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

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.