State Government

Gov. Mike Dunleavy asked Republican lawmakers in the state House on Wednesday not to show up for the beginning of a special session he called for next month, to prevent his vetoes from being overridden.

Dunleavy made the request in a meeting with House minority members Wednesday. Officially, the Republican governor called the special session, set for Aug. 2, to address education reform and the creation of a state agriculture department.

“Governor Dunleavy asked House minority members to not show up for the first five days of session because like any governor, he does not want his vetoes overturned,” Dunleavy spokesperson Jeff Turner said in a statement.

Turner said arriving on the sixth day of the session would allow lawmakers to begin with a “clean slate for conversations on public education reform policies.”

In June, Dunleavy struck $150 million in general funds from the state budget using his line-item veto power, including more than $50 million lawmakers set aside for public schools. The vetoes also included $25 million for school maintenance and nearly $27 million for wildland firefighting.

Dunleavy also vetoed three other bills after lawmakers adjourned in May — one that would sharply limit payday loans, another that would address a shortage of housing for rural teachers, and a third that would bolster the Legislature’s oversight of oil and gas tax revenue.

The state Constitution requires lawmakers to consider veto overrides within five days of the start of their next session. Large, bipartisan majorities approved much of what Dunleavy vetoed, and if House Republicans decline to attend the beginning of the session, that would make it nearly impossible for lawmakers to override him.

Turner said Dunleavy was willing to “reinstate” the funding he vetoed “if he and lawmakers can reach an agreement on the education bill he will introduce next month.”

The leaders of the state House and Senate’s bipartisan majority caucuses said they were shocked at the governor’s request that lawmakers not attend the start of the session he called.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent, said in an interview.

“Really, a governor would do that? Call a special session and then inform some members not to show up? How bizarre is that?” Edgmon said. “I have to tell you that from every appearance, it would seem like the special session is, at least in some way, compromised before it even begins.”

“That is just absurd, really,” said Senate President Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican. “I think it’s honestly unconscionable to the governor to call a special session and tell a minority not to show up.”

Neither leader said they could recall a similar move from a governor in their decades-long careers in state politics.

Dunleavy declined an interview request.

Big Lake Republican Kevin McCabe, though, said he thought the governor’s move was fair game — just one of many political maneuvers used by both parties to get their way using any tool at their disposal.

“Should it work like this? No. In a perfect world, it never would work like this,” McCabe said. “But we don’t live in a perfect world.”

McCabe compared Dunleavy’s request to a vote House leaders called to reduce the Permanent Fund dividend this year, leveraging the absence of three Republicans to overcome internal divisions that threatened to derail progress on the state budget.

McCabe blamed the Senate’s bipartisan, Democrat-heavy majority caucus for not compromising with the governor on policies that Dunleavy argues would boost the state’s bottom-of-the-nation test scores.

McCabe suggested that a generation of Alaska children would suffer “because the Senate doesn’t like the governor.”

“He has no other political agenda — he’s a lame duck governor, right? — other than to get his policy changes through,” McCabe said.

Stevens, the Senate president, said his requests to meet with the governor to find common ground had been repeatedly rebuffed.

Several House minority Republican lawmakers said in interviews Thursday they did not plan to heed the governor’s request to stay away from the Capitol during the first five days of the special session, including Soldotna Republican Rep. Justin Ruffridge.

“It struck me as being asked to not represent my district, and I think that’s a request that I don’t intend to honor,” he said. “I don’t think that the people of my district would appreciate very much their representative not showing up to do the work when the work is being called to be done.”

Rep. Jeremy Bynum, a Ketchikan Republican, said he, too, planned to be in Juneau for the start of the special session, as did Fairbanks Republican Rep. Will Stapp. All three have said on multiple occasions that they’re willing to override vetoes from Dunleavy, subject to a few caveats.

“I signed up to be in the House of Representatives. That includes special sessions,” said Rep. Bill Elam, Republican of Soldotna. “I’m going to do my job, and I’m going to be where I need to be for the work, so my plan right now would be to be down in Juneau.”

Elam voted to override Dunleavy’s veto of the key bill that raised the amount schools are supposed to get from the state under its public school funding formula, House Bill 57. But asked whether he’d support a vote that would restore the education funding Dunleavy cut, Elam said he was undecided.

Rep. Sarah Vance, a Homer Republican, said the request was “unusual” but said she did not plan to attend the start of the session unless her constituents asked her to.

“I agree with (Dunleavy) in that I believe we should be focusing on (education) policy right now,” she said. “Since I will be a no vote, my absence also counts as a no vote, and it will save Alaskans money by my presence not being there until day six, when I’m ready to work.”

McCabe, who has consistently opposed the education funding increases that have won over some of his fellow minority Republican caucus members, said he would not attend the start of the session. He said he’d be in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho at the conference of a pro-life nonprofit group.

“It would be helpful if our team stayed together, but we haven’t proven that we’re very good at that through the last year,” McCabe said. “Everybody’s got their own agenda. Typical Republicans.”

Lawmakers raised the foundation of the funding formula, the base student allocation, by $700 per student in a 46-14 vote in May, overriding a veto from Dunleavy to do so. But Dunleavy vetoed roughly 30% of the funding necessary for the increase.

Even if every minority Republican attends the session, it’s unclear whether lawmakers would have the 45 votes necessary to undo Dunleavy’s line-item veto. One, Democratic Anchorage Sen. Forrest Dunbar, is abroad on a National Guard deployment.

Stevens said he did not anticipate making significant progress on the governor’s two listed priorities during the special session. He said he expected lawmakers would gavel in as scheduled, consider one or more veto overrides, and gavel out in time for lawmakers to make the evening flight out of Juneau that same day.

Stevens said hoped enough lawmakers would attend in order to override the governor’s line-item veto of education funding. If the effort failed, Stevens said lawmakers would seek to address the issue when they return for the regular session in Juneau. But he warned that minority Republicans could face backlash from their constituents if they follow the governor’s request.

“If they stay away and we only meet for one day, and education funding fails because they’re not there, I don’t think that bodes well for them in future elections,” he said.

Republican Nikiski Sen. Jesse Bjorkman said the episode did not bode well for the future of Dunleavy’s legislative priorities.

“Unfortunately, what this means is it’ll be really hard for him to get anything done further,” he said.

KDLL’s Ashlyn O’Hara contributed reporting.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that a House vote reduced the Permanent Fund dividend to $1,000. That particular vote cut it to roughly $1,400.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a proclamation for a special session on Wednesday, calling Legislators back to Juneau in August to pass legislation on education reform and his executive order creating a new Department of Agriculture.

The special session also means that lawmakers cannot wait until January to vote on overrides to the governor’s budget vetoes and his vetoes on several policy bills. They must vote in the first five days of the special session.

That’s significant, because 45 votes are needed to override a budget veto, and while there were 46 votes in favor of a prior veto override this spring, at least one legislator who voted in favor of that override will be unavailable in August.

The 30-day special session is scheduled to begin 10 a.m. August 2 in Juneau.

Agriculture is currently overseen by a division within the Department of Natural Resources.

​​“Enacting a few necessary reforms to our public education system can elevate those children struggling in Alaska’s school system,” said Dunleavy in an email statement with the announcement. “As elected officials we must do all we can to put the next generation on the path to a successful and prosperous future, and that starts with a solid public education. Splitting the Division of Agriculture away from DNR into a department will elevate food security and support our hard-working farmers while growing the agricultural sector.”

The announcement comes in the wake of a historic veto override vote, 46-14, by the Legislature rejecting Dunleavy’s veto of an education funding bill, House Bill 57, raising the core of the state’s education formula by  $700 per student. Dunleavy then made a budget veto of part of the funding for schools, pushing it down to $500 per student, and House and Senate leadership have promised to override that veto in the next session.

Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, said he was surprised by the announcement and learned about it from reporters calling him for comment.

The special session will force lawmakers to vote early on veto overrides for education funding and a variety of other bills, he said. Legislative attorneys have told lawmakers that with the governor’s proclamation, they cannot defer those votes until the regular session begins in January.

That’s a problem for supporters of an education veto override, because 45 of 60 legislators are needed for that vote to succeed. This spring, a policy veto override garnered 46 votes, but Sen. Forrest Dunbar, D-Anchorage, is in Poland on a National Guard deployment and is expected to be unavailable in August.

Other legislators may also be unavailable, Stevens said.

And supporters of an override have questioned whether all of the votes from the previous override vote will hold for a budget override.

In May, lawmakers voted 32-28 to deny an executive order by Dunleavy to create a new Department of Agriculture, citing the proposal’s costs as well as creation through an executive order rather than as legislation, with public input.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Some key Alaska state legislators are pushing back on the Republican budget package known as the “big, beautiful bill.”

With U.S. Senate votes coming soon, state Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, said she and House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, thought it was time to ring the alarm bells.

“Bryce and I … have been astonished and dismayed at what we’re seeing Congress looking at doing to our Medicaid program,” Giessel said in a phone interview Friday.

In a New York Times opinion piece Friday, the pair of legislative leaders argued the tax- and spending-cuts package would “throw state budgets into chaos” for rural states like Alaska.

Roughly one in three Alaskans has Medicaid coverage. Edgmon, who represents Bristol Bay and other rural Southwest Alaska communities, said the program props up communities throughout rural Alaska.

“It’s so interwoven as a whole into our entire economy out here — everything from air taxis to restaurants to transportation to certainly health care itself,” Edgmon said in a phone interview from Dillingham.

The New York Times piece he co-authored with Giessel is headlined “Alaska Cannot Survive This Bill.”

Changes to Medicaid and the federal food aid program known as SNAP could push some families into bankruptcy and leave others without enough food on the table, Edgmon said. He and Giessel wrote that cuts to SNAP could force village grocery stores to close.

“The SNAP program, I’d characterize as one of the sleeper programs in Alaska, because it does provide a lot of benefits to people that sort of escapes … the average person’s comprehension of how important it is,” Edgmon said.

SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, pays for food for roughly 70,000 low-income Alaskans. All of the money for that food currently comes from the federal government, though the state shares half of the cost of administering the program.

The House-passed version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would, for the first time, require states to pay part of the cost of benefits.

A Senate proposal would push up Alaska’s SNAP costs by roughly $50 million, according to data Giessel shared from the state Division of Public Assistance.

The status of that provision in the Senate bill is in flux. It was recently stripped out of the bill under the rules the Senate is using to avoid a filibuster, but Republican leaders say they plan to push it back in as the bill approaches procedural votes, amendments and a final Senate vote, a process that could start as soon as Saturday.

Giessel says the changes couldn’t come at a worse time for Alaska’s already-stressed state budget. Lawmakers approved an austere spending plan this year as low oil prices sent them scrambling.

“It’s going to be hard to find that money,” she said. “How much more are we going to cut from the Department of Transportation? How much more are we going to cut from the Department of Corrections? How much more are we going to have to reduce our commitment to education?”

The impact of Medicaid changes on the state budget is less clear. The House-passed version of the bill would reduce federal spending on Alaskans’ health care by roughly $200 million per year and leave tens of thousands of Alaskans without health coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation and health care groups.

Giessel argues that would force some costs indirectly onto state and local employees’ health insurance, since more uninsured Alaskans would forgo primary care and instead show up at emergency rooms — federal law requires them to treat everyone, even if they can’t pay.

Defenders of the tax and spending cuts package, though, say opponents vastly overstate the impacts on Alaska’s budget.

Much of the projected loss in Medicaid spending is linked to a proposed work requirement for adults without children. But the most recent Senate draft has exemptions for Alaska Native people covered by the Indian Health Service, people with serious mental health conditions, including substance abuse, people living in areas where the unemployment rate is above 8%, pregnant and postpartum mothers, and people receiving major medical care outside their home community.

The state’s chief Medicaid administrator, Department of Health Deputy Commissioner Emily Ricci, said those broad exemptions mean it’s tough to anticipate just how many Alaskans might lose Medicaid coverage.

“Many national estimates don’t reflect Alaska’s unique circumstances or the exemptions in the bill that apply here, so they may overstate the impact on our state,” she said in a statement. “The bill is not complete, the Department is closely tracking as it develops.”

House Minority Leader Mia Costello, an Anchorage Republican, said in a statement that the bill “protects our most vulnerable while ensuring that benefits are targeted and sustainable.”

“It is narrowly focused on the subset of adults who are fully able to work but choose not to,” she said.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy, in a statement on social media, pointed to a broad range of energy-related provisions in recent Senate drafts that would ease drilling on federal land and direct more oil and gas tax revenue to the state, and another that would provide $300 million to homeport an icebreaker in Juneau.

Costello said the bill, which also extends and expands tax cuts passed in 2017, would give the state’s economy a boost.

“To claim Alaskans can’t ‘survive’ a federal budget bill that is due to unleash so many aspects of our economy while maintaining benefits to our most vulnerable is misguided,” she said.

But Giessel, who is a family practice nurse practitioner, questioned whether Alaskans would truly benefit from the bill’s carve-outs.

“What does it take to get an exemption? It takes someone applying for that exemption,” she said. “I can tell you that people applying right now, even for Medicaid benefits, are waiting months.”

Another Republican legislative leader, Senate Minority Leader Mike Shower of Wasilla accused Giessel and Edgmon of fearmongering and questioned the pair’s commitment to reining in costs in the state budget.

“The leadership in the Alaska Legislature refuses to entertain anything along the lines of a balanced and realistic fiscal policy. Instead, it’s how to protect government, no discussion of protecting and encouraging the private sector, and how we are going to tax Alaskans to pay for a state government that — by their own tacit admission in the (opinion piece) — we can’t really afford,” Shower said in a statement.

As of Friday afternoon, Senate leadership has yet to unveil the final text of the bill, even as they plan to vote as soon as this weekend. Edgmon says that makes it difficult to assess what it would mean for the state in any appreciable level of detail.

The bill is likely to span hundreds of pages, and Edgmon says the race to pass the fast-changing bill by the president’s July 4 deadline makes it hard to anticipate the consequences.

“I don’t think anybody, even ourselves as long term legislators, have a full understanding of what those impacts could be as they trickle down the entire economy,” he said.

The Congressional Budget Office, which analyzes the impact of federal legislation, said last month that the House’s version of the megabill would on average, accounting for both the tax and benefit cuts, increase the resources available to the average American. But the highest-income households would come away with more — while those in the bottom 10% would be worse off.

Edgmon and Giessel closed their opinion piece with a warning.

“Alaska is one of the most amazing places in our country,” they wrote. “Congress is risking our way of life to give money to the rich.”

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration on Thursday for the Denali Borough after the Bear Creek Fire destroyed homes and hampered transportation in the area.

Wildfires have been burning across the Interior since late last week. The Bear Creek Fire north of Healy has burned 26,000 acres, destroying some homes and forcing residents to evacuate.

The disaster declaration will support the borough’s response to the fire and open up state relief funds for displaced residents, according to the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

Bear Creek Fire

Evacuations for the Bear Creek fire remained in place and unchanged on Friday, with a shelter located at Tri-Valley School in Healy. Denali Borough Mayor Chris Noel said the fire had forced at least 75 people to leave their homes.

Borough officials say they are still assessing the damage, but the fire destroyed at least 17 structures, six of them residential.

Noel also said that a damaged fiber optic line was causing cell service interruptions.

The fire also caused power outages in the area. At least 24 homes were still without power on Thursday, according to the Golden Valley Electric Association.

About 225 firefighters and support personnel were still working the Bear Creek and other nearby fires, said Rita Henderson, spokeswoman with the Alaska Incident Management Team, which includes federal, state, local and tribal entities.

Henderson said the firefighters had put in a dozer line to keep the fire from going further north. She said firefighters were also working to protect homes and roads near the Bear Creek Fire as well as several other fires north of Healy.

Henderson said helicopters were dropping buckets on hot spots along the Parks Highway, and pilot cars might continue escorting drivers through the area for another week or longer.

“The public should be ready for wait times along the Parks Highway going north and south, but they’re doing their best to keep that moving,” she said.

Fairbanks fires

Fires north of Fairbanks, totaling around 6,530 acres, have not been contained and continued to grow as of Friday.

No structures have been damaged in those fires so far, said Jessica Ferracane, the spokeswoman for the Southwest Area Incident Management Team.

Ferracane said the responders continued to focus on the Himalaya Road Fire, surveying the terrain from above and installing sprinklers around residences and other structures.

“This one is very close to homes,” she said.

Fairbanks North Star Borough officials lowered evacuation levels around Himalaya Road and Aggie Creek on Thursday, allowing residents to return home.

Ferracane said firefighters would continue using heavy equipment along the Elliot Highway and other roads in the area.

“People should expect delays and possibly poor visibility due to smoke and also fire crews working alongside those roads,” she said.

Fire crews were also working on fires near Salcha, Tok and Delta Junction, as well as ones close to Rampart, Nelchina Glacier and Clear.

Drier weather and thunderstorms in the forecast 

The Interior started seeing warmer and dryer weather on Friday after a few days of cooler, wetter weather. The forecast showed warmer temperatures and light winds going forward, as well as potential for thunderstorms and lightning.

Fire managers warn that existing fires could grow and there could be new flareups.

“We’re coming back into sunny and warm days, and fires across the interior region are becoming more active,” said Sam Harrel, an information officer with the Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy told lawmakers Wednesday he had vetoed a bill that would have sharply limited payday loans in Alaska.

Senate Bill 39, which passed the Legislature on a bipartisan vote of 38 to 22, looked to cap interest rates for so-called “deferred deposit advance” loans at 36%. Backers of the bill, including the Alaska Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, say it’s an effort to curtail what they describe as “predatory” loans.

“We know that payday loan customers in Alaska are taking out over five payday loans per year, even though they’re marketed as one-time emergency assistance,” Claire Lubke, the group’s economic justice lead, said in an interview. “We know that this causes cycles of debt in which people are taking out one loan and then another, trying to get out from what they originally borrowed.”

Sen. Forrest Dunbar, D-Anchorage, sponsored the bill, which passed along caucus lines in the Senate. Three minority Republicans joined the Democrat-heavy multiparty coalition controlling the House to pass the bill in the lower chamber.

In a presentation to lawmakers, the group said the fees for payday loans equate to interest rates in the hundreds of percent per year. State law allows lenders to charge up to $15 per $100 borrowed, up to $500, typically for two or four weeks. Lenders can roll over the balance into new payday loans twice.

Opponents of the bill say it would unnecessarily limit consumers’ choices and reduce loan options for borrowers with poor credit.

Andrew Duke leads the Online Lenders Alliance, a financial technology group that opposed the bill.

“The proponents were trying to paint a picture that if you enact this bill and put more restrictions in place, lenders will just keep making loans to the same borrowers at lower cost. That is patently false,” he said in an interview.

Dunleavy declined an interview request but made a similar case in his veto message.

Duke also said the bill could restrict small businesses’ access to credit, though public interest researcher Lubke said the bill would not affect commercial lending. The head of the state Division of Banking and Securities did not immediately return a phone call and email seeking comment.

A variety of other states have similar limits on payday lending. The federal government also restricts it for active-duty military members.

Lawmakers can override Dunleavy’s veto with a two-thirds majority vote. That could prove difficult, since proponents would have to pick up at least two more Republican votes to override the veto.

Four of Michelle Love’s children who have developmental delays have received services from the Infant Learning Program in Wasilla. On a recent Thursday, her 2-year-old son Christopher ran back and forth between his mom and his older brother Michael, giggling and squealing.

Love and her four children were at an appointment with Mat-Su Services for Children and Adults, or MSSCA, a nonprofit that serves Matanuska-Susitna Borough residents with developmental disabilities. Christopher was born with symptoms of drug withdrawal, and Love began the process of adopting him at just two months old. She said the program helped Christopher make progress when she felt stuck as a parent.

“He was just on a plateau, standstill, it was like I had an infant for months and months,” Love said. “We brought infant learning in, and they were able to help me understand what I was seeing with what he was doing and his behavior.”

Among the line-item vetoes issued by Gov. Mike Dunleavy earlier this month was a $5.7 million cut to expand a program that serves infants and toddlers like Christopher with developmental delays. Advocates have said that a funding increase is long overdue, and needed to help more families. They also argue that expanding the program will save the state money in the long run.

Without the fund, many young kids with developmental delays don’t qualify for services. That’s what happened to Christopher. Love says as soon as he started making real progress, the state stopped covering his services because he no longer had a delay of more than 50% compared to his peers. That’s the standard for the state to provide assistance to infants and toddlers, unless they have a specific diagnosis. Love said as soon as the services stopped, Christopher regressed.

“He was excelling, he was speaking, he was doing all this stuff, and then all of a sudden, he’s nonverbal and really behind in a lot of areas,” Love said. “I’m frustrated that he lost that time he could have had, which would have been very valuable.”

This on-off cycle is just one of several issues families and providers have with the state’s current Infant Learning Program. Alaska is one of just five states that doesn’t provide treatment to infants below a 50% delay. MSSCA Interim Executive Director Stephanie Tucker said that makes Alaska stand out when she and her staff attend conferences for developmental specialists.

“It’s embarrassing, because they talk about the kids they serve, and we’re like, ‘Yeah, we don’t serve those kids.’ It’s embarrassing because we’re behind the grade on the research, we’re behind the grade compared to the rest of the nation,” Tucker said. “It’s kind of shameful for Alaska. We should do better because we can.”

State lawmakers considered Senate Bill 178 during this year’s legislative session, which would’ve expanded eligibility for the program down to a 25% delay, but didn’t pass. Lawmakers included the money in the state’s mental health budget anyway, but Dunleavy vetoed that funding. Dunleavy’s spokesperson Jessica Bowers said in an email that “given the state’s current fiscal outlook, further increases in funding are not sustainable at this time.”

But specialists working in the program disagree. They say providing early intervention for infants saves money in the long run. Tucker said the yearly cost for one child to receive infant services is about one-tenth of the cost to provide those services to children once they turn three.

Mark Lackey is the executive director for Child Care Subsidy Early Learning in Wasilla, where children with developmental delays receive services. He said developmental specialists work with the families of delayed infants during in-home visits, teaching them how to help their child develop without the specialist. Lackey said children in the program can often grow out of the need for special education before they turn three.

“That kid with a 40% delay currently can’t receive services from infant learning, but the moment they turn three, it’s going to cost us a lot of money,” Lackey said. “We could have avoided many, many of those cases if we could have served that family and that child earlier.”

The Mat-Su is the fastest-growing region in the state, and one of the only regions that has seen continued population growth in recent years. Lackey said that growth exacerbates the issue of providers trying to serve all the children who qualify, especially given that the program has not had a funding increase in over a decade.

“That really puts them in a difficult position. Their caseloads just go up and up and up. So they’re caught in this, between a rock and a hard place of not having enough staff to do all the things that they’re required to by law,” Lackey said.

Filmmakers Laura Norton-Cruz and Joshua Branstetter released a documentary early this year about the Infant Learning Program in the Mat-Su that was screened for legislators in Juneau. Tucker got excited when legislators responded by adding money to the budget to expand the program weeks later. She says her organization reached out to the governor’s office to offer a private screening, but never got the chance. Dunleavy used his line-item veto to cut the funding that would’ve allowed providers to hire more staff and offer services to more kids.

“It was just utterly disappointing, because I know that if you understand the services we provide and what kind of prevention they can lead to down the line for other kinds of services, there’s no way you would say no to this,” Tucker said. “It’s disappointing, because to me that just speaks to, they don’t know. They don’t know, and they need to know.”

Tucker said she’ll redirect her frustration into advocacy for the bill when the next session starts in January.