This story was originally published by the Alaska Beacon.
The day before the Alaska Senate was scheduled to vote on the multibillion-dollar state operating budget, members of the Senate’s Finance Committee met to consider a last-minute amendment.
There was one problem — no one from the Office of Management and Budget showed up.
That office is the executive branch’s financial agency, and its absence was remarkable, if not unprecedented, legislators said Tuesday.
It wasn’t an isolated incident.
As the Alaska Legislature enters the last weeks of its regular session, Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration has warned department staff against entering the state Capitol unless they have special permission from the executive branch.
On one key bill, the executive branch appears to have stopped working with legislators altogether.
“When you have a whole department that’s just saying we’re not going to help you with a piece of legislation, I’ve never experienced that in my time here,” said Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage.
The executive branch’s policy change was outlined in a memo published Monday by the political site Alaska Landmine.
“Out of respect to the legislature and the amount of work they have to complete in the next three weeks, beginning this Monday … there is to be no department staff in the Capitol building without express approval,” wrote Jordan Shilling, director of the governor’s boards and commissions office. “This includes commissioners, deputies, directors and liaisons and remains in effect until adjournment.”
Shilling’s memo is drawing additional attention because members of the House and Senate’s majority caucuses have already said they would like the governor to be present in the Capitol more often.
“I’ve never seen this. It’s not helpful to our work. They’re the experts,” said Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage and co-chair of the House Finance Committee.
A spokesperson for the governor said the policy has precedent.
“Executive branch staff are not forbidden from entering the capitol. If you read the attached email, it clearly states that staff will need approval to be in the building between now and adjournment,” said Jeff Turner, the governor’s communications director, by email.
“This is not a new policy; the Dunleavy administration and previous administrations have enacted a similar policy in the closing days of session to facilitate an orderly end to the session,” he said. “Department staff will continue to testify in committees and provide information as needed to legislators and their staff.”
A legislative director for a former governor said previous administrations verbally warned staff away from the Capitol in the last days of a session, and to limit visits to only what was absolutely necessary.
Putting a warning in writing, and requiring permission, is unusual, the person said.
After the initial publication of this article, Turner said OMB Director Lacey Sanders was absent from the Senate Finance Committee hearing on Tuesday because her schedule was already full when the request came in.
Josephson raised questions about the meaning of the memo.
“One concern is — is it meant to reflect a protest of the Legislature’s work writ large for this session?” Josephson asked. “To use a child’s version of this: Are we in trouble? Did we do something wrong?”
When it comes to Senate Bill 113, a pivotal revenue measure scheduled for a House vote Wednesday, the Department of Revenue is declining to answer questions even electronically or by phone, Wielechowski said.
“It is a problem when we have a department who created the bill, gave it to us, we filed it, and now refuses to work with us, on or off the record,” he said.
SB 113 updates the way the state handles corporate taxes on businesses that sell to Alaskans over the internet. Right now, if an Alaskan buys a movie from Netflix, that company can decide to pay corporate income taxes to the state where its servers are based, where its headquarters are located, or somewhere else.
SB 113 says that those taxes must be paid in the state where the sale takes place. It’s an idea worth as much as $65 million per year for the state, and it was inspired by Lucinda Mahoney, former commissioner of the Department of Revenue, Wielechowski said.
Turner, the governor’s communications director, said Wielechowski doesn’t have it right.
“The Dunleavy administration has never officially proposed the new tax measure contained in Sen. Wielechowski’s bill, and it never drafted a bill even remotely like it,” he said by email. “It was an idea floated by a former commissioner during the Fiscal Policy Working Group hearings.”
After Turner’s comments were published, Wielechowski’s office provided a copy of a draft bill dated 2021 and sent to his office by the Department of Revenue.
Presented with the draft, Turner said on Wednesday morning that a former Dunleavy administration employee did draft the bill but that the administration did not formally introduce it.
SB 113 is intended to pay for reading-improvement grants included within House Bill 57, a popular education funding bill that the House and Senate passed last month with bipartisan support.
Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak has been in the Legislature for a quarter-century.
“I have never seen that either,” he said about the policy change. “This is my 25th year, and I have never seen anything before like that. … As we continue in this legislative process, will we be able to speak to the departments? Will they be able to speak to us? Can we find out what’s going on? Are they going to be here in the building, which is preferable? Are they going to be online, which is not quite so good, but OK? Are they simply not going to be available? We simply don’t know that answer.”
James Brooks is a longtime Alaska reporter, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. A graduate of Virginia Tech, he is married to Caitlyn Ellis, owns a house in Juneau and has a small sled dog named Barley.
