Update 1:40 p.m.: The House Finance Committee returned to business today and took up the school funding bill without attempting to undo any of the changes done the night before. Republicans opposed advancing the measure, raising concerns about the cost of the underlying internet bill, but ultimately didn’t have the votes to prevent the bill from advancing as Majority Reps. Neal Foster and Bryce Edgmon backed a Minority-led effort to get the bill out of committee. This story’s headline has been updated to reflect that the House leadership’s attempt to quash the legislation were ultimately unsuccessful.
Original story
The final days of the session are filled with surprises, and Monday night’s meeting of the House Finance Committee was no different.
With House Republicans smarting over the Senate’s end-of-session strongarm tactics, the House Finance Committee met on Monday night to cook up their own turducken bill that would pack an increase for pupil transportation costs into a Senate bill dealing with school internet upgrades. But things quickly got out of hand as legislators moved to staple on other school funding measures, which resulted in intervention from House leadership that will likely sink the bill altogether.
Things started off with Finance Committee Co-Chair Rep. DeLena Johnson making an amendment to add about $8 million of school funding to the legislation, a provision copied from the Senate’s legislation to increase the base student allocation. While that alone might not be unusual, it opened the door for further amendments to the bill with the explicit acknowledgment the Senate’s school funding bill was fair game.
That’s a big deal because the Senate’s school funding bill contains a permanent increase to the base student allocation. Even though that measure appears broadly popular, far-right House Republicans have instead favored one-time increases that make it difficult for districts to plan from one year to the next. Seeing the opportunity, Anchorage Democratic Rep. Andy Josephson offered an amendment to graft the BSA increase onto the bill.
Rep. Mike Cronk, a far-right Tok Republican who has previously bashed districts because he feels they’re not being straightforward about their funding, warned that it’d kill the bill.
“With this amendment, I can pretty much guarantee that this bill will get killed,” he said. “It’s not the proper way to try to stuff $175 million into a broadband bill.”
Other members didn’t seem so sure.
Rep. Alyse Galvin, I-Anchorage, noted the House had already voted in support of a funding increase of this size when it passed the budget. Sure, the funding wasn’t a permanent increase then, but she said it showed broad support for such a change.
“This is an odd way to do it, but I can tell you I will be supportive and here’s why,” she said. “We’ve already passed in our body the $174 million increase. … I think it will bring the education system some predictable funding. It’s not the $1,300 my caucus has supported, but it seems like a fair and reasonable amount.”
The amendment ultimately passed 8-3, with Rep. Galvin being joined by a mixture of minority members, majority Republicans and majority Bush Caucus members in Reps. Josephson, Dan Ortiz, Sara Hannan, Bryce Edgmon, Neal Foster, Will Stapp and Frank Tomaszewski. Anchorage Republican Julie Coulombe joined Reps. Johnson and Cronk in opposing the amendment.
It was a surprising development, signaling that there very much is support for a permanent increase to the base student allocation among the minority members and the moderate majority members. If they stick together through the final vote, it’d be enough to override the House’s far-right Republicans.
As momentum was growing in favor of school funding—Rep. Stapp was in the middle of proposing an amendment to double the school funding increase—House Finance Committee Co-Chair Rep. Neal Foster noted House Speaker Cathy Tilton and Rules Committee Chair Craig Johnson joined the meeting.
That was the signal for the House Majority members to clear out and huddle up with leadership. The members returned about 30 minutes later, and Rep. Foster announced they would set the bill aside.
“The thought was maybe coming back to it tomorrow to let cooler heads prevail and just think it through a little bit at the request of some folks,” Foster said, referencing the emergency meeting with Tilton and Johnson.
He conceded that it would likely make the passage of the bill, despite its support, in any form unlikely before the end of the legislative session as it would need to hit the floor with the votes to advance it to a vote in a single day and get back to the Senate for a concurrence vote before the end of the legislative session at midnight Wednesday.
Of course, it could still pass, but that would require the will from House leadership, and there certainly doesn’t appear to be the will.
Rep. Ortiz objected to tabling the bill but the House Majority members were less willing to break the party lines on that vote. Ultimately all seven majority members and Rep. Galvin voted in favor of tabling the legislation with only Reps. Ortiz, Hannan and Josephon voting against the maneuver.
In the end, Cronk may be right that adding in the BSA will kill the entire bill. However, it won’t be due to a lack of votes that will kill it, but House leadership leaning on the levers that control the flow of legislation.
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.
