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The layoff letter State employees received on Thursday

Suzanne Downing
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19
The layoff letter State employees received on Thursday

Alaska State employees were given notice of a partial government shutdown that could result from the Legislature’s failure to pass next year’s budget. Here is the letter:

Dear Alaska State Employee,

I regret to inform you of a potential partial government shutdown.  A partial shutdown could occur as a result of the Legislature failing to pass next year’s annual budget with language providing an effective date of July 1, 2021.  The effective date for the budget provides authority for the Executive Branch to spend certain funds.  Under Article II, Section 18 of the Alaska Constitution, a spending bill takes effect 90 days after it is enacted.  An earlier immediate effective date is possible only when 2/3 of the legislators in the House (27) and Senate (14) agree.  Because that effective date concurrence did not pass both bodies with the 2/3 majority, the earliest the operating budget can come into effect is 90 days from enactment, which would be sometime in September.  We are hopeful the legislature will still take action to and we will not need to proceed with the shut down. 

This will impact your employment status with the State of Alaska. On behalf of Governor Dunleavy as well as all of Commissioners, I assure you this action is no reflection on your service.

  • For permanent and probationary employees in the classified service (typically this means you are represented by a union), you will be placed on layoff from your current position effective July 1, 2021. You will receive notice by email should your layoff be rescinded prior to July 1, 2021, or should you be recalled from layoff after July 1, 2021.
  • For partially exempt and exempt employees (statutorily appointed employees), you will not need to report to work as of July 1, 2021. You will receive notice by email prior to July 1, 2021, should there be any changes to this direction, or after July 1, 2021, should your employment return to regular status.
  • For non-permanent employees whose positions will continue beyond June 30, you will not need to report to work as of July 1, 2021, until further notice by email.
  • For student, college, and graduate interns, you will not need to report to work as of July 1, 2021, until further notice by email.

This letter constitutes notice under your respective bargaining agreements or applicable statutes.  No additional notice will be provided.

You have until June 29th to send in a leave cash-in.  Please know that you will have health insurance until July but depending on the time of the shut down you may need to self pay your employee contribution. If you are a member of a collective bargaining unit, you may also want to contact your union for additional information; we are working closely with them. We are all here to assist you as much as possible.

Kate Sheehan

Director

Division of Personnel and Labor Relations

Read Governor says he won’t sign this flawed budget, and layoff notices go out.

Gov. Dunleavy says he won’t sign this flawed budget, as layoff notices go out to state workers

Suzanne Downing
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38
Gov. Dunleavy says he won’t sign this flawed budget, as layoff notices go out to state workers

Gov. Mike Dunleavy says that the budget, without an agreed-on effective date, is unacceptable because it means the government will shut down until September.

He said in a press conference he expects the Legislature to fix the problem by Friday night, the final day of special session, and he is ready to call them back into another special session that would start next Wednesday, if necessary.

On Thursday, the required layoff notices went out, because the Legislature was unable to agree on the effective date, which either must be changed, or is constitutionally mandated to go into effect after 90 days.

If the government shuts down, it would only be partially because the governor has a constitutional duty to keep public safety and health functions going. That means Troopers, guards, and public health nurses would continue to work.

Also, the airports will remain open because of a federal requirement to not impede interstate commerce. Even Alaska State ferries could come under that requirement. But things like permits and drivers’ licenses may not be available, as many functions of government would be put on pause.

Rep. Zack Fields, who voted for the budget and for an immediate effective date, as did all Democrats, said it’s the governor’s fault and that Dunleavy could ask the Republican minority to “rescind action and vote yes on the floor this week, and get the 2/3 vote. But he has not done that because he’s manufacturing a crisis to hold the whole state & economy hostage over the dividend.” He did not, surprisingly, say that the governor should just sign the budget and let it go into effect July 1.

It was the Republican House Minority, with the exception of Rep. Bart LeBon, that voted to block the effective date, as they are unhappy with the $525 Permanent Fund dividend, and also unhappy about the inappropriate use of the Constitutional Budget Reserve as the fund source for the dividend.

The governor has had several conversations with leaders of both the House and Senate, and likely advised them as to his plans before his 2:30 pm press conference.

When asked by a reporter what he thought was the reason the budget failed, Dunleavy said there are 60 different legislators representing different districts.

Left unsaid by the governor is that in the past, the “binding caucus” made it easier to get the budget passed, but with no binding caucus in the House or the Senate, there are 60 moving parts at any given moment on a budget, making the problem for legislative leaders that much more difficult.

Event: Bronson to hold town hall on his ending homelessness plan

Suzanne Downing
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12
Event: Bronson to hold town hall on his ending homelessness plan

Mayor-Elect Dave Bronson and transition team leader for homelessness Dr. John Morris will host a community dialogue Thursday, June 17 from 5-7 pm at the Wilda Marston Theater on the ground floor of the Anchorage Loussac Library to discuss their preliminary blueprint to address the next steps for the homeless in Anchorage. 

Bronson will be sworn into office on July 1. He presented the framework for his homelessness solution to the Anchorage Assembly earlier this week.

Rick Whitbeck: Russia builds pipelines, as Biden stifles oil production in Alaska

Suzanne Downing
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11
Rick Whitbeck: Russia builds pipelines, as Biden stifles oil production in Alaska

By RICK WHITBECK / THE DAILY CALLER

Anyone who turned on the news or opened a newspaper during the Trump presidency heard “Russia” on an unending loop.

Americans were inundated with rumors and innuendo – many of which turned out false – about so-called connections between the 45th president and Russia at every turn, whether they liked it or not.

The mainstream media just could not get enough.

For the first five months of the Biden administration, the media has focused its attention elsewhere: the “existential threat” of climate change, untold amounts of government spending and various other attempts by Biden and his team to shift American left-ward.

But with Wednesday’s meeting between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Russia is back front and center.

For those of us in Alaska, it was once said we can see Russia from our house. While that line has become a joke, for those of us who care about energy jobs and domestic energy production, the early actions of the Biden administration are serious as a heart attack. The most significant action we have seen regarding Russia involves pipelines: canceling the one with our friends and enabling the construction of one by our foes.

Last month, the Biden administration decided against sanctioning the Russian company behind the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, claiming it would destabilize relations with Russia and the European countries that will receive fuel from the pipeline.

It’s indisputable that completing Nord Stream 2 will be a huge geopolitical victory for Putin. The ability to go straight to Germany further puts the squeeze on Ukraine, where gas currently must pass through to reach Western Europe. Barring further developments, the pipeline’s completion is slated for this summer.

Unfortunately, Biden’s fondness for pipelines doesn’t extend to domestic producers here at home. Last week, they put the nail in the coffin of the Keystone XL Pipeline, and here in Alaska they have shut down the opportunity for tens of billions of barrels of potential production from the 10-02 area in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and from on- and off-shore federal lands – although the latter’s ruling has been held up by a federal judge from Louisiana.

Read this column at The Daily Caller, where it first appeared. Rick Whitbeck writes for The Daily Caller, Must Read Alaska, The Federalist, and other publications in his role as Alaska director for Power the Future, a nationwide non-profit focused on supporting energy workers, while pushing back on radical green groups and the ideologues who fund them. Contact him at [email protected].

Culture wars continue as Colorado cake artist being sued in court for not celebrating gender transition with a special cake

Suzanne Downing
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21
Culture wars continue as Colorado cake artist being sued in court for not celebrating gender transition with a special cake

Colorado cake artist Jack Phillips won in the U.S. Supreme Court after the Colorado Civil Rights Commission took action against him because he declined to design and create a custom wedding cake celebrating a same-sex marriage. That lawsuit was filed in 2012 and not resolved until 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled that the state had acted with “clear and impermissible hostility” toward Phillips’ religious beliefs, violating his rights under the First Amendment.

That same Colorado agency went after Phillips again, right after the Supreme Court decision, because he had declined to design a cake celebrating someone’s gender transition. Phillips filed a federal lawsuit against the agency in that case and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission withdrew its complaint.

Now, the person who requested the gender-transition cake is suing Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop in state court for discriminating against him/her.

Phillips doesn’t make cakes that advocate certain things that are in conflict with his deeply held Christian beliefs. Those include Halloween cakes, cakes that disparage people or degrade others. No, he won’t bake you a cake that celebrates Satan, demons, or blasphemy.

The attorney, formerly a man but now presenting as a woman, is Autumn Scardina, who called Masterpiece Cakeshop in June of 2017 and requested a custom cake designed with blue frosting on the outside and pink cake on the inside to celebrate and reflect a transition from male to female. The call came on the same day that the Supreme Court agreed to hear Phillips’ original case about the same-sex wedding cake.

“The shop declined the request [for a gender transition cake] because the message of the cake contradicts Jack’s religious belief that God creates us either male or female,” said Alliance for Defending Freedom.

“And a few months later, Scardina made another request of Masterpiece Cakeshop. This request was for a custom cake featuring Satan smoking marijuana,” ADF wrote.

Scardina first filed a charge against Phillips with the Colorado Civil Rights Division, which got involved but eventually dropped that case.

Scardina wasn’t done. He/she has taken the matter to a state court to litigate against Masterpiece Cakeshop.

Read more about this case at Alliance for Defending Freedom, which is defending Jack Phillips.

“For some, it won’t be enough until Masterpiece Cakeshop closes its doors. They want Jack, an average American business owner, to pay a hefty price—all because he wants to live according to his faith,” ADF wrote.

After the budget and the tiny PFD, each lawmaker gets $8,700 for special session

Suzanne Downing
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After the budget and the tiny PFD, each lawmaker gets $8,700 for special session

Immediately after the Senate passed a budget that is partly unfunded, and a Permanent Fund dividend that is arguably the smallest in Alaska history, the Legislative Council met Wednesday to circumvent a state law preventing lawmakers from receiving per diem until the budget it passed, if not passed during the regular session.

In a Capitol building that the public has been locked out of for more than a year, Legislative Council locked the public out further by going into executive session, with no witnesses, to decide that the legislators will be awarded per diem retroactive to May 20, the first day of special session.

That means legislators will get up to $8,790 for the 30 days they will have spent in special session.

“I move that Legislative Council authorize special session per diem payments retroactive to May 20, 2021, for the first special session of the 32nd Alaska State Legislature,” Speaker Louise Stutes read to the council.

In 2019, Megan Wallace, director of Legal Services, explained that Alaska Statute says legislators are not entitled to per diem payments after the 121st day until the first day that the Legislature passes a fully funded operating budget.

However, there is a loophole. “That law does not prevent this body from taking action to provide retroactive payments. The language says it is not to be paid until after the budget is passed,” Wallace told legislators then.

Sen. Lora Reinbold offered an amendment to say that the per diem would be awarded to those legislators physically present in Juneau.

But Sen. Bert Stedman said that was unfair to the legislators whose presence wasn’t needed in Juneau if they didn’t have a committee assignment, and many members are not able to seek other employment, if they are expected to drop their work and return to Juneau for a vote or other matters.

Speaker Stutes agreed with Stedman and said that when members return to their districts, they are often still working on legislative business.

Sen. Gary Stevens said that with Covid, people are working more remotely, and that “we have a good honor system, it has worked well in the past, people put down the per diem they think they deserve, and it’s reviewed by staff and the public has a chance to look at it and see if there is any misuse of it.”

Reinbold said the public will be disappointed because of the reduction of the Permanent Fund dividend decision and the budget. “I think we’re on very thin ice with the ethics law.”

The Reinbold amendment failed, 9-1. Reinbold was also the only legislator on the council to vote against the per diem.

Read The math: The $525 PFD is only worth $195 in 1984 dollars

Read: Protest vote Senate votes for $525 PFD, rejecting conference committee strong-arm tactic

The math: The Legislature’s $525 dividend is worth only $195 in 1984 dollars

Suzanne Downing
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26
The math: The Legislature’s $525 dividend is worth only $195 in 1984 dollars

The third year that the Permanent Fund dividend was issued, 1984, it was the lowest in history at $331.29.

If this year’s dividend was to match that smallest dividend in history, factoring in inflation, it would be $872 today.

The $525 dividend that is in the 2022 budget for eligible Alaskans is only worth $195 in 1983 dollars, also because of the effect of inflation.

That makes it by far the smallest dividend in the history of the fund, at a time when the fund is nearing $82 billion, the largest balance in history, an account that is far greater than the gross domestic product of Luxembourg ($72 billion).

It amounts to $1.43 a day for each eligible Alaskan, not enough to be helpful to private sector workers who have been bludgeoned by the pandemic policies of 2020-2021.

The reason the $525 was established for this year’s dividend check is because the rest of the dividend was used as a hostage against the Legislature’s fiscal hawks to force them to vote for budget items they disagree with, or lose more than half of the possible $1,100 dividend.

It was a carrot and stick approach to get them to vote for something less than what is guaranteed by Alaska Statute.

According to Alaska Statute, the lawful calculation of the dividend is based on a five-year average of the Permanent Fund’s performance. It varies depending on the stock market and other factors. Alaska Statute mandates that the dividend is calculated through this method:

  1. Add fund statutory net income from the current plus the previous four fiscal years.
  2. Multiply by 21%
  3. Divide by 2
  4. Subtract prior year obligations, expenses, and PFD program operations
  5. Divide by the number of eligible applicants

If that formula was followed, this year’s dividend would be over $3,000. But since the Gov. Bill Walker era, Alaska Statute has been ignored, and now it’s the “leftover dividend.”

The highest dividend awarded was $2,072 in 2015.

Then-Gov. Bill Walker vetoed half of the 2016 dividend and allowed $1,022 to be remitted to Alaskans for their share of the oil wealth.

Once the statutory calculation was abandoned, all bets were off as the dividend became not a calculation, but a calculated way to leverage other budget items through the legislative process.

Read: Senate protest vote shows conference committee failed in using $525 PFD as threat

Congress adds a holiday for federal employees: Juneteenth

Suzanne Downing
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20
Congress adds a holiday for federal employees: Juneteenth

Don’t try calling any federal office on June 19. It’s going to be a paid holiday.

The Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, a bill that celebrates the emancipation of the last remaining enslaved African-Americans after the Civil War passed the Senate by unanimously on Tuesday night, then passed the House quickly on Wednesday, 415-14. The bill now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk.

Also known as Emancipation Day, Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger of the Union Army rode into Galveston, Texas, to inform still-enslaved African-Americans that the Civil War had ended and that they had been freed under the Emancipation Proclamation.

President Abraham Lincoln signed the proclamation two years earlier, ending slavery in states that had seceded, as Texas had done in 1861. The official end to slavery in the entire country came on Dec. 6, 1865, with the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. June 19th has long been a regional and cultural day of celebration that has gained more notoriety in the post-George Floyd months of civil unrest.

The bill was sprung on the Senate by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and he fast-tracked it on Tuesday. There was no discussion of a fiscal note for adding more days off for federal employees, but last year when a similar bill was in play the cost was estimated to be $600 million per year. Those with concerns about the fiscal impact or policy had given up, seeing that the votes to pass were overwhelming.

In the U.S. House, Congressman Don Young voted in favor of the bill. The 14 who voted against it were Republicans.

In Florida, a Juneteenth state holiday was passed this year by the Legislature, and the fiscal note said the state would “incur additional costs of approximately $2.5 million as a result of the special compensatory leave accrued each state holiday. Overall, state government will lose the value of a work day for all state employees. This lost value is estimated to be in excess of $14.5 million.”

Juneteenth is also a paid state worker holiday in Texas, New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, Washington, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and most recently, Illinois.

In Alaska, Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson introduced SB 5, to make Juneteenth a paid holiday for State of Alaska workers, with co-sponsors Scott Kawasaki, Tom Begich, and Lyman Hoffman. The bill is in the State Affairs Committee, its only referral. There is no fiscal note attached yet.

Alaska State employees already have 11 days off as paid holidays each year, in addition to their accrued vacation days. Gray-Jackson would add a 12th paid holiday to the schedule that now includes:

  • New Year’s Day (January 1)
  • Martin Luther King Jr. Day (3rd Monday in January)
  • President’s Day (3rd Monday in February)
  • Seward’s Day (Last Monday in March)
  • Memorial Day (Las Monday in May)
  • Independence Day (July 4)
  • Labor Day (1st Monday in September)
  • Alaska Day (October 18)
  • Veterans Day (November 11)
  • Thanksgiving Day (4th Thursday in November)
  • Christmas Day (December 25)

For the two million federal workers, Juneteenth will be the 11th paid holiday, in addition to their two or more weeks of paid leave. That is an increase of over 10 percent of their existing days off. Other paid holidays are:

  • New Year’s Day
  • Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday
  • Washington’s Birthday
  • Memorial Day
  • Independence Day (July 4)
  • Labor Day
  • “Columbus Day” (also as Indigenous Peoples Day)
  • Veterans Day
  • Thanksgiving
  • Christmas

Murkowski, women VIP lawmakers hosted by VP Kamala Harris for annual lunch

Suzanne Downing
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21
Murkowski, women VIP lawmakers hosted by VP Kamala Harris for annual lunch

A bipartisan luncheon for women serving in the U.S. Senate was hosted by Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of the most powerful people in the Senate, was seated just to the vice president’s left at Number One Observatory Circle, the official residence of the Vice President of the United States. Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington State, was seated at Vice President Harris’ right.

“Continuing our tradition of having a bipartisan, women Senators’ dinner. Thanks to the Vice President for hosting tonight,” Murkowski posted on Twitter.

Harris invited all 24 women senators — 16 Democrats and 8 Republicans.

The senators were served a summer garden tower salad with hearts of palm, paired with a Simple Life Rose wine; roasted mahi-mahi, grilled vegetables and basmati rice, paired with a Cakebread Sauvignon Blanc; and for dessert, strawberry rhubarb croustades, and vanilla ice cream, according to the menu that was posted on Twitter by Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska.

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