2 days ago
Local officials warn of possible lawsuit in wake of Alaska governor's education funding veto
Then-Rep. Grier Hopkins, D-Fairbanks, speaks on the floor of the Alaska House, Wednesday, May 18, 2022. Hopkins is now the mayor of the Fairbanks North Star Borough. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
One day after Gov. Mike Dunleavy made a precedent-setting veto by cutting funding for the state's public school education formula, a group of city and borough leaders denounced the decision during a joint news conference, with some saying that they expect a lawsuit to challenge it.
'Everybody needs to start talking about what a lawsuit looks like,' said Rozlyn Grady-Wyche, a member of the Mountain View Community Council in Anchorage.
Caroline Storm, of the Coalition for Education Equity, has been talking about a lawsuit for more than a year. On Friday, she said the coalition 'will file or be a partner in a lawsuit before next session, because it doesn't seem that between the Legislature and the governor, that they are capable of meeting their constitutional obligation to adequately fund public education.'
State lawmakers this year voted for a bill that increases the base student allocation, core of the state's per-student funding formula, by $700 per student, overriding a Dunleavy veto in the process.
But that formula is subject to the state's annual budget process, in separate legislation. If the formula is a bucket, the budget decides how full that bucket is.
Until now, lawmakers and the governor have filled that bucket to capacity each year. This year, one of Dunleavy's vetoes took $200 per student from that bucket, cutting about $50.6 million statewide.
For municipal officials, it's a significant problem because the ordinary local budget process is over, meaning that they will have to reopen their budgets and make additional cuts to public education.
In some cases, those cuts will come atop school closures — including in Fairbanks, Anchorage, Kodiak and the Kenai Peninsula Borough — and other cuts that were already planned.
'It's a crisis for our state, and that's why we're all here today,' said Fairbanks North Star Borough Mayor Grier Hopkins during the joint news conference.
On Thursday night, the Anchorage School Board voted to implement an immediate hiring freeze while it addresses the veto.
The board had budgeted for a $560 BSA increase, thinking it was being cautious. Now that there's a $500 increase instead, ASD facing a $4.3 million budget gap.
'I cannot even imagine where $4.3 million is going to come from,' said Margo Bellamy, vice president of the ASD board.
Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche, R-Soldotna, said the veto has a 'fairly significant impact' in his borough, where voters may be asked to pick up the slack.
'This is essentially a tax shift. It's the state not meeting a constitutional expectation requirement, if you will,' he said.
Penny Vadla, treasurer of the Kenai Peninsula Borough school board, said the impacts in her area will be largest in sparsely populated places.
'We're closing theaters, we're losing library aides in some places where that means that library in a small school will close down,' she said. 'The impact on larger schools is that they might become larger without the capacity to put more students in that building.'
State legislators could override Dunleavy's cuts, but Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, and Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, said they don't expect that lawmakers will be available until the 2026 Alaska Legislature begins in January.
'I'll certainly be getting on my phone and hitting the streets to urge our legislators here, in the borough, the Interior delegation, to override the veto,' Hopkins said.
Micciche was critical of legislators' slow pace.
Before becoming mayor, Micciche served as Senate president. Lawmakers, and particularly the presiding officers of the House and Senate, should have already scheduled a special session to consider a veto override, he said.
'You knew that there was going to be a second swipe by the governor,' Micciche said.
If the Legislature stays on the sidelines, that would leave legal action as the only recourse for Alaskans seeking a quick reversal of the governor's action.
Any legal argument is expected to revolve around the question of whether or not the governor's veto violates the Alaska Constitution's education clause.
'The Alaska Constitution clearly states that the legislators shall, by general law, establish and maintain a system of public schools open to all children of the state, so that language creates a constitutional obligation to provide adequate and equitable public education,' said Grady-Wyche.
'If the state fails to meet this obligation by consistently underfunding schools, closing essential programs and/or making access inequitable across regions, it can be legally challenged in court,' she said.
Storm, of the Coalition for Education Equity, has been watching the governor and Legislature closely for years and talking with other education groups in the meantime. The coalition is a nonprofit that has successfully sued to increase state school funding in the past.
Storm said she sees a national pattern at work, with conservative and limited-government groups and officials attempting to favor charter schools over traditional public schools.
'This is a coordinated attack on public education as a whole, as part of a national trend, or as Project 2025 — one hundred percent — and parents need to really start thinking about what's going to happen when public education goes away, and what that means for their kid, because it's not going to be pretty,' she said.
Storm wasn't in the news conference with municipal officials, who focused on the local consequences of funding — or not — public education.
Micciche, who said he's 'not a courtroom guy,' cautioned that any lawsuit comes with risks: What happens if the plaintiffs lose?
'You can get a ruling; it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get an outcome,' he said.
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