Dunleavy dithers on whether he should call off special session

Gov. Mike Dunleavy is considering calling off the special session he called for August 2, based on comments he made in phone calls to Senate President Gary Stevens.

Stevens told the Anchorage Daily News about Dunleavy’s dithering.

This is a chronic condition for which there is no known cure.

The special session is supposed to be about education, but the leader of Alaska’s Golden Age doesn’t have special anything to offer.

As usual, Dunleavy’s non-spokesman refused to say anything of substance.

“In response to several questions about whether Dunleavy was considering calling off the special session, his spokesperson Jeff Turner said in a email only that Dunleavy ‘is having discussions with the Senate president about the policies that will be taken up in the special session,’” the Daily News reported.

Dunleavy called the special session as part of a scheme to prevent the Legislature from overriding his vetoes by asking his allies to refuse to show up for work for five days so they won’t be present to vote on vetoes.

Even by Dunleavy’s standards, this is a dumb ploy. And any Republican slow enough to listen to him about this will deserve all the bad publicity that will follow.

“Some Republicans aligned with Dunleavy on the issue, including Reps. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River, and Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, have said they will follow his wishes and stay away,” the Alaska Beacon reported.

Larry Persily has a good column on the perennially intransigent governor, a guy who has no clue about how to work with people who don’t share his point of view. He is also not a big help to those who do share his point of view.

Then again, Dunleavy doesn’t have anything new to present to legislators about education. The recycled talking points based on oversimplifying every element of the educational challenge is not new.

That he hasn’t released any of the items he wants legislators to study in advance is all that anyone needs to know about his continued inability to lead the state.\

SECRET MARKETING: The Dunleavy administration continues to keep its expensive Alaska marketing plan a state secret by failing to take note on the state website that the marketing website, created by a company run by Kevin Sweeney, has been set up to attract new business to Alaska. I wrote about this July 15. The state Department of Commerce still says on the top of its website that it has not hired a company to prepare a marketing plan, a claim that has been posted since 2023.

Commerce Commissioner Julie Sande doesn’t appear to be paying attention.

ADAM CRUM: The vast field of Republicans hoping to become the next governor is likely to include Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum and Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor. Crum has confimed he is leaving his state job August 8, but refused to say what he will announce that day.

If he runs for anything, he should explain, among other things, his role is launching a private investment fund while working as a state employee. I wrote about this on June 26 and again on July 2, when he did not show up for a New York Stock Exchange closing bell ceremony that he promoted for the venture.

He should also be held accountable for how the Department of Revenue misused the public records law to conceal unauthorized leave without pay by Crum in April.

There are many other issues related to Crum that deserve attention, including his responsibility for the food stamp fiasco and a plan to raise rates dramatically at the Pioneer Homes; the conflicts of interest generated by having a Crum family company take over services that had been performed by the Division of Motor Vehicles; the work Crum did to try to privatize the Alaska Psychiatric Institute; and his half-baked plan in 2019 to cut Medicaid by $700 million a year.

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