Alaska lawmakers overrode Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a bill intended to bolster the authority of the legislative auditor on Saturday, handing the governor a defeat with the first vote of a special session.
Along with an attempt to override Dunleavy’s veto of more than $50 million in public school funding, House and Senate leaders said the vote on Senate Bill 183 was a top priority for the special session. The state Constitution requires lawmakers to hold override votes within five days of reconvening.
The bill passed the Senate unanimously and by a 30-10 vote in the House. Lawmakers said it was necessary to address what the heads of the state House and Senate described as a “persistent pattern of obstruction within the senior ranks of Alaska’s Department of Revenue.” It came after a precipitous dropoff in revenue from so-called oil tax and royalty settlements, which the state negotiates with oil companies. In 2020, those provided $281 million for the state’s main savings account; in 2024, that number dropped to $3.1 million.
Legislative leaders said Dunleavy’s administration had not fully cooperated with an audit that seeks to examine the state’s collection of oil taxes by failing to produce a summary table outlining settlements that the governor’s administration provided as recently as 2019. Instead, in recent years, the administration has offered raw data that the legislative auditor said was unusable. The bill requires the administration to turn over information to the auditor “in the form or format requested.”
Dunleavy vetoed the bill, saying it raised constitutional issues. He said any allegations that the administration had acted unethically or illegally were “baseless.”
The Legislative Budget and Audit Committee earlier this summer authorized a rare use of its subpoena power to compel the administration to turn over the data lawmakers are looking for.
