Gov. Mike Dunleavy told legislative leaders Monday that he had vetoed a bipartisan bill that the heads of the state House and Senate say was necessary to address what they described as a “persistent pattern of obstruction within the senior ranks of Alaska’s Department of Revenue.”
Backers of the bill say it’s an effort to get to the bottom of why certain types of oil tax revenue have fallen precipitously in recent years by clarifying the authority of the Legislature’s auditor.
Bill sponsor Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, said Monday that the veto was “shocking.” The administration’s failure to turn over usable information means lawmakers can’t effectively perform oversight, he said.
“This is information that has been provided to the auditor ever since the auditor has been able to recollect. This information has never not been provided to the state,” he said. “The question the Legislature should be asking right now, and the people of Alaska should be asking is, what is the governor hiding?”
Dunleavy and Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum declined interview requests.
The amount of money deposited in the state’s main rainy-day fund from so-called tax and royalty settlements dropped from $281 million in 2020 to just $3.1 million in 2024, according to documents from the Department of Revenue.
Meanwhile, the Dunleavy administration has cut back on the information it provides to auditors seeking to examine tax payments by oil and gas companies, Legislative Auditor Kris Curtis told lawmakers earlier this year.
Instead of summary tables provided by past administrations as recently as 2018, Curtis said, the Department of Revenue last year sent her office what she described as a “data dump” — an unintelligible collection of raw data that her office could not assess. She said the department refused to turn over the data in a usable format.
“The most recent reason that they provided was that they were not required to do so by law,” she said at an April hearing. “This interpretation overturns longstanding precedent, and it opens the door for all state agencies to refuse to provide or compile information in the format requested, therefore preventing legislative oversight.”
The bill was the subject of a letter from Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, and House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, who urged the governor not to veto it.
“Without timely access to complete and usable information,particularly as it pertains to oil and gas production taxes, oversight is impaired, public trust is undermined, and the integrity of our state’s governance is imperiled,” they wrote.
In his veto message, Dunleavy said the bill was an unconstitutional delegation of the Legislature’s authority. The state Constitution gives the state auditor the authority to look over the state’s books, but Dunleavy said the Constitution doesn’t allow the auditor to specify the format for data it requests.
“The Alaska Constitution does not grant to the Auditor or to (the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee) discretion to command the activities of the executive branch by ordering state agency employees to produce work product at their whim and under threat of criminal sanction, nor may the Legislature delegate such an expansive and unchecked authority,” he wrote.
Wielechowski said legislative attorneys had written the bill and had not flagged any constitutional issues.
The bill passed the Senate unanimously and by a 30-10 vote in the House.
Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, who voted against the bill, said the problem was overblown. He said he saw the bill as a “politically motivated” attack on Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum, a possible candidate for the 2026 governor’s race.
“I think that the governor has issues now and again, and I have issues now and again, but I know Mike Dunleavy to be a pretty honest guy,” he said. “I don't think he is intentionally telling the Department of Revenue (or) Adam Crum to hide anything, or to tell any of his departments to hide anything.”
McCabe said he agreed with lawmakers’ desire for transparency on tax issues, but said the bill was the wrong way to accomplish the goal.
Lawmakers could override the veto with a two-thirds vote when they return in January.
