TALL TALES from Juneau

Eyes on the Dunleavy/Babcock administration

The Final Battle

CONVENIENTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL

This week the discussion in the Capitol focused a lot on education and its funding. The first thing to know is that the Alaska Constitution requires adequate funding for education. It’s pretty cut and dried. That’s the backdrop. The conflict comes because – remember how the governor and his people were all fired up about slashing public education funding this year? His first budget called for hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts. But what they hadn’t counted on is that education had already been forward-funded for two years beginning last year. That means that for this year, we didn’t have to worry about the governor getting his mitts on education funding because it was out of his reach – signed and sealed. Schools don’t have to have the now-customary annual panic attack, teachers won’t get pink slips, and everyone can breathe a huge sigh of relief that at least kids and schools are exempt from the hatchet this time around.

***SCREECHING BRAKES***

Or so we thought. Enter Kevin Clarkson, the new Attorney General who seems to like challenging the constitution more than he likes following it. He’s fought against LGBT rights, against abortion rights, against investigations into whether Sarah Palin abused her power as governor, and fought for barring certain religions from performing invocations at assembly meetings. SPOILER: He’s lost ALL of them.

You might say that bringing doomed challenges to our constitution is a bit of a hobby for him. We’d prefer he collect stamps or play Bingo, but he seems to have his mind set. And now he says that even though past legislatures have done this at least 10 times under 4 different Governors and 7 Attorney Generals who never had an issue with it, and even though forward funding has been supported overwhelmingly by both Republican and Democratic legislators… suddenly… you know what’s coming… “It’s unconstitutional!” and by “unconstitutional” he means “out of the governor’s control.” And, of course, the people under Clarkson all nod and say he’s right. But the non-partisan folks who are there to serve the legislature in the Legislative Legal Department have said what you’d imagine they’d say. It’s perfectly legal and constitutional and the legislature is well within its rights to forward fund education.

PARALLEL UNIVERSE

Break away for a second and let’s visit the White House Rose Garden. Bear with me… Yesterday, President Trump said that he was going to stonewall the repair of America’s crumbling infrastructure until Democrats stopped asking pesky questions about his ethical lapses. Translation: Unless I get my way, I will allow bridges to fall, roads to crumble, and I don’t care because I want what I want. That brings us back to Alaska. Gov. Michael J. Dunleavy has now said that if the legislature doesn’t abdicate their control, release the budget and turn it ove to him, he is literally not going to write the check to schools on July 15 to fund their budgets for next year. Translation: Unless I get my way, I will allow thousands of educators to be laid off and I don’t care, because I want what I want. The fact that Trump is a former “builder of things” and Dunleavy is a former teacher and school superintendent makes it even worse, because they are supposed to understand this stuff, and they do. But they don’t CARE. And that’s a problem.

And remember, the governor and the legislature have already gotten into a tiff over $20 million that the governor wanted to cut earlier in the year. The legislature said no way, and now he’s waiting until the laaasssst possssible daaaaay to sign the check, which is June 30. Because he can.

How long is the governor willing to hold his breath on this particular issue? At a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee this week, it was implied that he’d withhold funds until a court challenge was resolved. How long does THAT take? Well, running anything through the Supreme Court takes time – probably more than a year and with a pile of associated legal fees. The administration would rather pay legal fees and lay off teachers in order to ban forward funding education than to allow a good policy that should be uncontroversial that helps kids and teachers go forward.

THE BATTLE OVER THE FALSE CHOICE RAGES ON

The other big issue in the news at the moment is the PFD. As the special session plods along, a bill has been presented by the House Finance committee. It would shake the piggy bank into coughing up one last full PFD using the statutory formula, but that would be contingent on changing the formula in future years to about half of what it is now. So, if you’re planning this out it would be about $3000 this year, $1500 next year and then start growing again from there. Public testimony was taken this morning, and there was a string of callers (the usual suspects if you listen to all public testimony about the PFD) in favor of a full PFD using the formula in statute. So, where does it go from here? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Unless the topic of restructuring our oil tax credits comes up, we’re doomed to fight between basic services like education, transportation, and health care and the PFD which keeps 20,000 Alaskans out of poverty every year. It’s a bad hard choice, and also a false choice, because this year we’ll allow the most profitable corporations in the world to keep $1.2 billion of Alaska money that otherwise would conveniently fill our $1.2 billion budget hole. We don’t actually have to decide between poor folks who use the PFD to scrape by and basic government services we all want and need. But SB14 which would repeal those credits is going to have to wait until next session. At the moment it’s locked in the Senate Resources Committee and being held there. Unless that committee hears from you, it’s likely to die there and we can look forward to the continuation of this untenable battle. Here are the people who decide if we have this discussion.

SPECIAL DELIVERY

If you’d like to keep tabs on all the goings-on without having to pore over newspapers and websites from across Alaska and the nation, no worries. You’ve got me! Every weekday morning I’m up at the crack of down compiling the latest headlines and interesting opinion pieces into one handy email delivered right to your inbox. There’s also a breakdown of the important committee meetings, floor sessions, and opportunities to testify. If you want in on this sweet deal, all you have to do is subscribe to the PRESS CLIPS right HERE.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend. Remember what it’s all about, and while you’re enjoying family and friends, spare a moment to raise a glass in appreciation to those who lost their lives in service to the country.

Jeanne