Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska plan to privatize DOT jobs

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.

I agree with Walker on this one, even though I despise the idiot...

I am a retired Surveyor for the Arkansas Highway Dept. and during my 37 years there, they started letting consultants do a large amount of the work. Our Department supplied them with the facts that we could do it better and faster in house, than the consultants could, but the Higher ups wanted to give their buddies some work, and they did. We always had to go back on their jobs and clean up things that they did badly or just failed to do. Seems no contract could cover enough to keep them from finding loopholes so that they could get paid, even though their work was lacking. My experience only. Other places it may work better. miles

It is in large part a plan to cripple the union.

I hear ya Miles but AK DOT is really top heavy and the capital budget is facing a 94% decrease so I don't see
the State farming out much work.

Like Art, I'm not a fan of Walker but the staff reductions are much needed. With Walker's tax plans and cutting the PFD, there will probably be less traffic around here.

Delta is seeing a reduction already in that many of our immigrant neighbors have sold out and moved to Hawaii as that state is number one for welfare and social services.

That is not all bad news!

Dasvidaniya

But what if we don't ever want to meet them again?

If it's top heavy then get rid of those positions at the TOP that make it so, not the people that actually do the work. There are high paid supervisory level positions at DOT HQ in Juneau that supervise one whole person and contribute very little to getting the work done in the regions. Very little of the highway and airport work that local DOT designers do comes from the state capital budget anyway.....the vast majority is federally funded at 91% with a 9% state match. Walker has his numbers all mixed up....he doesn't know who's paying for what.

I know a man that applied for a position, where the current person was retiring. He got the job, and the office, and found out that there was nothing to do. Seems that the person that retired had topped out in a position, and they wanted to give Him a raise, so they created a new position for that purpose. We also had a woman that had made it to the 3rd highest paid position, and was near retirement, when they discovered that She had lied about Her education. She was fired, as She had done to a lot of people during Her time there. Some for that exact same thing. miles

Outsourcing design and planning (those that really do the work) just seems like a bad idea. Having engineers involved in every stage of a project from design to completion seems the better way.

Can the lowest bidding firm, located in Florida, be expected to adequately layout a project in Alaska?

Projects I've been around have always been more successful when we do out own designs. When we've used outside sources, it seems we have to have a second tier of local engineers fix all the oversights when one gets into the construction phases.

Would Boeing ever seek outside sources to design one of their planes?

Likely the real issue is simply the problem of downsizing after a period of inflated budgets. Highly paid supervisors are where the serious bucks are. Start the clearing at the top.

Agree fully on something like a plane... disagree on something like a road project here.

For one thing the State employees will most likely be hired by the contractors to do the same work.

Just because the engineer isn't a state employee doesn't mean you can't have an engineer involved in every phase of a project.

The issue is cost effectiveness. If you can get private industry to provide the same services for the same price or better, and not have to pay them more for the time they don't work than the time they do work (pensions) then why not privatize?

I can see having DOT crews to plow roads, and to repair roads. But I don't see the benefit in having them design or build roads.

It's not that easy. Under AS 39.52.180(a), depending on what was worked on, and in what capacity, an employee may be prohibited for two years from working on something for a contractor that he also worked on as a State employee.

And a perfect example of a Union-caused cost requiring legislative correction.

You are making a number of huge assumptions here, and one entirely ridiculous comparison.

Could outside engineers design worse roads than what is produced in-house?

I'm sure they could make worse roads, but they shouldn't cost as much.

AS 39.52 is the state Ethics Act. Unions and ethics? It's even hard to say those two words in the same sentence!

Which ones to you consider poorly designed?