Dunleavy, House Republicans manufacture summer budget crisis

This Anchorage Daily News editorial Sunday accurately sizes up the budget mess created by Gov. Mike Dunleavy and right-wing Republicans in the state House.

The newspaper also has this good advice the governor and his friends will ignore: “Legislators should return immediately to Juneau and pass an effective date before July 1, sparing the state an embarrassing, fiscally damaging shutdown. Gov. Dunleavy should urge any holdout legislators to do their duty and approve that vote, and he should ratify the budget as soon as that’s done. This is the only way the state can have any hope that future special sessions this year — to deal with the dividend formula, the state’s long-term fiscal balancing act, or other priorities — will bear any fruit whatsoever.”

The Dunleavy legal strategy attacking a retroactive effective date for the budget is embarrassing. The claim by Deputy AG Cori Mills that the “best example” she could think of is to compare this to the folly of making a criminal law retroactive sounds like a lesson from the Dewey, Cheatem & Howe School of Law.

I disagree with one major claim by the Daily News, the assertion that "political parties and caucuses don’t matter right now."

Political parties and caucuses do matter right now, if we are to give proper credit where credit is due.

Credit the Republican governor and his right-wing Republican allies in the state House for the impending shutdown. Not all Republicans, but most of them.

Dunleavy could avoid the shutdown by following past practice in state government, but he wants a bigger Permanent Fund dividend as the foundation of his 2022 re-election campaign.

“Urge your legislators to vote no on this coercive budget,” Dunleavy said in a state-funded missive to his supporters last week.

He and 16 Republicans in the House are willing to shut down the state government because they have been unable to get a majority of legislators to overdraw billions from the Permanent Fund.

The 16 GOP representatives, leaders of the Anti-Math Movement in Alaska politics, are those who voted against the effective date of the budget as shown below.

Two members of the House minority, who came to this job with decades of effective management and budget experience in business and government—Reps. Steve Thompson and Bart LeBon—voted for the effective date.

The majority of legislators did the right thing. Sixteen Republicans voted for the Dunleavy shutdown, but the governor and his allies refuse to take credit for their actions. Twenty-seven “yes” votes were required on the effective date.

Your contributions help support independent analysis and political commentary by Alaska reporter and author Dermot Cole. Thank you for reading and for your support. Either click here to use PayPal or send checks to: Dermot Cole, Box 10673, Fairbanks, AK 99710-0673.