'Pro-family' Dunleavy vetoes pro-family spending
There's very little pro-family in this pro-family governor.
Good morning, Alaska! It’s Tuesday.
In this edition: After attempting to rebrand himself as a “pro-family” governor, Gov. Mike Dunleavy delivered a round of vetoes to this year’s budget on Monday that essentially cut the kind of spending you’d label as “pro-family.” The one-time boost to school funding has been slashed in half, most school maintenance spending was eliminated, some grants for child care were cut, and an increase to early education was hacked back. The school cuts will have a huge impact throughout the state, but Dunleavy couldn’t even be bothered to answer questions about his actions.
Current mood: 😒
Something fun: The voting on Alaska’s next artistic license plate is underway
‘Pro-family’ Dunleavy vetoes pro-family spending
“You see, I happen to like people, and, more importantly, we need more people in Alaska. Not less. We need more people in our jobs. We need more people in our schools. We need more people who create wealth. … To that end, together we can enact policies like the Healthy Families Initiative for our people that are pro-children, pro-mothers, pro-fathers, pro-families.”
Gov. Mike Dunleavy, State of the State address on June 23, 2023
Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy closed this year’s State of the State address with an attempt to rebrand what it means to be “pro-life.” With the specter of the end of Roe hanging over politics—playing a significant role in the drubbing right-wingers received in the midterms—he announced that his “goal to make Alaska the most pro-life state in the entire country” was really about measures to attract families to Alaska and keep them here. With the talk that he’d turned a new leaf and would be more moderate heading into his second term, it sparked some hope that Alaska might just be able to make some progress.
This Monday, however, the governor delivered more than $200 million in vetoes that are almost entirely focused on cutting education funding, social safety net spending and the sort of investments in infrastructure that keep families in Alaska.
Unlike almost every other veto announcement I’ve covered, Dunleavy took the unusual move of just releasing the vetoes in a news release with a bland, perfunctory statement about preserving the state’s general fund dollars (for what, precisely, is left unanswered). There was no news conference for him to explain the cuts to Alaskans and field questions from reporters—which I would like to think would have included “How does this budget align with your pro-family position? Was that just a sham?”—and it looks like all one-on-one interview requests were declined.
[More: The full list of the vetoes]
The most notable is a $87.5 million cut to public school funding. The cut amounts to half of the $175 million the Legislature put into public schools as a one-time boost as years of chronic flat funding, inflation and expiring covid money combine to put most districts on the edge of a financial cliff. Even the $175 million was expected to fall short of many districts’ needs, and the outlook now is generally uncertain but grim with the quick-hit message from districts being to expect larger class sizes and eliminated programs.
Senate Education Committee Chair Löki Gale Tobin said in a prepared statement that the cuts directly attacked the public school system.
“It’s a shame that the Governor used his line-item veto power to hurt kids and further destabilize our public school system,” she said. “I fear that what has been communicated to the broader public today is that Alaska does not believe in high-quality public education. I know that is not the case, which makes today so disappointing. It is time to get a large BSA increase on the books by putting it into state law through a stand-alone bill. One-time funding is not the solution our students, parents, and teachers need because, as evidenced by today, it is always subject to the Governor’s line-item veto authority.”
In a particularly scathing assessment, Bristol Bay School District Superintendent Bill Hill told the Alaska Beacon that the veto sent a clear message.
“I think overall, the governor is sending a message with his cut … education is going to take a back seat to whatever his priorities are,” he said.
The governor was generally noncommittal throughout the legislative session about increased public school funding. Instead, he focused what little attention he had for the legislative session on his version of Florida’s “Don’t say ‘gay’ bill” that would open schools to legal liability if they dared talk about sex or gender identity without written parental permission. Regarding school funding, he proposed legislation that would have essentially paid teachers a dividend for staying through a school year.
Neither bill garnered much traction outside the most extreme conservatives in the Legislature and was a non-starter with the bipartisan Senate Majority. Once they were introduced, the governor was almost entirely absent when it came to public education. His administration, instead, was quietly advancing regulations singling out transgender student-athletes.
The governor’s veto pen wasn’t just limited to K-12 funding but included a $10 million cut to maintenance for K-12 schools, the entire $5 million increase for the Alaska Native Science & Engineering Program (Dunleavy requested a $4 million increase) and reached into higher education by eliminating more than $35 million in capital project spending for the University of Alaska campuses in Fairbanks, Anchorage and Juneau.
Other vetoes
This session saw the bipartisan Senate Majority push for increased spending across several social safety net programs and other programs that you’d think would fall in line with making Alaska more “pro-family.” Most fell to the governor’s veto pen.
The Senate-backed increases to early education in the form of Head Start Program grants, some child care grants (though, admittedly, there’s still a sizable chunk of new money that went untouched of about $7.5 million), additional legal representation for low-income Alaskans, reentry grants, community behavioral health grants, crisis care grants and workforce development spending all were reduced or eliminated.
It also eliminates $10 million in the backstop funding for the Alaska Marine Highway System, critical funding needed to secure federal support for the ferries.
The reason for nearly every veto was stated as “Preserve general funds for savings and fiscal stability.”
It’s particularly interesting given that Dunleavy and the Dunleavy-aligned House both backed budgets that included sizeable draws on savings to cover deficits created by paying out a hefty dividend without making corresponding cuts or implementing new revenue. The budget that ultimately passed the Legislature was balanced. That was primarily thanks to hard-ball negotiations by the Senate that pushed for a smaller dividend—about $1,300—while keeping spending in line with the anticipated revenue for the year.
If oil prices stay on target with the current forecasts, the state is expected to run a slim surplus of about $100 million. Now it’s expected to be about $300 million after the vetoes.
Another interesting bit is that the governor went after some but not all of the roughly $34 million in district-specific earmarks that were part of the final budget negotiations between the House and Senate. Those were local projects from many House Majority members’ districts ranging from cemetery construction to road improvements.
At first blush, there’s a bit of regionalism at play with projects slated for the Mat-Su—Dunleavy’s home area—spared from vetoes while those in Anchorage and Kenai fell to the veto pen. However, look at how the final vote on the budget played out, and you’ll get a far more precise idea of whose funding was vetoed and who wasn’t.
Namely, those who voted for the budget kept their earmarks, while those who voted against it while planning on bringing home the bacon got their bacon vetoed.
Interesting.
What’s next
The threshold for a budget veto override is a tall task, requiring a three-quarter majority from the Alaska Legislature. That means just 16 legislators out of the 60 can effectively protect the governor’s actions from being reversed. That high threshold discouraged legislators from trying to overturn the governor’s draconian vetoes in his first term, which instead were partially reversed amid an outpouring of public backlash to the cuts.
Still, that hasn’t stopped some, like Sen. Tobin, from calling for an attempt to override the vetoes.
While it seems that the knee-jerk response is that it’s a fruitless effort, what’s interesting is that with those capital project vetoes. A not-insignificant chunk of far-right legislators saw their pet projects get vetoed. Whether that’s enough for them to join an attempt for a blanket override has yet to be seen, but I’d hazard a guess that at least some conversations are happening on that front.
Stay tuned!
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To understand the "why" behind Dunleavy's veto, we must recognize the "who". Who benefits from undermining our public schools? It is the religious right, pro voucher group. With Minnery as a close advisor to Dunleavy there can be little doubt.