The Alaska State Legislature gaveled in and out Tuesday as a technical step in running down the clock on a special session, slated to end Aug. 31.
Legislative leaders say they’ve already accomplished their priorities — successfully overriding two vetoes by Gov. Mike Dunleavy — and have no interest in taking up further business this month. Dunleavy had called the special session and asked lawmakers to work on education and agriculture measures.
The House and Senate presiding officers — House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, and Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak — were both on a morning flight that was delayed due to Juneau fog, pushing back the planned floor sessions for more than an hour. But within minutes, they adjourned both the House and Senate until another session at 10 a.m. Aug 31. That’s also expected to be a brief formality, known as a “technical” session.
“We’re going to stand our ground,” Edgmon said in an interview afterward. “And if he wants to call us back in,” he said referring to the chance of the governor calling another special session, “‘second verse same as the first,’ you know. The results are going to be ‘second verse same as the first,’ too.”
Edgmon and Stevens both confirmed that the governor’s education policy priorities would be considered by a new joint education funding task force, which is scheduled to meet Aug. 25, and in the regular session in January.
Stevens also pointed to the next session for considering a new Alaska Department of Agriculture, as the Legislature has rejected Dunleavy’s executive order creating one. Dunleavy had asked the Legislature again to act on the order in August.
“If it’s his executive order, we can’t affect that. We can’t amend it. We can’t change it in any way. And so we much prefer to have a bill,” Stevens said in an interview Tuesday. “The advantage of going through the legislative process is that we take the time to study all the issues. We can hear various legislators’ thoughts on it, we can hear from the public, and it just winds up with a better process.”
Sen. Robert Myers, R-North Pole, said by phone on Tuesday that the Republican-led minority caucus supports Dunleavy’s education policy items and would have liked to see them considered. “It was at least an opportunity for us to try to drill down a little further and take some time on different education policies, rather than just talking about the funding that was vetoed and then moving on,” he said.
Jeff Turner, Dunleavy’s communications director, said by email on Tuesday, “it’s disappointing that the legislature is choosing to kick the can down the road.”
Asked whether Dunleavy plans to call another special session this fall, Turner replied that if the governor chose to do so, it would be announced in a press release.
Myers said he’s not confident there would be any further work or negotiation if the governor called another special session. “Of course, that’s his prerogative, but the way that the majorities are behaving, I don’t see that anything significant is going to change, which is, again, disappointing. You know, we should be focusing on our outcomes for our students, not on playing these kinds of political games.”
Five legislators attended the technical sessions, including Rep. Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage, Rep. Cathy Tilton, R-Wasilla, and Edgmon in the House and Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, and Stevens in the Senate.
Corinne Smith started reporting in Alaska in 2020, serving as a radio reporter for several local stations across the state including in Petersburg, Haines, Homer and Dillingham. She spent two summers covering the Bristol Bay fishing season. This article originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.
