Dunleavy goes on TV to praise Trump, while state services collapse around him
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has plenty of time to opine on why Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees deserve prompt approval by the U.S. Senate and he has plenty of time to go on Fox News and praise the wisdom of Donald Trump.
But the Alaska governor won’t take the time to explain to Alaskans what he has done—if anything—about the critical collapse in operations under his watch at the Alaska Division of Retirement and Benefits. There was a computer hack at the division November 5.
This message is posted in many places on the website of the Alaska Division of Retirement and Benefits website. The division has posted a less conspicuous announcement that it suffered a computer hack on November 5 and discovered some “compromised machines.”
You won’t find Dunleavy dealing with difficult issues that are part of his job. You will find him pontificating about national issues that are not part of his job.
If you try to contact the leaders of the Division of Retirement and Benefits, which is in the Department of Administration, the message you get is that the division has a computer outage and no clue about when it will be repaired.
“We are actively working to restore access but do not know at this time when service will be restored,” the division says.
I’ve written to Administration Commissioner Paula Vrana today asking when the problems are expected to be fixed and what employees have been told about the failure.
On November 15, Sen. Bill Wielechowski wrote on social media that the state computer system has been down for weeks “and state employees can’t retire and get benefits. Now the system is down and state employees can’t re-enroll for health care benefits.”
“My office has calls in to the administration trying to get more information about when this will be fixed,” he wrote. “No timetable yet.”
A state employee who retired September 1 wrote me today to say that she has yet to receive her first pension check.
“I have reached out to Empower, the investment firm that holds the SOA (State of Alaska) pension and was told the state has not done what they need to do so I can start getting my pension. I have been sending email messages to the Division Director of R&B (retirement and benefits) and the individual who is my case manager, no response. I have tried calling R&B with no response,” she said.
She said she believes the message below has been on the website for two months, “so retirees cannot even manage their own accounts because the software is broken.”
Readers who have had recent encounters with the retirement office and received explanations or excuses can write me with details at dermotmcole@gmail.com.
It is hard to find, but the division posted a notice November 18, three days after Wielechowski’s comments, that conflicts with the statement posted above about the extent of the shutdown. The lack of a clear explanation from the Dunleavy administration is an obvious problem.
On November 13, the Anchorage School District told employees the state computer problem “impacts an employer’s ability to submit payroll files for participating employees of the state sponsored PERS and TRS.”
The school district said it was unable to submit retirement contributions for monthly paid employees for the pay period that ended October 31 and for bi-weekly paid employees for the pay period ending November 3.
Here is the November 18 state announcement that did not mention the pension payment issue:
On November 5, unusual activity was detected on the Division of Retirement and Benefits (DRB) server and initial investigation revealed it to be a cybersecurity incident. The State Security Office immediately started an investigation and incident response was activated. Through the course of the investigation, compromised machines were quickly identified.
Based on significant forensic analysis, the security office was able to return DRB workstations to service and identify the affected servers. The investigation also revealed no indication of data loss or any larger impact beyond the DRB environment.
The Division’s main system was not affected by the outage. So, new retirees will still receive their pension payments as anticipated. Because workstations were initially isolated, approximately one week of processing was lost, which could result in some minor delays. However, the Division is still processing retirements and is confident they can process all November retirements that are complete and without issues within six weeks. The outage has not resulted in any pause or delay of pension payments to retirees. The utage has, however, affected open enrollment for member health benefits. We will ensure that disruptions to open enrollment are accommodated by deadline extensions that allow all members adequate time to manage their benefits.
Your contributions help support independent analysis and political commentary by Alaska reporter and author Dermot Cole. Thank you for reading and for your support. Either click here to use PayPal or send checks to: Dermot Cole, Box 10673, Fairbanks, AK 99710-0673.
Write me at dermotmcole@gmail.com.