State Legislative Actions: Alaska Veto Override Attempt and Utah Veto Standoff

Two distinct state legislative matters were reported. In Alaska, lawmakers convened to attempt to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy's veto of a pensions bill described as addressing a decades-long issue; the same report noted gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins selected Anchorage Assemblymember Zac Johnson, an independent, as his running mate for lieutenant governor, and that Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom announced she would not seek a place on the August primary ballot for governor. In Utah, the Legislature had a deadline of May 6 to convene a veto override session targeting Gov. Spencer Cox's vetoes, but legislative leaders chose not to pursue an override. In the Utah case, Senate President J. Stuart Adams and House Speaker Mike Schultz stated they would instead pursue what they described as constructive dialogue with the governor. One specific piece of vetoed legislation named in the Utah report is a Judicial Amendments bill that would grant the governor and the state Senate authority to select the chief justice of the Utah Supreme Court; talks on this bill were reported as ongoing. The Alaska report did not specify the outcome of the veto override vote on the pensions bill, only that lawmakers had convened to attempt it. The current status of the Alaska pension veto override attempt is not confirmed in the available reporting, leaving the outcome of that vote unresolved. Similarly, the ultimate resolution of the Utah Judicial Amendments bill dispute remains unconfirmed, as talks were described as continuing rather than concluded. Because these two reports describe unrelated events in different states, no claims from one can be corroborated by the other; each fact above is supported only by its single respective source, and the two-independent-source threshold was not met for any individual claim.