Tshibaka inflates state savings during her tenure as administration commissioner

With her resignation Monday as administration commissioner and the official start of her U.S. Senate campaign, Kelly Tshibaka posted a letter to Gov. Mike Dunleavy that is at least 11 pages long, exaggerating how much she has saved the state. (The signature page is missing.)

I made a prediction here in November that it would be easy to imagine Tshibaka using her drive to privatize state services as the foundation for a U.S. Senate campaign. Afterwards, she denied any plan to privatize or eliminate state jobs, but said a 50 percent state budget cut was possible.

Instead, she is positioning herself as a champion of state efficiency, which will sound more palatable.

About her claim to be an efficiency expert, in arguing against the oil tax initiative last year, Tshibaka posted a video on Facebook in which she said, “It wasn’t that long ago that our state operated on about half the budget it has now, for the same amount of population we have today. I think we can do that again.”

In her resignation letter, Tshibaka doesn’t mention privatization, but details a long list of cost-cutting ventures from her greatest hits list. Looking back now on the steps that Tshibaka took to get certain contractors in sync with her thinking, it appears that she had a deadline in mind—the spring 2021 launch of her Senate campaign.

The wildest exaggeration in her resignation letter is her bold-faced claim at the start that the savings could be from $266.5 million to $399.2 million in “realized or potential financial results.”

Read more and you see that up to $321 million of the alleged savings are “projected, documented, future potential cost savings,” a world-class collection of hedge words that means the real number could be zero.

The details of her vision of a new state government may be hidden in the buzzwords and business school lingo justifying the spending of nearly $50 million in federal COVID-19 bailout money to prepare for the remote delivery of state services.

It is a series of short steps from teleworking to privatization to having work for the state government performed in cheaper locations in the Lower 48 or around the world. That is clearly the only option available to anyone who wants a 50 percent budget cut, but it is politically unwise to say that in public.

In her resignation letter, Tshibaka says the state did not use teleworking to begin hiring Outsiders for state jobs.

That may be, but the six-point “pandemic preparedness plan” gave a roadmap for outsourcing state services.

When Gov. Mike Dunleavy hired Tshibaka in 2019 as administration commissioner, he also created a brand new job for her husband, Niki Tshibaka, as “assistant commissioner” in the education department, earning $139,000. Dunleavy never explained why the new position was essential.

The state paid $81,277 to move the Tshibaka family to Alaska in 2019 from Washington, D.C. The family spent $8,731 on lodging, $1,005 on meals and $71,541 on transportation. I’m certain that move could have been accomplished at a more reasonable price.

More recently, Tshibaka could have saved a few bucks before signing off on the $4.5 million Tandem Motion contract, paying a former barista $350 an hour, a total of $358,400 for six months.

What appears to be a recurring theme during Tshibaka’s time in state government is that she went out of her way to help direct state contracts to specific vendors. That happened with the Tandem Motion contract, with Tshibaka taking steps to steer the contract to the small Seattle company.

There is good reason to believe that also happened with the Alvarez & Marsal contract. Tshibaka added a requirement that the contractor have at least 25 years experience, an excessive amount.

It happened again in February with her choice of a right-wing public relations contractor who should have been disqualified for exceeding the maximum bid amount.

Last summer, her department did a no-bid training contract with OrgShakers of Washington, D.C., saying it was not practical to seek competition.

Why? OrgShakers had done limited work for free in May and June. It would continue to do some work for free, the state said. (Volunteer work cannot be used as a justification for getting a no-bid state contract, as it gives the “volunteer” an unfair advantage over others.)

Under the no-bid deal, the state decided to pay OrgShakers $355,000 for work performed from May to December, with Tshibaka as the project director. The contract was loaded with fuzzy business jargon. OrgShakers was hired to give virtual classes on such topics as “The Journey of Change and Remote Teamworking.”

The state amended the contract Feb. 3 to add $367,000 to the no-bid deal, “to embed the state of Alaska’s Program Acceleration Office to enable ongoing, robust program management, visibility of, and engagement with, programs taking place across the state of Alaska.” The no-bid total is $722,083.

All of this deserves examination. Unfortunately, the news coverage of Tshibaka has largely consisted of printing her press releases with no review of her contracting practices.

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