Opinion ID: 2631894
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Effect of AS 14.14.060(c)'s silence about a mayoral role or veto

Text: 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.