Suzanne Downing: Governor shouldn’t try to play nice with this legislative majority. They don’t play nice.

By SUZANNE DOWNING

May 22, 2026 – For the past decade in Juneau, education funding was the sun around which everything else orbited. If you listened to the public narrative crafted by Democrats, nothing else mattered. Every debate, every press conference, every budget fight eventually circled back to the Base Student Allocation. Raise the BSA. Permanently raise the BSA. Raise it again. If you weren’t talking about education funding, you clearly didn’t care about children.

This year, education lost its spot as the prettiest girl at the dance.

The new belle of the ball was defined benefits. And trailing closely behind was her sister, “new revenue,” which is Juneau-speak for taxes, taxes, and more taxes.

Different casual caucuses formed around different priorities this session. There were gasline legislators. Capital-spending legislators. PFD legislators. Defined-benefits legislators. Education legislators. It became a strange patchwork of competing interests and transactional politics.

Education dropped lower on the priority ladder, but it never disappeared. It simply became one more interest group feeding at the trough instead of the singular moral cause around which the Capitol revolved.

Take Rep. Chuck Kopp, the House majority leader. Last year, his energy was focused heavily on permanently increasing education spending through a larger BSA. This year? Defined benefits became the centerpiece — the only centerpiece. The priorities shifted with the political winds.

But trying to make everybody in the education caucus and unions happy, lawmakers still shoveled enormous amounts of money toward education in every imaginable direction.

In the capital budget alone, there is roughly $150 million for education-related projects, deferred maintenance, and one-time spending. Anchorage alone received a couple million dollars in reimbursements for projects already completed. In practical terms, that means Anchorage now has a couple million dollars freed up to spend elsewhere … however it chooses.

That $150 million was a major priority for some members of the Senate majority, who favored disproportionate education-related capital spending even while the state faces long-term enrollment decline and the need to close campuses.

They also layered on roughly another $100 million above last year’s BSA increase, outside the normal funding formula, through one-time spending.

Then came another roughly $100 million in a fuel trigger for school districts. Notice something interesting here: There is no comparable fuel bonus for state agencies. Schools got special treatment.

The money is fungible: When government frees up money in one bucket, it can be shifted somewhere else. Everybody in Juneau understands this. Nobody says it out loud, but there is always a nod and wink accompanying these appropriations.

Then lawmakers supercharged community revenue sharing.

There is $50 million for FY27 and another $30 million layered in. On top of that, legislators pulled $37 million out of the commercial passenger vessel fund and distributed it to coastal communities.

So now roughly $80 million goes broadly to communities statewide, while coastal communities get another $37 million bonus on top.

Again, the money is fungible. Local governments can redirect their own dollars elsewhere, including toward schools. Anchorage, for example, also received $15 million in the capital budget for the Port of Anchorage. Every time the state absorbs one local expense, local governments gain flexibility somewhere else.

Education funding may not have dominated the headlines this year, but the spending is still everywhere once you follow the money trail.

Meanwhile, Alaska is experiencing demographic realities the Legislature rarely wants to discuss honestly. We have fewer children. Smaller families. Young families leaving the state. Entire districts facing enrollment decline.

But when oil prices ticked upward, lawmakers did what lawmakers do: They spent the extra money. A lot of it. And much of it eventually circled back to education, directly or indirectly.

Now Gov. Mike Dunleavy faces the familiar June veto season. If he intends to keep annual government growth near the 1% level he has maintained during his administration, he will need to find roughly $200 million in cuts.

Under former Gov. Bill Walker, annual spending growth averaged roughly 6%. Under Dunleavy, the slower rate of growth, under the rate of inflation, has saved the state over $3 billion, according to Institute of Social and Economic Research at UAA.

The governor has until about June 15 to make his veto decisions.

Here is the political reality: He should not try to play nice. The Legislature certainly didn’t.

Dunleavy gave lawmakers what may have been the best bargain they were ever going to get: Defined benefits in exchange for getting the gasline tax framework across the finish line. Legislators blew it apart anyway.

So now comes the annual ritual where everyone pressures the governor to avoid confrontation, avoid hard vetoes, avoid bruised feelings. Why?

A reminder: This Legislature does not operate on niceness. It operates on leverage, factions, pressure campaigns, and transactional politics.

The governor would be foolish to believe there is some grand bipartisan goodwill waiting for him if he simply signs enough spending bills and trims softly around the edges in exchange for the gasline legislation.

They don’t play nice. And he shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

Suzanne Downing is founder and editor of The Alaska Story and is a longtime Alaskan.