AKLEG Day 44: 'I'll veto it.'
And as if to show just how serious he really is about the negotiations, the governor is currently absent from Juneau and doesn’t plan to return until next week.
Good morning, Alaska.
In this edition: A day after legislators approved a landmark deal on education, Gov. Mike Dunleavy held a rambling hour-long news conference where he announced his plan to veto the bill unless lawmakers deliver a second education bill containing his education priorities by mid-March. It seems like the threat isn’t exactly lighting many fires under lawmakers’ seats after the bruising fight to reach the first deal, plus there are some major red flags about the path ahead.
Current mood: 🤯
‘I’ll veto it.’
In another bizarre and grievance-filled news conference, Gov. Mike Dunleavy threatened to veto the education bill the Legislature approved on Monday if a second bill containing his wishlist of education priorities isn’t passed by the end of the veto window. The only problem is no one, including the governor, seems to know precisely what is on that wishlist or how much latitude there might be on those proposals.
“We have 15 days before it becomes law or I veto, and I made it clear if there are not certain elements in that bill, I won’t sign it into law — I’ll veto it,” he said, referencing “beefing up” reading opportunities and expanding charter schools. “If people really want the (base student allocation increase), they’re going to want to help to get these items across the finish line over the next 14 days.”
And as if to show just how serious he is about the negotiations, the governor is absent from Juneau and doesn’t plan to return until next week. That means any negotiations will have to happen remotely or through in-betweens.
Legislators didn’t totally write off the governor, but it sounds like there’s little enthusiasm for a round of hardball negotiations with a notoriously domineering governor. Speaking with reporters after the governor’s news conference, Senate President Stevens said he was “honestly not sure what the governor’s demands are.”
“Is he willing to compromise? Or is he saying, ‘I get … everything I want, and you have to accept that?’” said Stevens. “That’s going to be a problem for us.”
Also mentioned at the news conference is Dunleavy’s plan to pay teacher bonuses between $5,000 and $15,000 for completing a year of teaching, depending on the school. Legislators have balked at the cost of the proposal — which was proposed to run three years at nearly $60 million a year — and questioned how effective it would be to retain teachers in the long run.
“There hasn’t really been a discussion about how good of an idea it is to bring in people from the Philippines and couples from the Lower 48, have them teach for three years, earn a $90,000 bonus, and then leave the state,” Sen. Bill Wielechowski told the Alaska Beacon, referring to the combined amount a two-teacher couple would receive over three years in a remote school.
There’s also the question of how the various provisions between the existing legislation contain a roughly $175 million increase to baseline education funding and tens of millions of dollars for homeschooling, reading interventions and internet upgrades, and the governor’s renewed demands. In a line that grabbed the attention of several legislators I spoke with, the governor conceded that he wouldn’t guarantee that the original bill would be fully funded even if he got his way on the bill.
“Are we going to be able to fund everything we want?” he said when asked about how his new demands would be funded and how it might affect the dividend. “I don’t think so … Everything that people would like to have put in the budget is probably not going to get funding, and some of that may include some of these pieces.”
While the legislation would outline new funding for various programs, the funding would still need to be delivered in the budget where the governor’s line-item veto power is effectively impossible to override. That means he could cut funding for reading interventions — which he called an ineffective reward to underperforming schools because it would be based on kids who need help reading — or even undercut the base student allocation funding.
While the governor insisted that there would be “a substantial BSA,” he refused to name a number he would support.
In essence, the governor demands that legislators sell the farm on education policy — handing over control of the state’s charter school system to a board appointed entirely by the governor — without guaranteeing he’ll ever pay.
When asked why he expected a different outcome this time, given that little has changed, Dunleavy conceded that he didn’t know beyond his threat.
“I don’t know,” the governor said. “I don’t know what will be different this time, except they will have to decide if they want some of the work they did to get across the finish line. It can’t just be BSA.”
Overriding a veto of the education bill has a lower bar than overriding budget vetoes because it’s non-budget legislation, requiring 40 of the Legislature’s 60 members to vote in favor of an override rather than 45 votes. Clearing either hurdle would be easy if all legislators who voted for passage of the legislation — 38 in the House and 18 in the Senate — voted to override, but that is far from a given.
Several far-right legislators who supported the bill have already declared they will side with the governor on the veto. Others have played coy, leaving it an open question whether there would be the votes to override the governor’s veto of the education bill.
At the very least, the governor has bought himself some time before legislators’ intestinal fortitude is put to the test.
Follow the thread: The governor’s rambling news conference
Why it matters
This latest fight is a pretty tidy encapsulation of Dunleavy’s approach to legislating as governor, where compromise has essentially become “Give me what I want, or else I’ll burn the house down.” He’s not done much to win buy-in for his proposals beyond these bloviating news conferences that offer little beyond tired lines about school spending and blatantly false claims that younger people don’t want to retire with a meaningful sense of security.
His charter proposal is perhaps the worst of the bunch as it’s predicated on a study that simply found Alaska’s charters performed well compared to other charter programs in the country. It doesn’t offer insight into why those charters did well or how they compare to neighborhood schools. The governor doesn’t mention that it was written by an advocate for vouchers and charter schools.
But beyond that, the governor hasn’t introduced a charter bill for lawmakers to vet. Instead, all the questions about how it would be implemented and funded are expected to be answered through the regulatory process beyond legislators’ reach.
Give him the gun, and then he’ll tell you what he plans to do with it.
Columnist Dermot Cole summed up the whole situation perfectly on Monday, well before the governor even took the podium.
“My initial review of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto threat on the education bill is that it encapsulates his four greatest weaknesses as governor—his lack of trust for others with expertise, his lack of respect for those who don’t agree with him, his arrogance and his inability to compromise.”
Stay tuned.