The Alaska Legislature, as widely expected, failed Tuesday to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a $1,000 increase in per-student education funding by a 33-27 vote, seven short of the two-thirds majority necessary.
The vote leaves state lawmakers in limbo on education funding and policy proposals with about a month left in the session. There is general agreement about raising the statutory $5,960 Base Student Allocation, but the amount and what policies an increase should be tied to are strongly contested.
Extending a one-time $680 BSA increase in effect this year — either for another year or permanently, and not linked to policy changes — has been frequently cited as a baseline goal by members of the Senate’s bipartisan majority. Dunleavy, when he vetoed House Bill 69 last week, previewed a new bill with a $560 BSA increase and the equivalent of about $140 in per-student funds for specific policy-related objectives he has sought this session.
HB 69, introduced early this session, went through several revisions before the Senate passed a bare-bones version containing a $1,000 BSA increase with all the policy provisions from earlier debate removed. The Senate’s vote of 11-9 and House’s concurring vote of 21-16 were both the bare minimum of “yes” votes necessary, and legislative leaders acknowledged it was unlikely they would get eight additional votes after Dunleavy said he would immediately veto the bill.
The only change from the previous floor votes was Sen. Donny Olsen (D-Golovin) voting to override the veto after voting against the bill on the floor. An explanation for the change was not immediately available after the joint session.
All three members of Juneau’s all-Democratic delegation — Sen. Jesse Kiehl, and Reps. Sara Hannan and Andi Story — voted in favor of the override.
The Alaska Legislature fails to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy veto of an education bill by a 33-27 vote, seven short of the total necessary, during a joint session on Tuesday. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empire)
A primary argument of legislators supporting the governor’s veto — including two co-chairs of the Senate Finance Committee whose votes were contrary to the rest of the majority — is the state is suffering a major financial shortfall that could get worse next year and beyond due to dropping oil prices and other economic uncertainty.
“I support a $1,000 BSA (increase), but we need to first address the question of revenues,” said Sen. Lyman Hoffman (D- Bethel), one of the co-chairs who noted there are bills pending the committee that could raise revenue through new oil and business taxes.
“They are revenue measures that I believe we’ll be able to, if passed by the House and the Senate, be able to afford a $1,000 BSA. If we truly say that education is our number-one priority, we should stand behind it fiscally.”
The one-time $680 increase in effect this year has a total cost of about $175 million, which is roughly the price tag Dunleavy put on the bill he proposed last week. A $1,000 BSA increase is projected to cost more than $250 million.
Some legislators arguing in favor of a veto override argued the roughly $75 million extra cost for a $1,000 BSA compared to the current $680 is an affordable part of a $12 billion annual state budget, especially since there is about $2.8 billion in the Constitutional Budget Reserve that can be tapped in necessary to cover shortfalls.
“That’s 2.4%” of the CBR, said Rep. Andy Josephson (D-Anchorage), co-chair of the House Finance Committee. “So I can’t go to my constituents and say ‘This is just unaffordable’ because it’s not. It’s just a question of will, that’s all.”
The budget passed by the House last week — which includes the $1,000 BSA increase — contains what amounts to a $530 million deficit. The spending plan also contains a Permanent Fund dividend of about $1,400 based on the same formula to calculate last year’s PFD, which many lawmakers have stated is the minimum they are willing to accept.
Tapping into the budget reserve will require a three-fourths vote of both the House and Senate, which would mean getting votes from the Republican minority caucuses that largely share the governor’s education policy goals. Among the provisions in his newest bill are allowing students to enroll in any district statewide regardless of where they live, easing the regulatory process for new charter schools, boosting homeschool funding, and offering financial incentives to school districts based on K-6 reading scores.
Senate President Gary Stevens (R-Kodiak) said after the joint session that negotiations will continue with Dunleavy during the remainder of the session, although no discussions about the governor’s bill have occurred yet. Senate Rules Chair Bill Wielechowski (D-Anchorage) said the goal now is a per-student funding increase between the $680 and $1,000 levels.
“It does feel like the wind has come out of the sails a little bit after this override session, but we’ve still got time,” he said. “Our schools are counting on us.”
HB 69 as originally introduced by Rep. Rebecca Himschoot (I-Sitka) contained a $1,269 BSA increase for the coming year and a combined $2,550 over three years that she said was needed to make up for inflation since per-student funding has been relatively flat since 2011. She also said it was important for lawmakers to act quickly on the bill this session so school districts would know how much funding they were going to get before passing budgets for the fiscal year that starts July 1, so the delay and ultimate failure of the bill with even a reduced increase were disappointing.
“The very thing that we were trying to do with early funding was to give our schools some predictability and some stability, and we wanted to do that early enough to avoid the cuts, avoid cutting staff and programs,” she said. “But that’s working to some degree against us right now because there’s more time (in the session). So we take the burden of what’s happening — the really catastrophic burden of what’s happening in our school districts right now — and shifting that to an opportunity for us to just keep kicking the can. But we’re kicking the can and we’re not done kicking.”
Dunleavy, in a social media message after the joint session, stated the failed override “shows a clear understanding of our fiscal situation and the fact that the bill had zero policy to create a better educational outcome for our students.”
“By sustaining the veto of HB 69, we now have a clear path to deliver a smarter solution, one that increases education funding and includes the policy reforms needed to improve outcomes for Alaska’s kids,” he wrote.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
