House Bill 132 has passed through both sides of the Alaska legislature despite Governor Bill Walker’s threat of a veto.
House Speaker Mike Chenault(R-Nikiski) said legislative supporters of the bill are willing to meet with the governor if he were to bring forward a plan but it’s not within their feduciary responsibilities to hand over a blank check.
Senate President Kevin Meyer(R-Anchorage) added…
Sen. Meyer: “To clarify things a little bit, we did appropriate $200 million to AGDC, now that he’s changing the makeup of the AGDC board and appears to be going a different way, that has us concerned because we appropriated that money thinking here’s how it’s going to be used and we had a plan under House Bill 4. So we had a bill, we had a deliberate process, the public was involved we took public testimony and he seems to be going a different direction with AGDC and a different plan and there is no bill, there is no plan, there is no public testimony.”
Between the House and Senate the bill garnered 38 supportive votes, 2 away from votes needed to overturn the governor’s veto should it come to that.
Chenault was asked if he thought that furthered Governor Walker’s leverage…
Rep. Chenault: “I would love to have had 18-19 votes on the Senate side and I wold have loved to have had 30 on the House side. But I think that as we get into the process more and more, if he does veto it then we’ll be working not only with the members who voted yes but certainly talking to the members who voted no and trying to answer any issues that they might have as to why they voted the way they did. I’m not concerned with getting up to 40 votes.”
Both Meyer and Chenault said at this point they believe the governor will likely still veto the bill.
