Walker is facing more pushback over his proposed budget for next year, this time in the form of a grievance a state employees union has filed.
Staff members of the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities’ design department are responsible for designing construction projects like roads and intersections. Part of Walker’s fiscal plan is letting 76 of those employees go in 2018 and up to 300 more in the future, as well as outsourcing jobs.
His fiscal year 2018 Budget Review says, “Outsourcing design has the added advantage of bolstering the private sector economy while maximizing the number of projects completed with the available transportation funding.”
“I think the Governor is misinformed on what our contract requires,” said Jim Duncan, executive director of the Alaska State Employees Association (ASEA).
The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the ASEA, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 52 and the State of Alaska — which took effect in July — states in Article 13, “Decisions to contract out shall be made only after the affected agency has conducted a written feasibility study determining the potential costs and benefits that would result from contracting out the work in question. The study shall include all costs associated with contracting out the work in question including, but not limited to, wages, benefits, administrative costs, agency overhead, program supervision, and audits.”
Duncan said that study hasn’t been done, and the governor’s plan breaches the contract.
The grievance claims the governor and the state have “failed to consider the intent behind the agreement regarding privatization” by acting outside the CBA’s guidelines. Because of that, ASEA claims the governor and state are in violation of Article 13 and wants them to immediately stop contracting out members’ work and follow the CBA’s rules regarding privatization. Duncan said roughly 50 percent of design work is currently outsourced.
It also requests a neutral third party conduct the study, “to ensure the reliability and objectivity contemplated by the contract that has been so clearly lacking up to this point.”
Walker responded with a statement saying, “With a budget deficit that is more than $3 billion, my goal is to cut the size of government and reduce state spending. When the capital budget was more than $2 billion, it made sense to have a large in-house design staff — but not so with a $115 million capital budget.”
To that, Duncan replied, “I understand cutting back if the need is not there, but privatizing is not okay. Not okay until they’ve done the feasibility study and can show that there is a benefit to doing it.”
When KTVA asked if the governor could specifically address the issue of potentially violating a state contract, his office deferred to Deputy Commissioner Leslie Ridle and Minta Montalbo of the Department of Administration.
Ridle responded via email Wednesday stating that the governor’s budget is a proposal and it still has many steps in the Legislature before anything is enacted. She said before any decisions are made, the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities are required to complete a feasibility study.
“Because no action has been taken to increase contracting out of design services to consultants, there hasn’t been a breach of our labor contracts,” Ridle wrote.
