Anchorage skyline (photo by Frank Kovalchek, Creative Commons)
LARGEST BUDGET IN ANCHORAGE HISTORY
The Anchorage Assembly raised property taxes by 5.3 percent on Tuesday night. At the same time, the Assembly passed the largest budget in Anchorage history, for the first time ever piercing the half-a-billion-dollar mark.
The new budget for 2017 is $509 million. It will cost homeowners hundreds of dollars more on their property tax bills.
Last year, the city over-collected property taxes by about $15 million. In late summer, the Assembly told taxpayers that they’d refund $5 million of the money, but wanted to hold onto it in case it was needed.
In 2016, Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, left, rallied for AFL-CIO President Vince Beltrami as he mounted an unsuccessful attempt to win a seat in the Alaska Senate.
Mayor Ethan Berkowitz cautioned last year that city should wait until the State Legislature resolved the state’s fiscal crisis before refunding over-collected taxes. By late fall, the money was spent and taxpayers didn’t get their rebate. So much for holding on to the money.
For the next property tax billing cycle, a home appraised at $400,000, which pays about $6,500 in property taxes now, will be taxed an additional $344. A $300,000 home will be taxed an additional $243.
Amy Demboski, an assembly member from Eagle River, last year offered amendments for some $4 million in property tax relief, but was outvoted.
Last night, she offered a less ambitious $1.6 million in budget reductions — to no avail. She and fellow Assembly member Fred Dyson were outvoted 9-2.
To address overtime at the fire department, which has been driving up the budget, Demboski suggested moving a $300,000 storm water study item over to help create a firefighting academy, so that 12 departing firefighters can be replaced. Otherwise, overtime will continue to mount due to laws requiring mandatory staffing levels.
The water study will likely lead to the creation of a new storm water taxing district, which would be a new revenue stream for the city.
The original 2017 budget was $499,218,718; $509 is the revised budget passed on Tuesday.
Rep. Chris Tuck, in this morning’s press conference, saying Alaskans are proud of his caucus’ passage of a state income tax.
EVEN YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY IS GOING TO BE TAXED
The Senate Majority’s StateIncome Tax Calculator has been used more than 60,000 times in the two weeks since it was released. By Alaska standards, it has gone viral.
Alaskans are getting a strong dose of sticker shock when they see how much they will owe. Everything from your paycheck to your pension and your Social Security check. Nothing is safe from the Walker-Democrat income tax — it taxes just about anything that moves.
But Democrat House Majority Leader and union representative Chris Tuck this morning returned to the wishful theme that Alaskans actually want an income tax. He opened up his caucus’ press conference this morning by telling reporters that Democrats in Juneau took over, took charge, and accomplished what Alaskans sent them there to do.
“They are also proud to see this coalition act,” he said.
But the evidence is not in Rep. Tuck’s favor. Alaskans do not support the Democrats’ income tax plan, which was designed by Gov. Bill Walker’s Revenue Department.
A recent poll conducted by the Alaska Chamber of Commerce showed that just 16 percent of Alaskans believe new taxes will be good for Alaska’s economy, and 62 percent believe adding new taxes would have a negative effect on Alaska’s economy.
Not surprisingly, the 16 percent supporting new taxes mirrors the number of registered Democrats in Alaska, which is 15.4 percent.
That leaves an overwhelming number of voters opposed: undeclared, nonpartisan, and registered Republicans — for a total of 78 percent of those voters — think more taxes are hurtful, not helpful.
It may be that as Alaskans learn more about the Democrats income tax plan, they become less supportive, which may be why the Governor and House Democrat Majority have not published a transparent explanation of how the income tax would impact Alaskans.
The Senate Majority, however, has created a tax calculator just for that purpose. They want you to know. Alaskans can easily see how much they would owe under the Walker-Democrat plan to fix the state’s budget. Join the 60,000+ voters who have already tried it:
The playground at Twin Lakes in Juneau is seen fully engulfed in flames in this photo taken from Egan Drive.
And it happened that two teenagers set fire to a beloved playground structure in Juneau — while a convention of about 40 fire and arson investigators was in the capital city.
Bad timing.
The fire and arson investigators are meeting this week for the 32nd annual Fire and Arson Investigations Training Conference, where they can re-up their certifications and get new ones. Those teens didn’t stand a chance. They’re now cooling their heels at the Johnson Youth Center.
Project Playground along Twin Lakes was an iconic playground village seen by nearly everyone who uses Egan Drive to get from downtown Juneau to the hospital, Lemon Creek, the Mendenhall Valley and beyond.
It’s been explored by thousands of children over its decade-long history, as a delightful, integrated set of play equipment that was also designed to be accessible to children in wheelchairs or walkers. It was an authentic place, and a point of community pride.
Built in 2007, the playground was a labor of love by volunteers, businesses, nonprofits, and the City and Borough of Juneau, involving more than 1,500 people and more than 17,000 hours, much of it volunteer hours. The fundraising portion of the project took two years. There was more than $1 million invested in the playground and volunteer groups took pride in power washing it and repairing it.
With the shredded rubber surface providing fuel to the fire, the playground was quickly engulfed, and burned to the ground just six weeks before its 10-year anniversary.
Mayor Ken Koelsch said that next week he and City Manager Rorie Watt will call a meeting of the original group who conceived of and spearheaded the playground, as well as anyone else interested in a discussion about how to rebuild it.
Meanwhile, Juneau has experienced a series of unexplained fires, including damage to a downtown business, and the burning of a dugout canoe in Indian Village, which is also downtown. There have also been at least two grass fires in uninhabited areas that had no obvious identifiable cause.
The teens who are now cooling their heels at the Johnson Youth Center are likely to have a lot to answer for.
Larry Zuccaro of Homer files petitions with Homer City Clerk Jo Johnson in March.
According to three city council members in Homer, Alaska, it’s not up to voters to decide if they are “unfit for office.” It’s up to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The three, who are facing a recall vote, have enlisted the ACLU of Alaska to help them sue the City of Homer over what they claim is an unconstitutional recall election scheduled for June 13.
Donna Aderhold, David Lewis, and Catriona Reynolds are facing the discontent of hundreds of local residents who signed recall petitions in March. The petitions said they were unfit to represent the city.
The council members had worked as a group to craft a resolution that would have made Homer a “sanctuary city,” where illegal immigrants would find safe haven from law enforcement. The effort was cloaked in secrecy and residents were surprised when they learned of it. Under local fire, the resolution was eventually watered down and it failed passage.
The “Sanctuary Three” didn’t stop there. They also worked to establish an official position for the City of Homer opposing the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota and support the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in its resistance against the project. Some Homer citizens felt the council members had “gone rogue” in trying to make the entire city weigh in on a project thousands of miles and several states away, for no good reason other than obsequious political correctness.
The ACLU, in a press release, said that the three have done “nothing more than exercising their free speech rights.”
But the citizens are also expressing their right — their right to vote people out of office. They gathered 437 signatures — far more than needed — on petitions to recall the three council members. The city clerk, after consulting with the city’s attorney, said the petition was strong enough to allow it to go for a vote. The law provides liberal language that supports the public’s right to remove lawmakers.
But the ACLU disagrees.
“Legislators have a well-established right, under the First Amendment, to discuss their views on local or national policy and it is good that they do. Such a right promotes public discussion and advocacy of issues of concern to our neighbors at all levels of government,” the ACLU wrote in a press release.
“Taking public positions and drafting legislation are activities every lawmaker has the right to do, even if there are people who disagree with them,” the ACLU wrote. “As a result, the certification of their recall petition both violates the constitutional rights of the individual council members and would send a dangerous message to all of Alaska’s elected officials that they dare not express opinions on public policy issues for fear of facing a recall effort from a motivated faction of voters.”
That’s troubling to Larry Zuccaro, who was involved in gathering the signatures needed for a special election.
“That is just how a Marxist would think. They’re telling us we don’t have a right to remove them? It’s basic — that we are only governed through our consent, and we’re simply following the legal process for removing our consent to have them govern,” said Zuccaro.
“This is much more troubling than just this Homer recall,” Zuccaro said. “If the ACLU is able to block the citizens from a recall, where does this end on the national level, that we no longer have the authority to recall our own council members? Who is going to decide these things — will it no longer be the public but the ACLU now determining our local politics? It would set a significant precedent.”
Sarah Vance of Homer was also concerned about the ACLU’s involvement, but even more so by the fact that three city council members are suing to keep their elected positions – and asking that the city pay their legal costs.
“These three council members chose to have the ACLU represent them in suing the city that they swore to defend,” she said. “They’re suing to keep their jobs. It’s an insult to me as a resident that they would not allow every resident an opportunity to state their opinion at the ballot box, but have instead chosen a lawsuit, and they want to use our tax dollars.”
Mike Fell, another supporter of the recall, wondered why the ACLU got involved in the Homer election. “It’s absurd that the ACLU would try to stifle the democratic process. That’s what they are supposed to defend.”
In fact, at the national level the ACLU has made it a top priority to fight against voter supression. “Apparently the Alaska ACLU didn’t get the memo,” Fell said.
The lawsuit states that there are insufficient grounds to claim that the three are unfit for office, as the recall petition alleges. And, of course, the three council members in question are also asking that their legal fees be paid by the city of Homer.
Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, founder of Gabby’s Tuesday PAC, is blocking legislation that would limit her political action committee that allows her to funnel lobbyist money to other lawmakers.
By WIN GRUENING, SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR
As the Alaska Legislature winds down to its 120-day constitutionally set window, most of us are focused on what is happening with the statewide budget and how it will impact our state and communities.
In other action, however, two legislative anti-corruption measures being considered deserve the public’s attention as well.
Win Gruening
The two measures concern campaign finance and potential conflicts of interest.
These two measures (SB 5, “An Act prohibiting certain groups from soliciting and accepting contributions,” and HB 44, “An Act requiring a legislator to abstain from taking or withholding official action”) are being sponsored along party caucus lines.
How and why this is may be instructive.
In 1996, the Alaska Legislature adopted a campaign finance reform law that banned contributions to elected officials and candidates from business and unions and capped campaign contributions at $500 per individual. The new law also limited contributions that candidates could receive from registered lobbyists.
After a federal judge struck this law down on constitutional grounds, a subsequent Alaska Supreme Court decision upheld almost all its provisions as constitutional — including the prohibition of out-of-district lobbyist contributions.
Fast forward to 2016. Republican House member Gabrielle LeDoux found a way around these rules by creating a new committee, separate from her campaign, called Gabby’s Tuesday PAC. According to Alaska Public Office Commission (APOC) reports, she then raised $13,365 last year, much of it from lobbyists out of her district, and transferred committee money to the campaigns of other candidates.
When the Democratic Party filed a formal complaint about the PAC last year, APOC subsequently ruled that the PAC was legal but shared concerns raised by the complaint that it could be viewed as a “loophole” to circumvent the campaign contribution limits in state law.
However, APOC felt obliged to apply the law as enacted and left the issue in the hands of the Legislature to change, if desired.
But now things have changed. Rep. LeDoux is now a member of the Democratic-controlled majority coalition in the House so it was left to the Republican-controlled Senate to take this issue on.
Accordingly, Sen. Kevin Meyer sponsored a bill, SB 5, to do just that. It prohibits lobbyists from making campaign contributions to groups headed by a lawmaker living outside their election district. It also prohibits contributions to these groups while the Legislature is in session.
Two weeks ago, SB 5 passed the Senate unanimously on a bipartisan basis 20-0 and was sent to the House. It remains to be seen whether Rep. LeDoux, now chair of the powerful House Rules Committee, will allow the bill to ever reach a floor vote.
Meanwhile, the Democratic majority coalition in the House set their sights on Sen. Meyer with HB 44, sponsored by Rep. Jason Grenn. That bill would require, among other things, legislators to abstain from voting on issues that could “benefit” their employers. This sounds reasonable until you realize that it is intended to apply to anyone employed in the oil industry — which clearly targets Sen. Meyer and Sen. Peter Micciche — who both work for an oil company.
HB 44 passed the House along mostly party caucus lines 24-15 and was sent to the Senate for their consideration.
But this is a slippery slope.
One could argue that fisherman shouldn’t vote on legislation affecting the fishing industry and lawyers shouldn’t vote on any legal issue such as, say, tort reform. Even though they are self-employed, theoretically couldn’t their vote benefit them significantly?
Alaskans understand that a part-time citizen legislature implies that legislators are expected and permitted to earn outside income and there should not be unnecessary burdens discouraging citizens from government service. Otherwise, our legislature would eventually be limited to government workers and citizens who are retired, unemployed, or independently wealthy.
Voters were completely aware of the employment of Sen. Meyer and Sen. Micciche when they were elected and chose them partly because of their knowledge and expertise in the oil industry among other things. Does it make sense they would be prevented from voting on matters affecting the industry? Should we also apply this to any legislator who is an employee (or spouse of an employee) of a company working in the oil patch? Where does it end?
Surely the purpose of Alaska’s campaign finance and ethics laws are to restore the public’s trust in the electoral process and to foster good government. But often creating new laws just creates more loopholes.
Why not just provide voters the facts and let them decide?
Win Gruening retired as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in 2012. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is active in community affairs as a 30-plus year member of Juneau Downtown Rotary Club and has been involved in various local and statewide organizations.
The Little Sisters of Jesus on Little Diomede in 1959. On the back of the photo it reads, “Diomede Island, Mary-Jo [Brin], Josephe-Alice, Odette, Damiene.” (From The Catholic Anchor)You might not have had the privilege of meeting Little Sister of Jesus Marie Josephe Brin, unless you spent time in Nome or Little Diomede. She spent most of her life ministering in the most remote reaches of America — Western Alaska.
Sister Mary Jo was the longest-serving Catholic nun in Alaska. Born on April 27, 1932 in France, she died April 15, 2017 in Anchorage after spending most of her life in service.
Sister Mary Jo Brin
Sr. Mary Jo arrived in the Territory of Alaska in 1959 just as it became a state. As a young nun who had just completed her novitiate training in Montreal, she was sent to Nome, where she was part of a small band of Catholic nuns who built themselves a cabin on Little Diomede Island over the course of three summers, hauled water, gathered berries, and practiced subsistence fishing, just as their Native neighbors did. They walked and prayed, healed, and served among the poor.
Sr. Mary Jo spent most of 60 years in Northwest Alaska in her ministry, learning subsistence skills from the women of King Island, Nome, and Little Diomede.
She was known as an expert skin sewer and helped sew walrus skins for skin boats. She learned to speak Inupiaq with the help of many Elders in the region.
The Little Sisters of Jesus was founded during World War II by Madeleine Hutin, who took the name Little Sister Magdeleine of Jesus. The original community of the religious sisters was in Touggourt, Algeria. Little Sister Magdeleine began by sharing the life of semi-nomads on the outskirts of a Saharan oasis.
Bt the 1950s the Little Sisters had a small group in North America and in the Arctic. Sr. Mary Jo’s dream was to live among Alaska Natives, as Little Sister Magdeleine had lived among the nomads of the Sahara, and share with them the love of Jesus. She brought her dream to fruition.
In 2014, the sisters had to leave Western Alaska and regroup nearer to medical facilities in Anchorage. Sr. Mary Jo needed nursing home care after experiencing cognitive problems. Her health rapidly deteriorated this month and she died surrounded by those who loved her on Easter weekend.
Three of the Little Sisters of Jesus are said to be living in the Anchorage Pioneers Home.
The ranking was determined by an assessment of hours worked, labor participation rate, and other factors.
We aren’t just working hard, we’re working harder than the rest of the United States.
As Alaskans, we display our work ethic as a badge of honor, pulling far more than our expected weight in our households and our communities. Of course, all our hard work isn’t only a reflection of our values, but is a matter of practical reality.
It should come as no surprise that Alaska has the fifth highest cost of living among US states, according to the Council for Community & Economic Research. Unfortunately, after adjusting for cost of living, Alaska ranks in the bottom 34 percent of states for household income. This high cost of living erodes our quality of life and diminishes our ability to save for the future.
Now, facing an imbalanced fiscal outlook, we are told that all our hard work is not enough and that it’s time to establish a new tax on Alaskan workers. Are we being asked to dig deeper in order to support a high functioning, efficient set of government services or are we simply propping up a wasteful bureaucracy in desperate need of overhaul?
One data point can be seen in our education spending. Alaska spends more per K-12 student than any state in the country outside of New York. Yet Alaska ranks 45th in school system quality according to this panel of national experts.
Further, despite real per-student spending having increased by over 70 percent over the past 45 years, Alaska’s SAT scores are actually 3 percent lower, according to the College Board. The increased spending, as structured, has not delivered.
These facts have not escaped this session’s Senate Education Committee. The group is working through SB 96 and other measures to improve upon the current system in ways that realize efficiencies while improving outcomes, including efforts that:
Increase access to virtual education
Redirect spend from administrative overhead to classroom instruction
Provide grants to local districts that realize budgetary cost savings, and
Explore the merging of schools that are too far below their capacity
Alaska’s budgetary number as a simple figure is impossible to understand without some context. Here are a few unfortunate facts related to the present size of our state budget:
Alaska has budgeted more annual spending per capita than tax headliners New York or California.
The 49th State ranks #1 in annual budget per capita nationwide.
Alaska has the dubious distinction of budgeting nearly $10,000 per man, woman, and child in total spend for this fiscal year.
The equivalent of over 43 percent of Alaskan’s household income is currently earmarked for State government spending, which is an unsustainable and irresponsible level.
The data make it clear that as Alaskans we’re already doing all that we can and perhaps more than we should to keep the heater burning, gas in the tank, and food on the table.
In spite of all of this, we’ve been told that Alaskans aren’t giving their “fair share.” Rather than a rush to add more burdens to Alaskan families, let’s make sure we are doing the hard work to make government more efficient and effective for those it serves.
Nicholas J. Begich III is a technology executive, entrepreneur, and investor. He serves on the board of MTA, Baylor University’s business accelerator LAUNCH, and committees of the Alaska Republican Party. Nicholas holds an MBA from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business with concentrations in Information Technology and Decision Support Modeling, and a BBA in Entrepreneurship from Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business. He lives in Chugiak with his wife Dharna Begich, Pharm.D, and their son, Nicholas IV.
It was about the bedbugs. And yes, it was about the cats.
Bedbugs, three cats, some possibly developmentally challenged children, a family of publicly subsidized renters, a too-lenient landlord and an eviction notice all ended up in a collision of perspectives before the Alaska Human Rights Commission.
The cats (and the bedbugs) won.
The 2013 case illustrates why it is important who is appointed to the Human Rights Commission. The questions that commissioners face are formally adjudicated, and the judgments they make have profound impacts on people’s lives. (The panel is considered “quasi-judicial,” but in fact it does make case law by its decisions.)
In this situation, which we’ll call Bedbugs vs. Common Sense, a family of six moved into a rental unit managed by an Anchorage man who had several rentals as his business. The man didn’t allow pets on his properties, but he made an exception for this family. He said they could have their one cat. The mom was evidently very persuasive.
But soon the one cat became three cats. The landlord didn’t like it but he didn’t work hard enough to get them to get rid of the cats. He told them that he had only approved one cat. But he didn’t document that he tried to force them to downsize their litter.
Then, when the apartment became infested with bedbugs, he asked them to take their cats to a vet and have them certified as vermin-free. Mitigation for bedbugs is costly and he wanted to be sure the infestation didn’t return. None of the other units had bedbugs and none of the other units had pets. He was deducing the two were connected.
What the mom did instead was to bring back a letter from a psychiatrist saying these cats were comfort animals that were necessary for the well-being of three of her four boys, who have been diagnosed with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Yes, that is now considered a disability — a mental disability.
Eventually the landlord said he wanted to remodel the unit from top to bottom and the family would have to move out. That’s when the mom took the case to the Alaska Human Rights Commission. She asserted he was picking on her kids’ comfort cats.
The commission found in favor of the mom. The family was allowed to stay, cats, bedbugs, and all. One member of the Human Rights Commission dissented, but she was outnumbered.
Drew Phoenix, in blue, is Gov. Bill Walker’s nominee for the Human Rights Commission. He is an LGBTQ champion. (Photo from Catholic Anchor newspaper)
THE ACTIVIST APPOINTEE TO THE HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION
In February, Gov. Bill Walker appointed a person to the Human Rights Commission who has stated very publicly and unequivocally that he is an advocate for the expanded rights of transgendered people — those who have switched from one gender to another.
This activist was once a woman known as Ann Gordon, a Methodist pastor in Baltimore, MD.
From accounts in church documents, Pastor Gordon was well-loved by her congregation. But there’s little trace of Ann before she went through hormone treatment, invested in some psychological counseling and various surgeries, and emerged as Drew Phoenix, a man. That’s not as important as the fact that he has stated that he wants to be the face of transgender rights. He is a cause-driven activist.
It’s also his business now. Phoenix works as a diversity consultant out of Fairbanks. For a couple of years he served as the executive director of Identity, the pro-gay advocacy group in Alaska.
Identity hosts events such as one coming up in May-June: Alaska Youth DRAG Workshop, “to create a community of support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth and their allies through the Art of Drag. The Workshop will be a 3 day…event celebrating gender expression, creativity, and performance. Through education, group activities, and socializing, we hope to empower the youth and further embrace themselves in order to be greater change agents in their communities. We will focus on character development, song choices, costuming, hair and make-up, and lessons in Drag Herstory. The third day will also end in a Variety Show, where participates will have the opportunity to share a performance with a live, all ages audience, during Pride Fest!”
Identity is very much an in-your-face group, and Phoenix is cut from the same cloth.
With Gov. Walker’s appointment and the approval of 31 members of the Legislature, Phoenix would be serving on the commission that would most likely make decisions about the gender-fluid world we are living in: Whether men should be allowed to use women’s bathrooms (or the reverse) and whether boys competing on girls’ sporting teams are playing fair. Whether a conservative Christian wedding photographer must take photos of a gay wedding, or a Muslim baker provide a wedding cake celebrating the union of the same gay couple.
Just as nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court are deeply vetted and examined about their beliefs and their past decisions, Phoenix should face scrutiny, because he has made activism his cause and he’s been stating his opinon on these matters for many years. He would bring a clear, self-avowed bias to the Alaska Human Rights Commission.
Must Read Alaska left a message for Drew Phoenix but has not heard back. It’s important that Alaskans know where he stands on the big issues he’ll likely face if confirmed. Right now, Alaskans don’t know for certain how he would judge issues, but a reasonable person can guess that based on his statements and his work as an LGBTQ activist and diversity consultant, he will favor sexual and gender identity rights over rights of faith.
And that’s a hill many conservatives will defend to the bitter end. It is a hill Phoenix must charge in his legislative confirmation process.
LAWS, REGS AND VOTER INITIATIVES
In Washington State, the Legislature didn’t act to open locker rooms and bathrooms to transgendered individuals, so the Washington Human Rights Commission there made the law through regulation.
In 2015, Washington guaranteed access to restrooms, locker rooms, and other such facilities according to an individuals sense of which gender they identify with, and that means all buildings, public and private.
In Anchorage, a two-year-old law on the books is being challenged by backers of a ballot initiative who want voters to decide whether people should use bathrooms according to what is on their birth certificates. The “Protect Our Privacy” initiative would restore bathroom order in a world where organizations like Identity are encouraging people to re-evaluate their gender identity on a daily basis.
Time will tell as to how Phoenix’s appointment fares in end-of-session legislative deal-making. That, in turn, will influence the outcome of a multitude of commission cases, such as those pitting Bedbugs against Common Sense and those pitting political correctness against private property rights, wedding services, and religious freedom.
OUR MOST CANTANKEROUS CONTRIBUTOR THINKS ABOUT THE ‘S’ WORD
By ART CHANCE
Allow me to engage in a fantasy where once again I’m the State’s director of labor relations. I work for a Republican governor who has at least a little courage and we have a State Senate controlled by Republicans who are more interested in governing the state effectively than in getting re-elected or getting a lobbying contract.
We all know how likely all that is.
It is late April, the clock is ticking on the 120-day constitutional limit on the legislative session and there isn’t a hope in Hell that there can be a budget before adjournment.
A May special session has us knocking up against the June 1deadline for giving layoff notices to State employees, should there not be a budget at midnight June 30.
In this fantasy scenario the only way there can be a budget before June 30 is if the Republican governor and Senate capitulate to the Democrats/unions, or if the governor and Senate can make the Democrats/unions blink.
So, how do I, the labor relations director, make the Democrats/unions blink?
The factual predicate of all this is that they’re under contract, so my tool bag for bringing them to heel is pretty limited.
The only move on the board really is the Queen’s Gambit: A government shutdown for the State is a real shutdown, not the fake media events the federal government stages from time to time.
Now, if I have those conditions I set out in the first paragraph, I threaten the shutdown.
But back to reality: In the current conditions, it is the governor and the Democrat/union House threatening it.
Right now, I’d start talking about how there will be no money for back pay for employees who miss work because of a government shutdown.
Government shutdowns are usually a pretty comfortable thing for public employees; they get some time off and they ultimately get paid for it.
A government shutdown is a paid vacation for government employees that doesn’t even cost them any leave.
In reality a government shutdown is a paid vacation for government employees that doesn’t even cost them any leave. You have to make it hurt or it is meaningless.
I’ll admit that even with the relatively favorable conditions I set out in my first paragraph, I’m struggling with this because the shutdown threat is just about the only tool I have left in my tool bag.
The only real advantage I have is knowing a shutdown will hurt the unions at least as much as it hurts me.
It doesn’t matter if they make $30,000 or $130,000, State employees have no savings; they live from paycheck to paycheck because they have the confidence of their leave cash-outs and ultimately their SBS and retirement funds.
If you shut it down on July 1, they get one more paycheck for their work for the last two weeks of June and then the wolf starts sitting outside their door — and they’re on the phone to the union in no time.
If you’re a hardball governor and they really do go through with a shutdown, you could make that last paycheck really hard to get as well; it’s a nasty one, but it’s a tool.
I always assumed that the 8,000-odd member General Government Unit couldn’t keep many of their members on strike as soon as the members were told they couldn’t take leave to go on strike, and most of the lower level members have little or no leave; at that level alarm clocks don’t work, cars don’t start, and babysitters don’t show up, so it is hard to have much accrued leave.
So, union leaders are catching Hell from their about-to-be broke members just like politicians are catching Hell because nothing in the State is going to work after 12:01 July 1, 2017.
Rest assured, one is scared and the other is glad of it, and I don’t mind admitting that were I making this play, I’d be scared.
I don’t think there is an elected official in the world who’d go through with this, and union leaders are elected officials too. A credible threat starting with a plain language statement that if the Democrats/unions shut down the government there will be no money until there is actually a budget and they go back to work is a good start; it actually gives the Republican side a reasonably useful tool.
Right now, they have an empty tool bag.
The governor and the Democrat-controlled House can force the Senate to a standoff that leads to a shutdown, and, folks, unlike the federal government, a State government shutdown is very, very real; the government has almost no authority to operate and Granny might really go over that cliff.
The Senate has already shown that it will move toward the House and the governor; now we’ll find out how far they’ll move to avoid a shutdown.
This game ain’t for sissies.
Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon. He gets kicked off of Facebook now and then for using the word “hermaphrodite” to describe politicians who don’t know what political party they stand with.
