Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy delivered more than $200 million in line-item vetoes to the state’s budget on Monday, more than a third of which came from K-12 education funding in a shock to districts around the state.
Education funding was one of the biggest issues of this legislative session as districts grapple with a difficult combination of chronically flat baseline funding from the state, increasing inflation and expiring federal Covid-19 relief money. Schools warned that without a considerable increase in funding, they’d be forced to increase class sizes, cut programs or raise property taxes in some cases.
To that end, the Legislature agreed to put $175 million into K-12 education as a one-time increase that equated to a roughly $680 increase to the baseline per-student funding formula. It fell well short of the hopes of pro-school legislators but was accepted as a better-than-nothing approach.
On Monday, Dunleavy announced he had vetoed half of it.
Now, despite a high bar for overriding a governor’s budget vetoes, several legislators are calling for a special meeting to take up the veto overrides.
“Due to the Governor’s actions today, our public schools are going to have to make do with substantially less funding than they need to provide for reasonable class sizes and prevent teachers from leaving Alaska for better opportunities elsewhere,” Senate Education Committee Chair Löki Gale Tobin in a prepared statement. “Inflation has made it much more expensive to keep the lights on and keep school buildings warm. Unfortunately, the Governor’s line-item veto will further shift that burden to local school districts, and in many cases, local taxpayers. I fully support an effort by the Alaska State Legislature to override this short-sighted veto.”
The Alaska Constitution sets a particularly high bar for overrides of budget vetoes, requiring three-quarters of all legislators or 45 of the 60. That means 16 legislators aligned with the governor are enough to stymie any and all attempts to override his vetoes. That high threshold discouraged legislators from trying to overturn the governor’s draconian vetoes in his first term, which instead were partially reversed amid an outpouring of public backlash to the cuts.
But this time around, support for the $175 million boost for public education crossed the political boundaries with broad support from Republicans, Democrats and independents. While the session left underlying issues about school funding unresolved, there appeared to be a general acceptance that school funding wasn’t keeping up with school costs.
“I feel like the increase in funding was supported by a pretty large majority in both bodies, and so it’s disappointing,” Soldotna Republican Rep. Justin Ruffridge, the co-chair of the House Education Committee and key architect behind the $175 million figure, told the Anchorage Daily News. “I think that it’s going to be a tough thing for many districts to determine what to do now.”
Ruffridge proposed the $175 million increase in the House Education Committee, a number that seemed to gather momentum throughout the session. In proposing it, he said it was meeting the needs of Kenai Peninsula Borough School District and was intended to maintain class sizes as well as keep programs like theater and the swimming pools—the ones where Alaska Olympic champion Lydia Jacoby trained—open. He told the ADN that he’s not sure what will happen now that half the money has been eliminated.
The picture for other school districts, particularly those in rural Alaska where many fixed costs have escalated in recent years, could be much more severe.
Under the Alaska Constitution, the Legislature would have the first five days into the next legislative session or the next special session to consider an override vote.
One more thing
While an override is typically near-impossible given that it takes a small minority to uphold the governor’s vetoes, there could be conservative legislators keen on overriding the vetoes.
Among the vetoes, Dunleavy went after some but not all of the $34 million in district-specific earmarks that were part of the final budget negotiations between the House and Senate. Those were local projects from many House Majority members’ districts ranging from cemetery construction to road improvements.
At first blush, there’s a bit of regionalism at play with projects slated for the Mat-Su—Dunleavy’s home area—spared from vetoes while those in Anchorage and Kenai fell to the veto pen. However, look at how the final vote on the budget played out, and you’ll get a far more precise idea of whose funding was vetoed and who wasn’t.
Namely, those who voted for the budget kept their earmarks, while those who voted against it while hoping to bring home the bacon got their bacon vetoed: $1.5 million for a cemetery project in Eagle River Rep. Jamie Allard’s district, nearly $2 million in road projects of the districts of South Anchorage Republican Reps. Julie Coulombe and Laddie Shaw, nearly $1.5 million in various projects in the districts of Kenai Republican Reps. Sarah Vance and Justin Ruffridge. All voted against the budget.
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.
