Gov. Mike Dunleavy has once again issued an executive order to carve out a standalone Alaska Department of Agriculture, bypassing legislative inertia and aiming to consolidate agricultural policy under a single agency.
In a letter dated Aug. 1 to House Speaker Bryce Edgmon and Senate President Gary Stevens, the governor said he was exercising his authority under Article III, Section 18 of the Alaska Constitution to reorganize the executive branch. The order transfers agricultural duties currently housed within the Department of Natural Resources to the newly proposed Department of Agriculture. He already issued an executive order doing this on the first day of regular session in January, but by March the Legislature had met in joint session and disapproved it. Now he is at it again.
“The Executive Order will encourage the development of expertise, eliminate duplication of functions, and establish a single point of responsibility for state agriculture policy,” Dunleavy wrote.
The order moves key responsibilities — including those under Title 3 of Alaska Statutes — from DNR to the new department. The Alaska Board of Agriculture and Conservation would also shift to the new agency. Coordination between the DNR and the new Department of Agriculture would continue for land management, with both commissioners required to work jointly on classification, leasing, and sale of state agricultural lands.
The order also renames the Alaska Natural Resource Conservation and Development Board and adds the Agriculture commissioner as an ex-officio member.
When the governor resubmitted the order during the current special session, lawmakers refused to even accept it, sending a letter asserting that executive orders can’t be submitted during a special session focused on a separate topic. They did not even post his EO to the BASIS website.
Despite the pushback, there is no explicit prohibition in the Alaska Constitution preventing the governor from submitting such orders during a special session. And because the Legislature has recessed until August 19 — without officially rejecting the order — the 60-day review clock is ticking.
With no committee meetings scheduled during the window of August 19–29 and at least five senators excused for that period, it remains unclear whether the Legislature will act in time. If no disapproval vote is taken within 60 days of transmission, the executive order goes into effect automatically.
That opens the door for Dunleavy to move forward with the creation of the department unilaterally.
There is no clear purpose for the Legislature’s planned return on August 19. No bills are scheduled, no committee hearings are posted, and absent lawmakers are going to be a problem. In essence, Dunleavy appears poised to push forward with a significant reorganization of state government — not by legislative action, but by legislative inaction.
My only request of the Governor as he unilaterally creates the Department of Agriculture (which I strongly support) is that he select somebody other than the current division director as the new commissioner. Bryan Scoresby lacks the skills and abilities the new commissioner will need on day one.
Unfortunately I have to agree with you. Question is who to fill those shoes. Scoresby seems like a nice man when I’ve met him prior to his appointment to the Division of Ag. Unfortunately I’m not sure anyone at the Farm Bureau is a good fit. Need someone with nothing to loose, an open mind to enginuity and an Alaskan/sub-arctic way of growing food, and a backbone to fight with DNR, and fish and feathers for the space to expand agriculture in our great state.
Seattle has long controlled Alaska agriculture because it controls the price of meat. Alaska politicians do not allow enough COMMERCIAL ag land available to allow price for beef, pork and chickens at a level that can compete with Seattle prices.
Northern Canadian commercial ag feeds that whole country.
More State bureaucracy will not change this but elected officials are fed well in Juneau by Seattle Special Interests.
‘https://donnliston.net/2024/11/alaska-meat-packers-pig-in-a-poke/
About the only thing this legislature does is the wrong thing.
Voters need to remember at the polls.
Sounds to me like we’re all going to be share croppers for the state.
Forty acres and a mule. Great.
Asking for a lawsuit.
Odd way to operate Executive Branch.
Wrong again, Joe. Biden’s US Dept of Agriculture had some idiot little girl based in Alaska handing out free fish and other food to the villages. Another taxpayer’s burden to appease the rural Democrats who claim they deserve subsistence rights superior to all other Alaskans. Not only does rural preference subvert our constitution through racism, it shows how Democrats use the system to gain votes with handouts. Ask your friend Lisa Murkowski who she really works for. Dunleavy knows.
ps. Joe, grow up.
Great, another department for the legislature to waste money on.
I think you’re mistaken, it is Dunleavy who will be handing out a huge bloated paycheck to some crony to run the Dept of Agriculture.
So the Governor wants to “eliminate duplication of functions” by creating another department of state government, (with another Commissioner who will make a mint) to SHARE responsibility for “land management, with both commissioners required to work jointly on classification, leasing, and sale of state agricultural lands.”
FFS. And we wonder why these clowns in the legislature have no fear when (repeatedly) overriding his vetoes on education and tax auditing authority.
Maybe it’s because he isn’t for small Government except when it suits his longstanding public money for religious schools goals (as a senator he wanted to amend the AK constitution to allow it, then later decided choking the life out of AK public schools was a better first step) or enriches his political backers (gotta get his name back in the ring for a big federal appointment somehow…)
What happened to the party of Don Young and Ted Stevens?!? This guy and backstabbing Begich are really our present and future?
Who doesn’t love more cows and vegetables!?
Alaska wildlife
This is a setup to give Shelley something to run on.
She headed the thousand-member AG Task Force.
‘https://donnliston.net/2024/10/food-security-scam-hurts-alaskans/
Good theory Donn.
A very strange conflict between a Republican governor and a Republican legislature. It seems to show that their are personalities at work. That is rarely ever the case in other states where the Executive and the Legislature are politically aligned.
Did the governor rescind his administrative order 358? I would imagine it would be difficult to start a new department without creating new positions. If the positions already exist why is a new department needed?
It changes the authority the head of the division of Ag to a Commissioner of the Department of Ag. Goes from working for the Commissioner of Natural Resources to to being equals and having more influence.
Growing more government is not the answer.
What a failure of a special session by the governor. He needed to use the bully puplit and driven the news and agenda instead of weakly reacting. He needs to go. We need a fighter.
We need more farm land for more weed production for a more purple State.
Governor’s ahead of the curve here.
I’m at a loss as to what a ‘dept. of agriculture’ is for in a state where less than 1% of the entire state is privately owned and land prices prevent start up ranches or farms.
That would be a task the Department would have to advocate for in addition to leases of state and federal ground. This is the place and reason they could become more beneficial to the citizens as a department than as a division of DNR as they currently reside.
So this is the second state department created by this administration – so far. If creating an Alaska Department of Agriculture can generate an agricultural industry where there is none today, should we not create an Alaska Department of Oil and Gas (to get us back to 2 million barrels), an Alaska Department of Mining, an Alaska Department of Manufacturing, etc.? If we eliminate the department that hands out food stamps and Medicaid would that get Alaskans back to work?
Remember when we had a state agency formed to create movies? That was heavily subsidized by legislative appropriations of general fund dollars. Is the reason it failed that it was not a state department?
Did Matanuska Maid, the state-owned diary, and Governor Hammond’s grain industry fail because there wasn’t an entire department to support them?