AG says he recused himself from dealing with public money for private schools

Attorney General Treg Taylor has officially recused himself from deciding whether there is a constitutional loophole to allow public funds to be spent on private schools, the Alaska Beacon reported Monday.

Five days after Taylor’s wife sent out a press release saying that public funds can go to private schools through a bill pushed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy when he was a legislator, Taylor recused himself.

The Taylors plan to seek $8,000 from the state in the next school year to reimburse themselves for private school costs.

On May 21, Taylor signed a document allowing his deputy, Cori Mills, to take the lead on developing a state position on the legal questions. His wife’s press release was first published May 16.

The Beacon said the department issued a press release Monday, quoting Treg Taylor as saying, “I want to ensure that there is no perception of bias in relation to the objective advice provided by the Department of Law on this issue of correspondence school allotments used to fund courses or tuition at a private school.”

There is little doubt that AG Taylor agrees with his wife and that Dunleavy agrees with Taylor’s wife and with AG Taylor that there is a way to circumvent the constitutional ban on using public money for private schools. As a school board candidate in Anchorage in 2011, Treg Taylor said he favored school vouchers in Alaska.

Back when he was a senator, Dunleavy championed the provision that is now under legal review by the law department. He also pushed for a constitutional amendment to allow the state to support private schools. That never passed, but a more limited measure won legislative approval in 2014.

In her May 16 press release, Jodi Taylor praised Dunleavy for getting the law passed that “allows a parent or guardian of a correspondence study program student to use the student’s education allotment funded from the Base Student Allocation to pay for classes at private schools, in addition to many other choices for accessing education.”

There are constitutional questions about the state law that have not been heard in court because the provisions have not faced a legal challenge.

The Alaska Constitution bans the use of public money for private schools.

In 2013, legislative lawyers told Dunleavy and his staff member, Bethany Marcum, that the matter is a complex one that would have to be decided by the Alaska Supreme Court. A key 1979 decision found that tuition grants for Sheldon Jackson University, a private college, were illegal under the Alaska Constitution.

Here is that 2013 legal opinion about the many questions regarding the matter, most of which remain unsettled.

In 2013, Dunleavy told a reporter for the Frontiersman about a hypothetical family in Fairbanks might benefit by being able to be reimbursed for tuition at the private Catholic school in Fairbanks.

“Let’s say Monroe Catholic is teaching a Latin course,” he said. “If a kid in high school, or correspondence, or even down the street at another school wants to take the Latin course, why can’t he?”

Dunleavy asked legislative lawyers in 2013 if it would be constitutional to give public funds to a student attending Monroe Catholic. They said it “appears to be prohibited,” although the courts would have the final say.