The Alaska Senate is moving closer to approving a state constitutional amendment that would lower the number of votes needed to override a governor’s veto of a spending bill. The House would also have to approve an amendment before it could go to a public vote on final approval. <\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the Senate State Affairs Committee passed Senate Joint Resolution 15, which would require two-thirds of the Legislature, or 40 votes, to override a spending veto, the same as the current threshold for vetoes of non-spending bills. The current spending-bill threshold is three-quarters of the Legislature, or 45 votes.<\/p>\n
If that amendment had been in place on Monday, it wouldn’t have changed the Alaska Legislature’s failure to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s decision to veto a multipart education bill, but Sen. Scott Kawasaki, D-Fairbanks and chair of the State Affairs Committee, said the amendment “sort of got legs because of what happened with the governor’s veto.”<\/p>\n
Sen. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage, proposed the amendment in February, and it was scheduled for Tuesday’s hearing last week.<\/p>\n
“We’re the only state in the country that has a three-quarter override threshold for fiscal matters. And I think two-thirds is more than enough,” Claman said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
He said it’s a good policy to examine whether the government is working well.<\/p>\n
The Alaska Legislature hasn’t overridden a governor’s veto since 2009, in part because of the fiscal threshold, which is the highest in the nation according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.<\/p>\n
In January, lawmakers unsuccessfully attempted to overturn Dunleavy’s 2023 budgetary vetoes. That vote was 33-26 and would have also failed under the proposed threshold.<\/p>\n
Enacting a constitutional amendment requires 14 votes in the Senate, 27 in the House, and approval by a majority of voters during a general election. Constitutional amendments are not subject to a veto.<\/p>\n
If the same number of House members who opposed the education-bill veto override vote also were to oppose the proposed amendment, they would be able to block it.<\/p>\n
SJR 15 has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee, which has not yet scheduled it for a hearing.<\/p>\n