Alaska

Alaska legislators prepare for August special session with veto override votes a top priority

Published

7 months ago

July 24, 2025

Alaska legislators prepare for August special session with veto override votes a top priority

Sen. Forrest Dunbar, D-Anchorage, casts one of several votes during a Senate floor session at the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau on May 20, 2025. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Alaska legislators looking to override some of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s vetoes received a boost late Tuesday with news of a lawmaker’s plan to return from Europe for a special session set to begin next month.

Anchorage Democratic Sen. Forrest Dunbar is deployed with the Alaska Army National Guard and was previously expected to miss the special session that Dunleavy called for August. But Dunbar said he had received permission to fly to the state to participate in the session.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate majorities have said they plan to vote on overriding Dunleavy’s veto of roughly $50 million in education funding — but to succeed, they need support from 45 out of 60 lawmakers. The presence of Dunbar, a reliable vote in favor of an override, increases the likelihood that they can meet that threshold.

Dunleavy called lawmakers into a 30-day special session to begin Aug. 2 with the stated goal of reviewing his education policy ideas and a plan for creating a new agriculture department. But majority members in the House and Senate have been skeptical of Dunleavy’s policy plans. Dunleavy has declined to provide specifics on his proposals until the beginning of the session.

Instead, lawmakers say they expect to hold a brief special session that will focus on attempts to override Dunleavy’s vetoes of what majority members describe as high-priority items.

Under the Alaska Constitution, lawmakers have a window of five days once they convene to consider overriding any of the vetoes Dunleavy has enacted since the regular legislative session ended in mid-May.

Earlier this month, Dunleavy asked House Republican minority members not to attend the first five days of the special session, to make it more difficult for majority members to secure the votes needed to succeed in overriding him. Additionally, Dunleavy scheduled the session in summer, when many lawmakers were set to be absent.

Dunbar’s announcement that he had succeeded in getting permission from his military superiors to return to the state for the special session indicates the lengths some lawmakers are willing to go to override Dunleavy’s vetoes.

Several House minority members, including House Minority Leader Mia Costello, have said they would not heed Dunleavy’s request for them to stay away from Juneau for the first five days of the session.

“I’m hearing from folks that they — at least my constituents — are telling me they want me to attend, because it’s my job,” said Costello, an Anchorage Republican.

But it was still not clear whether the Legislature could muster the 45 votes needed to override Dunleavy’s budget veto, Senate President Gary Stevens said Wednesday.

Costello said she hadn’t yet decided whether she would vote to override Dunleavy’s vetoes, despite voting to override Dunleavy’s veto of an education bill in May.

“I’m not sure if we have the votes, but we’re trying to figure that out right now,” said Stevens, adding that the Senate majority caucus would meet Friday to discuss its course of action.

And even if they did, Stevens said that Dunleavy was considering calling off the special session altogether, based on two phone conversations Stevens said he had with Dunleavy on Wednesday.

“The governor always has the right to cancel a special session right up until the time we call ourselves into order,” said Stevens. “Will he do that? I don’t know.”

In response to several questions about whether Dunleavy was considering calling off the special session, his spokesperson Jeff Turner said in a email only that Dunleavy “is having discussions with the Senate president about the policies that will be taken up in the special session.”

If the governor cancels the special session, lawmakers may convene one without his support. Such a move would require support from 40 lawmakers — a threshold Stevens didn’t immediately know whether the Legislature could meet.

If the special session goes ahead as planned, Stevens said he intends to prioritize votes to override Dunleavy’s education funding veto, and to override Dunleavy’s veto of a bill that was intended to provide clarity on the state’s audits of oil and gas tax revenue. Stevens and other legislative leaders said that the Dunleavy administration has refused to provide certain information on the tax revenue to the legislative auditor, raising concerns among lawmakers that the administration is leaving millions of dollars in revenue on the table. (Dunleavy has called the bill “sweeping and likely unconstitutional.”)

Those two veto override votes could come as soon as Aug. 2, the first day of the special session. And the special session could end soon after that, Stevens said.

“Any legislator saying, ‘I won’t be there on the first day,’ is abrogating their responsibility,” said Stevens. “It’s our duty, it’s our job to honor the call of the governor and be there on Aug. 2. And everyone needs to be there on Aug. 2. If they are not there, they are not doing their jobs.”

The bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate number 35 members combined. That means they need to draw support from 10 Republican minority members to succeed in overriding the governor on budget vetoes. Overriding policy vetoes — like that of the oil and gas tax audit bill — requires a lower threshold of 40 votes.

On paper, lawmakers have the support they need to override the governor’s veto of education funding and the oil and gas tax audit measure, known as Senate Bill 183.

The Legislature overrode Dunleavy’s veto of an education funding bill with support from 46 lawmakers in May. And Senate Bill 183 passed with support from 49 lawmakers.

But some lawmakers who supported the May veto override vote, including Costello, have indicated they have not decided yet whether to support an override of the budget veto.

Costello said Wednesday that she was spending time meeting with constituents this week to determine whether they support overriding the governor.

Some Republican lawmakers aligned with the governor have already announced they would not attend the special session. Among them is Senate Minority Leader Mike Shower, a Wasilla Republican, who said he had a prior work commitment that would keep him away from the Capitol for the first days of the special session. Some House members have said they would follow Dunleavy’s request not to attend the beginning of the session, including Rep. Sarah Vance, a Homer Republican, and Rep. Jamie Allard, an Eagle River Republican.

Stevens said that if lawmakers are successful overriding Dunleavy’s vetoes of education funding and Senate Bill 183, they may move on to some of the governor’s other vetoes.

“That would be my intention of dealing with those two things primarily,” said Stevens. “Then, as we discuss it, we’ll see if there are other overrides we want to consider.”

The potential list of override votes is long: Dunleavy vetoed dozens of line items in the state budget, and he also vetoed four other policy bills, including ones that passed with broad bipartisan support from lawmakers.

But if the votes over education funding and oil and gas audits fail to reach their respective thresholds, “it would be pointless to go on to other overrides,” said Stevens.

Regardless of whether the special session goes as planned, education funding and oil and gas tax audits are “live matters that will be dealt with in January,” Stevens said.

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Alaska

Sand Point teen found 3 days after going missing in lake

Published

11 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Sand Point teen found 3 days after going missing in lake

SAND POINT, Alaska (KTUU) – A teenage boy who was last seen Monday when the canoe he was in tipped over has been found by a dive team in a lake near Sand Point, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Alaska’s News Source confirmed with the person, who is close to the search efforts, that the dive team found 15-year-old Kaipo Kaminanga deceased Thursday in Red Cove Lake, located a short drive from the town of Sand Point on the Aleutian Island chain.

Kaminanga was last seen canoeing with three other friends on Monday when the boat tipped over.

A search and rescue operation ensued shortly after.

Alaska Dive Search Rescue and Recovery Team posted on Facebook Thursday night that they were able to “locate and recover” Kaminanga at around 5 p.m. Thursday.

“We are glad we could bring closure to his family, friends and community,” the post said.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated when more details become available.

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Alaska

Opinion: Homework for Alaska: Sales tax or income tax?

Published

23 hours ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

Opinion: Homework for Alaska: Sales tax or income tax?

iStock / Getty Images

This is a tax tutorial for gubernatorial candidates, for legislators who will report to work next year and for the Alaska public.

Think of it as homework, with more than eight months to complete the assignment that is not due until the November election. The homework is intended to inform, not settle the debate over a state sales tax or state income tax — or neither, which is the preferred option for many Alaskans.

But for those Alaskans willing to consider a tax as a personal responsibility to help fund schools, roads, public safety, child care, state troopers, prisons, foster care and everything else necessary for healthy and productive lives, someday they will need to decide on a state income tax or a state sales tax after they accept the checkbook reality that oil and Permanent Fund earnings are not enough.

This homework assignment is intended to get people thinking with facts, not emotions. Electing the right candidates will be the first test.

Alaskans have until the next election because nothing will change this year. It will take a new political alignment led by a reality-based governor to organize support in the Legislature and among the public.

But next year, maybe, with the right elected leadership, Alaskans can debate a state sales tax or personal income tax. Plus, of course, corporate taxes and oil production taxes, but those are for another school day.

One of the biggest arguments in favor of a state sales tax is that visitors would pay it. Yes, they would, but not as much as many Alaskans think.

Air travel is exempt from sales taxes. So are cruise ship tickets. That’s federal law, which means much of what tourists spend on their Alaska vacation is beyond the reach of a state sales tax.

Cutting further into potential revenues, state and federal law exempts flightseeing tours from sales tax, which is a particularly costly exemption when you think about how much visitors spend on airplane and helicopter tours.

That leaves sales tax supporters collecting from tourists on T-shirts, gifts for grandchildren, artwork, postcards, hotels, Airbnb, car rentals and restaurant meals. Still a substantial take for taxes, but far short of total tourism spending.

An argument against a state sales tax is that more than 100 cities and boroughs already depend on local sales taxes to pay for schools and other public services. Try to imagine what a state tax piled on top of a local tax would do to kill shopping in Homer, already at 7.85%, or Kodiak, Wrangell and Cordova, all at 7%, and all the other municipalities.

Supporters of an income tax say it would share the responsibility burden with nonresidents who earn income in Alaska and then return home to spend their money.

Almost one in four workers in Alaska in 2024 were nonresidents, as reported by the state Department of Labor in January. That doesn’t include federal employees, active-duty military or self-employed people.

Nonresidents earned roughly $3.8 billion, or about 17% of every dollar covered in the report.

However, many of those nonresident workers are lower-wage and seasonal, employed in the seafood processing and tourism industries, unlikely to pay much in income taxes. But a tax could be structured so that they pay something, which is fair.

Meanwhile, higher-wage workers in oil and gas, mining, construction and airlines (freight and passenger service) would pay taxes on their income earned in Alaska, which also is fair.

It comes down to what would direct more of the tax burden to nonresidents: a tax on income or on visitor spending. Wages or wasabi-crusted salmon dinners.

Larry Persily is a longtime Alaska journalist, with breaks for federal, state and municipal public policy work in Alaska and Washington, D.C. He lives in Anchorage and is publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel weekly newspaper.

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Alaska

Nome brothers summit Mt. Kilimanjaro, carry Alaska flag to third major peak

Published

1 day ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

Nome brothers summit Mt. Kilimanjaro, carry Alaska flag to third major peak

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Two brothers from Nome recently stood at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, planting an Alaska flag at 19,000 feet above the African plains.

The Hoogendorns completed the seven-day climb — five and a half days up and a day and a half down — trekking through rainforest, desert, and alpine terrain before reaching snow near the summit. The climb marks their third of the world’s seven summits.

Night hike to the top

The brothers began their final summit push at midnight, hiking through the night to reach the top by dawn.

“It was almost like a dream,” Oliver said. “Because we hiked through the night. We started the summit hike at midnight when you’re supposed to be sleeping. So, it was kind of like, not mind boggling, but disorienting. Because you’re hiking all night, but then you get to the top and you can finally see. It’s totally different from what you’d expect.”

At the summit, temperatures hovered around 10 degrees — a familiar range for the Nome brothers. Their guides repeatedly urged them to put on jackets, but the brothers declined.

“We got to the crater, and it was dark out and then it started getting brighter out,” Wilson said. “And then you could slowly see the crater like illuminating and it’s huge. It’s like 3 miles across or something. Like you could fly a plane down on the crater and be circles if you want to. Really dramatic view.”

A team of 17 for two climbers

Unlike their previous expeditions, the brothers were supported by a crew of 17 — including porters, a cook, guides, a summit assistant, and a tent setup crew.

The experience deviated from their earlier climbs, where they carried their own food, melted snow for water, and navigated routes independently.

“I felt spoiled,” Wilson said. “I was like, man, the next mountain’s gonna be kind of hard after being spoiled.”

Alaska flag on every summit

Oliver carried the same full-size Alaska flag on all three of his major summits, including in South America and Denali in North America, despite the added weight in his pack.

“I take it everywhere these days,” Oliver said. “It’s always cool to bring it out. And then people ask, you know, ‘where’s that flag from?’ Say Alaska.”

When asked about his motivation for the expeditions, Wilson said “I guess to like inspire other people. Because it seems like a lot of people think they can’t do something, but if you just try it, you probably won’t do good the first time, but second time you’ll do better. Because you just got to try it out. Believe in yourself.”

Background and next goals

The Hoogendorns won the reality competition series “Race to Survive: Alaska” in 2023. In 2019, they were the first to climb Mount McKinley and ski down that season. Oliver also started a biking trip from the tip of South America to Prudhoe Bay with hopes of still completing it.

Kilimanjaro is their third summit. The brothers said they hope to eventually complete all seven summits, with Mount Vinson in Antarctica among the peaks they are considering next… all while taking Alaska with them every step of the way.

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