Governor, Commissioners And Legislative/Administration Pay Raise Process Badly Flawed

Are the Alaska State Officers Compensation Commission pay raise recommendations for the governor, his commissioners, and the legislature reasonable?  My basic response is "No."  First round, the Commission only recommended raises for the administrative branch (governor and department commissioners), but not legislative branch.  The legislature rejected it.  All the members of the Commission then were either removed or resigned and governor appointed a whole new board which came up with new recommendations in a matter of days including a 67% increase for legislators.  

I'm going to take a look at this from human resources perspective.  While this isn't something I've spent my life on, I did teach human resources at the graduate level including compensation and I was involved in a major classification study at the Municipality of Anchorage - from helping write the RFP to working with the consultants - so I know a little more than the average person about how this should work.

Here are the basic issues for me: 

1. Compensation changes in large organizations are usually preceded by a study that gathers relevant data which becomes the basis and justification for the changes.  The final report also would discuss the fiscal implications of increases in compensation.  The report the Commission posted on its website in January is NOT a serious compensation study.
2. Traditionally, commissioners of state departments, like US cabinet officers, serve for a relatively brief time.  It's been considered an honor to serve one's state or country and good commissioners are respected for taking a break in the careers to serve the public.  Those coming from the private sector often take a cut in pay to serve.  Such servicet also makes someone more desirable for jobs after their service because they better understand how government works and they have personal connections that can be helpful.  So prestige and public service, but not a high salary, have been the traditional remuneration for these kinds of jobs.  No one seems to have discussed this. 
3. The Commission did not follow the steps listed in the statutes that establishes the Commission.
4. Given that the first Commission recommendation was no raise for the legislature, and the second Commission's recommendation was a huge raise, there's the appearance that the governor was really offering the legislature a bribe so that he could get his own salary and those of his commissioners raised.  This is obviously speculation.  But it's consistent with the governor's reelection campaign where he basically offered voters a higher Permanent Fund check if they reelected him.

That's the gist of this post.  If you want more details see below.  

[I'm trying to give you some headlines to act as guideposts, but separating out the issues so neatly also hides the interconnectivity of the issues.  I'm doing my best but also mindful if I wait to make this perfect, the issue will no longer be current.]

How to determine fair pay

There is no foolproof way to do this, but human resources experts have come up  two standard, general approaches to calculating salary:

• What is a job worth?  Classification and Pay studies try, in the simplest terms, to examine the duties of each job , the qualifications required  for each job, and the value that work contributes to the organization. You can see more details here.  It's an imperfect system at best as it tries to pin down and quantify many qualities that can't be quantified in a system that is constantly changing.  
• Market analysis looks at what specific jobs get paid in other organizations in order to determine what pay must be given to compete for workers.  This works best for common job types, but less so for more specialized positions.  This system tends to keep high wage jobs high and low wage jobs low.   You can learn more about this process here.

Large organizations often do a combination, trying balance both those strategies.  

Commission Doesn't Seem To Have Done That

The Alaska Compensation Commission proposed significant raises.  There is no evidence they did any serious data gathering or analysis to arrive at their recommendations.  The Compensation Report at the Commission's website basically says it was decided to increase legislative salaries by 2% a year to match inflation, but that hasn't been done.  So let's add up all those years and bingo, here's the number.  (OK, I'm being slightly facetious here.  You can see the study here.  Don't worry.  It's short. Two and a quarter pages, and that includes the cover page.)

This is NOT the serious report one would expect.  The posted one was dated January 24, 2023.  That's the one that didn't recommend any increases for legislators and was quickly voted down by those legislators.  

The new Commission, quickly created after the legislature turned down the original Commission's recommendations, doesn't have a study up on the website, presumably because there was no time to actually do one between their appointment and their recommendation a couple of days later.  

Basically, the January report  reads more like something written by a bunch a guys meeting to play poker one night, but they have to get this recommendation out before they play cards.  

"What do you think guys?  

"Is this fair?" 

"Yeah sure, that sounds good." 

"We're done.  Start dealing."

That is NOT how you run an efficient and effective organization.  This is a good old boys style of operating.   

Do we know what the cumulative costs of 60 legislators (40 house members and 20 Senators) would be?  No. 

What about the impact on the state employees' health system and retirement system?  

What do we compare ourselves to?

Was there any consideration of how much Alaskans get paid compared to other state legislators?  There is in a comment or two that observers made after the proposal went public, but was that part of their discussion?  The Juneau Empire writes very briefly about that:

"Alaska ranked 12th in legislative salaries in 2022, although it also is among 10 states that are classified as full-time legislatures whose members receive an average salary of $82,258, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. The raises would rank Alaska fourth among all states in 2022 (although other states’ salaries may have also changed since then), with California topping the list at $119,702 (plus roughly $210 in per diem)." (emphasis added)

Full time legislatures? 

Is that from discussion among Commission members or research the Juneau Empire did?  But even so, while the Alaska Legislature has exceeded its 90 day limit regularly in the last few years, calling it a full time legislature is something of stretch.  Certainly it's not a full time permanent legislature.  It meets for four or five months full time, then lots of members go back to their regular jobs.  Do we want to continue with part time, amateur legislators?  Do we want professional legislators?  More on this below.

Size of population, land mass?

And how do we compare based on populations of the states?  Alaska is the third smallest state (after Vermont and Wyoming)  How difficult is being an Alaskan legislature compared to legislatures of other states?  Ours is  the smallest legislature in the country. By a lot, compared to most states, though a few - Delaware, Nevada - are close to our size. One could argue that means more work per legislator, or one could argue it means far fewer people to deal with and negotiate with which should make it easier.

Alaskan is also the largest state geographically, with at least one house district larger than many states, yet with few roads.  On the other hand,  manyAnchorage legislators could walk across their districts in an afternoon.  It does seem reasonable evaluate pay of Alaska legislators based on how much it costs 

• to get to and from Juneau
• to meet with their constituents (though electronic meetings are much more common these days, the reliability of internet can be terrible in many remote villages)

Other considerations that were raised in media coverage

Alaska Public Media reports that Senate President Gary Stevens said,

“I think the younger folks that are entering the Legislature, they deserve to have a livable wage,”

Compensation Commission Member Larry LeDoux is  quoted in the Juneau Empire:

“I think if we’re really going to have a citizen legislature we need to have a salary that will allow citizens to maintain their households while they serve in the Legislature.”

  One could argue that a citizen legislature is a more amateur legislature and shouldn't get paid professional salaries.  

Professional or Amateur ("Citizen Legislator")

Do we have a citizen legislature or a professional legislature?  What does 'professional' legislator even mean?  One with many years of experience in the legislature?  Or one with educational training and work experience in a field relevant to understanding the issues facing the state?  

Surely we have a number of legislators who would qualify as 'professional' by those definitions.  But we also have people whose basic qualification is that they are residents of Alaska with a party brand that is in the majority of their districts.  And some sort of name recognition in that district helps.

Amateur suggests this is public service more than a career.  That they just need enough to get by for a term or two.  But people get addicted to the Juneau summer camp atmosphere and to the prestige that comes with being called Representative or Senator.  And after two terms as a Representative or just one term as a Senator - the next term vests them in the State retirement system.   But I appreciate the argument.  I'd note that I did spend a session in Juneau blogging the legislature on my own dime.  It's doable, but my kids were on their own by then.   

Former legislator Adam Wool from Fairbanks wrote in a March 29, 2023  letter to the editor in response    (sorry there's a pay wall) :

"But I feel compelled to counter the narrative I’ve been hearing lately that the current pay is not sufficient to entice legislators with young families to come to Juneau. As a legislator who had a young family, I find this untrue.

The salary of $50,000 per year, although not great is what a beginning teacher makes, and although it isn’t high, it isn’t low for a job that is only full-time for four months per year. The job also includes full medical benefits and a pension plan, another draw for a young family.

The tax-free per diem of $300 per day while in Juneau is much more than adequate. Many of us paid around $1,500 per month in rent; some even had roommates, which made it lower. A few rented bigger houses, some owned condos and one even lived on a boat he owned. Between restaurants, cooking at home, eating in the legislative lounge and the various dinners and receptions we attended, food totaled around another $1,500 per month. Altogether, that leaves about $6,000 per month of untaxed income to send home, making the salary closer to $80,000 per year."

Nat Herz, a reporter who covers the legislature, thinks they should get the salary raise, but cut out the per diem.  That's not an unreasonable suggestion - though it has tax consequences for the legislators.  

These are the kind of things a good compensation study would have looked at in detail instead of making broad generalization about pay and then suggesting a huge increase without any back-up data.

We also heard from the governor and a legislator that the State department commissioners' salaries were too low in an Anchorage Daily News article about the first recommendations that were voted down by the legislature:

"[Senator] Stevens said Dunleavy has told him that he has struggled to hire commissioners on their current $125,000-per-year salaries. Eagle River Rep. Dan Saddler, who worked at Division of Natural Resources between stints serving in the Legislature, said $125,000 may sound like a lot of money, but that it can be an impediment to hiring highly skilled administrators.

“There are more opportunities in the private sector for people with those administrative talents,” he said."

 

In it for the money or to do public service? 

 This, again, gets back to the issue of whether being a commissioner is a regular job that people apply for because of the pay, or a way for a seasoned professional to spend a few years taking a cut in pay to do public service.  

A Brookings Institute study in 2002 which looked at Federal appointee salaries (not just cabinet secretaries) did not put much emphasis on the public service motive, but did say this:

"People who accept top federal appointments derive non-monetary benefits from their service, of course, and these benefits help to explain why government service continues to attract outstanding candidates. Many public-spirited Americans are eager to serve in influential or high-profile positions, even if the financial rewards are far below those obtainable in a private-sector job. Experience in a senior government job allows workers to acquire skills, knowledge, and reputation that may have considerable value outside the government. Few appointees say they are forced to accept a big cut in earnings when they leave federal office. More than one-third of the appointees who served between 1984 and 1999 say they modestly or significantly increased their earning power as a result of holding a senior administration job (Light and Thomas, 2000, p. 35)." (emphasis added)

The Center for Presidential Transition, answering the question "I Was Offered a Political Appointment—How Much Will I Be Paid?" in 2020, writes: 

 "The government does not pay senior officials the kind of money typically found in the private sector. In the government, you may run a multi-billion-dollar program with thousands of employees and make less (sometimes much less) than $200,000 per year. You should also not be surprised if you receive a political appointment and have subordinates who make more than you. Career employee pay is much more controlled by statute and regulations, and is not connected to the pay of political appointees."(emphasis added)

So what's a reasonable pay level for Alaska state commissioners? Chron  lists the salaries of the top appointees in the US federal government:

"Level I Officials [highest Federal level]

Twenty-one federal officials have Level I jobs and earn $210,700 annually, as of 2018. These positions include all cabinet secretaries, such as secretary of state, secretary of defense and secretary of education, as well as the U.S. attorney general, U.S. trade representative, the director of the Office of Management of Budget, the commission of Social Security for the Social Security Administration, the director of the National Drug Control Policy in the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the director of national intelligence."

I doubt that any Alaska commissioners have more responsibility than the top people in the US President's staff.  So this is easily a ceiling figure, though one could also argue being a Commissioner in Alaska doesn't carry the prestige of being a Cabinet member in Washington DC.

The Commission's Process Doesn't Follow Statutes

The Alaska Statutes clearly spell out some procedures the Compensation Board is supposed to follow:

(c) The commission shall meet at the call of the chair. Notice of a meeting shall be mailed to each member at least 20 days before the date scheduled for the meeting.

(d) The commission shall meet to discuss its findings and recommendations at least twice before submitting its final report to the presiding officers of each house of the legislature and the governor.

They did not give 20 days notice.  They came up with their recommendations in about two days after being appointed.  

They do not seem to have met twice.  And if their "final report" is just the salary recommendations with no data to support those recommendations, they truly have no defensible basis for their recommendations.  

There is no evidence they met twice.  

What can the Legislature do now? 

I'm not 100% sure.  I can't find the statute that says what the legislature can do with the Commission's recommendation.  I'm not sure one exists.  

I did call Rep. Andy Josephson because he's a lawyer and until the last Redistricting Board changed the boundaries of his district, he has been my representative.  I asked how much leeway the legislature has to change the Commission's recommendation.  He thought they could vote for part but not all, but they couldn't change it.  He said there was a statute, but couldn't immediately find it.  He also said that since the legislature writes the statute, they could also change it.  But, I responded, that defeats the idea of having an independent commission, rather than the legislators themselves, setting the legislative compensation.  He agreed.  

Rep. Josephson also reinforced the idea that this was a pre-arranged deal.  That the Commission was set up to make this proposal.  And since the Governor appoints the members, I understood that this came from the Governor's office.  

Should the legislature approve the recommendations, could a member of the public sue because the Commission didn't follow its procedures?  Anyone can sue, but I'm not sure how the courts would respond.  

Last observation about the work the Commission should have done

Over the last few days, spending maybe 3-5 total hours on this, I'm offering you a lot more information about how to think about appropriate salaries than the State's Compensation Commission offered in their January report.  The second Commission hasn't even posted their report, and given they came up with salary recommendations in about two days, I'm guessing they have no report.  Though, what I've written is hardly a comprehensive salary survey and analysis that would normally be the basis of a professional report, it's way beyond how the Commission considered its recommendations.  

Conclusion

The jobs of governor, state department heads, and legislators are fairly specialized and unique.  Unlike organizations with hundreds of types of jobs, there are only a few types of jobs here and not that many comparables - the 50 states and the federal government.  This sort of study is probably much easier and could be done in less time than such a study for Conoco-Phillips or the Municipality of Anchorage.  It's not that hard, but the Commission didn't even make a symbolic effort to outline the issue and justify their recommendations.

The salary commissioners have let Alaska down. Their work is unprofessional and highly unworthy of the people of Alaska. They didn't even follow the statutory process.   Our legislators need a fair compensation package, not a wholesale giveaway to get them to approve salary increases for the governor and his cabinet officials.  

The legislature should reject these recommendations and ask the governor to commission a serious compensation study.  Or the legislature could commission its own study.  From what I can tell, they don't have the power (and shouldn't) to set their own salaries. Such a study would give them a basis for voting yes or no on the recommendations and/or could form a basis for the Compensation Commission to make new recommendations.  

That's how things should go, from a legal and rational perspective.  But this has become a very political (not partisan that I can tell) decision.  

The Lazy Blogger

 For most of the life of this blog, I posted close to daily.  Within the last six months or so (maybe longer) I've given myself permission to slack off.  Why?  

• This should be fun, or at the very least satisfying for me.  
• There's so much crazy out there to write about it's hard to choose how to best spend one's time dealing with it.  
• When I write about important issues I want to do it right - get most of the key issues and back up what I saw with evidence and that often takes time.  But that means working harder than just popping off with my opinion
• Much of that crazy is simply intended to confound rational people, because 
• it isn't intended to make sense, 
• but to waste rational people's time as they try to 'expose' the lies
• The key things we need to focus on are:
• signing up non-voters, people who 
• have never voted because they aren't interested in politics
• have never voted because they weren't old enough and may not know how to vote and for some, are leery about doing something they aren't good at
• for those of us who went along with our parents when they voted, this may seem hard to believe, but lots of people have parents who didn't vote or didn't take them along to familiarize them with the process
• stopped voting because they think both parties are equally bad
• don't vote because they think their one vote doesn't make a difference
• developing scripts with evidence explaining 
• why voting is important
• that there is a huge difference between the parties
• that democracy is threatened if the GOP hold on to the House, regain the Senate, and/or the Presidency
• how to vote and how to get their non-voting friends to vote too
• [UPDATED MARCH 27, 2023 - How to distinguish between fact and fiction, human and bot.]

But we can't use ignore ALL the BS flying around.  So I do have some thoughts on the pay raise for the Governor, his commissioners, and the legislature among many other things.  But that's for later posts.  Enjoy the end of the weekend.  Do something you've never done before.  

"flood the zone with shi*t" - Why Courts And Media Don't Seem Adequate These Days

[Bear with me.  I'm trying to pull a number of issues together.  Basically, we need to step back and see the bigger picture rather than get distracted by all the crap the Right is throwing out there.  Their goal is to spew so much nonsense that the system breaks as people try to address it rationally.] 

Choosing labels carelessly  

"CULTURE WARRIORS such as U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) . . ."  LA Times"

There may have been a time when there was something that could be called 'culture war,' but that time is long past.  MTG is not offering anything resembling 'culture' unless the naked quest for power is considered a 'culture' today.  There's nothing here, really, about Christian values, though one could argue MTG represents hijacked Christian values to wrest power.  The attacks on LGTBQ and specifically trans and drag queens is merely a hook to incite the gullible to send cash and votes toward the GOP.  

On the other side are people who merely want to be free to be themselves.  If they take PRIDE in who they are, it's merely because society has vilified them so long and so hard, that they need some validation now and then.  

The media are slow to discard misleading labels, while the Republicans have an automated factory where they produce and distribute new imagery daily.  Where they take left leaning terms and turn them into epithets.  Some journalists are too young even to remember that the correct name is Democratic Party, but the Republicans have flooded the airwaves so long with "Democrat" party that people think that's the name.  

Eastman mulls the economic benefits of letting kids die

"In the case where child abuse is fatal, obviously it's not good for the child, but it's actually a benefit to society because there aren't needed ??  government services ?? for the full course of that child's life."

Rep. David Eastman (R - Wasilla) on the cost savings to the state when abused children die.

Alaska: Rep. Eastman of the family values party says it's actually a net benefit to society when a child dies from abuse & neglect because of the financial burden it would otherwise put on the state budget. pic.twitter.com/NKUOvUZvgf

— ChudsOfTikTok (@ChudsOfTikTok) February 21, 2023

The Republicans in Alaska have rules that oust other Republicans from committees if they don't vote with the party on budgets.  But making a case for letting abused kids die because it saves the state money, well, he has the right to free speech according to the committee chair Rep. Vance (R Homer).  

But, as I write, it seems that the House has censured Eastman over this.  (Thanks Matt Acuña Buxton)

The problem I have as a blogger (and any legitimate journalist has) is dealing with all the jabberwocky  being thrown out there by the Republicans - from DeSantis' shipping of immigrants to New York, banning the teaching of history he doesn't like, and his Don't Say Gay campaign (just a few examples) to the Hunter Biden laptop.  

And that's the point.  Stephen Bannon said to "flood the media with sh*t" and that's exactly what they are doing.  

From CNN

While some of the actors in this circus may actually believe what they're doing, those encouraging people to file all those election challenges and to write all those laws letting kids carry machine guns in public are just "flooding the zone with shit."  Getting people riled up and wasting time on fighting all the shit flying at them.  

Our justice system is based on the assumption that people believe in the Rule of Law and that the vast majority of people will voluntarily obey the law.  Neither our court system nor our journalists are quite ready for large numbers of people rejecting the rule of law or the rules of reason.  

The lawyers were trained to dot their i's and cross their T's, but with Trump and others filing bogus lawsuits and appeals and motions, the courts can't keep up. The public is losing confidence that they will ever be able to bring Trump and his mob to justice. But that's how Trump has stayed out of prison all these years.  The legal system has to retool itself to handle this sort of threat.  Not sure how.  Dominion suing Fox is one option, but so much damage happens before it is settled.  And Alex  Jones declared bankruptcy to avoid the financial consequences of losing his lawsuit.  We need tactics that work with the Right's new weapons.  

Journalists are trained to be impartial to the extent they feel compelled to treat insurrection as a legitimate point of view.  I'd note that some journalists believe they shouldn't vote because that taints their objectivity.  Here's an NPR journalist mulling over NPR's ethics code.  The Republicans are counting on journalists to continue such internal counting of angels.  

Such purity doesn't matter any more (if it ever did) because whatever journalists do, the Republicans will vilify them.  Meanwhile old school journalists will try to respectfully cover MTG's calls for a new confederacy and Eastman's claim that letting abused kids die is beneficial to the state of Alaska.  

Not voting, not declaring one's party, might seem the right thing to do, but I think declaring where you stand openly and then letting readers determine if your personal values color what you write (or say) is the more honest approach.  

In any case, the old rules don't apply to the new political world we're in.  Yes, a lot of voter fraud cases were won.  And a number of January 6 Insurrectionists (yes, that term identifies me as biased, but it was also the conclusion of the courts) went to prison.  But most of the top people are still living, ostensibly, comfortable lives.  (I'd like to think that all the  pending litigation is at least  disturbing Trump's peace.)

We need new tools for dealing with the current manufactured chaos.  How much damage have we had to endure (can we endure) before the deluge of lies is dammed?  

There are perhaps a dozen more threads I could easily follow that give context to what's happening today. 

 It's a psychological barrier to blogging because I know that writing about some discrete issue merely entangles me in Bannon's web.  But people's attention spans are much shorter than they used to be.  Few want to read long attempts to put things into perspective.  I'm not just making this up.

"A recent study by Microsoft Corporation has found this digital lifestyle has made it difficult for us to stay focused, with the human attention span shortening from 12 seconds to eight seconds in more than a decade."

But you can't read too many long articles, let alone books, even with a 12 second attention span.  But if you got this far, you're doing fine.  And should take articles like that with a grain of salt.  Who measured the average attention span in 2000, for example?  No, I'm not going to dig up the actual research report to find out.  It does say that drinking water, exercise, and avoiding electronic devices helps increase attention span.  So go for a walk and don't take your phone.  

When Will Alaska Supreme Court Issue Its Full Redistricting Ruling? [UPDATED 9/1 and 9/4/22]

 Wait, what?  I thought they ruled a long time ago?

Yes, they made a couple of rulings.  First they issued a decision on March 25, 2022 when the Redistricting Board appealed Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews' decision. They agreed with him on some things (particularly his calling the Eagle River Senate seats gerrymandering) but not on others (Matthews' ruling against the Board regarding the Skagway appeal and they also ruled against taking Cantwell out of the Denali Borough.  

Then after the Board addressed those issues, their decision was again appealed, Judge Thomas Matthews ruled again, and on May 24, 2022 the Supreme Court removed their temporary stay on Judge Matthews' order to the Board.  

BUT, these were short decisions that briefly summarized what they decided the Board needed to do.  These were NOT decisions that explained their decisions.  

Why do they need to explain their decisions?

The reasoning behind their decisions will help guide future Boards when they make their future redistricting maps.  If they do it clearly, these will be useful guidelines as the next Board grapples with what they can and can't do.  

Some things the Court ought to answer:

1.  Explain what appears to some as a contradiction between past rulings that said everything within a Borough boundary is considered Socio-Economically Integrated and their finding this time that Senate pairings in Anchorage were political gerrymandering.  Those two findings are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but since the Board's attorney's mantra was "everything within a Borough is SEI" the Board majority seemed to think that then they could pair any two contiguous house districts within the Municipality of Anchorage, and it would be fine. (Contiguity being the main legal criterion for a Senate pairing.)  Aren't things like race, economics, political leanings part of Socio-Economic Integration? Why then are factors like race, economics, and political leanings  within a single Municipality  indicators of political gerrymandering?  That needs to be explained.  And maybe the past rulings about everything in a Borough being SEI should be adjusted to reflect the differences within a Borough as populous as the Municipality of Anchorage.  Here's a post I did looking at past rulings about SEI.

[UPDATED Sept 4, 2022:  Maybe this is better focused:  I'd like to see the Court explain how they differentiate the criteria used to determine political gerrymandering and the criteria used for Socio-Economic Integration (SEI).  If Marcum hadn't mentioned that ER would have gotten an extra Senate seat, would the other characteristics of the two paired house districts been irrelevant?  At one point in the Supreme Court hearing there's a discussion between Board attorney Singer and Supreme Court Justice Warren Matthews [not to be confused with Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews or Board attorney Matthew Singer] on terms like 'communities of interest,' and 'equal protection.'  It would be nice if they could explain clearly the different concepts that Attorney Singer discussed and how the Court distinguishes between the idea that a Borough is SEI, but, as Justice Matthews pointed out, there are differences in communities of interest within the Borough of Anchorage.]

2. Address the issue of geographic contiguity.  While the House districts paired in the revised map were technically contiguous, the borders that were touching were in unpopulated and roadless mountain areas.  While that 'connected' the two districts physically, the communities in those two districts were geographically far apart (relative to the population of Anchorage) and not really sensible political units. 

"Auto-contiguity" came up as a concept.  That 'auto' refers to cars - can you drive from one part of the district to another without leaving the district?  This was an issue in the Valdez/Mat-Su case and in the Eagle River Senate pairings. 

 I understand that being contiguous in large, roadless rural districts will sometimes require those rural Senate seats to have much less ideal connections between communities.  But in urban areas where there is much greater population density, it seems more than reasonable to consider contiguity as a continuum from "more to less," than an "either/or, yes/no," evaluation.  It was clear that the Board majority paired HD 22 and HD 9 with such an unusable border for political reasons.  The Hickel Decision tell us that

"In addition to preventing gerrymandering, the requirement that districts be composed of relatively integrated socio-economic areas helps to ensure that a voter is not denied his or her right to an equally powerful vote."

In urban areas, extreme contiguity such as we had, should also be an indicator of possible gerrymandering,  particularly when much more natural contiguity alternatives are available.  

3.  Explain why the Supreme Court disagreed with Judge Matthews' finding that the Board needed to pay more attention to public testimony in the Skagway case.  Did they disagree with his reasoning on the Board's need to justify why they were making a decision that was contrary to the overwhelming public testimony?  As I understand it, they basically said, it didn't matter since the district met the criteria for a district.  

4.  There was a request from Calista plaintiffs that ANCSA boundaries be found acceptable as local boundaries for the Board to use making their maps.  This makes some sense in situations where those boundaries connect villages (water districts, schools, roads).  But the for-profit Native corporations are just that: profit making corporations that have a lot of power.  We wouldn't want corporations, say like Conoco or Monsanto, to have their own corporate political districts.  I think the Native Corporations have the burden of proof here that they are sufficiently different, in ways that matter to elections, that it would be okay.  

5.  Also on hold has been the decision about whether the Board has to pay attorney fees for the Girdwood plaintiffs. 

Does it matter when the court rules?

1. There are several factors to consider in answering that question. 
1. How urgent is the answer?
1. Elections
1. The Board got out its initial brief decision out in time to have an interim map for the 2022 election.  So they took care of the most urgent issue.
2. The 2024 election is two years away.  Candidates need to decide if they are going to run well before that.  
1. All of the state House districts are settled.  The court has pretty much closed off any changes to them.
2. There are only, potentially, two to four Senate seats that could be changed when the Board meets again to decide to just use the 2022 interim map for the rest of the decade, or if they try to tinker with the Senate seats in north/east Anchorage some more. So, at most, less than a handful of Senators might have their districts changed.  AND the voters in those districts will also be affected.  
2. The Board
1. There are still five Board members who have to meet at least one more time to decide on a permanent map for the rest of the decade.  These are people who, mostly, have full time jobs.  The longer it takes for the decision to come out, the greater the chances someone might no longer be available to serve.
2. Board staff is, as I understand it, down to one person - Peter Torkelson.  He needs to be considering his next job and if something good were offered, he'd probably have lots of reasons to take it.
3. I originally wrote here, last night, that Board space was still rented and they need to dispose of the equipment and furniture they have.  But this morning I got an email saying that the Board had closed down its office at the University Center and most of its furnishings and equipment have been returned to the state surplus office where they got it.  But they do have laptops and data stored at a secure site.  
3. The Court's time limits for decisions
1. Six Months Rule
1. "A salary disbursement may not be issued to a superior court judge until the judge has filed with the state officer designated to issue salary disbursements an affidavit that no matter referred to the judge for opinion or decision has been uncompleted or undecided by the judge for a period of more than six months." 
2. Six Months Rule and the Supreme Court
1. "For the Alaska Supreme Court, the six-month rule starts to run when the case is taken under advisement by the five members of the court. In order to be under advisement, the case must be ready to be decided by the court. Normally, the date the case is taken under advisement is the date of oral argument or the court's conference on the case if no oral argument is requested, although on occasion that date may be different in the event of requested supplemental briefing, reassignment to another justice, or other events that affect the date when the case is ready to be decided by the court. Once the case has been assigned to an individual justice to write the opinion, or in the words of the statute, has been "referred to the justice for opinion” (which cannot happen until the court has discussed the case after oral argument and knows which justices are in the majority), that justice has six months to complete the draft opinion and circulate it for voting by the rest of the court. This is the portion of the opinion that is within the control of the individual justice. Draft opinions are usually issued much more quickly than six months, in most cases within 90 days of the case being taken under advisement. Once all voting is complete by all individual justices, all voting suggestions have been incorporated during the reconciliation process, and any separate opinions have been prepared and voted upon, the draft is ready to be proofread and prepared for publication. About 75% of all Supreme Court appeals are published within nine months from the date they were taken under advisement."
2. The Appellate Clerk added these caveats by email:  "The six-month rule applies in the appellate courts, but perhaps not the way you would think.  The six month clock resets each time a new draft is circulated, including draft concurrences or dissents.  I cannot give you an estimate on when this opinion will be issued."  and in response to my question whether it had been assigned to a judge and to whom:                             "Yes, the case has been assigned, but no, I cannot reveal to whom."

So, when will the ruling come out?

Well, if the clerk can't give me an estimate, it's probably foolhardy for me to try.  But I can at least look at some of the timelines involved.

1.  The Court lifted the stay on Judge Matthews' order on May 24, 2022.  Six months (if this went without the caveats listed above) would be November 24, 2022.  Nine months would be February 24, 2023.  

2.  But we don't know when:

    a.  the Justices met to have their conference on the case

    b.  when they assigned it to a justice to write up

    c.  how many 'resets' the clock had because of the need to rewrite the draft.

Will the Board end up making any changes after the decision comes out?

In the best case scenario the maps won't change any more.  I say this because:

1.  The Court could decide the current map will become the permanent map until 2030.

2.  The Court could give it back to the Board.

3.  There isn't much room to change anything; at most two or three Senate seats

4.  The political gains the Board majority sought with the Eagle River Senate seats are not really within reach anymore, so they would seem to have no motive to change anything, unless it was simply to have the last word.

[UPDATE: September 1, 2022:  Let me add 5 to reiterate that the most important part of the Supreme Court decision will be the reasoning behind the decision.  This is for the next Redistricting Boards 2030, 2040.  They don't want to rush this.  They want it to be as clear as possible.  So I'm guessing they'll take as long as they reasonably can until the justices are comfortable with the language.]

If the Court has decided that the final decision will be to make the interim map, permanent, then they would see no urgency in this case compared to other cases they are working on.  

Or if they give the final decision back to the Board, but with language that makes it practically impossible to do anything but make the interim plan permanent, there would, again, be no urgency.

The only real urgency then would be to let the Board officially wrap up loose ends and close down.  

So, I would guess we won't see a decision until after the six month mark from the last Court ruling  which would be late November,  but probably by the nine month mark in February 2023.  Sort of like having a baby.

The Alaska Redistricting Board's Dramatic Pleas For Military Voters And JBER's 3.5% Voter Turnout [Updated 8/31/22]

The Republican majority of the Alaska Redistricting Board created elaborate stories to justify pairing a Muldoon house district with Eagle River.  When that was rejected by the Alaska Supreme Court, they made even more passionate pleas to keep JBER with Chugiak in a state senate district.   It was mostly about the military connections,  and how the holy soldiers would be deprived of their representation if paired with the unholy (read: Democratic) downtown. 

Simpson:  "The most partisan is the proposed pairing of JBER and downtown.  This would diminish the voice of our valued military personal.  I can’t accept that.  I will vote for 3B."

Simpson: "I find the pairing of 23 and 24 ER and Chugiak the more compelling solution.  Pairing JBER with downtown overlooks a conflict of interest and opens us to a challenge to that constituency.  Chugiak has developed as a bedroom community for the military families.  They send their kids to middle school and high school there.  That testimony was compelling to that pairing."

Marcum:  "I’m very uncomfortable with Option 2 because it moves JBER and links it with D17.  It makes the least sense for any possible pairings.  Downtown is the arts and tourism, not what makes up JBER.  It is used to wake up the military community.  Choosing option 2 is an intentional intent to break up that natural pairing.  JBER should be with Chugiak" [note, these were my notes and I suspect I missed some words, but I did get the tone and intent correct.] 

Marcum:  "I would like say on behalf of our military.  Implications for military will be major.  Dominated by downtown voters.  JBER voice will be lost.  Ironic that those who have sacrificed the most."

You can see each of them and Member Binkley on the video on this blog post.   

[UPDATED August 31, 2022:  I knew I had their comments and my responses somewhere, but couldn't find them when I wrote this.  They're in this post - at the end.  My comments are in red which should make that section easier to find.]

So, let's look at that lost voice.  .   Here are the results from House District 18 for August 16 primary election.  Those brave soldiers barely whispered

 

Note that the JBER precinct has 7,528 registered voters out of 12,157 voters total.  That means they comprise about 60% of the voters in the district.  Yet only 277 JBER precinct voters actually voted out of 1184 total votes.  Although they are 60% of the total voters, they were only 23% of the people who actually voted.  The State's chart shows that only 3.68% of JBER voters voted!

The military tend not to vote.  All the candidates with parts of their district on base know this.  The fact that campaigning on base is difficult - candidates aren't allowed to go door to door for example - doesn't bother candidates too much because the military tend not to vote in large numbers.  Particularly for state offices.  (I haven't found the precinct by precinct stats for the US Senate or House races which might have gotten a slightly higher percent of JBER voters.)

So all the theatrics by Budd Simpson, Bethany Marcum, and to a lesser extent John Binkley about how JBER needed to be paired with Chugiak so they could be fairly represented and not, God forbid, with downtown, was just that - an act to capture one more Republican state senate seat.  

Fortunately, the Alaska Supreme Court saw through the dramatics, thanks, in large part to minority Redistricting Board members Melanie Bahnke and Nicole Borromeo.  

Warnings From Half Of A Yellow Sun

The phrase, "Everything is impossible until it is done" often attributed to Nelson Mandela among others, tells us not to give up hope that we can accomplish something.  It's a positive inspiration for people fighting to elect sensible politicians or to change oppressive laws.  Surely the Supreme Court decision declaring the right to gay marriage is an example of the truth of that quote.  Tattoo it on your brain.  

But I want to look at the possibility of negative events in this post, which might be more aptly said, "Everything is impossible until it isn't."  NOT taking action because we DON'T think something bad can really happen is a problem.  

Below is a short passage from Half Of A Yellow Sun a novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  

The book portrays the lives of (mostly) upper class, educated Nigerians.  Part I is titled "The Early 60s."  I'm now in Part II:  "The Late Sixties."  I'll briefly point out why I think it is relevant to us today for those who may not see in the passage what I see.

The narrator, in this chapter, speaks from the perspective of Ugwu, an Igbo, who is the houseboy of Odenigbo who teaches at the university in Nsukka. He is also Igbo though he often speaks to Ugwu in English.  Odenigbo is often referred to by Ugwu as Master. Odenigbo hosts weekly afternoon lunches for a small group of faculty - where they have lively discussions about the politics of their newly independent country.  

The gathering in the passage is a little different.  There had been a recent coup and now there are reports on the radio that the Muslim, Hausa-speaking Northerners are starting to attack the Christian Igbo soldiers who they accuse of tribal favoritism and corruption in the newly independent nation of Nigeria.

"Ever since the second coup some weeks ago, when the Igbo soldiers were killed, he had struggled to understand what was happening, read the newspapers more carefully, listened more closely to Master and his guests.  The conversations no longer ended in reassuring  laughter, and the living room often seemed clouded with uncertainties, with unfinished knowledge, as if they knew something would happen and yet did not know what.  None of them would ever had imagined that this would happen, that the announcer on ENBC Radio Enugu would be saying now, as Ugwu straightened the tablecloth, "We have confirmed reports that up to five hundred Igbo people have been killed in Maiduguri."

"Rubbish!" Master shouted.  "Did you hear that?  Did you hear that?"

"Yes, sah,"  Ugwu said.  He hoped the loud noise would not wake Baby up from her siesta.  

"Impossible!" Master said.

"Sah, your soup," Uguw said.

"Five-hundred people killed.  Absolute rubbish!  It can't be true." [emphasis added]

I'd note that in the next chapters the slaughter will get even worse.  

My sense is that most US citizens are still sitting too comfortably in their lives to believe how close we are to the impossible.  Or maybe a little too uncomfortably to believe things could really get even worse.  They are telling people like me not to be alarmists.  Things always work out.  

Well, until they don't.  

In May 2020, Trump said Trump said keeping US deaths to 100,000 would be a ‘very good job.’  Over a million people in the US died of COVID.  Where's the outrage?  Well, the million who died aren't here to complain.  And while their families were affected,  most of us didn't have physical contact with all those dead bodies.  The deaths were spread out geographically.  But let's consider how many people died.  The ten largest cities in the US have populations above 1 million.  

But the next ten, if all those deaths took place in their cities, would have been wiped out!

11	San Jose	California	1,003,120
12	Fort Worth	Texas	958,692
13	Jacksonville	Florida	938,717
14	Charlotte	North Carolina	925,290
15	Columbus	Ohio	921,605
16	Indianapolis	Indiana	892,656
17	San Francisco	California	884,108
18	Seattle	Washington	787,995
19	Denver	Colorado	760,049
20	Washington	District of Columbia	718,355

Source:  https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities

It would have a lot more impact if the deaths had been geographically concentrated in any of these cities.  The whole population would be gone!  Ghost town.  

We still don't comprehend the enormity of the disaster.  And because we refuse to even wear masks, we continue to offer our bodies as breeding ground for the virus.  Even if we have no symptoms, we give the virus a host where rest and mutate into newer and potentially even more deadly variations.

But perhaps the biggest catastrophe waiting to happen is the loss of our democracy.  Women have already had a basic human right ripped away from them.  Now far right legislators are trying to limit their right to interstate travel.  If the Supreme Court next fall cedes all voting decisions to state legislatures, Republican legislatures will gerrymander their states so that only Republicans can win.  They'll change voting laws and procedures so that potential Democratic voters will have a video game worth of obstacles blocking their attempts to vote.  

Armed (unregulated) militias could duplicate the slaughters that Odenigbo can't believe are being reported on the radio.  If you don't believe that you didn't see any footage of January 6.  You don't understand the hate and anger behind the anti-abortion laws.  You fail to consider the 320 million guns owned by US citizens.  You're not paying attention to regular mass shootings - there have already been 48 in the US in July 2022 and today is only July 17!

Some US citizens understood the gravity of things when they watched the January 6 insurrection.  Others while listening to the Congressional Jan 6 hearings.  But most people seem to be incapable of believing a fascist takeover of the United States could really happen.  Their image of the US as the land of democracy and freedom blocks the image of an authoritarian take over.  No government in history has not eventually fallen.  Despite the talk of American exceptionalism, we aren't any different.  

Some people may think that they are law abiding white citizens so they'll be fine. Only bad people have to worry.  

And many might imagine the worst, but can't imagine they have the power to do anything about it.  That's understandable and curable.  

We all need to keep these two quotes visible:

EVERYTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL IT IS NOT.  

To remember that losing our democracy is very possible.

EVERYTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL IT IS DONE.

To remember that we can work to preserve our democracy and defeat those who want to kill it.  

The most immediate thing you can do is make sure as many people as possible vote blue. Don't believe me?  Stacy Abrams got enough blue voters registered and to the polls in Georgia in 2022 to give its electoral college votes to Biden and to replace two Republican US Senators with Democrats.  She did it by planning and hard work.   There are many organizations working hard to duplicate that kind of work.  In 2020, nearly 2/3 of eligible voters voted.  That was a presidential election year when more people vote.  It was a record high.  But it means that 1/3 of voters did NOT vote.    

You can help find those non-voters and encourage them to vote blue.  Here are some organizations working on that.  

Six Organizations Getting People to Vote and How to Help Them

Fearless Action is a youth led group getting people to vote.

The League of Conservation Voters

Fascist/authoritarian takeover isn't inevitable.  But the fact that majority of the Republicans in the House and Senate won't say that Biden won the election, but instead are denying the insurrection, and are attacking the January 6 investigation, and doing nothing to prevent it from happening in 2024 is not a good sign.  

While the 2022 election is critical to maintaining a democracy, the larger threat looming over the world is Climate Change.  While a growing number of people are convinced that climate change is real, they aren't willing to fight hard to slow it down.  Every day of delay means more extreme climate change impacts and more suffering of all living creatures on the planet.  (Well, there probably will be some creatures who will find a way to thrive in the new earthly reality.)

I'm guessing the title of the book is related to the flag of the short-lived breakaway country of Biafra.

Bill Allen - My Respect For Him As A Pre-Modern Man In A Modern World

When I heard last week that Bill Allen had died, I immediately wanted to write a bit of a remembrance.  I sat through three different political corruption trials in 2007 and 2008 where he was a key witness for the prosecution.  He had already pleaded guilty and would explain each time how he had given money to different Alaskan GOP politicians so they would vote favorably for the oil industry, for his company VECO in particular.

I thought I had a post that spoke to the part I wanted to say.  But I couldn't find it.  

I just read Michael Carey's Anchorage Daily News opinion piece remembering Bill Allen, so I'll refer you to that.  I met Michael on the first or second day of the first of the trials.  He'd heard that the defendant had been a former student of mine and invited me to lunch.  I told him I couldn't talk about what I knew about Tom from my teacher-student relationship, but he still took me to lunch that day.  Michael's a good man and I appreciate his view on things.

Michael's article got me to look again back into the archives of this blog and I found what I was looking for.  It's in a post talking about the stories imbedded in the trail, in this case, cultural stories. I'd note my use of the term "pre-modern man."  This doesn't mean cave man.  It refers to the value systems prior to the Scientific Revolution and the application of science and rationality to agriculture, the production of goods, to medicine, and to government and law.  It was a time when family and power were the key things that mattered. 

From Pete Kott's Trial: The Underlying Stories September 15, 2007

"First, I would note that the main character in the trial so far has been Bill Allen. Pete Kott has said very little since the first day when the jury pool assembled and Kott stood up with the attorneys and introduced himself as "Pete Kott, the defendant." Since then he's been a quiet shadow sitting between his attorneys. Witness Rick Smith has a supporting role to Bill Allen. So let me try on this story as an interpretation of some of what is happening here in court.

We have a clash of two different cultures - a pre-modern, tribal world and a modern, legal world. In Bill Allen's world, as I tease it out of his words and behaviors, power and family are the main values. Loyalty is a second, but lower value. The law, the government, the legislature in particular are seen as either obstacles to be overcome or tools to get what you want. Allen is clearly an intelligent man. Coming from a poor family, as he told the story, where he and his family survived as 'pickers' of fruit and vegetables in Oregon, he often missed school to pick. He finally dropped out at 15 to earn money as an assistant welder. He has used his wits, his ability to work hard, and his ability to size up people, to create a business that earned between $750 million and $1 billion last year, according to his testimony. 

In the world he described, good and bad referred to how something would affect his business. Good legislation was legislation that would benefit - directly or indirectly - Veco's prospects. Good people were those who supported Allen and Veco. Money was a sign of power. And with money, this high school drop-out could show his power over the better educated. He could buy legislators. He paid Tom Anderson to be a consultant who did, apparently, very little for his monthly check. He paid for political polls for state legislative candidates. He handed out checks to legislators. They had audiences with Allen in the Baranof Hotel's Suite 604. But symbolically, he could really show his power by building the addition to Ted Stevens' house and by hiring Ted Stevens' son for $4000 a month to do "not a lot." The most senior Republican U.S. Senator was beholden to him. Surely, that's a sign of power. He even bought a newspaper - The Anchorage Times.  So all these educated people worked for him - a high school drop out who'd picked fruit as a child. 

Earlier in the trial, I'd thought perhaps loyalty was the main virtue in this world - the loyalty of the Pete Kotts. The loyalty of his Veco employees. He said he trusted Kott as a friend who would do whatever it took to support him. He told the court he'd put aside $10 million when Veco was sold, to support the loyal employees who'd worked for the company and made it what it was - not the executives, but the workers. 

But then I looked at the situation before me. Allen was the government's witness against his most loyal servant, Pete Kott. We've watched this tribal culture on HBO - in the Sopranos and in Rome. We see it in the car bombs of Baghdad. We even see it in the White House where the rule of law is trumped by the raw use of power, and the redacting of significant parts of the Constitution. If the rule of law has any meaning in this culture, it is might makes right. And when the FBI confronted Allen with hundreds of hours of secretly recorded audio and video tapes, he saw that their army of investigators and attorneys had more juice than Veco. In this conflict of power, the FBI had him by the balls, a graphic image that would say it all in Allen's world.   And to protect the ultimate core of a tribal culture, his family, he abandoned Kott and the others, to keep his family out of prison.  

This is not an immoral man. Rather this is a man who lives by a different code of right and wrong from the one that now judges him. Family and power come first. Loyalty to underlings comes next. He told the court he didn't expect anything from the Government for his testimony. He recognized their power, and in their place he would not treat his vanquished with 'fairness'. But he also had his own pride - in the powerful company he built by his own hands and wit, in his own hard work - and as he told Kott's attorney, "I won't beg" the government to lower his sentence. He'll take what comes as a man. He's protected his family, whatever else happens, happens.

This man who ruled by the pre-modern values of power and personal loyalty is put on trial by the rules of a modern state, where rationality, not personality count. Where merit, not loyalty and personal connections, is the standard. (A merit system generally prefers college degrees to dirty fingernails.) His behaviors are judged, not by power, but by laws. The kind of laws he paid legislators to write in his favor and that he ignored when they were in the way.  

I think it is important to recognize the good qualities in Allen. This is a man who, it would appear, was raised in a culture where poverty was bad and thus money was good. No one was there to help him, he had to help himself. The modern, civilized world failed him. It forced him to work as a child. The school system didn't work for him. The idea of rule of law wasn't, apparently, one he learned from his family and he wasn't in school enough to get it there. With what he had, he built a large corporation which gave him the power to take care of his family. He played well by the rules of tribal culture. 

And lest those of us who believe in the rule of law get too smug, tribal instincts are alive and well under the veneer of civilization we wear. We see it flare up in divorce courts, at football stadiums and boxing matches, among hunters and fishers. It's part of our humanity. We're still learning how to balance the tension between protecting our own and helping others, between the freedom of the individual and the good of the larger community.