Dunleavy claimed to have plan for hiring 17 new Troopers, but budgeted $0 to pay them

Alaska newspapers ran a campaign press release by Gov. Mike Dunleavy and his public safety commissioner in January in which they claimed to have a budget plan to hire 17 new Troopers.

What Dunleavy and James Cockrell, the public safety commissioner, didn’t reveal in the press release, printed as an opinion column, was that the proposed Dunleavy budget includes no money to hire the 12 Troopers, 2 technicians and 3 wildlife safety officers.

And they didn’t say that they want to add five Troopers in Wasilla, five Troopers in Palmer, one in Anchorage, one in Tok and two technicians in Juneau and Soldotna. A backup budget document claims the new positions were part of “additional efforts” to add staffing in rural Alaska.

The positions were not in the proposed Dunleavy budget, but that didn’t stop Dunleavy and Cockrell from misleading Alaskans and suggesting otherwise.

“In the fiscal year 2023 budget proposal, the Alaska Department of Public Safety would see a significant increase in funding to address crime across the state. The department will be able to hire 14 additional Alaska State Troopers and three Alaska Wildlife Troopers for both urban and rural Alaska,” Dunleavy and Cockrell claimed in their press release, printed in full by the Anchorage Daily News on Jan. 1.

The Frontiersman and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, among other newspapers, also ran the press release.

Dunleavy and Cockrell claimed the 2023 budget is evidence of their commitment to public safety.

But what Dunleavy and Cockrell failed to disclose in their press release is that the Dunleavy budget includes no funding to pay for the 17 positions, according to the Legislative Finance Division.

“Governor’s budget includes 17 new Alaska State Trooper and Alaska State Wildlife Trooper positions without associated funding. Adding funding for those positions would cost $5.1 million,” the nonpartisan finance division told the Senate Finance Committee.

In a Dec. 15 press release, Dunleavy’s office said 15 new Troopers would be hired under his budget, and “appropriation will be worked out with lawmakers during the 2022 session.”

And in the backup budget materials, Dunleavy’s office said the “funding request is forthcoming as the department demonstrates the need based on recruitment efforts.”

The takeaway from this is that Dunleavy wanted to avoid adding $5.1 million to his proposed budget for public safety, but also wanted to generate campaign publicity for himself about hiring new Troopers.

In a press conference on Dec. 15, Dunleavy falsely claimed the budget “funds 14 new State Troopers and 3 wildlife Troopers.” At that same event, Cockrell claimed the budget added 17 positions, but he did not say there was no money in the budget to pay them.

Asked at a Jan. 25 budget hearing if the department plans to absorb the cost of hiring 17 new positions, Cockrell said no. He said Dunleavy’s budget office told him that “if we could show that we can hire more Troopers,” the governor plans to ask the Legislature for a supplemental budget increase to pay for the new positions.

He didn’t say why the governor had refused to include the money in the proposed budget.

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