Dunleavy administration fails to pay some employees on time because 46% of state payroll jobs vacant

The Dunleavy administration communicates with the public when and if it has something nice to say about the Dunleavy administration or something bad to say about President Joe Biden.

Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor, front man in fighting the part of the federal government that doesn’t shovel billions to Alaska, has his own two-person publicity staff, who have unloaded 88 press releases already this year.

The Department of Administration, on the other hand, which handles the mundane but vital processes that keep state government going, has issued no press releases for two-and-a-half years.

The last one was Feb. 1, 2021, right before Kelly Tshibaka quit to run for the U.S. Senate, an update on personalized license plates.

Paula Vrana is Dunleavy’s administration commissioner. She is the only member of the department’s so-called “executive team,” according to the state website.

While Vrana does not have her own publicity helper, Gov. Mike Dunleavy has no shortage of state employees who yelp on his behalf.

It’s no surprise that Dunleavy and his PR squad have never informed the public that the department in charge of getting state employees paid on time is not getting its work done and needs emergency help.

For that we have to thank the Alaska Beacon, which published this striking story Tuesday that explains the state failure Dunleavy has hidden from the public.

Thirty-one of 67 state payroll jobs are vacant, putting an impossible load on 36 employees who handle the payroll for 14,000 state workers.

“They’re one crisis away from lots of people not getting paid,” Jeff Kasper, business manager for the Alaska Public Employees Association, told Alaska Beacon reporter James Brooks.

To make matters worse, the solution from the Dunleavy administration is no solution at all. The state has suspended one of the hiring tools that all state agencies depend upon, offering more money or benefits for hard-to-fill positions with “letters of agreement”

The letters take too long to process by the short-staffed department, state officials told the Alaska Beacon.

Kasper believes the failure to fill vacancies is part of a concerted Dunleavy effort to outsource payroll work.

No surprise that the Dunleavy administration denies that charge, while taking steps to outsource payroll work.

On Aug. 15, the state signed a renewable six-month $315,000 contract to outsource some payroll work with CGI Group, Inc., one of the largest business consulting companies in the world.

CGI will hire employees at a “center of excellence” in Troy, Alabama.

The state will pay the contractor $45.50 an hour for eight employees working five days for each two-week payroll period. It will pay the company $58 an hour for a senior analyst and $163 an hour for a supervisor. I do not know how much the employees in Alabama will get paid.

State employees for this type of work, with six months clerical experience, start off making about $25 an hour, not counting benefits. The state is advertising for payroll employees now in Juneau, offering a $4,000 signing bonus for those who sign a two-year deal.

The state says its outsourcing agreement is the “initial” contract. There is no reason to expect it won’t be renewed after six months.

If you make a state agency ineffective by not doing enough to hire new employees, the next step is to outsource the work because the state agency is ineffective.

On Aug. 11, Dunleavy’s chief of staff wrote to all state commissioners that the extreme staffing shortage is the reason for the “higher than usual number of employees not being paid on time.”

“It is important to me that we get this fixed immediately,” Chief of Staff Tyson Gallagher wrote to all 15 commissioners in a private email.

The Alaska Beacon obtained this internal email from Dunleavy Chief of Staff Tyson Gallagher outlining an important change in state policy on a key hiring tool, so-called “letters of agreement.” The Dunleavy administration has kept this secret.

Commissioners say they need “letters of agreement” to better recruit employees for hard-to-fill jobs, especially because state pay rates are lower than other employers.

Complaining that the letters of agreement are “very cumbersome” does nothing to address the state hiring problem. It will just make things worse.

Look for the payroll outsourcing to continue. The state claims to have conducted a feasibility study on why it is outsourcing payroll work, as required by the union contract, but that is probably not a real study, so there will likely be a union grievance filed over this.

This slide is from a March 15 presentation to the Legislature, highlighting payroll staff turnover and the 2,000 manual actions required each week to process paychecks.

And what is Dunleavy saying or doing to fix the problems?

Nothing.

He staged a PR event in Wasilla, part of the never-ending GOP hysteria tour, with Dr. Ben Carson, who is in Alaska for a Republican fundraiser.

Dunleavy went on at length about how much he believes in the American dream and how this is the greatest state and the greatest country, stopping just short of saying this is the greatest planet and the greatest solar system.

“I’ll continue to speak the truth,” Dunleavy said. “And many of us will continue to speak the truth.”

Anyone can speak the truth if that means repeating mindless platitudes.

But speak the truth about the state payroll emergency? Not a chance.

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