Senate takes on Palin over budget vetoes

Senate leaders are challenging Gov. Sarah Palin's vetoes of $100 million in capital projects in last year's budget, but they're not using the usual - and difficult - process of overriding the vetoes.

Instead, they're taking the unusual step of resubmitting half those projects to the governor in the supplemental budget for the current year, usually reserved for unforeseen costs, such as ferry fuel increases and Interior firefighting costs.

That puts Palin in the uncomfortable position of again vetoing the most popular of the projects in a time of record surpluses.

Sen. Minority Leader Gene Therriault, R-North Pole, called the resubmission of the projects a "senseless political game."

A number of legislators last year were angered when Palin vetoed numerous projects around the state. The governor said the budget was growing too rapidly.

Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, said the growing budget surplus means the state now has the money to do the projects.

"These are items that are important to our communities," said Sen. Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, a member of the leadership of the Senate Bipartisan Working Group, the coalition that elected Sen. Lyda Green, R-Wasilla, as Senate president. Green and the working group have often clashed with the governor, a fellow Republican.

The vetoed project list has resulted in a testy exchange of letters and public statements between the governor and legislators, in which Palin called the resubmission of the projects "counterproductive."

"My understanding is the governor is very upset that it happened," said Sen. Kim Elton, D-Juneau, who is seeking three projects for Juneau.

He responded with a letter accusing the governor of failing to work with the Legislature in developing a sustainable budget and urging her to take a fresh look at the projects.

Elton also said the governor's staff has been meeting in closed-door meetings with individual senators, instead of making the governor's wishes known publicly.

Sen. Fred Dyson, R-Eagle River, who serves as the minority's only representative on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, disagreed.

Dyson said the backroom dealing actually came when the members of the Senate working group, which includes Stedman and Elton, created the project list without giving the Republican minority or the governor's office time to review it before it was voted on.

Elton denied that, but said he didn't know when Dyson or the governor's office were provided with the supplemental bill.

Dyson said he was given the 18-page spreadsheet partway through the meeting in which he was asked to vote on it.

Palin's director of the Office of Management, Karen Rehfeld, was also given the list and asked to comment on it at the meeting, said Russ Kelly, Palin's legislative director.

Dyson said members of the majority met together in a room off the Finance Committee room, then filed together into the committee and "voted like puppets" for the bill.

"I was embarrassed for the Senate," he said.

Sen. Johnny Ellis, D-Anchorage, tried to defuse the conflict, denying the Senate was "daring" Palin to veto the resubmitted project, and saying they were instead requesting she reconsider them.

The supplemental budget bill, Senate Bill 256, was passed by the Senate along majority-minority lines this week and is scheduled to be heard in the House Finance Committee Monday and Tuesday.

• Contact reporter Pat Forgey at 586-4816 or patrick.forgey@juneauempire.com.