The Juneau Assembly has proposed updates to the city’s disorderly conduct laws, tightening rules around blocking sidewalks, public disturbances, and behavior in public spaces.
The focus of the new updates- making it easier for the Juneau Police Department to arrest individuals, particularly unhoused individuals for disruptive actions in public areas.
The ordinance adds language allowing police to intervene when people stand, walk, or camp in places like sidewalks, stairwells, parking lots, and garages.
“We had a long conversation about the community impacts of public camping, and that was probably the longest agenda item that we discussed.” Said Deputy Manager Robert Barr, “it would make it a bit easier for our police department officers to do some enforcement activity that they already do.”
Deputy City Manager Robert Barr said the changes bring city code in line with state law, removing steps that currently delay enforcement, which lie within officers arresting individuals for trespassing rather than disorderly conduct.
“Our first course of action whenever we’re engaged in that sort of activity with folks who are unhoused, is to try and connect to resources and seek voluntary compliance.” Said Barr, “but sometimes it’s not possible.”
Alaska already grapples with its growing unhoused population, Juneau currently operates under a “dispersed camping” policy for its homeless population, allowing camping on unimproved public land as long as it minimizes impact and doesn’t violate specific regulations like blocking public rights-of-way.
Juneau Police cleared the unhoused encampment on Teal street back in June, Barr said the assembly asked to bring back more information at a future meeting, likely the next Committee of the Whole, on creating a shelter safety zone in the Teal Street area, “just to investigate whether other tools that we could implement would protect our social service providers out there.” said Barr.
Juneau has had the highest average sale price for a single-family home in the state for the past two years and a report from the Department of Labor and Workforce Development, shows that housing costs are nearly half of most Alaska residents’ annual income.
These proposed updates come amid nationwide trends, with the Supreme court ruling that cities can ban people from sleeping and camping in public places last year.
Sandbag filling and distribution, photo generously provided by CBJ
The City and Borough of Juneau and Tlingit & Haida will hold sandbag distribution events on Saturday, July 19 and Saturday, July 26, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Dimond Park Field House parking lot in preparation for another glacial outburst flood.
With the summer heat rising and water levels climbing in Suicide Basin, emergency officials, city officials and the National Weather Service are closely monitoring the threat of another glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in the Mendenhall River Valley. This threat follows a record flood event on August 6, 2024, which swept through neighborhoods, damaged property, and reshaped how Juneau prepares for these recurring flooding events.
Suicide Basin, located above the Mendenhall Glacier, has released floodwaters nearly every year since 2011. These events occur when meltwater trapped behind the glacier breaks through ice dams, sending torrents into Mendenhall Lake and River below.
As of Saturday, July 12, water levels in the basin are around 1,263 feet, about 108 feet below the spillway level. That’s slightly lower than this time last year, due to a colder spring and early summer.
At the current rate, or around 4 feet per day, the basin could reach full capacity by August 8.
Sand, bags, and shovels will be available for residents to fill on site. Households in the 18-foot flood risk zone may collect up to 75 sandbags total, including from earlier events.
For flood prep info, visit juneauflood.com or bit.ly/JuneauFloodReady, and sign up for alerts at bit.ly/CBJAlerts.
Artist Crystal Worl has completed restoration work on her mural honoring Tlingit civil rights leader Elizabeth Peratrovich in downtown Juneau.
The project was made possible thanks to equipment donated by Tyler Rental, which provided the use of a forklift from July 6 to 12.
The lift allowed Worl to safely access and restore the 60-by-25-foot mural that spans the south-facing wall of the Juneau Public Library and Marine Parking Garage.
The mural that Worl, who is Tlingit and Athabascan, began planning in 2018 was originally installed in September 2021, and is a tribute to Elizabeth Kaax̱gal.aat Peratrovich, a member of the Lukaax̱.ádi (Sockeye Salmon) clan. She is remembered for her advocacy in the fight for equality for Alaska Natives, and for her pivotal role in the passage of the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, the first civil rights legislation of its kind in the United States.
The restoration is part of an ongoing commitment to preserving public art that celebrates Alaska Native heritage and leaders. “We appreciate this generous support in helping to maintain a public artwork that honors the legacy of a great Alaska Native leader,” Sealaska Heritage Institute said in their Facebook post.
Located on Áak’w Kwáan territory, the mural is now fully restored.
Crystal Worl writes on her website about the mural, “Educating the public about the local Indigenous values, culture, and history is important for Alaskans and visitors alike. I hope that this mural will contribute to the movement to transform Juneau into the Northwest Coast arts capital of the world and will beautify and enhance the downtown Juneau area. With the world recovering from the COVID pandemic and embracing racial and social justice ideals, artists must also rise to the occasion to tell our history and our stories.”
A school bus drives in front of the Alaska State Capitol on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
A school bus drives in front of the Alaska State Capitol on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
Governor Mike Dunleavy has called a special legislative session beginning Saturday, August 2, in Juneau.
The session will focus on two issues, education reform and the creation of a new Alaska Department of Agriculture.
The Governor’s recent budget vetoes have been raising concerns, the Governor cut over $122 million from the state budget, including $50 million from per student funding and major school maintenance projects. Juneau Senator Jesse Kiehl spoke with News of the North about the Base Student Allocation and had this to say, “when we look at the budget issues and the Governor’s special session coming up, what that really has to do with is, are we going to fund the BSA that we passed? it took an override to get that $700 per kid increase, and of course, the Governor vetoed that down, actually below a level that he proposed at one point during the session.”
Senator Kiehl is also a part of an education task force created by House Bill 57 which will look at a wide range of financial challenges and school policies, It’s charged with making recommendations before the 35th Alaska State Legislature convenes in January 2027.
When asked if the governor’s vetoes would affect the Education Task Force, Senator Kiehl said “I think those are going to be pretty separate issues. The task force has a lot of work ahead of us, to look both at the adequacy of how much we’re putting into schools and whether we’re doing it as well as we can be- Are there better ways to fund? are there more fair ways to fund? And then some other education policy issues.”
The group will dig into rising costs in transportation, energy, insurance, and school maintenance, along with accountability and student outcomes. The task force will present recommendations in a report on the first day of the January 2027 session.
Alaska’s three biggest cities have the highest health care costs among the nation’s urban areas, with costs that are about 50% higher than the U.S. urban average, a state analysis shows.
The findings, part of a broader analysis of Alaska’s cost of living that was released by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, are the latest in a series of reports detailing Alaska’s extraordinarily high medical costs.
“It was not surprising at all,” said Sam Tappen, the state economist who did the analysis. His findings are in an article in the current issue of Alaska Economic Trends, the monthly magazine of the department’s research section.
Similar analysis has shown that Anchorage, Juneau and Fairbanks have held the top three spots for urban health costs in each of the past 15 years, he said.
Using available data, Tappen found that Fairbanks had health costs that were 51.5% higher in 2024 than the average among 254 U.S. cities and metro areas. Juneau was in second at 50.9% and Anchorage third at 47.5% above the urban average.
Medical costs in urban Alaska also rose more than the costs in almost all other sectors, Tappen’s analysis found. Medical costs increased by 7.8% in 2023, compared with an overall inflation rate in Alaska that was under 2% that year and just slightly above 2% in 2024, the analysis found.
Compared to the U.S. average, urban Alaskans also devote a higher percentage of their annual household spending to medical care – 12% in 2023, compared to a national average of 8%, the report said.
The findings, which did not extend to health costs in rural areas of the state, are consistent with past reports on medical costs in Alaska.
In 2016, for example, a consultant’s report prepared for insurer Premera Blue Cross found that payments to Alaska providers were 76% higher than the national average and that operating costs for hospitals outside of Anchorage were more than twice the national average.
Reports by the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage have also documented steep increases in Alaska health care costs. One ISER report, issued in 2018, found that annual health care spending in Alaska increased from $1.5 billion in 1991 to $8.2 billion in 2014. A 2023 report by ISER, ranked Alaska second in per-capita health care spending, behind the District of Columbia, and said Alaska’s total health care spending had risen to $9.7 billion by 2019.
Beyond medical costs, Tappen’s analysis showed that Fairbanks had the highest utility costs among the 254 cities and urban areas in the analysis. Utility costs in Fairbanks in 2024 were more than twice the U.S. urban average, the analysis said.
The three Alaska cities also had among the highest U.S. urban grocery costs, with Juneau ranking second, Fairbanks third and Anchorage fourth. Honolulu had the highest average grocery costs of the 254 cities in the analysis.
Overall, the Alaska cities’ cost of living, though 21.5% to 27.2% higher than the national urban average, was not extraordinary in 2024, Tappen’s analysis found.
That is because housing costs in Alaska that once were among the nation’s highest have now been far surpassed by those in several cities elsewhere. “The U.S. housing market has just been a lot hotter than Alaska’s, and so they’re getting more expensive faster than us,” Tappen said.
Photo provided by CBJ following the installation of the HESCO barrier project
Photo provided by CBJ following the installation of the HESCO barrier project
With the summer heat rising and water levels climbing in Suicide Basin, emergency officials, city officials and the National Weather Service are closely monitoring the threat of another glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in the Mendenhall River Valley. This threat follows a record flood event on August 6, 2024, which swept through neighborhoods, damaged property, and reshaped how Juneau prepares for these recurring flooding events.
Suicide Basin, located above the Mendenhall Glacier, has released floodwaters nearly every year since 2011. These events occur when meltwater trapped behind the glacier breaks through ice dams, sending torrents into Mendenhall Lake and River below.
As of Monday, July 7, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reports that the basin’s laser-monitored water elevation is approximately 1,224 feet, well below the 1,247 feet recorded on the same date last year, and more than 100 feet below 2023 levels. The current elevation is about 147 feet below the overflow channel, which begins spilling at 1,371 feet.
If the rate of rise in the basin remains around 4 feet per/day, this would result in a full basin in 37 days, though the rate of the rise could change.
These differences in water levels from 2024 and 2023 to current levels are due to the cold spring/early summer time temperatures. Freezing levels remained 3000 to 4000 feet through the spring and early summer time but are now around 7000 feet, meaning rapid melt could accelerate water accumulation.
Monitoring equipment, including two daily cameras and a USGS laser sensor, remains active. Officials caution that water level data may show occasional jumps or drops due to icebergs disrupting sensor readings.
City and Borough of Juneau (CBJ) officials, in partnership with state, federal, and tribal agencies, have implemented Phase 1 and Phase 1A of a near-term flood mitigation strategy. With guidance from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, CBJ has installed HESCO barriers along vulnerable stretches of the Mendenhall River. These modular barriers are designed to protect against floodwaters as high as 18 feet.
Given the growing threat and lack of a permanent solution, officials urge Juneau residents, especially those in the Mendenhall Valley, to take stay informed and prepared.
For the second consecutive year, student reading scores in Alaska have risen, a trend state officials attribute to the success of the Alaska Reads Act.
According to new data from the Department of Education and Early Development, the percentage of students reading at or above average increased from 41% at the beginning of the 2023–2024 school year to 57% by year’s end.
In the 2024–2025 school year, that percentage rose again, starting at 44% and climbing to 60% by the end of the year, an increase which outpaces the national average for growth.
“This is promising evidence for our Alaskan students and their teachers as all the hard work and focus they have put in is coming to fruition,” said Education Commissioner Deena Bishop. “This achievement shows that the Alaska Reads Act was the right policy direction for our state, and more importantly, for our youngest learners. Congratulations!”
The Alaska Reads Act was signed into law in 2022 by Governor Mike Dunleavy with the goal of ensuring all students can read at grade level by the end of third grade. The legislation focuses on evidence-based instruction, early intervention, and high teaching standards.
“These results show why it’s critical to tie clear goals and strong commitments to education policy,” said Governor Dunleavy. “The Alaska Reads Act proves that coupling funding with real reform works. We made the right decision, and students across Alaska are seeing the benefits.”
However, despite those gains, the governor has made deep cuts to education funding in the newly signed state budget.
Dunleavy vetoed more than $122 million from Alaska’s annual budget, including over $50 million from the state’s per-student education funding formula and tens of millions meant for major school maintenance projects. It marks the first time in state history that a governor has failed to fully fund the education formula.
While the rise in student reading scores is being celebrated, many educators and lawmakers warn that continued progress may be at risk without sustained investment.
The governor will hold a special legislative session on August 2, with one of the topics being education reform.
The first-ever Bitcoin Alaska Conference was held July 5–6 at Centennial Hall in Juneau.
The conference brought together policymakers, energy experts, and Bitcoin enthusiasts to examine the role of cryptocurrency in shaping Alaska’s economy and energy future.
One of those experts was Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation.
Alex Gladstein offers an argument for technology as a critical tool for individual empowerment and freedom in an increasingly complex global landscape.
“So the organization that I worked for, the Human Rights Foundation, was founded with a very specific mission, which was to address authoritarianism.” Said Gladstein , “5.7 billion people live under an authoritarian regime in nearly 100 countries around the world, where they don’t have free speech, rule of law, separation of powers, or property rights. So while our country is not perfect, it is something that you know, billions of people aspire to, and we focus on helping human rights activists, journalists, labor leaders and environmentalists, who live under authoritarian regimes. And that often brings us to look at what the tools are that they’re using.”
Gladstein, working with the Human Rights Foundation since 2007, has witnessed firsthand the power of technology in some of the world’s most restrictive environments. His journey began with underground internet efforts in Cuba, where he and his team would smuggle contraband media and help citizens access information forbidden by authoritarian regimes.
The conversation centers on two primary technological innovations: Bitcoin and open-source AI tools. Bitcoin he says, emerges as a powerful instrument of financial sovereignty.
“even the most hardened skeptic admits that it’s got some sort of speculative investment quality to it, given that it’s been the best performing financial asset in the world since it was created, I think there’s a risk in ending the story there. I mean, that’s really what a lot of people see. They see an investment, and that’s about it.” Said Gladstein “I think what they don’t see is the freedom money part of it, which is that it doesn’t require paperwork to use. You don’t need an account. You can be any gender, any faith, any religion, any nationality, and you can use it and connect to it and trade and commerce and transact with other people. The second part of it is the censorship resistance. You know, it’s unstoppable.”
In Alaska, particularly in the North Slope, where abundant “stranded” natural gas from oil production could power cryptocurrency data centers, Stax Capital Partners, a Wasilla-based startup, recently proposed building a 50 MW Bitcoin mining facility south of Prudhoe Bay, about the same amount of electricity used as Alaska’s largest coal plant, according to the Alaska Beacon.
A New York Times investigation found that U.S. Bitcoin mining operations can require power comparable to small cities, and during crises like Texas’ 2021 Winter Storm Uri, some operations were actually paid to shut down to protect vulnerable power grids, Critics warn that large-scale installations, like those proposed in Alaska, risk similar grid strain and could push fossil fuel consumption higher.
On the technology front, according to Gladstein, it’s a double-edged sword. “there’s the centralizing force of the state, and they are using AI tools to better understand their population, map their population, surveil their population. But at the same time, these open AI tools that are available to anybody, are allowing individuals to have, essentially, a fortune 500 company in their pocket.”
Gladstein acknowledges the risks of digital intrusion and recommends people spend more time offline to reduce their digital surface area as these same technologies can pose a threat to individual privacy.
Yet, he remains fundamentally optimistic about technology’s potential to expand human freedom. “It’s going to be super empowering for individuals and small businesses that don’t have a lot of resources. I’m excited about that.”
Students swing on a playground at Meadow Lakes Head Start in Wasilla, Alaska. It closed in 2024 due to funding and staffing challenges. (Image by Lela Seiler, courtesy of CCS Early Learning)
By: Corinne Smith, Alaska Beacon
The budget vetoes that Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued last month included millions of dollars proposed by the Legislature to bolster child care and early intervention services for children with disabilities or developmental delays.
Dunleavy vetoed a proposed $1.86 million in additional funding for child care grant programs and place-based and home-based child care centers, citing declining state revenues. The budget retains $5.87 million for those programs for next year.
For early education and infant learning, the Legislature proposed a significant boost — $5.7 million more — for the state’s 17 programs that provide intervention services for families with children from infancy to 3 years old experiencing disabilities or developmental delays. Dunleavy rejected the increase, and allocated $10 million for the statewide programs.
“Governor Dunleavy’s goal is for Alaska to be the best place in the country to raise a family,” said Grant Robinson, a deputy press secretary for the governor in an email on Monday responding to a request for comment. “The budgeting process requires the Governor to consider all line items in view of the State’s fiscal situation. The budget the Governor signed still provides more than $5.8 million of funding for childcare benefits. Given the State’s revenue outlook, the Governor made the difficult yet fiscally responsible decision to veto increasing and expanding infant learning programs.”
The governor vetoed more than $127 million from the Legislature’s proposed budget, including $50 million for public schools. In a prerecorded video released with the veto announcement in June, Dunleavy cited lower state revenues due to falling oil prices.
“Basically, we don’t have enough money to pay for all of our obligations. So as a result of that, you’re going to see some reductions in this year’s budget. It’s not an easy thing to do. It’s certainly not a fun thing to do, but it’s necessary,” he said.
Anchorage Republican Sen. Cathy Giessel, who also serves as the Senate majority leader, agreed that the state is facing fiscal challenges, but said child care and early education programs should be prioritized, as the Legislature had proposed.
Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, listens to a presentation about natural gas during a March 12, 2025, hearing of the Senate Resources Committee, which she chairs. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
“We had a balanced budget. It is true, it was very difficult to arrive at that balanced budget,” she said in a phone interview. “We searched all the couch cushions for one-time funding to fund this balanced budget, but we achieved it. The governor’s vetoes of these two critical services are just going to mean future costs, because these services were not provided for kids in their earliest development stages. So I was very disappointed.”
An estimated 1,800 Alaskan families are currently served each year by the state’s infant learning programs, funded by the state and federal Medicaid, at no cost to families. Children and families work with developmental specialists, and can receive speech, physical and occupational therapies. In addition, parents receive training and education on child development.
For example, in the Northwest Arctic region, an early learning and family program is administered by the Northwest Arctic Borough School District. It is based in Kotzebue and serves all the Northwest Arctic villages, as well as Point Hope in the North Slope Borough.
“We’re spread very thin,” said Tracey Schaeffer, one of the program’s three staff members. “And we definitely could use another staff person to help with traveling and seeing families and spending time in the villages.”
There is only one air carrier, Bering Air, serving the region, down from four companies operating a few years ago, she said, so with weather events and disruptions, it’s increasingly challenging.
“We have to change reservations a lot because of the weather,” she said, estimating the total cost for travel and flights at up to $25,000 per year, plus significant time. “As it gets warmer, we have a lot more days that are not very safe to fly here.”
Schaeffer said they work as much as possible by phone, but intervention services are very personal. “And all the while, you’re trying to kind of build a relationship with this family, because it’s a really intimate, sensitive situation when you’re working with a family who has a child that experienced, you know, something that wasn’t expected, a disability, or something, a medical issue, that has put their development at risk,” she said.
The proposed state funding increase would have been welcome, she said. “That would have been a huge relief, because there’s a lot of pressure. I mean, (with) early intervention, three years is a short period of time, you know, and we lose so much time because of weather, flight cancellations or something,” she said. “So there’s a lot of pressure there. We’ve done this job for a long time, and we know the time goes fast, and we want to provide as much intervention as we can. And it’s just hard to do that.”
Schaeffer also runs a small child care center in Kotzebue, serving eight children, the first licensed provider to open in the community in over a decade. She said more local and state support is needed to address the lack of child care and rippling impacts for the community. “We lose people all the time because of a lack of child care. You know, we have educators or providers that come and they start a family, and then they realize, like, ‘Wow, I can’t find a child care provider,’ and we lose them because of that.”
Shaeffer and her daughter opened the child care center in 2023, a challenging process documented in a short film by Laura Norton-Cruz, a social worker, public health advocate and film producer. She and filmmaker Joshua Albeza Branstetter created a documentary film series focused on the challenges of child care and early education programs called the “Early Childhood in Alaska” series.
Yulia Smith, a developmental specialist with the Mat-Su Valley infant learning program, is seen in a playroom with a young participant. The program is the subject of a short documentary film produced by Laura Norton-Cruz and Joshua Albeza Branstetter, part of the ‘Early Childhood in Alaska’ series. (Photo courtesy of Joshua Albeza Branstetter)
“Child care is just not a profitable business model. It’s an investment in child brain development and family well-being, and the economy,” Norton-Cruz said, emphasizing the need for increasing state and federal funding support. “Staffing is the majority of the costs. But also, if you run a home-based child care center, you have to pay your mortgage or you have to pay rent, you have to pay utilities: Those things cost money. And we need support from the government to be able to offer this essential service, to have a workforce, and to have children who are kindergarten ready.”
In April, Anchorage’s largest child care provider, Bright Beginnings Early Learning Center, closed, displacing 125 children. Norton-Cruz said while some progress has been made, like raising awareness around Alaska’s child care crisis, families and providers are still struggling.
“Others have cut back on hours or cut back on the number of rooms, or the number of kids they can take, in order to have this essential service for parents to be able to go to work, which we need them to do,” she said. “Because we have major workforce shortages, and parents need income to pay for, you know, rent and everything else, we have to do a better job of funding and supporting the sector.”
In 2023, Dunleavy launched a child care task force with the stated goal to develop a plan to improve availability and affordability of quality child care throughout Alaska. Norton-Cruz said the work of the task force was positive, and would like to see the governor put more state funding toward its recommendations.
“When we don’t have policy that supports child care and early childhood, we basically just rely on the unpaid labor of women,” Norton-Cruz said. “Whether that’s moms, or whether that’s grandmothers, or aunties, you can’t just say, ‘Oh, but grandmas and aunties can step in.’ That’s not policy. That relies on something that may not always be there for everyone, and isn’t fair. … People need to be able to make that choice, rather than have that choice made for them.”
Giessel also said there is a need for state funding for the governor’s own task force recommendations. She pointed to new state revenue measures that Dunleavy has opposed —like oil taxes — that leaders in the Alaska House multipartisan and Senate bipartisan majority caucuses want to pursue to bring in more state dollars.
“First of all, we have a huge gap in our tax structure on our oil resources,” Giessel said, referring to the difference between taxes paid by traditional corporations and by those corporations that report their income through their owners, known as “S corporations.”
“The S corporations pay no corporate tax to the state,” Giessel said. “There is legislation that would institute a requirement for S corporations to pay a corporate tax to the state, conservatively estimated, that would be $100 million per year.”
A bill to tax these corporations is in the Senate Rules Committee.
“That would pay for a huge amount of these child care and early education funding requirements,” Giessel said.
“For him to say that these cuts are because of declining revenue and ignoring his responsibility in this, is just amazing to me,” Giessel added.
The Legislature will meet for a special session on Aug. 2, when they will consider whether to override the budget vetoes.
Governor Mike Dunleavy speaks during a press conference on Thursday, April 17 in Juneau. (Photo by Greg Knight/NOTN)
Governor Mike Dunleavy speaks during a press conference on Thursday, April 17 in Juneau. (Photo by Greg Knight/NOTN)
By: Corinne Smith and James Brooks, Alaska Beacon
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy is calling state legislators back to Juneau for a surprise special session.
On Wednesday, the governor issued a proclamation stating that the session, which begins Aug. 2, will cover education reform and his executive order creating a new Department of Agriculture.
The proclamation also forces an early vote on whether to override or sustain several of the governor’s vetoes, including an unprecedented cut to the base student allocation, core of the state’s per-pupil funding formula for public schools.
Under the Alaska Constitution, legislators must vote on an override in the first five days of the next session, in this case a special session.
That’s significant, because 45 votes are needed to override a budget veto, and while there were 46 votes in favor of a prior veto override this spring, at least one legislator who voted in favor of that override is expected to be unavailable in August.
In a prepared statement, Dunleavy outlined his stated reasons for calling a special session.
“Enacting a few necessary reforms to our public education system can elevate those children struggling in Alaska’s school system,” Dunleavy said. “As elected officials we must do all we can to put the next generation on the path to a successful and prosperous future, and that starts with a solid public education.”
The governor’s office declined to answer an emailed question asking whether the special session’s goals included an early vote. Some legislators said that seemed apparent.
House Minority Leader Mia Costello, R-Anchorage, said members of the House’s Republican minority were preparing to meet with the governor Wednesday afternoon.
Asked whether she thinks the governor called the session to force a veto override early, she said, “undoubtedly, the governor is aware that those issues would be taken up in the first five days in the Legislature. So, I do believe that is a part of the plan.”
She said she doesn’t know whether calling the vote early will decrease the chances of an override. Though some lawmakers may be absent, “people are home, talking to their constituents … how that translates into their votes is a hard thing to tell.”
Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage and chair of the Senate Rules Committee, did not mince words: “Oh yeah, this is all about the veto override,” he said. “Because he knows there’s people that are not in the state. You know, that’s actually the day that the National Conference of State Legislatures starts to meet also. So I know there’s some people who are scheduled to go to that. So, yeah, this is all about trying to game the system so we don’t have enough votes to override his veto.”
Legislators uniformly said that the governor’s special session proclamation came as a surprise. Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, was hiking in Denali when reached by phone. Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, was at his town’s boat harbor.
“It’s a stunning announcement,” Edgmon said. “It’s extraordinary to get the Legislature back to Juneau, and it takes a tremendous amount of organization, cooperation, dialogue, you know, conversations, particularly when you’re throwing a topic like education policy in the mix, which normally could take up an entire two years of a legislative session.”
Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, said the Legislature will reconvene but the votes for an override are uncertain. “I suspect that’ll be the first thing we deal with, if not the only thing we deal with, and we’ll see how the votes go.”
Under the Alaska Constitution, governors have the power to call special sessions, with the subjects limited to those chosen by the governor and the reconsideration of vetoed bills. While the Legislature is required to convene, it’s not required to actually discuss the chosen subjects.
Stevens said there’s no guarantee that the Legislature will take up Dunleavy’s agenda items. “It should be no secret to anyone that we’re going to, when we do meet — it’s my intention — on Aug. 2 to bring up first the issue of the override. And then we could, after we’ve done that, pass or fail, then we probably … can easily adjourn and deal with these issues the governor brought up at a later date.”
Sen. Forrest Dunbar, D-Anchorage, is currently deployed in Poland as part of U.S. National Guard service, and Stevens says it’s unlikely he would be able to make the special session. “He’s doing a service to the country, and it’d be very hard for him to get back. I don’t know if the military would even allow him to leave at this point, he’s in a training session, and so we’ll certainly look into that. But I would say it’s probably unlikely that he can be back.”
Dunbar did not respond to requests for comment by Wednesday afternoon.
“But he’s not the only one,” Stevens added. “There are others that are traveling, which makes it even more difficult to get to 45 votes.”
That threshold matters because overriding a governor’s budget veto requires 45 of 60 legislators, meeting in joint session.
This spring, 46 lawmakers voted to override the governor’s veto of a bill increasing the base student allocation in state policy. But authorizing spending the money was a separate vote, as part of passing the budget. If Dunbar is absent, all 45 remaining supporters of the veto override would have to stand firm in order to restore public school funding cut by the governor.
“I don’t know where people are going to be, but it’s really going to come down to probably one vote on a number of these overrides. So, not having that one vote, it’s going to be tough,” Wielechowski said.
In addition to the budget vetoes, the governor had vetoed three policy bills, including Senate Bill 183, increasing the powers of the legislative auditor.
Legislators said that bill, which passed with bipartisan support, was needed because the executive branch has stopped providing reports needed to verify the work of oil tax auditors on state taxes owed. Dunleavy said legislators’ criticism of the administration’s handling of the issue insinuated that it was acting unethically or illegally and undermined public trust in government. He demanded in a letter to lawmakers last week that they stop.
Afterward, at a meeting of the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee, lawmakers voted to authorize subpoenas against members of the administration over the issue.
Calling a special session makes an override of the SB 183 veto more difficult, Wielechowski said.
“If you’re an oil company, today’s a great day. They’re probably popping champagne bottles in Houston, Texas, today, and also all across the oil basins, because they know that it’s going to be harder to audit their taxes and probably likely to cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said.
Josephson said there will likely be several veto override votes taken up by the Legislature. “There will be attempts on multiple overrides. Multiple, multiple overrides,” he said, and hopes it includes an override vote to restore a policy bill addressing funding for teacher housing and Mount Edgecumbe High School in Sitka, and budget increases for infant learning programs. “So that’s going to be sort of interesting as well, because those veto override attempts must occur.”
After addressing the overrides, lawmakers could adjourn the special session without taking up either of the topics on the formal agenda.
Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, said he hopes that doesn’t happen and lawmakers consider creating a Department of Agriculture separate from the Department of Natural Resources.
Agriculture is currently overseen by a division within DNR, and McCabe said that recent wildfires in the Denali Borough show the need for DNR to be free to concentrate its attention on more important things without taking time away from agriculture.
Dunleavy addressed the issue in his statement announcing the session: “Splitting the Division of Agriculture away from DNR into a department will elevate food security and support our hard-working farmers while growing the agricultural sector.”
In May, lawmakers voted 32-28 to deny an executive order by Dunleavy to create a new Department of Agriculture, citing the proposal’s costs as well as creation through an executive order rather than as legislation, with public input.
Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said by phone Wednesday that the Legislature passed legislation related to many of the governor’s policy priorities for education in May, including taking steps toward easing access for new charter school applications and expanding funding for career and technical education, as well as creating a task force to examine open enrollment and other measures.
She said she was unclear what further education reforms the governor wants: “I haven’t heard from the governor nor any of his staff, about anything else that he would like to see happen within our public education system.”
In a video Dunleavy released when he vetoed the school policy bill, he said it “fell short” on the policies he sought, including on charter schools, reading improvement incentives and open enrollment.
Other legislators were skeptical that the special session would accomplish its stated goals.
“I don’t think it’s going to work, is it?” said Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River, on talk radio Wednesday morning.
Senate Minority Leader Mike Shower, R-Wasilla, said he hadn’t spoken to the governor or any of his staff about the special session but said that sustaining the vetoes could be a primary objective.
“Honestly, I don’t know exactly what the intent is, or what the hope is for accomplishing (something), whether it’s PR or some kind of vote with people missing, or anything like that,” he said.
“Personally,” Shower said, “I’m not the biggest fan of special sessions, only because in my eight-plus years here, I’ve never seen them actually accomplish anything.”
