A state Senate committee has advanced a measure that would block an executive order giving the governor total appointment authority over the entire Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board.
State statute currently provides that House and Senate leaders appoint four members of the nine-member advisory panel.
The executive order removing legislative power to appoint members to the board is one of a dozen issued by Gov. Mike Dunleavy in mid-January. The orders, dealing with various state boards, will take effect unless the House and Senate meet in joint session before mid-March and vote to reject any of the orders.
The Senate Transportation Committee met twice last week to consider a measure that would block the governor and retain legislative appointments to the ferry board. At the Feb. 20 committee meeting, state Department of Transportation officials argued a board consisting entirely of governor-appointed members would be less contentious.
The Transportation Committee on Feb. 22 advanced the ferry board measure, setting it up for a vote if legislators agree to meet in joint session in the next three weeks.
The bipartisan Senate majority, comprised of 17 of the Senate’s 20 members, has been taking up resolutions to reject most or all of Dunleavy’s dozen orders. Many of the orders, including the one for the ferry system’s advisory board, give the governor more control over a policymaking body.
Dunleavy, in a Feb. 7 press conference, said having a ferry operations board fully in sync with the administration is why he issued the executive order giving him the authority to appoint all nine members, including replacing those with time remaining on their terms.
Referring to his order to take full control of appointing members to the ferry advisory board, Dunleavy said: “Are there some people that aren’t gonna like it? Of course.”
Department of Transportation officials referred to adversarial and awkward “dynamics” among current board members during their testimony at the Transportation Committee hearing on Feb. 20.
Juneau Sen. Jesse Kiehl questioned the philosophy of having an operations board designed to be in lockstep with the administration.
“I will say that over the last two-and-a-half decades or so I have often seen marine highway system leadership … blowing whichever way the wind blows on a given day,” he said at the Feb. 20 meeting. “Making tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of decisions, sometimes in ways that have turned out to be inefficient, sometimes in ways that have turned out to be failures. Quickly achieving alignment may not be in the best interest of the system at all.”
Jan Wrentmore, a 40-plus-year Skagway resident, testified at the Feb. 22 committee meeting that “the biggest enemy to the marine highway is changing political agendas.” Every new governor makes changes to the ferry system, she said, adding that a diverse board would help keep the marine highway “stable.”’
Dunleavy came under heavy criticism for his policies and actions related to the Alaska Marine Highway after taking office in late 2018. He proposed cutting the ferry system’s budget by two-thirds and appointed a task force to consider options including privatizing it. He subsequently vetoed large amounts of funding approved by the Legislature during his initial years, and more recently he has essentially proposed flat funding each year in his budgets.
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