And they don’t want to upset him, I guess. It’s the only thing that’s logical. There’s been no change in circumstances,” he told the paper. “The districts didn’t win the lottery. There’s been nothing that should otherwise change their position.”
A vast majority of Republican senators in the bipartisan Senate Majority stayed the course on their votes and voted in favor of the override, including Senate President Gary Stevens and Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel.
After vetoing half of the one-time boost of education funding from the last session, the governor and his administration have opposed a permanent increase to school funding. Instead, they have argued in favor of smaller investments that would put strict limits on how that money can be spent by local school districts.
The education package being advanced by House Republicans calls for a $300 increase to the base student allocation, the figure that’s used to determine how much funding each district receives, or about $77 million annually. That’s far less than the $174 million approved by legislators last year or the $87 million that survived Dunleavy’s veto.
The House legislation proposes other increases to school funding, but much of that money would go to Republican-favored priorities like homeschooling, charter schools, and a teacher pay bonus program proposed by the governor.
That teacher pay program would pay teachers between $5,000 and $15,000 depending on their location for completing a school year with no requirement to continue teaching, a move the Legislature’s legal analysts say likely violates the Alaska Constitution’s equal protection clause and labor agreements.
House Republicans have outlined a breakneck schedule for their legislation, calling for a single public hearing this Saturday, with a floor vote on the measure as early as next week.
How they voted:
In favor of the override: Reps. Armstrong, Carrick, Dibert, Edgmon, Fields, Foster, Galvin, Gray, Groh, Hannan, Himschoot, Josephson, McCormick, Mears, Mina, Ortiz, Schrage, Story and Stutes. Sens. Bishop, Claman, Dunbar, Giessel, Gray-Jackson, Kawasaki, Kiehl, Merrick, Olson, Stedman, Stevens, Tobin and Wielechowski.
Against the override: Reps. Allard, Baker, Carpenter, Coulombe, Cronk, Eastman, C. Johnson, D. Johnson, McCabe, McKay, Prax, Rauscher, Ruffridge, Saddler, Shaw, Stapp, Sumner, Tilton, Tomaszewski, Vance and Wright. Sens. Bjorkman, Hughes, Kaufman, Myers and Wilson.
Absent: Sen. Shower
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.
