Governor, legislators may get automatic pay hikes for inflation
No legislator has introduced a bill yet to do away with the Alaska State Officers Compensation Commission.
This is the year to get rid of it.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy destroyed whatever credibility the commission had in March 2023. Here is a review of what happened.
All commission members were removed and replaced with five newcomers who met just once for less than 15 minutes.
Three of the members were part of a prearranged plan to endorse big raises for Dunleavy, the lieutenant governor, state commissioners and legislators. All five went along with it.
The commission, which still exists, is one of the most powerful entities in state government. The three members who coordinated the raises are gone, but the political manipulation tainted this commission.
Its recommendations become law unless a “bill disapproving all the recommendations for all officers listed in this section is enacted into law within 60 days after the recommendations are submitted to the governor and presiding officers of each house of the legislature . . .”
There are many ways to stop a bill from becoming law, which is what gives the commission power. The Legislature set it up this way so members would not have to vote directly on their own pay hikes. A new structure is needed.
The commission has scheduled a meeting Tuesday at 10 a.m. in Anchorage. The year is wrong on the website, but someone will fix that.
Here is some information about the meeting and how to participate by phone.
It appears that the commission, now with three members and two vacancies, might produce a plan that would give the governor, lieutenant governor, commissioners and legislators automatic raises every two years based on the rate of inflation, but not this year.
The three members of the commission—Jomo Stewart, Larry LeDoux and Lynn Gattis—tentatively agreed to inflation-linked raises at a December meeting, saying they would meet again in January before taking final action.
I say appears and might because no agenda has been published and no draft of the final recommendations of the commission has been published. There was a meeting December 14 at which these things were discussed.
This is from the draft report reviewed in December:
Here is the full draft report.
The minutes of the November meeting say “it was determined that tying wage increases to the CPI is consistent with other industries and avoids the appearance of granting wage increases for political or arbitrary reasons.”
I asked the commission at the December meeting to confirm that their report would place the automatic pay increase for inflation in state law as part of their report, but the commission members declined to respond.
If there is merit to raising salaries to match inflation, and I think there is, it should become state law with more public involvement and review than this. The idea should be defended and debated by Legislators and the governor, not by three people. The governor has not appointed anyone to fill the two vacancies.
The real problem is that Dunleavy, with the cooperation of key legislators, subverted the public process in 2023 with that 15-minute meeting.
It was the only meeting that the three 2023 appointees of the governor who agreed in advance to put the salary raises into effect ever took part in. They are former commission members Miles Baker, Duff Mitchell and Donald Handeland.
Stewart and LeDoux, who said in 2023 they are blindsided by the plan from the majority, are the two holdovers. They were named to the commission from lists provided by legislative leaders.
Gattis, the third member, was appointed by Dunleavy in October.
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