As the governor, legislators and other top political appointees are set to get automatic cost-of-living adjustments, Dunleavy administration officials were vague and non-committal about when legislators and the public will get to see the results of a long-delayed million-dollar wage study during an at-times combative hearing on Thursday.
The House State Affairs Committee meeting—which Dunleavy-aligned Republicans appeared to be poised to storm out of at one point—was called to understand why a comprehensive study of pay and benefits for public sector employees is still not public after blowing past a June 2024 deadline and may not be made public during this year’s legislative session.
At the hearing, Department of Administration Commissioner Paula Vrana said they approved an eight-month delay for the report to incorporate updated pay data, arguing that legislators needed the most up-to-date information possible before considering pay changes. She said the contractor is expected to deliver that report to the state by the end of March but declined to say if and when it would actually be available to lawmakers and the public.
“I am not sure that we can make a commitment at this point on what those dates would be,” she said.
Even a late March release date, which seems unlikely given the state’s insistence that they’ll need to prepare the results of the private contractor’s study for public release, would leave legislators with little opportunity to incorporate the changes into this year’s budget. The end of March will also be about a week after the deadline for the state to automatically incorporate new labor contracts into the budget, leaving the unions negotiating new contracts in the dark.
The hearing coincidentally follows a state salary commission recommendation from earlier this week that the governor, lieutenant governor, legislators and other top political appointees will get automatic cost-of-living adjustments—on top of a 67% raise just two years ago. Before the raise, the State Officers Compensation Commission had been firmly against raising lawmaker pay, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy forced those members out.
At the hearing on Thursday, legislators said the Dunleavy administration’s lack of action and urgency on public sector compensation has been frustrating.
“Fundamentally, I’m trying to figure out how are we going to be able to make the decisions we need to make now when we’re getting this information so late,” said Rep. Ky Holland, I-Anchorage. “I don’t understand why we didn’t have a preliminary report that could have been updated with a supplemental, and I don’t know whether or not we’re on track to actually see something in March.”
Vrana was generally dismissive of the concerns about missing this legislative session, saying that the study should set “a foundation for a longer-term conversation with the legislature, with the executive branch on the implementation, which I think is a whole separate and very robust conversation.”
Holland also pointed out that the amendment expanding the private contractor’s contract for the study had redacted parts. The officials did not provide an explanation and directed the issue to the Department of Law.
Legislators had hoped the information would be available heading into this year’s legislative session to guide efforts to fill widespread vacancies and a revolving door of employees in everything from public safety to schools to permit offices. Much talk has been about how the state’s poor pay and particularly poor retirement benefits drive away workers, but there has been little firm data since the state’s last comprehensive review was in 2009.
Currently, more than 16% of all public sector jobs are vacant, which several state agencies have conceded is undermining their ability to carry out their work. Several school districts have relied on foreign teachers and long-term subs to fill teacher vacancies.
Some have accused Dunleavy—entering the final two years of his term—of intentionally delaying the report’s release, feeling that it would bolster ongoing arguments in favor of better pay and the restoration of pensions. Those accusations weren’t directly levied at the hearing, but far-right and close Dunleavy ally Republican Rep. Sarah Vance said unprompted that she was convinced there was no such plan afoot.
“I think that gives me peace of mind that this isn’t an intentional delay,” she said. “The public has been all astir around this as if there’s been some controversy that there’s something to hide.”
The meeting was briefly interrupted when Republicans objected to hearing from Heidi Drygas, the executive director of the Alaska State Employees Association, which represents about 70% of the state’s public employees. During a break, cameras captured Big Lake Republican Rep. Kevin McCabe and Wasilla Republican Rep. Elexie Moore grabbing their things and starting to walk out during a testy exchange at the beginning of her testimony. Ultimately they stayed, when Drygas agreed to keep her testimony tightly limited to the wage study.
Drygas said the wage study is critical because the state is currently negotiating several contracts covering thousands of state employees, and it’s worthwhile to know whether state wages are competitive. She also reiterated that the late-March estimate for the report to be delivered to the Dunleavy administration came well after when contracts needed to be approved for the upcoming budget.
“If the point of the salary study is to inform wages for state employees and our collective bargaining agreements are three years old, then getting that information after our wage information is due to the legislature is not very helpful to the members I represent,” she said. “It’s not helpful to the constituents that you represent. It’s not helpful to the legislature. It’s not helpful to Alaskans at large. The whole point of the information is to inform whether or not we need to increase wages.”
While Dunleavy-aligned Republicans were generally dismissive of the delays, Drygas said the public is correct to be mad and frustrated by the process, noting that the study was funded with an appropriation approved by the Alaska Legislature.
“This is not the administration’s salary study,” she said. “This is the state’s salary study.”
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.
