But members of the bipartisan majority in the Senate said that achieving further compromise would be difficult to do after the work lawmakers had done in the first half of the session.

Senate President Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican, said that the Legislature could consider one-time funding as a solution to provide school districts with the dollars they need, while setting the formula aside.

That is what lawmakers did last year, when they included $175 million in the state budget for schools, after failing to agree on a bill to add the increase permanently to the formula by the end of the session. Then, Dunleavy vetoed half that amount. An attempt earlier this year to override that veto was also unsuccessful.

“The irony is that with the downfall of this bill, you lose a lot of things that were priorities for the House majority and for the governor,” said Sen. Bill Wielechowski, an Anchorage Democrat who was a key negotiator on the education package. Republican priorities included the funding for home-schooled students and the provisions meant to increase the number of charter schools in Alaska.

“I don’t think this is the end of the education debate, but I think what’s probably likely to happen is they will have lost all of those things and in the end, we’ll probably just get a $680 increase (to the BSA), perhaps in one-time funding,” said Wielechowski.

Lawmakers in favor of the override effort said that even if the Legislature successfully acts by the end of the session to pass a comprehensive education funding bill, the governor’s veto all but doomed an effort by rural school districts to apply for federal funding to increase their internet speeds by the end-of-March deadline.

“I find it extremely distasteful that the rural children of our state are virtually held hostage over our squabbling over the Base Student Allocation formula,” said Sen. Bert Stedman, a Sitka Republican who voted in favor of the override. “I hope that they don’t lose a whole year of higher-speed internet connectivity.”

Rep. Justin Ruffridge, a Soldotna Republican, was one of four Republican House Majority members who voted in favor of overriding the governor’s veto, despite significant pressure from Republican and conservative groups to stand with the governor.

“I did not run for office to represent one person or party or special interest group,” said Ruffridge. “I was personally elected by the people of Kenai and Soldotna, and they have overwhelmingly told me this is a bill that they support.”

But some legislators suggested that the failure to override Dunleavy’s veto would heighten the governor’s ability to control legislative processes moving forward.

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