It’s been a busy week in the state Legislature. An education funding boost passed the House and Senate Friday and is now headed for the governor, who has promised to veto it.
Alaska Public Media's Eric Stone spoke with Alaska News Nightly host Casey Grove to break down the latest news out of the Alaska State Capitol.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Casey Grove: Eric, weren’t the House and Senate working with the governor on a compromise education bill? What happened?
Eric Stone: Life comes at you fast. A lot has changed in the past couple days.
The House passed a bill a while ago that would boost the so-called base student allocation by $1,000. People on all sides of the political spectrum seem to agree that education funding needs a boost, though the amount is a big subject of debate.
But it’s not an exaggeration to say promises to boost education funding are a big reason a lot of legislators won their races last year. It was maybe the top issue in the campaign.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy, though, has consistently called for funding increases to be tied to specific policy changes that he says will improve test scores.
So the bill the House passed had a lot of things the governor liked. Then it went to the Senate. The Senate Education Committee threw some more changes into it — not all of which the governor liked — and then on Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee crumpled all of that up and threw it in the trash. That stripped everything out except for the $1,000 funding boost.
The committee co-chair, Bethel Democratic Sen. Lyman Hoffman, said, basically, we’re going to figure out how much support this $1,000 boost has by itself — how much support in the House, how much support in the Senate and in the governor’s office.
And, yeah, today we have something of an answer. Eleven out of the 20 senators voted for it. That's all of the bipartisan majority senators, minus the three co-chairs of the Senate Finance Committee. Hoffman, who handles the state operating budget, has said again and again that a $1,000 boost is more than the state can afford given low oil prices.
And just this afternoon, the House voted to concur with the changes, 21-16, with three minority Republicans absent.
How members of the House and Senate voted on the latest version of House Bill 69.
And we also know what the governor thinks of it now. So, basically, as soon as the Senate Finance Committee rolled out the naked funding boost bill, Dunleavy came out and said it was a “joke.” He said he would veto it immediately. And after it passed the House and Senate, he didn’t change his tune.
CG: OK, well, what's going on here? I mean, why are they pushing forward a bill that the governor has called a joke and promised to immediately veto?
ES: It's a good question. And I’m going to veer a bit into speculation here. In the news business, we call it analysis.
The whole thing strikes me as an effort to make a point.
CG: What is that point?
ES: I think lawmakers are making a few different points.
Senators and House members who voted to support the bill say schools desperately need money, and the struggling school system is an existential threat to the state’s future.
As far as why they voted for a bill that will almost definitely be vetoed, it seems like they might be playing hardball with the governor. Maybe they want Dunleavy to get some bad headlines for vetoing the bill. Maybe they’re just communicating that they’re frustrated that the governor isn’t engaging with them and negotiating something workable.
Minority Republicans who opposed the bill say that’s exactly what’s going on. Rep. DeLena Johnson, from Palmer, called it, and I quote, “a calculated maneuver that will have the effect of doing nothing.”
And I think the Senate Finance co-chairs who voted against their own bill are making the point that there’s not enough support to override the governor. And that without extra money coming in from new taxes on things like corporate income and oil, the state probably can’t afford it. That’s essentially what Hoffman, the head Senate budgeter, said on the floor.
CG: Speaking of what the state can afford — tell us about what’s going on with the state budget. You wrote this week that the bill has a massive $3,800 Permanent Fund dividend in it. But you say it’s basically a mirage. What’s going on?
ES: So here’s how things usually work. Usually in early to mid-April, the House finishes up the majority of its work on the state operating budget — that’s the budget for the state’s day-to-day business.
But the House Finance Committee got stuck on the PFD. Two Democrats from rural districts, where the PFD is a big part of residents’ disposable income, supported large PFDs in committee votes. And that left the majority without enough votes to take the governor’s $3,800 PFD out of the budget.
Until today — actually, just a few minutes ago, the House voted 20-17 to cut the PFD to roughly $1,400. That’s a figure Senate leaders have supported.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the House are crying foul. They say they were assured that the PFD amendment wouldn’t be up for debate today. The House speaker disputed that that assurance was made on the floor.
But in any case, it would still leave a big deficit — somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
How they’ll address that is anybody’s guess. There’ll be more budget amendments on Monday. So we’ll have to stay tuned to Gavel Alaska to see what's next.
