Harry Belafonte - Try To Remember

A good man and a great entertainer.  I'll remember.

Supreme Court's Redistricting Opinion Next Steps. Is Marcum Still On The Board?

The Alaska Supreme Court finally issued its Opinion explaining its reasoning for its earlier Orders.  (Three its in one sentence, sorry, I don't have time to make this pretty.)  See this post for more.  The immediate consequence of the decision is that the Alaska Redistricting Board was given 90 days to object to keeping the interim plan in place for the next ten years.  

For those not up on all these details - probably most people - the Court ruled the Board's last two plans  faulty because of gerrymandering.  So the court made a change in the Board's plan for the 2022 election.   The deadline for candidates to file to run for office was nearing and they needed to know what districts they would be running in.  So, that was the interim plan.  

Most of the state map has been approved and won't be affected.  There are only a few house districts in north Anchorage that could possibly be realigned into different Senate seats.  There is no way the court will allow the Board to make changes that would give Republicans more power in the legislature.  So it would seem that remanding the interim plan back to the Board is just a courtesy, maybe a way for the court to allow the Board to technically approve this plan as the actual plan for the next ten years. 

But that means the Board has to 

1. Reconvene and meet to 
1. approve the interim plan as the final plan, or
2. come up with an alternative within those very narrow options they have left and send it with a rationale back to the court
2. Do nothing and let the 90 days and let the interim plan become the final plan by default
3. 
   

Is Bethany Marcum still on the Board?

At the Alaska Press Club Conference Friday and Saturday, the Court's decision, which was announced Friday morning, was a big topic among some of the journalists who have reported on the Redistricting Board.  

One of the questions that came up was whether Board Member Bethany Marcum was still on the Board.  She's been nominated to the University of Alaska Board of Regents and some speculated that would mean she was off the Board. 

So I emailed Peter Torkelson who still is the Executive Director for the Board.  I asked 

• Is Marcum still on the Board?
• If not, since Governor appointed her, would he be appointing a new member?
• Are all the other members still on the Board?

Peter's normal quick response was that Marcum had resigned on March 23, 2023.  And the legal advisors believe that since the Governor appointed her, he would be the person legally entitled to appoint her successor.  He pointed out that Governor Parnell did that in 2011 for another Board member.  (Even though I covered the Board, I don't remember that at all.  But perhaps it happened early in the process.  I didn't start covering them until about March 2011.)  He didn't mention other members so I assume they are all still officially on the Board.

A new member could be someone who followed the process closely - say a Randy Ruedrich - but there aren't too many people who would really understand all the details and nuances of what the Board has been through.  I mention Randy even though the Court pointed out that the Constitution requires that appointments be made without regard to political party.  I simply don't think that Governor Dunleavy is capable of appointing someone who isn't committed to Dunleavy's political goals.  Unless he believes, as I do here, that there really aren't any changes to be legally made that would make a difference except to shake up a couple of districts and the incumbents of those districts.  

The Board's Eagle River Senate decisions, which passed 3-2, and were vigorously and loudly objected to by the minority members Banke and  Borromeo, were judged by the Court to be unconstitutional gerrymandering.  

I suspect the most dignified thing for the Board to do now would be to meet and vote to endorse the interim plan as the final plan and send their approval to the Supreme Court.  Board Members Marcum and Simpson were the most partisan Republican promoters of the gerrymandering.  The third Republican on the Board, John Simpson, went along with that, but I think he was less committed to that decision than the other two.  

I'd note that during the 2010 Redistricting process I asked then Board Attorney Mike White about a new plan being challenged on gerrymandering grounds.  His reply was that no plan had ever been overturned because of political gerrymandering and he wasn't worried.  Well, this round, the Supreme Court has definitively said that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional.  

I'm slowly reading through the Court's Opinion.  My present plan is read through the Opinion and identify what I see as the key points that are new.  Then I want to pull up the post(s?) I've written about what I hoped the Court would address.  Then I can see if they addressed all the issues I was concerned about.  So far, they have addressed the issue of the Governor intentionally appointing Republicans to the Board.  And they weren't just Republicans, they were hard core Republicans with a history of working with the Republican Party.  

I was concerned about how blatant the political appointments were this time round and that if the Court didn't address it, it would become an unenforceable part of the Constitution.  But they did address it - but I have to read more of the Opinion to see how it informs their conclusions.  I suspect it played a role in their deciding that the Eagle River Senate pairings were politically motivated.  

We'll see.  Meanwhile my previous post extracts the outline of their Opinion (all the headings) so you can have something like a Table of Contents of the Opinion.  There's also a link to the decision.  

Just one more piece of trivia.  I've tried to pay attention to follow the Court's language.  Particularly regarding "decisions," "orders," and "opinions."  So I checked online and here's what Cornell's Law School says:

• An order tells the parties to a case or cases something that they should do.  Orders can deal with housekeeping matters, such as scheduling or permission to file a brief, or with something substantive and important, such as whether the case will be dismissed or not.  An order may accompany an opinion or opinions, but if it does not, it tends to be brief and not to offer reasons. It may deal with one or more cases, and may dispose of those cases or not.
• A decision is a loose term for the set of opinions that accompany an order, combined with that order.  There may be more than one case associated with a particular decision.     
• An opinion is a general term describing the written views of a judge or judges with respect to a particular order.  Not all orders--including important orders, and including in both the district courts and the courts of appeals--have opinions.  A single order by a court might produce a zero or more majority opinions, zero or more concurring opinions, zero or more dissenting opinions, and zero or more opinions that concur in part and dissent in part.  It is also possible that a decision produces other documents that are not opinions -- for example, a syllabus, appendix, or summary describing all the other documents related to the decision.

What we got Friday was an Opinion.  

Alaska Supreme Court Issues Redistricting Opinion - Gives Board 90 Days To Object To Keeping Interim Plan

 Yesterday, the Alaska Supreme Court finally issued its Opinion detailing its reasoning for its earlier Alaska Redistricting Board Orders.  It's lengthy - 112 pages plus appendices.  

I've gone through it quickly (this weekend is the Alaska Press Club Conference) and pulled out an outline based on the Opinion's headings, which I'm posting below.  

But first, the Opinion concludes by telling the Superior Court to remand to the Board the Interim plan (which they imposed on the Board last June to be used in the 2022 election) and give the Board 90 days to object to the Interim Plan.  

"We REMAND for the superior court to order that the Board shall have 90 days to show cause why the interim redistricting plan should not be the Board’s final redistricting plan for the 2020 redistricting cycle:

A. Upon a showing by the Board of good cause for a remand, the superior court shall REMAND to the Board for another round of redistricting efforts; or

B. Absent a showing by the Board of good cause for a remand, the superior court shall direct the Board to approve the interim redistricting plan as its final redistricting plan, allowing any legal challenges to that plan to be filed in superior court in the normal course."

What will the Board do?  Most of the map was finalized and approved.  There were just a few House and Senate seats that could possibly be in play.  Board member Bethany Marcum was appointed to the Board of Regents and presumably would have to resign from the Redistricting Board if approved.  Dermot Cole wrote about this yesterday.   Matt Acuña Buxton has also written about the decision.

Here is a link to the whole Opinion.

Here is an outline of the Opinion.  

THE SUPREME COURT OF IN THE MATTER OF THE 2021 )

THE STATE OF ALASKA

Supreme Court Nos. 18332/18419 ) (Consolidated)

(Municipality of Skagway, S-18330) (Alaska Redistricting Board, S-18332) )

REDISTRICTING CASES (Matanuska-Susitna Borough, S-18328) (City of Valdez, S-18329) )

Alaska Redistricting Board, S-18419)

Superior Court No. 3AN-21-08869 CI

OPINION

No. 7646 – April 21, 2023

I. INTRODUCTION (p2)

II. CONSTITUTIONAL BACKDROP (p4)

A. Article VI, Section 6: Substantive Standards; Gerrymandering Concerns 

B. Article VI, Sections 3 And 8: Redistricting Entity; Gerrymandering Concerns 

C. Related Constitutional Provisions And Concerns 

1. Equal protection

2. Due process 

3. The “Hickel Process” and the Voting Rights Act 

D. Article VI, Section 10: Redistricting Process 

E. Article VI, Section 11: Plan Challenges 

III. 2021 REDISTRICTING PROCESS ROUND 1: BOARD’S FINAL PLAN; SUPERIOR COURT’S DECISION; PETITIONS FOR REVIEW (p24)

A. Board Proceedings 

B. Superior Court Proceedings 

C. Petitions For Review 

1. The Board’s petition 

2. Skagway’s petition 

3. Mat-Su’s and Valdez’s petitions 

IV. RESOLUTION OF ROUND 1 PETITIONS FOR REVIEW (p28)

1. Common Issues
   1. The superior court did not err when it concluded that the Board sufficiently followed the Hickel Process.

2. The superior court did not err by concluding that it was not in the public’s best interest to vacate Board actions resulting from Open Meetings Act violations. 

a. The Board’s OMA arguments 

b. Mat-Su’s OMA arguments 

3. Making the traditional hard look analysis more restrictive by blending it with other constitutional concerns was error. 

  a. Our view of the superior court’s hard look analysis 

b. The Board’s arguments 

c. Mat-Su’s and Valdez’s arguments 

B. Mat-Su’s And Valdez’s Substantive Constitutional Challenges 

1. Aside from the “Cantwell Appendage,” Mat-Su’s and Valdez’s article IV, section 6 arguments fail. 

a. Compactness
i. House District 29 

ii. House District 36 

b. Socioeconomic integration 

i. House District 29 

ii. House District 36 

c. “As near as practicable” to the population quotient 

2. Mat-Su’s equal protection challenge fails. 

a. One person, one vote 

b. Fair and effective representation 

C. Skagway’s Substantive Constitutional Challenges 

1. Socioeconomic integration

2. Fair representation and geographic discrimination 

D. The Board’s East Anchorage Ruling Challenges 

1. The Board’s evidentiary issues 

a. The superior court did not abuse its discretion when it denied the Board’s requests to compel discovery.167 

b. The superior court did not abuse its discretion when it adopted streamlined proceedings regarding witness testimony at trial.171 

2. The Board’s article VI, section 10 arguments 

a. Superior court’s article VI, section 10 ruling 

b. Article VI, section 10’s 30-day deadline and the meaning of “proposed redistricting plan” 

c. Article VI, section 10’s public hearings requirement and procedural due process 

i. Hearings 

ii. Procedural due process 

3. The Board’s equal protection arguments181 

a. “Politically salient class” versus “communities of interest” 

b. Whether socioeconomic integration and “communities of interest” are synonymous (p83)

c. Discriminatory intent
i. Secretive procedures 

ii. Partisanship 

d. Proportionality of representation 

e. Conclusion 

V. CONCLUSION OF CHALLENGES TO 2021 PROCLAMATION (p.95)

VI.  2021 REDISTRICTING PROCESS AFTER REMAND, ROUND 2: BOARD PROCEDURES AND AMENDED PLAN; CHALLENGE AND SUPERIOR COURT’S DECISION; BOARD’S PETITION FOR REVIEW (p96)

A. Board Proceedings On Remand 

B. Superior Court Proceedings 

1. Girdwood’s article VI, section 6 challenge 

2. Girdwood’s equal protection challenge 

C. The Board’s Petition For Review 

VII. RESOLUTION OF ROUND 2 PETITION FOR REVIEW (p.101)

A. The Superior Court Did Not Improperly Consider The Weight Of The Public’s Testimony. 

B. The Superior Court Correctly Concluded That The Senate District Pairings Continued To Violate Equal Protection. 

1. The superior court did not adopt a new burden of proof from federal case law. 

2. The superior court did not improperly distinguish our holding in 2001 Redistricting I. 

3. The superior court did not err in its discussion of communities of interest. 

4. The superior court’s discussion of local government boundaries was not erroneous. 

5. The superior court did not err when it applied the Kenai Peninsula neutral factors test and concluded that Senate Districts E and L constituted an unconstitutional political gerrymander. 

C. The Superior Court Did Not Err When It Ordered As An Interim Plan The Only Other Alternative Considered By The Board. 

VIII. CONCLUSION OF ROUND 2 CHALLENGES TO AMENDED PROCLAMATION (p.110)

IX. FINAL REMEDY (p.110)

Appendix A:  Maps

Appendix B:  Supreme Court of Alaska Order 3/25/2022

Appendix C:  Maps

Appendix D:  Supreme Court of Alaska Order 5?24/2022

Appendix E:  Maps

My Indonesian Yacht Cruise Was A Raft Trip On The Yentna With Ted Turner

[For those who are used to Twitter and need the this to read this in 20 seconds, skip down to the bolded question, What does this have to do with yachts cruising Indonesian islands? For those that want some context (and a little history on how the Anchorage Assembly first got onto cable, start at the beginning.]

 

Michael Shamberg's Guerilla Television had put video literacy into my life goals.  It pointed out that we are taught to read and write at school and given some skills in recognizing when written language is being used to manipulate us. (This was the 70s when schools still did that.  I think many still do, but I'm guessing a lot don't.)  

Shamberg's premise was that we were getting so much news via television that we needed that same sort of training in videography.  The book was a treatise on what was wrong with how news was created and a citizens handbook for how to make people's videos and how citizen created videos would change the world.  This was at a time when video cameras were pretty bulky and pricey, and there weren't any outlets for citizens to show their videos. There weren't even any Blockbusters yet.

I'd say Shamberg was pretty visionary. Eventually cameras on phones gave everyone a pocket video recorder and YouTube offered everyone a people's theater where anyone could show their videos and anyone could watch them.  Social media have extended the audience even further.  

And so when cable television was beginning to show up I was paying attention.  I was reading cable industry journals and even went to a few conferences on cable public access.  I was especially excited about the contracts around the country that required the cable companies to set up public access video studios with cameras and editing equipment so people could make their own videos. They also required public access channels to play those citizen made videos on. Sure, the audience was limited to cable viewers, but it was a step in the right direction. 

Multivision had bid for the contract in Anchorage.  This was 1982 or 83.  I was working on loan from the University to the Municipality of Anchorage for a couple of years.  I read the Multivision proposal and was dismayed that there was no provision for a public access video studio or a channel for people's video.  I kept telling Cathy Allen, Mayor Knowles' chief of staff (I think that was her title) that the Municipality should be demanding that such provisions - modeled from Outside cable agreements - be included in Multivisions' contract.  She kept treating me like I was crazy.  I kept sending her memos (yeah, email was not available yet)  about the Alaska Public Utility  Commission's meetings on cable.  One was coming up soon where there would be public testimony. On the day of the meeting I got a call to come up to Allen's office right away.  She'd just come back from a national conference and a city manager from a big city had sat her down and told her how important it was to have public access in cable contracts. Nothing I hadn't been telling her, but he was more credible to her than I had been.  So yes, I could go to the meeting and represent the Muni that afternoon.  

Fortunately, I'd been reading the proposal and comparing the prices they were proposing for monthly subscriptions and had lots of information about public access in other cities.  

So there I was, at the last minute, running down the street to the meeting.  There weren't a lot of people there and they all seemed to be Multivisions boosters.  Then my turn to talk came.  I nervously compared Multivisions prices to Outside prices and said something like, "I understand it is more expensive to operate in Alaska than it is Outside, but it's NOT three times as expensive!"  I also talked about how most cities were requiring cable companies to have public access studies and a public access channel.  And I sat down.

At the next break, I was mobbed by six or seven people asking me, essentially, "who the hell are you?" did  I really represented the Muni.  

As time went by I was back arguing that Multivisions should be televising the Assembly meetings live.  Not possible they said.  At that time they were meeting in the Muni's Tudor Road buildings and they said it wasn't wired for cable.  It would have to wait until the new Loussac Library opened.  

But for some reason the Assembly  had to move out of the Tudor building and temporarily went to the new Convention Center on 5th Avenue.  And I knew that building was wired.  By that time I'd gotten some others to join me and we had set up a non-profit for this project - something like Anchorage Media Access Group.  I lobbied the Assembly members and they agreed to a six month trial and allotted a paltry sum - maybe $3000 for that.  Our non-profit sent out an RFP to every third video business in the Anchorage media resources book.  We got two bids.  One was way beyond the money the Assembly offered.  The other was a budding videographer who agreed to do it at a ridiculously low price with the help of volunteers (ourselves and a few others) who would staff the cameras for him.  

At first, he balked. He couldn't trust his expensive cameras to volunteers.   But he relented when we pointed out that he couldn't afford to do it any other way.  And so the Assembly began its six months experiment being broadcast live on Anchorage cable.  

While Assembly members had had a number of doubts - it would lead to grandstanding, those without cable wouldn't have access, etc. - after several weeks they were all won over.  They had so many people say they saw them on cable and they had people showing up saying they were watching at home and had to come down to testify.  At the end of the six months they approved a much larger budget and our videographer got the contract and we stopped having to supply volunteers.  We disbanded our non-profit and gave the Assembly back the $500 we still had left and asked them to use it to support televising the Assembly. 

 

What does this have to do with yachts cruising Indonesian islands? 

Somewhere along this cable path, I got an invitation from Multivision to go on a float trip on the Yentna River with Ted Turner whom they were bringing up to Alaska.  That sounded very cool, but unlike a certain US Supreme Court justice, I didn't consider accepting for a second.  

I understood that I hadn't been randomly selected for this honor, but that it had to do with my advocacy for a better deal for Anchorage citizens and my advocacy for getting the Anchorage Assembly live on cable. And that this might be their way to get me to tone it down or who knows?.  I thanked them and said I couldn't accept their offer. 

Clarence Thomas, on the other hand, seems to have had no qualms about accepting annual half-a-million dollar vacations and didn't see it necessary to report these on his annual financial disclosure forms.  

The wealthy Republicans have been smart and have taken a long range planning approach to maintain power. When Bork got turned down for the Court, they apparently realized democracy was no longer enough.  

Lobbying has been a traditional way to get legislators to vote against the interests of their constituents.  This relationship is strengthened by campaign contributions. And secrecy. But even better would be owning a Supreme Court that decided their way if the legislature wouldn't.  

The Democrats have not been as Machiavellian and were not very good as spotting the stealth takeover  of the Supreme Court the Republicans, through the Federalist Society, had worked on for so many years.  

And with Trump as president, they succeeded in taking over the Court.  Justice Kennedy abruptly resigned to make room for Kavanaugh.  I'm still certain there's a cloak and dagger story about how Kennedy was convinced to step down, that would include his son's work for Deutsche Bank, the last major bank still willing to lend money to Trump for his projects. And Justin Kennedy was the man who made those loans happen. 

But since Trump essentially turned the job of picking his court nominees over to the Federalist Society, it's pretty clear that they had something to do with Kennedy's resignation as well.  The first link is to a speech by Sen. Whitehouse - the Senate's most active and vocal observer of how the Federalist Society has managed the sharp lurch to the right of the Supreme Court.  But for those of you who need a different source, here's a report from The Hill.  Speculation?  Sure.  But a lot of clues point in the right direction. And like Thomas' vacations with the Crows, I'm pretty certain there's lots we don't yet know.  At least there are facts and motives pointing in this direction, which is way more than the Republicans have for every major scandal they scream about daily.  

Breakdown of Norms

From Oxford Bibliographies:

"[Norms] are most commonly defined as rules or expectations that are socially enforced. Norms may be prescriptive (encouraging positive behavior; for example, “be honest”) or proscriptive (discouraging negative behavior; for example, “do not cheat”)."

Basically, norms are the rules that are socially, rather than legally, enforced.  When people break the norms, public opinion is the force that 'rules' the consequences.  Politicians lose elections, officials resign their posts.  

But we're in a period where Republicans, particularly, are no longer constrained by norms.  They're no longer constrained by laws. (Sure, politicians on both sides have fudged the law forever, but they did it clandestinely, not flagrantly out in the open.)  While Trump is by far the most egregious example, his Republican colleagues in the House and Senate have gone along.  The Senate had the power to remove him from office after the House voted for impeachment.  Twice.  

They didn't.  Instead, they rammed through the nominations of Kavanaugh and Barrett.  

Not all the Republicans are completely craven, but they are all much more interested in their reelections than they are in maintaining traditional norms of appearing to support the public interest, 

And Fox News, particularly, has worked closely with Trump to make sure their viewers are fed the stories they (the viewers) want to hear, no matter how much they deviate from truth.  Those Republicans who stood up to Trump, even slightly, have either retired (rather than face Trump's cult in the primaries) or they were defeated in the primaries.  Alaska's Senator Murkowski is the only exception I know of.  She used a write-in campaign to overcome a primary defeat in 2012.  In 2022, Alaska's new Ranked ChoiceVoting went into effect, which eliminated closed party primaries and put all candidates for each office into one primary. 

The wealthy Right Wingers know that their ideas are not popular with the voters.  Ending abortion, no restrictions on guns, racial discrimination, election manipulation are all opposed by healthy majorities of the general population. 

To win, Republicans have to rig the game.  Pack the Supreme Court with judges who rule in favor of business most of the time.  Gerrymander state voting districts to get far more Republicans elected even when the actual numbers of both parties are much more even.  Suppress the votes of minorities and the young in as many ways as they can think of.  Oppose all bills to help overcome the disparities in wealth, access to food, housing, education, and health care. In fact oppose all legislation that might be good for the country that Biden could take credit for.  And now we're seeing the truly power obsessed trying to control women's rights to decide their own health care, even banning out of state travel for those seeking abortions.  

With a strong Supreme Court majority, Republican governors are writing laws so far out of the bounds of US social norms and violate decades old Supreme Court precedents.  They are doing this in anticipation of the new Federalist Society judges overturning all those precedents as just as they overturned Roe v. Wade.  Voting rights?  We're back to a post Civil War Supreme Court that used States' Rights to allow disenfranchisement of blacks and lynchings among other terrible practices.  

And when Clarence Thomas says in his brief official statement that he read the rules and consulted with others and they said he didn't have to report transportation, he's telling me that he has NO business being a US Supreme Court Justice.  

• First, this is so extreme an example - half a million dollar vacations for 20 years!  Any reasonable person knows this sort of 'gift' needs to be reported  (I didn't have to go to law school to know accepting a pricey trip with a celebrity was the wrong thing to do.)
• Second, if Thomas has trouble interpreting such obvious and simple disclosure rules for judicial gifts, then he is hardly qualified to interpret the US Constitution. 
• Third, if he is capable of such interpretation, then he's intentionally flouting the rules and the norms for his own advantage.  In this case his perceived best interest was non-disclosure. One would assume that is also how he often interprets the law and the Constitution in his Supreme Court decisions.  
• Fourth, hanging out with the Crows and their yachting friends helps to shape his ideas of his own best interests and appropriate interpretations of the Constitution.

CONCLUSIONS

Like most such issues, this one is entangled in many overlapping contexts of law, of history, of politics, of economics, of ethics, that it is difficult to discuss it without either leaving important points out or without getting so long and complicated people won't finish.  

A key issue I'm leaving out is accountability of career and elected public officials.  Of course Trump and Fox have so violated societal norms of behavior and of truth telling that we seem to be in a completely different place than we were five or six years ago.  Though another part of me believes that the craziness we hear these days has always existed.  But today's technology enables much more of it to be seen and heard by the public.  

If that's true, the good news is that all this ugliness is being exposed - from police brutality to overt racism (OK, those two are probably intertwined), to sexual abuse, etc.  The bad news is those with norm-violating behavior and thoughts have found support for their anti-democracy desires.  

Before the Republicans get ultimate control of the courts and can manipulate all elections, we need to get all the folks who are still within traditional norms, but have given up on voting, to go vote.  There are still tens of millions of people who have come up with excuses not to vote.  (And this is also in part due to the Right's propaganda about how terrible government is, Democrats are, and how corrupt elections are.)  

Those who want Democracy to carry on have an obligation to get everyone who doesn't normally vote, to vote in the next few elections.  And the Republicans' extreme power grabbing - abortions bans, LGBTQ+ baiting, anti-Semitism, book banning, expulsion of duly elected legislators are all helping to get those voters to the polls in the next elections.   

We need enough Democrats in state legislatures and in Congress to overcome Republican attempts to turn the US into an authoritarian regime favoring wealthy white males who distort the Bible to further their interests.  

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.  

Finally, There Are Lights Out, No Clouds, And I'm In Anchorage

 @AuroraNotify posts photos people take of Northern Lights.  In Anchorage we can see them start early in the day from Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, then Canada.  But this fall/winter, it was usually cloudy when there were supposed to be good lights.  

And then we were out of town gramping when there were good lights and clear skies in Anchorage..  

But tonight had good lights predicted and clear skies.  I went out on the deck several times for about 15 minutes each.  You look up and it's like there are faint wisps of cloud, but you can see stars through the wisps and they move. 

The fourth time I went out the faint wisps exploded.  These pics are from my iPhone.  What I saw was much, much brighter but not as colorful.  The phone picks up things my eyes don't.  But here are a few sudden bursts of light right over the deck.  

This all happened in about five minutes or less.  And then things went back to faint gauzy ghosts floating and shapeshifting in the sky.  

The Ides of March Is A Good Day To Watch Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

 This cast has some of the biggest names of the day - Marlon Brandon, John Gielgud, James Mason, Deborah Kerr, Greer Garson . . .

From the Internet Archive:

Teaching English To A Refugee In Alaska - Polishing Old Skills

RAIS is the Alaska Catholic Social Service's Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service.  Last summer I volunteered to tutor English for them, but I decided that I did not want to go into someone's house regularly during COVID.  They said some of their clients live outside of Anchorage and maybe we can do this online.  

Several weeks ago they got back to me.  A refugee living outside of Anchorage wanted lessons. (I'm going to be vague to protect confidentiality.)

In Peace Corps training back in 1966 and 1967 we got killer training for Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL).  The trainer in charge of the TEFL lessons was like a teaching machine.  She had a technique and a style that, in hindsight, was a really good way to teach a foreign language AND the lessons were good for teaching any class.  I can't believe her name escapes me at the moment.  I used to have nightmares about her watching me practice teach.  [UPDATE March 11, 2023 - It was Phyllis!]

A 50 minute class consists of

• 5 minutes of pronunciation drill
• 10 minutes of vocabulary lessons
• 20-25 minutes of grammar drills
• 20-25 minutes of reading the lesson in the text out loud and questions and answers about the text

The pronunciation drill would be related to some of the words in the vocabulary lesson.  The vocabulary would come from the reading in that chapter.  The grammar drills focused on lots of oral repetition using the grammar we were working on.  And, of course, it included the vocabulary and sounds we just did.  There might be a sentence and after the students could repeat it fairly well, I'd give them words that they used to replace words in the sentence.  This was a good way to see if they understood it or whether they were just parroting stuff they didn't understand.  

We had a Level 3 English textbook at training that was used in Thai high schools.  The readings in the chapters were about Thai history, US history, and British history.  (I learned the basics of key Thai historic figures that way.)

When I arrived at my school, I found they were using the same book we had trained with.  And the class was at a chapter that I had done a practice lesson on in training in DeKalb, Illinois.  It felt like magic.  

So, using what I learned then,I've started preparing my lesson plans, though now I can do that with Keynote (Apple's version of PowerPoint.).  My student is highly motivated, already speaks fluent enough English, but grammar and vocabulary are limited and pronunciation could be improved as well.  Lesson 3 is tomorrow morning (Saturday).  So far he's put up with my very packed lessons with good humor.  I think I will have to ease back a bit - I can't sustain that level of effort.  But we've got lots of material to work with over the next month.  I told him he's my boss and he has to tell me what he wants and then I'll do it. But, of course, his texts also alert me to sentences and grammar he needs to work on.    

As I've been reading online to get foreign language teaching tips, I found one that both of us like:  Learn the words to English songs you like.  He's suggested the Beatles "Yesterday."  So I'm going to see what sort of grammar and pronunciation lessons we develop using the lyrics as a starting point.  (I used "Hello, Goodbye" once in Thailand.  Very easy lyrics.)

I'll look at the grammar they use, and then try to substitute words to make a lot more useful sentences from the lyrics.  

Learning to teach English as a Peace Corps volunteer meant we were learning Thai using the same method that we were preparing to teach our students with.  That's a very humbling experience which gave me a much better understanding of what my students were struggling with.  What looks so obvious to a native speaker seems impenetrable to a non-native speaker.  Sounds they make in Thai, we simply couldn't distinguish at the beginning.  So I had a lot more patience than I probably would have when my Thai students had the same problems I had and was still having trying to speak Thai.  Thais only have eight final consonant sounds.  Eight!  B, D,  K, N, NG, M, P.  (I checked online and they include W and Y, but it seems to me that those really become vowel sounds.)  But that means Thais have a LOT of trouble with all the consonants and consonant clusters (RD, ST, CH, NK, etc.)

So I've been looking at specific pronunciation issues that speakers of my students native language have.  

That's been using a lot of my creativity.  

I also learned in our first meeting that one of his sponsors is someone I've spent a fair amount of time with in the last couple of years.  

Getting Boosted Does Help, And The Older You Are The More It Helps

As some of you know, I've been monitoring COVID data since March 2020 and posting updates as the State updates their dashboards, which is now weekly on Tuesdays.  Today I speculated that the folks getting sick enough to be hospitalized and to die are likely to skew older and unvaccinated.  And I try not to say such things without back up data on here, so I looked it up.  And it's supported by the data - boosted folks don't get as sick or die as often.  Old folks get sicker and die more.  

I infrequently post the COVID updates in the main part of the blog.  You can see them at the tab on top labeled Alaska COVID-19 Count 3  May 2021 - ???.

So here's today's update (yes, it's Tuesday).  And in the tabbed updates there's also an introduction and some tables where I updated the numbers as they got posted.  Early on it was every day, then three days a week, and now weekly as the state chose to update less frequently.  I began the charts because in the beginning the state didn't put up anything except that day's numbers and you had no way to see if things were getting better or worse.  

Tuesday, March 7, 2023 - Positive tests up 132 from last week's 450, no new deaths reported (doesn't mean there weren't any, just not reported yet), and hospitalizations down from last week's 44 to this week's 35, but this week there's someone on a vent while there hadn't been for several weeks.  Available ICU beds up by four to 33 statewide, but remain at two in Anchorage.  

The takeaway?  COVID is still here.  Most people seem to be less sick, but some get sick enough to be hospitalized.  I haven't dug deeply enough into the state data to know who is still getting hospitalized and who's dying.  Presumably a) those with little or no immunization and those who are older, if we go by national trends.  

From the CDC - you can see the odds of being hospitalized go up by age, and it's starker for deaths.  (This chart is as of Feb 6, 2023)

Here's one from Washington State that shows both hospitalizations and deaths by vaccination status.  Again, those getting boosters were significantly, but not absolutely, better protected from hospitalization and dying.