News-Miner opinion: Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s appointment of former Alaska Republican Party chief and political ally Tuckerman Babcock to the University of Alaska Board of Regents is, at best, troubling. There are questions about whether Babcock’s appointment followed the law and there are concerns it replaced a Fairbanks regent on the board with Babcock, a Soldotna resident. Fairbanks, after all, is home to the university’s flagship campus and should have strong representation on the board.
By law, members of the 11-member board established by the state constitution are responsible for University of Alaska system policies and management. They are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature. The law governing all the machinations, Alaska Statute 14.40.150, is clear.
The law says regent appointees must be confirmed by a majority of the Legislature in joint session. Their names must be sent to lawmakers for confirmation or rejection within five days of the session’s start. If rejected, the appointment ends and “the name of another person shall be submitted within three days after the rejection.”
If the Legislature adjourns without action, or if there is an interim vacancy, the governor “may appoint a qualified person to fill the vacancy and the term of office of the appointee expires on the fifth day of the legislative session following the appointment.
Babcock was tapped after Dunleavy’s appointment of Bethany Marcum was rejected by the Legislature in a 31-29 vote, the only one of scores of Dunleavy nominees for Cabinet, board and commission posts not approved.
Marcum, a former aide to then-state Sen. Dunleavy, was director of the conservative nonprofit Alaska Policy Forum and backed Dunleavy’s 2019 budget that slashed university system funding by a whopping 40%. Marcum also faced vocal opposition for her role on the five-member Alaska Redistricting Board. The Alaska Supreme Court last year ruled the board engaged in unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering.
All that provided ample ammunition for her detractors. Four Republicans joined with nine Democrats in the Senate to sink her appointment. That was May 9. Almost immediately after her rejection, Dunleavy reappointed Marcum to the redistricting board post she left when he appointed her to the Board of Regents.
Lawmakers rejected her confirmation May 9. State law would indicate Dunleavy had three days to pick another person for the regents’ post and give their name to lawmakers. That would have given the Legislature, which not did adjourn until May 17 and then gaveled in for a one-day special session, plenty of time to confirm or reject Babcock. That did not happen.
Instead, Dunleavy waited until May 31 to make the recess appointment.
It is difficult to imagine Babcock, Dunleavy’s first chief of staff and long a staple in Republican state politics, ever being confirmed by the Legislature for a variety of reasons. He was part of Dunleavy’s taking an ax to the UA budget, and he demanded loyalty pledges to the governor from state employees, an action ruled illegal by a federal court in 2021.
Moreover, there is an obvious elephant in the room, the question of whether his is even a legal interim appointment because the clear process laid out in law was not followed. Is the appointment then illegal and vacated? Who, if anyone, could order it vacated?
It is unclear whether the governor, in appointing Babcock, was sticking his political thumb in the Legislature’s eye for rejecting Marcum, or why the law was not followed, but his action has prompted serious questions.
