Opinion ID: 2631894
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Is the Veto Power Substantially Irreconcilable with State Law?

Text: Having held that the municipality's veto power extends to the total amounts of school district budget and local appropriation ordinances, we must decide whether, as Long, Repasky, and the school district argue, state law impliedly prohibits that power. [60] The Municipality of Anchorage is a home rule municipality and therefore has all legislative powers not prohibited by law or by charter. [61] By contrast, a general law municipality is an unchartered borough or city [with] legislative powers conferred by law. [62] In deciding whether the state has limited the powers of home rule municipalities, we first look for prohibitions, not grants of power. Long, Repasky, and the school district do not claim that state law expressly prohibits the Anchorage mayor from having this veto power. Alaska Statute 29.20.270(c) expressly prohibits a mayoral veto of appropriation items in a school budget ordinance. [63] But this prohibition does not apply to home rule municipalities, [64] and therefore does not apply to the Municipality of Anchorage. [65] Alaska law does not expressly prohibit the municipality from conferring this power on its mayor. State law can also prohibit a municipality from exercising authority by implication such as where the statute and ordinance are so substantially irreconcilable that one cannot be given its substantive effect if the other is to be accorded the weight of law. [66] In general, for state law to preempt local authority, it is not enough for state law to occupy the field. [67] Rather, [i]f the legislature wishes to `preempt' an entire field, [it] must so state. [68] But in the context of public educationa field subject to pervasive state control [69] we have precluded even home rule municipalities from acting unless they were exercising power delegated by the legislature. [70] A home rule municipality cannot enact an ordinance which conflicts with a state education statute. [71] The relevant constitutional provisions are not determinative. One requires the legislature to establish and maintain a system of public schools. [72] Another expresses an intention to provide for maximum local self-government, and provides that [a] liberal construction shall be given to the powers of local government units. [73] Another provides that home rule municipalities may exercise all legislative powers not prohibited by law or charter. [74] Two statutes are of particular interest here. Alaska Statute 14.14.060(c) is important because Long, Repasky, and the school district argue that it impliedly prohibits the disputed veto power. Alaska Statute 29.20.270(c)(1) is important because the legislature made its express prohibition on vetoing appropriation items in school budget ordinances inapplicable to home rule municipalities.
Alaska Statute 14.14.060(c) gives assemblies power to determine and appropriate the total amount of local moneys for their districts' annual budgets. Repasky, Long, and the school district invoke this statute in making three main arguments to show that the state's pervasive authority over education precludes item vetoes of school district budget ordinances. First, they find it significant that AS 14.14.060(c) grants the assembly power in the school budget appropriation process, but says nothing of a mayoral role in that process. The school district finds the omission especially significant because two other subsections of AS 14.14.060 specifically grant authority to the municipal executive branch in education contexts other than the budget-approval process. [75] It consequently reasons that the Alaska legislature did not intend to give municipal mayors any role in the appropriation process described in AS 14.14.060(c). Long similarly argues that a mayoral veto would usurp the school board's authority and upset the legislatively created relationship between the school board and the assembly. She asserts that the state gave primary educational authority to the school board, a limited fiscal review power to the assembly, and no power to the mayor. Repasky asserts that a mayoral veto would interfere with the assembly's statutory role, a role which he characterizes as akin to a veto power over the school board's legislative actions. We are not persuaded that the absence of any reference in AS 14.14.060(c) to a mayoral role or veto is controlling. The statute gives municipal assemblies power to enact ordinances approving or reducing school district budgets. It does not try to describe comprehensively what happens after an assembly enacts an appropriation ordinance. Further, the statute addresses the legislative appropriation power. It does not give the assembly a veto-like power which might conceptually conflict with a mayoral veto or make a mayoral veto redundant. The Alaska legislature also would have recognized that municipal budget ordinances are legislative enactments which are typically subject to the veto or item veto power. Nonetheless, it did not prohibit exercise of the veto power in the school budget ordinance context in AS 14.14.060(c) or elsewhere in Title 14. It withheld that power in Title 29, but only as to non-home rule municipalities. [76] We think it is important that the legislature, which would have known that the prohibition in AS 29.20.270(c)(1) did not apply to home rule municipalities, did not address the veto issue in AS 14.14.060(c). If the legislature had intended to prohibit mayors of all classes of municipalities from vetoing school budget ordinances, it easily could have carried out that intention in AS 14.14.060(c). The existence of AS 29.20.270(c)(1) implies that the legislature did not consider AS 14.14.060(c) to preclude that veto power. And by making the express prohibition set out in AS 29.20.270(c)(1) inapplicable to home rule municipalities, [77] the legislature impliedly chose to let each home rule municipality decide whether to give its mayor the power to veto or reduce school district budget ordinances. The dissent contends that it was not necessary to make AS 29.20.270(c)(1)'s veto prohibition expressly applicable to home rule municipalities. [78] It reasons that AS 14.14.060 and .065 make it clear that no municipality (including a home rule municipality) could give its mayor veto power over assembly action on a school district budget. [79] But if this were so, the express prohibition in AS 29.20.270(c)(1) would be unnecessary for any municipality, home rule or not, because AS 14.14.060 and .065 would be all the prohibition needed. The specific prohibition in AS 29.20.270(c)(1) instead indicates that the legislature did not read AS 14.14.060 and .065 to prohibit such vetoes expressly or impliedly, [80] as to any class of municipality. [81] The issue here is really whether the veto power interferes with the role of the assembly, not the school board. The school board's power is at least partly legislative. [82] But the assembly's power to approve the total amount of the budget and appropriate the local source money is also typically legislative. That the Anchorage electorate, in adopting the charter and later amending it, chose to reallocate some of the assembly's legislative power by giving the mayor a veto power does not change the relationship between the assembly and the school board. And as between the school board and the municipality, the legislature chose to delegate the final budget approval power to the municipality. In effect, the municipality has allowed its mayor to share some of the assembly's influence over the amount appropriated. Doing so, in our view, does not detract from the school board's role in proposing a budget, [83] deciding how to spend amounts appropriated and setting educational policy, [84] or administering expenditures after appropriation. [85] We therefore conclude, as the municipality argues, that the authority granted to the assembly by AS 14.14.060(c) is subject to any veto power the mayor has over assembly actions. Citing the constitution, the municipality asserts that as a home rule municipality it may exercise all legislative powers not prohibited by law or by charter. [86] It contends that although the state has pervasive authority over education, it has not prohibited the municipality from exercising its legislative powers, including the mayoral veto power, in the field of education. We agree. Further, Repasky's first argument seems to rest in part on his assertion that the mayor was not unambiguously given this veto power. The same assumption may underlie the school district's contention that our decisions in Peninsula Marketing Ass'n v. Rosier [87] and Ross v. City of Sand Point [88] foreclose the municipality's argument. In Rosier we determined that the Commissioner of Fish and Game could not use the commissioner's emergency powers to veto decisions of the Board of Fisheries. [89] In Ross we held that a mayor could not override an employment decision of the city's grievance committee. [90] These cases are distinguishable from the present dispute because the executives there relied only on implied veto powers. [91] The executive in Rosier had no veto authority originating from another source. [92] And the mayor in Ross could not veto the grievance board's decisions because the city had not granted the mayor any veto power [93] when it created its personnel system as required by state statute. [94] The mayor's statutory authority to appoint, suspend, or remove employees [95] was not equivalent to a veto power. [96] In comparison, we concluded above in Part III.C that subsection 5.02(c) of the Anchorage charter granted the mayor power to veto the assembly's ordinances. Long, Repasky, and the school district cite two of our decisions, Tunley v. Municipality of Anchorage Sch. Dist. [97] and Macauley v. Hildebrand , [98] to support their contention that state law, particularly that found in AS 14.14.060(c), is substantially irreconcilable with this mayoral veto power. We held in those two cases that home rule municipalities had not been granted authority to act in educational policy matters delegated to the local school boards. [99] In one, a municipality attempted to impose accounting controls over expenditure of funds already appropriated for operating the district's schools. [100] In the other, an assembly attempted to determine which schools would be closed. [101] Both cases concerned operational and policy choices broadly delegated to school boards. And in both cases the municipalities' attempts to exercise authority did not arise from the limited authority the Alaska legislature had delegated to the municipalities. That is not the situation here. The legislature expressly gave municipalities the power to approve or reduce the total amounts of the proposed budget and local appropriation. The mayoral veto is not substantially irreconcilable with that power.
Second, Long, Repasky, and the school district argue that the process AS 14.14.060(c) describes and the schedule it contemplates would be incompatible with the delays mayoral vetoes would cause. They note that the statute provides that if the assembly does nothing for thirty days after receiving the budget, the budget proposal becomes the budget and local source appropriation. [102] The municipality responds that this simply means that local powers over the school budget are cut off after thirty days, and that AS 14.14.060 does not mean nor imply that during the allotted 30 day period the Municipality cannot exercise its home rule powers. We find the municipality's argument more persuasive. Alaska Statute 14.14.060(c) only addresses the appropriation process and does not undertake to describe all events that may follow the assembly's enactment of a school budget ordinance.
Third, reasoning that because courts do not read ambiguous legislation to reach absurd results, [103] Repasky argues that allowing this veto would lead to convoluted political consequences. He anticipates that an assembly might take no action on a school budget ordinance, leading to automatic approval, in order to deny the mayor a veto opportunity; he also anticipates that a mayor might veto the ordinance just before the thirty-day window expires, in order to prevent an override vote. Further, he claims that permitting a mayoral veto would require the school budget to clear hurdles never intended by the legislature. But we do not read AS 14.14.060(c) as intending to insulate school district budgets from local political influences. The statute makes it clear that the local appropriations for a school district are subject to municipal approval. Arguments that an item veto would be undesirable in the context of appropriations for the critical function of public educationbecause the veto is exercised without a public hearing, is exercised by only one person, and might not be successfully overriddenwould apply with equal force to most public appropriations. Those arguments generally implicate the item veto power; they do not assist in interpreting AS 14.14.060(c). Repasky and Long's arguments demonstrate that the mayor's veto adds an extra political element to the school budget process, but they do not establish that the veto power irreconcilably conflicts with Title 14. Other parts of the municipal budget are enacted by the assembly and are subject to a mayoral veto. [104] Allowing the mayor to veto the school budget ordinance puts the appropriation process on footing equivalent, but not identical, to that of other municipal budgets. The municipality's school budget is a large part of the municipality's expenditures and property taxes. The municipality argues that the school budget is growing faster than any other municipal expenditure and caused a fifty-one percent increase in property taxes between 1990 and 1998. [105] Such assertions explain the municipality's interest in exercising the appropriation power granted by AS 14.14.060(c). They also illustrate why home rule municipalities might choose to adopt an item veto power that encompasses school district appropriation ordinances. And they are consistent with the absence of an express or implied prohibition preventing a home rule municipality from sharing its legislative power with its mayor as a means of directly influencing the school budget and the resulting burden on local taxpayers.
State law does not expressly prohibit home rule municipalities from adopting this veto power. Education is subject to pervasive state control in Alaska. But AS 14.14.060(c) gives municipalities, not their school boards, the final word over the total amount of their school districts' proposed budgets. Only the school boards can decide how to spend the available funds, but the municipalities may limit the funds available. An item veto that only affects the total amount the assembly appropriates respects this limitation on the powers of the school boards. Alaska Statute 14.14.060(c) does not prohibit the municipality from delegating to the mayor, in the form of the veto power, part of the assembly's role in the process of approving the budget ordinance. Alaska Statute 14.14.060(c) does not address what happens after the assembly enacts an appropriation ordinance. It does not specify or imply a procedure that is inconsistent with a mayoral veto. And finding in AS 14.14.060(c) some implicit prohibition on this veto power would be inconsistent with AS 29.20.270(c)(1) and AS 29.10.200. Where possible, we construe sections of a statutory scheme to be consistent with one another. [106] We therefore hold that allowing a mayoral veto over the school budget does not irreconcilably impede the purposes of Title 14. Contrary to the dissent's argument, [107] we are not favoring the constitution's home rule clause over its public education clause. We read Titles 14 and 29 of the Alaska Statutes to allow home rule municipalities to permit their executives to apply the item veto power to school budget ordinances. We thus adhere to a policy choice the Alaska legislature has already made. We consequently conclude that AS 14.14.060 and charter subsection 5.02(c) are not so substantially irreconcilable that one cannot be given its substantive effect if the other is to be accorded the weight of law. [108]