Tammie Wilson's new state job and the bureaucratic shell game

State health commissioner Adam Crum brought up the new job of former Rep. Tammie Wilson in a legislative hearing Tuesday, adding more confusion and contradiction to what increasingly resembles a shell game.

On Friday, Wilson announced she was leaving the Legislature to fill a job in a “new unit” in Crum’s department under new Deputy Commissioner Clinton Lasley. The new unit has yet to be created and Lasley is the “acting” deputy because that job has yet to be created by the Legislature.

The state announcement Friday afternoon said that Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Crum “developed a policy advisor role in the DHSS Commissioner’s office. This new policy advisor will be Tammie Wilson.”

Every job in state government has a “position control number,” known as a PCN. Crum told legislators Tuesday that he had an existing vacancy in his office into which Wilson has been inserted. In speaking about her decision to quit the Legislature, Wilson said she had checked out the plan to hire her and she said she would be filling an existing vacant position for which there has been no pay increase since her last election, which would make it legal, in her view.

It’s not clear what duties and responsibilities have been attached to that PCN in the past. If they are not the same, the state has created a new position.

This appears to be a new position. We don’t know if it would remain in the budget in the next fiscal year or if Wilson would be moved into one of the other four new positions the state is trying to create in the commissioner’s office.

The confusion on this continues because Lasley has declined to answer my questions about Wilson’s job, referring me to the health department publicity office, which hasn’t responded.

“I am excited to have Ms. Wilson join my team as a policy advisor with a focus on children’s services in our state,” Lasley said in the press release, referring to the team that would be created in the fiscal year 21 budget.

On Tuesday, Crum was asked at about the proposal to create four new jobs in his office at about 31 minutes into this hearing. He immediately referred, without giving her name, to Wilson’s hiring.

“Recently there was an announcement, we’re bringing on, we have an open PCN within the commissioner’s office upon which I’ve hired a new individual to focus on family resiliency and family resources on the parenting side. The other item we put forward for the FY 21 budget is the creation of a new deputy commissioner and some policy staff to support them as we try to actually break out OCS and DJJ—Office of Children’s Services and Division of Juvenile Justice—on their own so they can have focused oversight,” Crum said.

The new deputy commissioner is to be Lasley, who has been the director of the pioneer homes. He is listed as “acting deputy commissioner,” pending action by the Legislature. One of the other three new jobs to be created is “special assistant to the commissioner,” which appears to be the one Wilson is intended to occupy in the next fiscal year.

The Constitution prohibits legislators from moving immediately to an executive branch job if the pay has been raised since the legislator was last elected or if the job has been created while the legislator is in office.

Under terms of a 2010 attorney general’s opinion, the ban on an immediate move also applies in instances where the legislator accepts a new job, resigns and then the state creates the job after the resignation.

The language in the budget for the work that Lasley is to lead, said the plan is to “add positions and authority to the commissioner’s office to reorganize the Office of Children’s Services and Juvenile Justice under dedicated leadership to provide better oversight, accountability and focus on achieving better outcomes in meeting the needs of children and families.”

Legislative financial analysts said this about the $633,000 for the new unit where Wilson is to work: “This increment requests one new deputy commissioner, one special assistant to the commissioner, and two project coordinators to support a new unit to provide direct oversight and leadership to the Office of Children's Services and the Division of Juvenile Justice.”

Had Wilson remained in the Legislature for this session, she would clearly have been unable to take the new special assistant to the commissioner job starting July 1 because it would have been “created” during her term. But occupying one new job that would transform into another raises the same constitutional question.

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