Gov. Mike Dunleavy has canceled a bipartisan proposal that would have allowed rural school districts to maintain teacher housing with money from the state’s rural schools fund.

House Bill 174, from Rep. Robyn Niayuq Burke, of Utqiagvik, passed the House and Senate with a combined 54 yes votes among 60 legislators.

The vote count led lawmakers to raise the possibility of overriding the veto.

Burke, reached by phone on June 26, said that when she heard about the veto, she immediately sent a text to the group chat shared by members of the House’s coalition majority.

“The response was, yes, let’s override,” she said.

It would take 40 votes from the 60 members of the combined House and Senate to override the governor’s decision on HB 174, and a vote isn’t expected until the Legislature convenes in January.

If enacted, HB 174 would allow small school districts to use the state’s Regional Educational Attendance Area fund for major maintenance at district-owned housing.

It would also allow Mount Edgecumbe High School, the state-operated boarding school in Sitka, to use the fund for major maintenance. Currently, the high school is maintained using funds from the Alaska Department of Transportation.

In his veto message to the Legislature, the governor said that enacting HB 174 would diminish the equity across school districts “and commits the state to a local housing obligation, diverting already scarce dollars away from critical classroom repairs and complicating grant rankings.”

Burke said the veto wasn’t a surprise and that the governor’s legislative office had tried to reach her about the bill, but that meeting didn’t take place before the legislative session ended.

Burke is a graduate of Mount Edgecumbe, as is her mother, grandmother and grandfather. Other lawmakers have tried to advance HB 174-like legislation in prior legislative sessions, without success.

In 2024, a similar bill passed the Senate but died in the House Finance Committee.

“I’m sure they’re pretty disappointed,” Burke said of the bill’s advocates, “because they’ve been working on that for quite a while. I’m frustrated, disappointed, not surprised, and will look forward to overriding it.”

The Alaska Beacon is an independent, donor-funded news organization. Alaskabeacon.com.