Though the Legislature’s two multipartisan majorities didn’t get everything they hoped for when they gaveled in four months ago — a time before Trump threw just about every part of the state’s budget into chaos — they did deliver on a tidy final legislative day that saw a historic veto and the final passage of the budget all wrapping up before 2 p.m.
Both Senate President Gary Stevens and House Speaker Bryce Edgmon remarked upon the smooth wrap-up of the session, with Stevens thanking everyone “for getting us to this point, a day early and before midnight.” The early adjournment is a marked departure from the madcap process that has usually defined the final days of the session.
That’s largely thanks to two coalition majorities that have been politically aligned for the first time in recent political memory.
It’s a session that opened with high expectations for progress on everything from public school and child care funding to pension reform for public sector workers, but was quickly reined in by a deteriorating budget picture as Trump-fomented uncertainty threw oil prices and the stock market — two key sources of state revenue — into a tailspin. The state has also seen hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding either canceled or paused. Even without the outside pressure, many of those issues faced a long shot as long as Gov. Mike Dunleavy still wields the strongest-in-the-nation veto power.
Still, legislators say they notched several meaningful wins given the circumstances.
Of course, there’s the education bill that will become law after legislators voted 46-14 to override the governor’s veto. That will permanently increase funding for public schools while also delivering a handful of policy changes that legislators found broadly agreeable, such as a ban on students having cellphones at schools and reading incentive grants.
And while legislators had bigger hopes for the budget, they said they managed to deliver on some key areas while still keeping it balanced. It still certainly earns its austere title, but the budget includes coalition priorities like $13.7 million for child care programs, $5.5 million for child advocacy centers that help children after suspected abuse, $13.75 million for behavioral health programs targeted at the state’s homeless population, $5.7 million for early learning, and 15 additional positions to speed up processing of the state’s beleaguered public assistance programs.
Other bills, like the election reform bill, ran out of steam. The much-anticipated election reform bill, which would have instituted campaign finance limits and fixed problems that bar rural Alaskans from having their votes counted, was tabled after it ran into the threat of a Republican de facto filibuster. While the legislation has been presented as an evenhanded compromise by its supporters, conservative Republicans in the House threatened to gum up the final days of the session with a mountain of amendments to slow everything down.
The failure of the measure to advance likely means Alaska will endure another election cycle where candidates can raise and spend unlimited amounts of cash from donors. Voters will get their own chance to vote on limits via an initiative currently slated for 2026.
We’ll continue to break down everything that happened in the 2025 session in future posts.
Stay tuned.
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 Bluesky.
