Rep. Sara Hannan (D-Juneau) keeps a wagon full of peonies in her office at the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau on August 1, 2025. Hannan said the flowers came from a friend in Fairbanks, Kim Dunshie-Herning of Northern Lights Peonies, who Hannan said sent them as a reward to lawmakers who attended the special session. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Alaska lawmakers are set to convene in Juneau for a special session Saturday at 10 a.m., after Gov. Mike Dunleavy asked them to create a state agriculture department and adopt a slate of education policies.

Legislators in the House and Senate majorities say they likely will not consider Dunleavy’s proposals during the special session — asserting that’s either because they already found them untenable or because they determined that the policies require additional consideration than can be afforded during a 30-day special session in August.

House and Senate majority lawmakers say that the special session could last just one day.

Leaders of the House and Senate say their top priorities are two veto override votes: one concerning roughly $50 million in education funding that Dunleavy vetoed from the state budget; and another concerning a bill that seeks further review of the state’s oil and gas tax revenue, which Dunleavy vetoed last month, causing lawmakers to raise concerns over whether the Dunleavy administration was leaving potential revenue on the table.

As lawmakers began traveling to Juneau on Friday, some said they had already booked a flight out of Juneau for Saturday evening, while others were keeping their options open.

House Majority Leader Chuck Kopp said Friday that he bought a one-way ticket to Juneau and was prepared to stay 30 days if necessary, though he did not expect the session to last that long.

House Majority Leader Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage, waits to board a flight to Juneau at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport on August 1, 2025, a day before a legislative special session is set to begin at the Alaska State Capitol. Kopp said he was prepared to stay for weeks but expected the session to be shorter than that. (Marc Lester / ADN)

“My expectation is we could easily be there for a week or two weeks,” said Kopp, an Anchorage Republican. “My advice to my colleagues was to be prepared to stay for the entire session, and to do all the work that’s in front of us.”

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While lawmakers remained uncertain about how the session would progress — including whether they would be successful in overriding the governor’s vetoes and whether they would take any time to consider his policy proposals — Dunleavy derided the Legislature for not taking his proposals seriously,

“There are reports that legislative leadership plans to hold at least two veto override votes before gaveling out and departing the capitol building for the airport,” Dunleavy wrote in a statement on Friday.

“That is a shame,” he said.

Dunleavy added that “some lawmakers don’t seem to care. If they do, they wouldn’t squander every opportunity they’ve had to continue that improvement in other core areas like mathematics and writing.”

Gov. Mike Dunleavy participates in an onstage interview as part of the Arctic Encounters Symposium at the Dena’ina Convention Center in Anchorage on July 31, 2025. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Lawmakers in the House and Senate successfully increased the state’s per-student funding formula in May, for the first time since 2017. After Dunleavy vetoed their bill, they overrode him with support from 46 out of 60 lawmakers, marking the first time in years that lawmakers overrode the governor.

The move by lawmakers was celebrated by districts, which said the funding was critical. But Dunleavy then vetoed funding directly from the budget, saying the state couldn’t afford to spend it due to declining oil prices. He later said that if lawmakers agreed to his policy demands, he would agree to reinstating the funding.

School funding

School administrators across the state say that a lack of per-student funding increases have forced districts to shutter programming, neglect urgent building repairs, grow class sizes, and contend with staffing vacancies.

In his statement, Dunleavy said Friday that “the state has increased K-12 public education funding by more than $1.5 billion” during his tenure. When asked about the source of the figure, a Dunleavy spokesperson pointed to a document that summed every education budget item approved by lawmakers outside of the base formula, including eight years’ worth of school maintenance and construction funding, and $621 million in federal coronavirus relief funding.

Fairbanks North Star Borough Superintendent Luke Meinert said in a press conference in Juneau on Friday that if the state’s education funding had kept up with inflation, the district would have a multimillion dollar surplus. Instead, it has a deficit, he said, despite closing multiple schools and eliminating hundreds of staff positions.

“We’ve been forced to make painful cut after painful cut,” Meinert said.

Lawmakers who support overriding the governor’s veto of education funding say that without the funding, schools in their districts will suffer.

Rep. Calvin Schrage of Anchorage talks outside his office at the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau on August 1, 2025, a day before the start of a legislative special session called by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Dunleavy said his policy proposals, which include establishing a new way to authorize charter schools, paying recruitment and retention bonuses to Alaska teachers, and allowing students to enroll in schools outside of the district in which they reside, will improve student outcomes in Alaska, where students regularly rank at or near the bottom of the nation in reading and math assessments. But Meinert and other administrators say that schools cannot afford to take the steps needed to improve student performance.

‘Up to the Legislature’

Lawmakers tried to preempt Dunleavy’s criticism over their disinterest in taking up his policy proposals during a special session by detailing their plans to take up similar proposals during the regular session that begins in January.

A bill adopted by lawmakers earlier this year created an education task force that is set to review a variety of proposed education reforms, including ones sought by the governor. That task force is set to hold its first meeting later this month, and lawmakers say it would be inappropriate to adopt the governor’s proposals until the task force reviews them.

Legislative leaders also say they are open to creating an agriculture department but plan to vote on the proposal during the upcoming regular session, beginning in January, rather than during a special session.

“The legislature is a slow deliberative process. So calling a special session and saying ‘do it now’ when you’ve got the wheels in motion to address those — I don’t know that we’re going to change directions real quickly,” said Rep. Sara Hannan, a Juneau Democrat.

In a brief interview Thursday, Dunleavy said that the length of the special session is “up to the Legislature.”

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“I get to call them in, they get to gavel out,” he said. “But we have important issues with education that we really want to get dealt with now so we can improve our outcomes. I know some in the Legislature just want to go in, do an override just for money, and gavel out. But that’s going to put things back on the agenda here in an election year, and we’ve got too many other things to work on, so this an opportunity, I think, for our Legislature to really work on great policy.”

When Dunleavy called the special session last month, he requested House Republican minority members not to attend the first five days of the session in order to thwart majority members’ efforts to override his vetoes. In the days that followed, several of Dunleavy’s allies said they would heed the governor’s request and refrain from traveling to Juneau during the beginning of the session.

But Dunleavy earlier this week said he would be in Juneau for the beginning of the session, and several of his Republican allies announced in short order that they would travel to Juneau for the first day of the session, as well.

Among the Republican minority members who vowed not to override Dunleavy are Rep. Jamie Allard of Eagle River, Rep. Kevin McCabe of Big Lake, and Rep. Cathy Tilton of Wasilla, Rep. Sarah Vance of Homer, Rep. Rebecca Schwanke of Glennallen, and Rep. George Rauscher of Sutton.

Under the state constitution, lawmakers have five days to override the governor’s vetoes once they convene. Though House Speaker Bryce Edgmon and Senate President Gary Stevens have said they will prioritize two vetoes for override attempts, several others are on the line.

The governor has nixed $25 million in school maintenance and construction funding and $6 million for infant learning programs. He also vetoed bills aiming to prohibit predatory lending practices and to bolster a commercial fishing loan program, among others.

Stevens previously said other overrides could be considered if the first two are successful.

The Alaska constitution sets what are among the highest thresholds in the nation for overriding a governor’s veto. To override a budget veto requires support from 45 out of 60 legislators. Overriding the veto of a policy bill requires support from 40 legislators.

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Daily News journalist Marc Lester contributed to this report.