Under Alaska’s record laws, the performance evaluations of any employee who isn’t part of a union can be considered a public record if its disclosure is in the public interest. That’s what happened with the performance evaluations of Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation CEO Angela Rodell, who was fired in a messy and controversial process by appointees of GOP Gov. Mike Dunleavy in 2021.
When her personnel file was ultimately released, it became part of a bigger picture that suggested the firing had more to do with perceived slights against Dunleavy than her performance.
It appears the Board of Trustees doesn’t want that to happen again.
On Wednesday, the fund’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved a policy change intended to hide the evaluation of the fund’s top executive from public scrutiny. The policy does away with written assessments of the fund’s manager, reserving all feedback for oral comments during a closed-door meeting with the CEO and leaving very little that can be disclosed through a records request.
Trustee Ellie Rubenstein pitched the change during Wednesday’s meeting by arguing that it was in the best interest of the CEO, ensuring that the disclosure of the performance evaluations won’t harm their employment after working with the fund. She said that the Dunleavy administration is considering changes to state law that would seal the records for most executives. However, until then, the board can get around it by simply changing its policy to eliminate the paper trail.
“We realized in conversations in that governance committee meeting that there’s nothing preventing a reporter today calling in a public records request for more than (Permanent Fund CEO) Deven (Mitchell),” she said. “We will be meeting in executive session in order to be able to give Deven feedback, but it is not going to be in writing, and we’ve been told by the Department of Law that that is totally acceptable.”
It appears the only document that would be in writing would be a self-assessment written by the CEO highlighting what they think are their strengths and accomplishments.
Previous legal analysis by the Department of Law based on Alaska case law found that no specific law in Alaska protects fully exempt employees’ records from public disclosure. The one fallback is the Alaska Constitution’s privacy clause, but the courts have found that a strong and compelling public interest can override it.
The change was welcomed by several other members of the Board of Trustees, with former Department of Environmental Conservation Commission Jason Brune suggesting it’s the behavior of the media — specifically bloggers — that the changes are needed at all.
“This is not about secrecy … this is about the individual’s right to the privacy of their personnel records. That’s the reason we’re doing this,” he said. “I want to give good feedback to Deven; I want to give him honest feedback that isn’t going to be subjected to the whims of a media that may be on a witch hunt.”
Brune worried that officials reviewing whether to disclose records may “take the easy way out and err on the side of public disclosure.”
Two outside advisors to the Board of Trustees also supported the changes, going further to suggest that all personnel records of every employee be shielded from disclosure regardless of public interest. They also suggested that any materials related to the hiring of future CEOs — including a basic list of applicants and travel expenses — be shielded from disclosure.
Christopher Poag, the legal counsel for the Alaska Permanent Fund, told the Board of Trustees that the Dunleavy administration is drafting legislation to fully shield the personnel files of state-exempt employees from public records requests. That would have to be approved by the Legislature, where members are already bristling at the Board of Trustees’ actions, including the firing of Rodell and a more recent decision to spend money without legislative approval to open an office in Anchorage.
The fund also considered but ultimately nixed a plan to aggressively grow the fund by having it borrow money to invest in riskier private equity investments.
The board is set to update its investment strategy at its meeting later today.
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.