Lawmakers narrowly rejected an executive order from Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Wednesday that would have created a cabinet-level state agriculture department.
Dunleavy’s proposal would have split out the existing Division of Agriculture from the Department of Natural Resources. Dunleavy pitched it as a way to give farmers, ranchers and other food producers a seat at the cabinet table, even after he’s no longer governor.
He said he was inspired by supply chain interruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially as speculation swirled that the Port of Seattle might close temporarily.
“It was at that moment that myself and a number of other leaders in the state of Alaska decided that we were going to make agriculture and growing things here in Alaska a priority,” Dunleavy said in a promotional video.
Lawmakers in the largely Democratic coalitions that control the House and Senate said they supported the idea of a state agriculture department. But Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau, told her fellow lawmakers the governor’s order was not the right approach.
“Executive Order 136 as currently constructed and described before the Finance Committee does not grow agriculture. It grows government,” she said. “It appoints a commissioner, establishes administrative offices, and does not add one dollar to our supports for food security.”
Dunleavy revised the initial cost estimate for the order after lawmakers said they were skeptical the state could afford it while facing large deficits. Dunleavy most recently pitched the plan as cost-neutral.
But Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, said he wasn’t convinced the department could be both cost-neutral and effective, especially over the long term.
“If you're just going to stand up a new department and have 13 people who are accountants and IT people, I don't know how that helps farmers a whole lot. You have to add technical people to that,” he said.
Opponents also said they would’ve preferred the governor introduce a bill creating the new department rather than an executive order. They said that’s because there’s little lawmakers can do to tweak an executive order in response to testimony from experts and the public.
The combined House and Senate voted 32-28 to reject the proposal.
Lawmakers who favored the order — which included every member of the all-Republican minority caucuses in the House and Senate, plus Reps. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage, Nellie Jimmie, D-Tooksook Bay, and Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage — said lawmakers could allow the order to go through and later pass a bill modifying the new department to their liking.
Senate Minority Leader Mike Shower, R-Wasilla, said any costs associated with the new department would be minor when compared to the state’s $15 billion overall budget. He chalked much of the opposition up to politics.
“They're just unwilling to give the governor a win on almost anything. That's my view of it,” he said.
Senate leaders rejected the accusation.
The most vocal supporter of the governor’s agriculture department proposal has been Sen. Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer. She chaired a legislative task force that wrote a lengthy report offering numerous recommendations for improving the state’s food security.
“We did accomplish some things, but there’s probably about 30 or so that we have not yet accomplished,” she said during debate on the order. “The only way that they will be accomplished is if there’s a Department of Agriculture, because you need someone to oversee that they happen.”
But even Hughes, in an interview ahead of the vote, said Dunleavy was at least partially to blame for what she called “confusion” over how the department would be paid for.
“There were some misstatements by the governor,” she said.
Dunleavy released a video in the runup to the vote in which he said “proceeds from what the farmers are growing” would help offset the department’s cost. Some conservative commentators took that to mean that Dunleavy was contemplating taxes on crops. The governor’s office later clarified that state land sales, not taxes, were what Dunleavy was referring to.
Though members of the Senate majority said they’d spoken with Department of Natural Resources Commissioner John Boyle about the proposal, Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, said Dunleavy had not been personally lobbying lawmakers to assent to his order.
Compared to Dunleavy’s predecessors, that’s unusual, Stevens said.
“Past governors have been in the building and much more receptive and much more willing to meet with us,” he said. “The governor normally would — say, in this issue, [he] would have been around the floor, you know, talking to us, knocking on our doors.”
Asked whether the governor should have done more to convince legislators to support the proposal, Hughes said the governor is only human.
“All of us can always do more. He's got some big things on his plate right now regarding the opportunity for a gas line [from the North Slope to Southcentral Alaska], for example,” she said.
Rep. Rebecca Schwanke, R-Tazlina, disagreed, saying the governor could not have prevented a “last-minute change of heart” on the part of some unspecified lawmakers whose votes she said ultimately doomed the executive order.
In a statement on social media after the vote, Dunleavy thanked the lawmakers who supported his proposal and said food security would remain a priority.
Senate leaders said they planned to schedule hearings on newly introduced bills that would create a state agriculture department in the near future.
