If you’ve been wondering when the state is going to finally implement the results of last year’s long-overdue salary study, which found the state’s underpaying most employees, and finally solve one of the biggest drivers of the state’s chronic hiring problems, then you’re not alone, but you are going to have to keep waiting.
In one of the more fiery hearings of the session so far, the House Finance Committee on Monday learned the state is once again punting on pay raises, arguing that the latest delay is because they need to go out for a second study to study whether the implementation of the salary study is feasible. Legislators from both the bipartisan House Majority and the more Dunleavy-aligned Republican Minority were broadly and understandably irate at the twist in a saga already marred by accusations that the Dunleavy administration was trying to rig it.
“We’re looking at how to develop a plan to implement the results of the salary study,” said Personnel Division Director Aimee Devaris, who was sent by the administration to field questions on the project despite being on the job for about three months. “It’s going to be a complex project, and it’s going to take a bit of time to work through all of that.”
“So we paid for a study, we got information from the study, and now we’re asking for another study on how to implement the last study that we paid for?” asked a visibly frustrated Rep. Will Stapp, R-Fairbanks, who noted that through all the talk about the salary study last year, which was delayed and extended so the Dunleavy administration could lower the benchmark of what’s considered competitive, that there was never talk of a second classification study being needed.
That’s because it’s complicated, Devaris said, noting the need to reevaluate how the state classifies different jobs before it can move ahead with fixing pay.
So, when can legislators expect the whole thing to be wrapped up and implemented so they can stop hearing about how hiring problems are undercutting the state’s delivery of everything from social safety nets to business licensing?
“Some amount of time,” Devaris said, noting that there wasn’t any money proposed for this year’s budget, so it’ll be “at least a year to develop those plans.”
That’s not what anyone wanted to hear.
The state’s chronic understaffing, hiring woes and retention problems have been impossible to ignore for years. And while there’s been renewed interest in restoring a pension system for public employees — a problem that’s felt particularly acutely because public-sector employees don’t accrue Social Security because the state’s opted out of the system — the fundamental problem is that state pay is simply not all that competitive.
Even a cost estimate to implement the salary study, at either the long-accepted level of what’s considered competitive or Dunleavy’s lower one, wasn’t available.
Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau, said she was troubled by the administration’s approach to the hearing, particularly the absence of Department of Administration Commissioner Paula Vrana. She said the lack of even a basic back-of-the-envelope cost estimate leaves legislators in the dark.
“It’s a little bit shocking to me that your commissioner is not with you today,” said Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau. “That she sent the lambs to the fire, knowing there were going to be questions about something we spent a lot of time asking about last year… It doesn’t bind us to anything, because maybe it’s a billion dollar price tag, and we know we don’t have a billion dollars to implement it, but we at least need to know.”
Even Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River, got in on the chiding, asking a pointed question if Devaris even knew where Vrana was (not in Juneau).
“I’m just going to make a comment on record that generally, when we have these briefings, the commissioners are here,” she said.
For Anchorage independent Rep. Calvin Schrage, a co-chair of the House Finance Committee, it all seemed intentional.
“We have a hollowed-out government where we all recognize that salaries are uncompetitive, and we don’t have a cost estimate on what that would take to address, and we can’t address any of it until we have a new governor, because none of this will be done until this current administration is out of office,” he said. “And it just is very challenging for me, at least sitting at the finance table, to understand how we address these challenges when it seems like everything is set up to be delayed until we have a new administration.”
And for Stapp, the whole thing was existentially exhausting.
“I’ve always wondered what the word Byzantine bureaucracy meant. And I feel like, after today, I kind of know that,” he said. “So I do feel like this is basically being stuck in a bureaucratic malaise that is slowly grinding my soul into powder.”
So, as it stands, the Dunleavy administration’s position on the salary study is, essentially, leave it to the next guy.
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 Bluesky.
