When the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation’s Board of Trustees met last month, former state Sen. Gene Therriault offered a stark warning about the board’s fixation with opening an Anchorage office.
He said using funds the Legislature earmarked for other purposes to open the office, as the Board of Trustees was considering, “may irreparably damage the corporation’s relationship with the Alaska Legislature.”
On Thursday this week, nearly a month after receiving the warning, the Board of Trustees announced their plans to push ahead with opening the office by the end of this calendar year, bypassing legislative approval. The decision was first reported by the Alaska Beacon, with officials arguing that the expense would pay for itself with improved recruitment and retention of fund employees.
“The net cost to the state of Alaska will be zero,” board chair Ethan Schutt told the Beacon.
At July’s meeting, Therriault doubted the justification. He pointed out that the number of employees who said they would move to Anchorage was smaller and less certain than the Board of Trustees had represented and that retention doesn’t seem worse than it has been in the past.
“Although addressing high staff turnover is the suggested reason for establishing an Anchorage office, the historical turnover information indicates that turnover is not unusually high currently,” he said, later adding, “Without a compelling and time-sensitive reason to move forward now … your actions would likely cause long-standing tensions with the legislative branch of government.”
Board Chair Schutt told the Beacon that he hopes the move can prove the value of the office, potentially winning legislative support for a future standalone office.
That may be a hard sell.
Legislators have long questioned the need for the Juneau-based investment corporation to have an Anchorage office, especially with a price tag of about $1 million for a standalone office. The cost for this plan, however, isn’t immediately clear. According to the Beacon, the fund won’t be opening a standalone office but instead use office space already leased by the Department of Environmental Conservation.
That was a proposal from DEC Commissioner Jason Brune, who served on the Board of Trustees as a commissioner but has since announced he soon plans to leave state service.
The political risk for the fund comes at a time when the Legislature and the Board of Trustees have frequently sparred. Legislators launched a special investigation into the Board of Trustees’ abrupt firing of well-liked CEO Angela Rodell in late 2021. The investigation found the board failed to follow good process in the firing but didn’t turn up concrete evidence that Gov. Mike Dunleavy orchestrated the firing.
Some fund staff members conceded that even friendly legislators warned there was a political risk if they moved forward unilaterally. Mike Barnhill, the Chief Operations Officer at the time of the meeting, faced particularly intense questioning about the office’s timeline by the trustees at the meeting. Later in the meeting, Barnhill also found himself crosswise with the trustees over whether staff pay was competitive. Barnhill, who argued it wasn’t necessarily staying competitive, has since resigned, according to the Beacon.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
