Anchorage Daily News

The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development is set to launch a new reading instruction center for students and teachers amid concern from some lawmakers that the program appears ill-equipped to meet the needs of the students least likely to achieve reading proficiency.

The budget recently approved by the Legislature includes $5 million for the launch of a reading academy requested by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The state board of education is scheduled to meet Thursday to approve the creation of the program, which has been quietly developed by the education department and the governor’s office with no public input.

Members of Dunleavy’s administration say the $5 million — which was approved by the Legislature as a one-time appropriation — would go toward an Anchorage-based tutoring center called the Alyeska Reading Academy and Institute, which would provide reading instruction to children in kindergarten through third grade, and professional development for teachers.

An initial budget document provided by Dunleavy’s office when he proposed the program in March stated the academy would serve “up to 100 students total” for an eye-catching average of $50,000 per student for supplemental reading instruction.

“For $50,000 a student, you can teach tires to read,” said Sen. Jesse Kiehl, a Juneau Democrat who opposed adding the funding to the budget.

In subsequent emails, Dunleavy spokesperson Grant Robinson said the tutoring “will not be limited to 100 students” and will include online learning components for students not based in Anchorage, but Robinson did not provide any information on the total number of students the program — set to launch this summer — will accommodate.

According to one assessment, Alaska students score at the bottom of the nation in reading proficiency. In 2022, less than a quarter of all students in the state were proficient in reading by fourth grade. Members of Dunleavy’s administration say the new academy is part of the solution.

“The Alyeska Reading Institute is rooted in evidence-based practices in the science of reading. It will serve Alaska districts, schools, teachers, paraprofessionals, families, and students regardless of geographic location,” Robinson said by email.

The academy is set to be located in Anchorage — where one-third of students read at grade level, according to a 2022 assessment. That may seem low, but children in many rural parts of the state are far less likely to read at grade level. In the lowest-performing districts, which are all off the road system, fewer than 5% of students can read at grade level.

Skeptics question whether the reading academy would effectively address the lagging reading abilities of Alaska children where the need is greatest. Some wondered if the program would be laying the groundwork for the creation of a state-run charter school that would skirt rules that currently require Alaska charter schools to be overseen by local district school boards.

“It appears to be a state-run charter school with questionable accountability,” said Sen. Bill Wielechowski, an Anchorage Democrat. “Nobody knows where it’s going to go, so yeah, there was a lot of concern about it.”

Dunleavy — a longtime proponent of “school choice” — has previously advocated for a constitutional amendment that would allow public funding to flow to private and religious schools in the state. But members of his administration have insisted the program is not a charter school. Education Commissioner Heidi Teshner said it would be “more of a tutoring and professional development program for students and teachers.”

‘The philosophy of the governor’

Under a budget plan submitted by the education department, the program would fund 12 new positions, including three administrators, four teachers and four reading coaches. The budget plan also directs $500,000 in annual rent for a 5,000- to 10,000-square-foot space in East or Midtown Anchorage, with areas to accommodate both teachers and children.

Amid concern from several Senate majority members, the funding included for the academy — which was initially added to the budget by the House on a permanent annual basis — was switched by the Senate to a one-time allotment, meaning that the Dunleavy administration would have to request it again next year if it intends to continue the program.

Sen. Bert Stedman, the Sitka Republican who oversees the operating budget in the Senate, said that approving the academy as a one-time funding item would make it easier for the Legislature to examine how the money is used before deciding whether to make the program permanent.

“I wasn’t that comfortable with that request and that appropriation, particularly when it could use some more transparency, so it was a decision by my office — mainly me — to make it one-time funding,” said Stedman, adding that the changes were made “in the spirit of compromise” with the governor’s office and the House.

“I would not be surprised if the education committees in both bodies take up the subject matter next year,” said Stedman. “You can be assured that there will be a reasonable if not a significant number of legislators that will have some concerns about this.”

Stedman said he saw the Alyeska Reading Academy as “in line with the philosophy of the governor when he was in the Senate.”

“He was very supportive of charter schools, still is very supportive of charter schools, as far as I know. And myself and the governor, with all due respect, don’t necessarily line up on this issue,” said Stedman. “In my district, the concern isn’t so much with charter schools. Our concern is with public schools and our public education.”

School choice — an idea the governor has celebrated — allows public funds to go toward schools outside of the traditional system of public education. Advocates for school choice say that gives more opportunities to students from disadvantaged neighborhoods, where local schools may underperform compared to schools in more affluent areas.

Opponents of school choice say that the approach would be impossible to implement in most of rural Alaska, which is composed of communities too small to support more than just one traditional public school. Siphoning public funds for charter schools, they argue, leaves less for the rural and neighborhood schools that serve some of the least affluent communities in the state.

Soon after he was elected to the state Senate in 2013, Dunleavy introduced a constitutional amendment that would have deleted language from the state constitution barring public funds from going to private and religious schools. The measure never passed.

Dunleavy has publicly said little about his plans for the reading academy. He first spoke about the idea at the same March news conference where he introduced his controversial “parental rights” bill. Since then, he has not made any comments about the academy.

At the time, Dunleavy said the funding would go to support a bill passed by the Legislature last year to improve reading proficiency through “conferences, trainings, materials and ongoing professional development through the department of education.”

Deena Bishop, the former Anchorage schools superintendent who now serves as Dunleavy’s special assistant for education issues and a point person for the reading academy, did not respond to an interview request.

‘Why don’t you get a YouTube video?’

The Legislature last year approved a bill that created new reading requirements for schools in an effort to improve Alaska students’ reading performance. The Alaska Reads Act implements new teaching methods and testing requirements meant to improve students’ ability to learn, based on a growing body of research on how kids learn to read that advocates say has led to improvements in reading outcomes in other states.

Dunleavy pitched the funding for the Alyeska Reading Academy as part of the implementation of the Reads Act, and as “another tool to meet the educational needs of Alaska’s students in a sustainable and high-quality manner,” according to an email from Robinson.

But some lawmakers said the academy would include provisions that are not only separate from the Reads Act — they directly conflicted with some of the goals of that bill.

“There was commitment (in the Reads Act) to put reading specialists to help teachers teach reading in the districts that are struggling the most. They would be on the district team. They would live in the region,” said Kiehl, the Juneau Democrat. But the Alyeska Reading Academy, with its Anchorage-based facility and staff, “didn’t come out of the Reads Act, wasn’t discussed, certainly isn’t what we voted for. I’ll be darned if I can see how it’s going to work.”

Teshner told House lawmakers in a March hearing that the program was designed to enable Alaska teachers from across the state to get the certifications that will soon be required under the Reads Act, which goes into effect in July. Teshner said teachers from rural Alaska — where English is sometimes not the primary language spoken at home and instructor turnover is much higher than on the road system — would be able to travel to Anchorage for in-person training during the summertime.

“If you’ve got reading coaches, presumably they are going to have to travel out to these school districts, right?” said Rep. Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent who co-chairs the House Finance Committee, during a brief hearing on the proposal. “Is it fair to say that a big chunk of this $5 million will accommodate travel to rural schools?”

Teshner said she assumes the funding is meant to cover both travel and housing in Anchorage for teachers from rural communities to benefit from the program.

“This highly supports our rural teachers who might not have the opportunities to get some of this training because they are like a one-man shop in some of our really small schools, so allowing them to come in for a week or two in the summertime and take that knowledge back to the district would be highly beneficial to the small communities,” she told the House Finance Committee.

But the budget proposal from the education department allots only $10,000 for travel. That amount would be insufficient to cover the travel costs to and from rural communities even for a small number of teachers.

Asked how the travel component will be covered, Robinson, with the governor’s office, said that “for in-person professional development of educators in rural Alaska, rather than having a group of teachers travel into Anchorage, the program will send an expert to the community.”

“Why don’t you get a YouTube video?” Kiehl asked. “It will be as relevant to the actual experience of teaching kids in the districts that are struggling.”

‘A hyper-expensive centralized school’

Teshner said that the program would be run by the department of education, comparing it to the Alyeska Central School, a statewide correspondence program that was run by the department until 2004, when the Legislature passed a bill to end it.

“We’re just basically reinstituting that model, but in a more statewide brick-and-mortar model,” said Teshner.

The only other brick-and-mortar school operated by the state education department, rather than one of the state’s 54 school districts, is the Mt. Edgecumbe High School, a residential school in Sitka.

“A hyper-expensive centralized school that’s not in a district that’s struggling to teach reading? I’m very dubious,” Kiehl said.

State law requires the state board of education — made up of Dunleavy appointees — to oversee policy and regulation changes for the Department of Education and Early Development. But that board has yet to formally review the Alyeska Reading Academy proposal.

“This is all new to the board. This is the first crack of the board looking at it and seeing it,” said James Fields, chair of the board, referring to the two-day meeting set to begin Wednesday in Kenai, when board members are scheduled to vote on formally establishing the reading academy.

Fields, who meets regularly with the governor, said Dunleavy first mentioned the idea of a reading academy to him late last year.

“He was just floating an idea and said, ‘What do you think?” said Fields. “I’m always going to be up for trying to help literacy instruction. If he wants to fund more literacy instruction — great.”

Asked about the administration’s decision to launch the reading academy in Anchorage, Fields said, “You’ve got to start somewhere.”

“For all I know, he’s planning on trying to set up satellites,” Fields said, though he added that he doesn’t “necessarily think the intent is to have this thing last forever.”

For now, uncertainty remains over the details for the $5 million appropriation. A webpage for the program states only that more information is “coming soon,” leaving skeptics with a litany of unanswered questions: Which students will have the opportunity to participate? How will it help teachers in the most challenged districts?

“I don’t think anybody really knows exactly what we’re getting for this,” said Wielechowski. “It could be a good thing. I just think there’s some unknowns.”

This story originally appeared in the Anchorage Daily News and is republished here with permission.

A former Homer judge has been indicted on a felony charge of perjury.

While many elements are still unknown, the case against Margaret Murphy could signal that an activist group has successfully influenced the way Alaska’s grand jury system works — putting discretion of which allegations are investigated and the power of criminal prosecution in new hands.

The indictment itself, filed on April 28, contains almost no information, saying only that Murphy perjured herself on or around Nov. 3, 2022, in Kenai. The document offers no details as to what the former judge is accused of lying under oath about.

But the list of witnesses examined by the grand jury suggests the allegation is related to a long-running saga between a Kenai man, David Haeg, and Alaska’s judicial system as a whole. For nearly two decades, Haeg has publicly accused judges, including Murphy, of corruption.

Reached by phone Thursday, Haeg, who was in the midst of running heavy equipment to crush rock, said he believed “beyond doubt” that the charge against Murphy is related to his case.

“There would not be a grand jury investigating those events besides that,” he said.

Murphy was a magistrate judge in Aniak and McGrath district courts before serving as a district court judge in Homer until 2019, when she retired. She could not be reached Thursday.

Many aspects of the case are atypical: The indictment is signed not by a state prosecutor but by Clint Campion, an Anchorage attorney. Campion was a longtime prosecutor and served as Anchorage district attorney from 2015 to 2017 before going into private practice. It’s rare but not unheard of for the Alaska Department of Law to hire private attorneys as independent prosecutors in cases that present special conflicts. For example, in the criminal case filed against Alaska’s former acting attorney general, Ed Sniffen, the department hired Gregg Olson as an independent prosecutor. That case was dismissed this spring.

The Department of Law retained Campion “to serve as outside counsel and handle proceedings related to a confidential matter,” department spokesperson Patty Sullivan said in an email. “The decision to hire outside counsel was made to avoid any potential conflicts of interest that might arise from the Department of Law’s handling of the matter.” The department didn’t immediately make available Campion’s contract or a letter describing the scope of work he is being retained for.

Haeg was originally convicted of unlawful hunting in 2004. Part of his sentence included forfeiting an airplane he used for a guiding business.

The case started a long legal odyssey that included appeals and a petition for post-conviction relief, as well as a 2018 incident in which Haeg was tased by troopers at a status hearing. In 2021, the Alaska Court of Appeals sided against Haeg, upholding his conviction. “Haeg also makes numerous assertions of widespread judicial corruption,” the opinion says. “But virtually all of these assertions are based on judicial rulings with which Haeg disagrees.”

Haeg has for years alleged broad corruption within Alaska’s judicial system, outlining his grievances on a website, Alaska State of Corruption. In recent years, he has focused on trying to get Alaska grand juries to directly investigate judges and district attorneys.

Grand juries are made up of citizens who typically listen to prosecutors present potential evidence for criminal charges, and then vote on whether the case should go forward or not. They meet regularly for months at a time, weighing in on dozens of potential cases. The defense doesn’t get to participate or show evidence. Grand juries wield significant power: They can subpoena people, forcing testimony. Indictment by a grand jury means criminal prosecution.

On rare occasions, grand juries have been formed in Alaska to investigate specific issues of public concern. In the 1980s, an investigative grand jury recommended that former Gov. Bill Sheffield be impeached.

But citizens interested in getting a grand jury to investigate an issue or allegation of concern have typically gone through a state prosecutor. Haeg and his supporters say that’s a problem, and that citizens should be able to directly, without mediation from the court system or state Department of Law, put topics on a grand jury agenda.

Last year, the Alaska Court System received three requests from citizens for grand juries to investigate issues, said spokesperson Rebecca Koford. On Dec. 1, the Alaska Supreme Court released new rules, saying ”grand juries are constitutionally authorized to investigate matters of public welfare or safety and to issue reports on the results of such investigation” while confirming the prosecutor’s role in taking the allegation to a grand jury.

Grand juries have a constitutional authority to investigate but “that does not mean that an individual citizen has a right to present anything directly to the grand jury,” the court system’s top attorney, Nancy Meade, said during a Kenai Peninsula Borough committee meeting in March.

The rules also established a process for dealing with complaints that involve the Department of Law, allowing for an outside prosecutor — like Campion — to be appointed if necessary.

Haeg, meanwhile, mobilized his supporters to stage protests at the Kenai Courthouse, waving signs with slogans like “Let the Grand Jury Investigate” and “Grand Juries Have the Power.”

Frustrated by the Supreme Court’s rules, they tried new ways of talking directly to grand jurors.

“We said OK, we’re gonna start protests in front of the courthouse. We’re gonna start asking people going into the courthouse, are you a grand juror?” Haeg said. “They say yeah, we’re gonna say, ‘Hey, I want you to investigate.’”

Two people connected to the Alaska Court System said protesters had even entered the courthouse to try to physically get into the jury room itself. Others reported grand jurors finding flyers on their parked vehicles from Haeg’s supporters.

Haeg contends he believes his tactics ultimately worked, though grand jury proceedings are secret.

“Five or six grand juries in a row on the shelf started investigating what we wanted to get them to investigate,” he said.

Haeg says state Rep. Ben Carpenter, a Republican from Nikiski, with support from Gov. Mike Dunleavy “agreed to convene a special grand jury” that would investigate Haeg’s claims itself.

Carpenter wrote an op-ed for the conservative website Must Read Alaska in 2022 supporting Haeg’s cause.

“Judges and lawyers must not control grand jury investigations for obvious reasons,” he wrote. Carpenter did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

Gov. Dunleavy “had absolutely no involvement in the Grand Jury investigating Mr. Haeg’s claims,” his spokesman Jeff Turner wrote in an email.

What transpired last summer and fall within the grand jury convened in Kenai isn’t public — such proceedings are secret. Haeg says he himself doesn’t know what was discussed.

Haeg says he isn’t happy about the Supreme Court rule, which he believes limits the access of citizens to grand juries.

But he sees the charge against Murphy as “vindication.”

“Maybe it was worth 19 years of my life,” he said. “For justice.”

How the case will proceed, and whether it will inspire other citizen-initiated grand jury investigations, remains to be seen.

Murphy is set to make an initial court appearance Tuesday.

This story originally appeared in the Anchorage Daily News and is republished here with permission.

A staffing crisis in the state agency that provides guardianship services for some of the most vulnerable Alaskans means it can no longer accept new cases, agency heads said in a letter to the Alaska courts recently.

The Office of Public Advocacy is required by law to provide guardianship services for adults with severe mental illness, intellectual or developmental disabilities, dementia or traumatic brain injuries, along with young adults transitioning out of the custody of foster care or the juvenile justice system. That means connecting them with basic services they need to survive, including housing and medical care.

But recent turnover among public guardians — whose training and certification process takes at least two years — has led the 17 fully certified public guardians employed by the office to each have a caseload between 97 and 100 wards, more than double the standard of 40 wards per guardian recommended by the National Guardianship Association, according to the letter sent Friday from the Office of Public Advocacy director and deputy director to the Alaska Supreme Court chief justice and presiding judges.

“As we have been alerting the courts for the last several years, the public guardian caseloads have become overwhelming,” wrote Director James Stinson and Deputy Director Beth Goldstein, explaining their decision to cease accepting new cases.

They went on to write that if public guardians are forced to accept additional cases without additional staffing, the “wards and protected persons would only receive the illusion of protections because the Public Guardian cannot carry out the essential tasks to keep them protected.”

Those tasks include obtaining funds, housing, benefits, food and medical treatment for Alaska residents who cannot do so for themselves.

Continuing to accept new cases, they said, would expose the agency, which is part of the Alaska Department of Administration, to “numerous negligence lawsuits” and create the possibility that additional public guardians will leave the agency “because they are petrified of being negligent and costing someone their life because their caseload is unmanageable.”

State law requires public guardians to follow rules adopted by the National Guardianship Association, including a minimum of one visit per month with each ward.

“OPA is on the brink of having the entire Public Guardian section implode,” Stinson said in an email. “If I do not take this step, we may be left with no Public Guardian section at all.”

Alaska courts spokesperson Rebecca Koford declined on Monday to say whether the courts had formulated an official response to the letter.

Stinson and Goldstein said in the letter that the staffing shortage is not a result of inadequate funding, but of high turnover.

”OPA’s challenge has not necessarily been funding or an inability to hire. The Governor and the Legislature have been supportive of additional requests for positions. The issue has been the attrition rate of Certified Public Guardians and the length of time it takes to train and certify a Public Guardian,” Stinson said in an email.

However, Stinson cited low pay among several factors contributing to turnover in recent years, in addition to high workload, a shrinking pool of interested and experienced applicants, and a lack of growth opportunities in the position.

Staff turnover and recruitment and retention challenges have been cited in recent months as leading to crisis-level challenges in numerous state agencies, including the Public Defender Agency and the state office responsible for handling public food assistance. Other agencies have pointed to past funding cuts and poor retirement and benefits options as contributors to the workforce challenges.

Seventeen public guardians have resigned in the past three years — four in the past year, Stinson said. The staffing reached a breaking point when a public guardian responsible for 85 wards had to take a long-term absence for health reasons, forcing remaining guardians to take on those cases and creating “an untenable staffing situation,” according to the letter.

Stinson and Goldstein said it would likely be nine to 12 months before they would have capacity to take on new cases, as additional guardians become certified.

The agency asked the court in the meantime to consider several interim solutions, including implementing a waitlist, prioritizing new cases on the basis of urgency and need, and appointing private attorneys to serve as temporary guardians, using a separate pool of state funds.

That separate pool has already been tapped by the state Public Defender Agency, which announced earlier this year it could no longer take on new clients charged with serious felonies in the Bethel and Nome Superior Courts because of staffing shortages.

Stinson said the Office of Public Advocacy, in consultation with the governor’s office, is also considering hiring additional employees to fill lower-level positions “that can help take the less complicated, but voluminous, work off the remaining” certified guardians.

A spokesperson for Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy said his administration is “working closely with the Office of Public Advocacy and the Department of Administration to determine what steps will be taken to alleviate the shortage of guardianship staff” and that the agency has already received approval for additional positions.

“There will be more information on that in the near future,” spokesperson Jeff Turner said by email. He did not answer when asked if Dunleavy saw the staff shortage in the Office of Public Advocacy as connecting to shortages impacting other state agencies.

The agency has set a target of around 60 cases per certified staff member to meet national standards. Currently, the agency’s 17 certified public guardians are handling more than 1,600 cases.

Stinson said the agency is committed to keeping all existing clients, which is “already a challenge.” The agency’s caseload has remained steady in recent months, he said, because as new individuals are assigned to the agency, other individuals die or have their appointment dismissed.

“The issue is that the cases have gotten more complex, and there are less resources for the clients so finding ways to meet the clients’ needs now takes longer and we have less certified staff to handle the cases,” Stinson said.

This story originally appeared in the Anchorage Daily News and is republished here with permission.

A state Superior Court judge has dismissed a sex abuse case against former acting Alaska Attorney General Clyde “Ed” Sniffen. In an order Friday, Judge Peter Ramgren sided with Sniffen’s lawyer, who argued too much time had passed for him to be charged with the alleged 1991 crime.

A grand jury indicted Sniffen in September on three counts of sexual abuse of a minor by an authority figure, based on his alleged sexual relationship with a then-17-year-old student. Sniffen was 27 at the time and a coach for the West Anchorage High School girls’ mock trial team.

While Alaska state law currently has no statute of limitations for felony sexual abuse of a minor, Ramgren dismissed the charge based on the argument that the law was different in 1991, when a five-year statute of limitations was in place.

The alleged victim, Nikki Dougherty White, learned of the dismissal Saturday morning by email. She called the ruling a “huge disappointment.”

“A huge sense of being let down by the court system,” she said.

White said that despite the dismissal, she does not regret going public with her story in January 2021, after she learned Sniffen had been appointed attorney general by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. Sniffen resigned as the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica prepared to publish an article about the allegations.

“Because the truth is important. And because Alaska has too long been a place that favors abusers, that does not provide a safe space for victims, for women, for girls. For anybody who doesn’t fit, you know, the white male profile,” White said in a phone interview.

“The Alaska judicial system isn’t built for us and it doesn’t protect us,” she said.

Sniffen pleaded not guilty to the charges. He could not be reached for comment Saturday. His attorney, Jeffrey Robinson, was out of state Saturday for a professional obligation and had just received the judge’s order on Saturday afternoon, he wrote in an email.

“I’ve not had any time to review it,” Robinson wrote.

The special prosecutor in the case, Gregg Olson, said Saturday no decision had been made on whether the state will appeal the order.

Another Superior Court judge, Erin Marston, presided over the case in January when Sniffen’s attorney argued it should be dismissed on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired and that the long delay between the alleged abuse and the filing of charges violated Sniffen’s right to due process.

Marston on Jan. 26 rejected a motion to dismiss the case related to alleged due process violations. Ramgren replaced Marston as the case judge on Feb. 7 due to Marston’s retirement. Ramgren was appointed to the bench in 2019 by Dunleavy.

In his Friday order, Ramgren wrote that a five-year statute of limitations was in place for the crime of sexual abuse of a minor at the time of the alleged offense, May 1991. The Legislature reduced or removed time limits to charge people for certain crimes in 1992 and again in 2001, the judge wrote, but he concluded those changes did not apply to Sniffen’s case.

“The court finds the applicable statutes and legislative history indicate these changes cannot be applied to the alleged offenses,” Ramgren wrote. “For that reason, the statute of limitations governing Mr. Sniffen’s conduct has expired and he cannot be subject to indictment.”

Sniffen led the state Department of Law, as Alaska’s top lawyer and legal adviser to the governor, for roughly five months in 2020 to 2021. His predecessor, Kevin Clarkson, resigned as attorney general when the newsrooms reported Clarkson had sent hundreds of unwanted text messages to a junior colleague.

This story originally appeared in the Anchorage Daily News and is republished here with permission.

A “parental rights” education bill proposed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy could be found to violate the state’s constitution, according to an agency charged with analyzing proposed legislation in Alaska.

Counsel for the Legislative Affairs Agency wrote in a memorandum requested by Rep. Jennie Armstrong, D-Anchorage, that Dunleavy’s bill “will likely raise challenges” under the Alaska constitution’s privacy clause, which is one of the strongest in the nation and has been used to defend abortion access in the state.

The legal opinion pertains to the provisions included in the bill that would ban gender nonconforming students from using bathrooms according to their preferred gender, and require schools to share medical information with parents and seek their permission when a child requests to use a different name or pronouns.

Dunleavy’s bill is scheduled for hearings in the House Education Committee later this week.

According to the memo, “prohibiting a gender non-conforming or transgender student from using the restroom of their choice, potentially requiring the student to abruptly begin using a different restroom, may publicly reveal the person’s status as a transgender or gender non-conforming student.”

Legislative counsel Marie Marx went on to write that “because disclosure of a student’s status as a transgender or gender non-conforming student could, at a minimum, cause embarrassment, humiliation, and anxiety, and in more severe instances subject the student to harassment or other harm, it is likely that a court would conclude that a transgender or gender non-conforming student has a fundamental privacy interest.”

A spokesperson for Dunleavy did not respond to a list of questions, including whether the governor had considered the prospect of legal challenges when crafting the bill. Instead, spokesperson Grant Robinson said the bill “does not dictate a particular approach but only requires that schools ensure the safety and privacy of all students” and said that schools can offer single occupancy facilities to avoid violating the rights of transgender students.

“We do not believe that a general requirement requiring procedures that provide the safety and privacy of all students triggers a constitutional violation,” Robinson said by email.

As for the provisions requiring that parents be notified when a student seeks to change their name or pronouns, Robinson said the bill “presents a fact pattern and question that has not been previously decided by Alaska courts.”

“Namely, when a student wishes to be publicly identified by a specific pronoun in the school environment, does notifying the parent of the student’s request, violate the student’s right to privacy, when the use of the pronoun itself will be a public action?” Robinson wrote.

Armstrong, the Anchorage Democrat who requested the legal analysis, said that “privacy is something that is very top of mind for gender nonconforming kids,” and that some children may feel unsafe about sharing their gender identity with their guardians.

“I want people to be thinking about this bill from all angles, and to see it for what it is, which is a bill that is harming kids,” said Armstrong, who shared copies of the memo with several members of the House Education Committee, including co-chair Rep. Justin Ruffridge, R-Soldotna. The memo was not shared with the committee’s most conservative members, including its other co-chair, Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River, who has called Dunleavy’s bill “outstanding.”

Legal challenges are unlikely to deter lawmakers or the governor, according to civil rights attorney Caitlin Shortell, who has successfully represented clients in lawsuits against the state.

“Legislators don’t generally care if something is unconstitutional. You can look at so many different laws that are passed and just be like, ‘what are these people smoking?’” said Shortell.

“Passing an unconstitutional law is their way up through the courts to test whether or not something would be — if it’s a law they want — approved,” she added.

The bill proposed by Dunleavy includes several provisions that have already been adopted in other Republican-controlled states, in some cases eliciting legal challenges.

Idaho, Arkansas and Iowa all enacted laws last week banning transgender students from using same-sex facilities according to their preferred gender, raising the total number of states with such bans to six.

[‘Forced outing’ bills make schools unsafe, transgender youth say]

The question over transgender students’ rights to use single-sex facilities has been playing out in federal courts for several years. In 2017, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of a transgender boy. In December of last year, a different federal appeals court ruled that a transgender boy was not entitled to use the boys’ bathroom. The judges in the majority of the 7-4 decision were all appointed by Republican presidents; the dissenters were all appointed by Democrats. Those rulings make the question poised for review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

While the Alaska Constitution’s privacy clause has been interpreted to be stronger than the one in the U.S. Constitution, Shortell said that doesn’t necessarily mean civil rights activists can rely on state courts to strike down laws like the one proposed by Dunleavy.

“The state constitution privacy clause has been interpreted … to do certain things, but that doesn’t mean that in the future it couldn’t be interpreted differently,” said Shortell.

When presenting his bill, Dunleavy insisted it was unlike those that had been introduced or adopted in other states, and would be a unique approach tailored to Alaska’s emphasis on local control, which allows district school boards to control school policies and curriculum.

“Let’s be clear, the state of Alaska is unique in its approach to just about everything, including people and our relationships with each other,” Dunleavy said at the time.

But every policy included in Dunleavy’s “parental rights” bill is similar to ones that have been introduced or implemented in several other states.

Alaska’s bill came at the heels of several other states this year proposing bills that could forcibly “out” students who may have shared a gender identity or sexual orientation in school that they have not shared with their parents or guardians.

Several states have passed or considered bills similar to the other provisions of Alaska’s measure, which would ban all classes related to gender and sexuality before third grade and require parental permission for a student to participate in such classes beginning in fourth grade.

The states that require written parental permission before a student can participate in classes discussing gender and sexuality, known as “opt-in” policies, are Arizona, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Texas and Utah, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, a nonprofit that advocates for comprehensive sexual education.

In Florida, a law called by critics the “don’t say gay” measure, was the first to ban all sexual education before fourth grade. Since then, several other states have proposed similar measures or broader limits that would ban all sexual education until a later grade.

This story originally appeared in the Anchorage Daily News and is republished here with permission.

The state salary commission on Wednesday recommended a 67% pay raise for legislators — alongside a significant pay boost for the governor and his cabinet — shortly after all five members were replaced by the governor.

Under the plan approved unanimously by the new commissioners, legislators’ salaries would increase from $50,400 to $84,000 per year, matching half of the new salaries proposed for the heads of state agencies. That would be the first pay raise for legislators since 2010.

The Alaska State Officers Compensation Commission is charged with making salary recommendations for the governor, senior executive branch officials and legislators. Earlier this month, the Legislature voted unanimously to reject the commission’s previous plan to significantly increase the salaries of the governor, lieutenant governor and department heads, without increasing the compensation of lawmakers. Legislators at the time questioned the viability of relying on the commission to calculate salaries moving forward.

Two of the five former members of the commission resigned days after the Legislature rejected the commission’s recommendations. The other three were abruptly removed from their positions by Gov. Mike Dunleavy earlier this week.

Five new commissioners were appointed, and a meeting was swiftly scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. During that meeting, the new commissioners waived a rule that requires them to notice meetings 20 days before they are held, allowing them to amend the previous commissioners’ recommendations immediately.

The new compensation package for legislators would not impact their per diem expense payments, which allow them to collect $307 tax free per legislative day. Per diem payments would add roughly $37,000 per year for legislators who claim then during an entire 121-day legislative session.

The pay increase has long been called for by lawmakers who say they struggle to maintain homes in both Juneau and their home districts, and who say the limited wages make the Legislature less diverse.

The recommended pay raises for lawmakers pave the way for the Legislature to also approve hefty pay increases for the governor and members of his cabinet.

Former Republican Rep. Kurt Olson, who had been the commission’s chair, submitted his resignation Monday. One commissioner, Lee Cruise, who was appointed by the governor, resigned by email last week after taking a job with the Dunleavy administration. The remaining three commissioners were removed from their positions by Tuesday afternoon.

The new commissioners announced during Wednesday’s 15-minute meeting included newly elected chair Donald Handeland, an engineer and active member of the Republican Party; Miles Baker, who until earlier this year worked in Dunleavy’s office; Duff Mitchell, managing director at Juneau Hydropower Inc.; Larry LeDoux, a former state education commissioner; and Jomo Stewart, president of the Fairbanks Economic Development Corp.

Handeland, Baker and Mitchell were picked by Dunleavy. LeDoux’s name was put forward by Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak. Stewart’s name was put forward by House Speaker Cathy Tilton, R-Wasilla.

While the decision to recommend lawmaker pay boosts passed unanimously, both LeDoux and Stewart said they were taken by surprise when Mitchell made the motion to increase legislator salaries to $84,000.

“I’m not 100% comfortable with the process that’s been expedited,” Stewart said during the commission meeting, after Baker and Handeland defended Mitchell’s motion.

Handeland said in an interview that he had been told to expect the motion for an $84,000 legislator salary during a meeting earlier Wednesday with Kate Sheehan, director of the personnel and labor relations division in the Department of Administration, and a member of the Department of Law. But Handeland said he had not communicated with other commission members about the motion before the commission met.

Stevens and Tilton said there was no deal struck between the governor and legislators to ensure pay raises for both, but that Dunleavy acknowledged the need for pay raises across the board.

“He said, ‘I’m gonna do something about that.’ And he did. But I had nothing to do with what happened,” Stevens said.

Members removed ‘in the spirit of cooperation’

House Minority Leader Calvin Schrage, an Anchorage independent, said he had concerns about the process used by the commission, and questioned how independent it is. But he was generally supportive of the salary increases.

“If you want commissioners that are talented and you want legislators that look like the people of Alaska, you need to increase salaries for both, and this current proposal does that,” he said.

The Senate has drafted a bill with the same $84,000-salary proposal for lawmakers, Stevens said, but the legislation had not been introduced. Stevens said before Wednesday’s vote that if the commission had done nothing for legislators’ pay, that bill could go before the Legislature.

In response to questions, Dunleavy spokesperson Jeff Turner said by email “it was clear that legislative leadership was not satisfied with the work being done by the Alaska State Officers Compensation Commission. In response to that, and in the spirit of cooperation, Governor Dunleavy removed the three commission members to allow new members to be appointed.”

“The decision to amend the previous salary report was made by members of the commission. You will have to ask them about their decision,” Turner added.

Mitchell, who made the motion to amend the commission’s recommendation, said the idea of pegging legislator salaries to half the compensation of department heads had come from the Legislature. But he insisted he had not spoken to any lawmakers before making his proposal.

“I think I picked it up, there was some discussion, or read something where, I don’t know who it was, I don’t know where I picked it up, but they were talking about some kind of benchmark to the commissioners,” said Mitchell in an interview. He later added that he may have spoken about the idea when he was interviewed by a member of the governor’s office for the commission position. “I don’t know how that came up or whatever. So I may have shared it.”

Jordan Shilling is director of boards and commissions for Dunleavy, and several commission members said they communicated with Shilling before joining the commission. Shilling did not respond to a request for comment on his communications with commission members.

The commission members who were not picked by Dunleavy said they were blindsided by the process, but still supported the pay increases.

“I normally wouldn’t make a decision like this on a rushed basis,” Stewart said in an interview after the commission meeting, adding that he was “taken aback at how rapidly that was going to happen.”

LeDoux said after the meeting that he supports the salary recommendation, but “it’s always good to give lots of notice to the public.”

“I don’t know the circumstance of why it was expedited, but I suspect there are deadlines involved with the Legislature,” LeDoux said.

Asked why he chose to hold a vote Wednesday rather than waiting to make recommendations at a later date, Handeland, the commission chair, took a long pause.

“I don’t know if there was urgency in that,” he said.

Unless lawmakers reject the new recommendations, including their pay raises — an unlikely scenario — the increases will take effect July 1 for the governor and commissioners, and in January 2024 for lawmakers.

‘Rotten with politics’

Alaska’s independent commission was established in 2008 in part so lawmakers would not need to vote to increase their own salaries. Under state law, the commission’s recommendations are released as a final report to the Legislature. The report becomes effective 60 days after it is introduced, unless lawmakers pass a bill to explicitly reject it.

The commission’s replacement came after lawmakers rejected its recommendations two years in a row. In 2022, they rejected a plan that would have marginally increased legislator base pay but substantially cut per-diem allowances, translating to a proposed pay cut for most lawmakers.

Stevens said after last month’s Senate vote to reject the commission’s pay raises for the executive branch that the commission had failed in its duty to meaningfully debate salaries for legislators. After the House disapproval vote, Tilton said she wished the commission’s recommendations were more “balanced.” Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, said that the commission was “rotten with politics.”

“I think we just need to give up on that commission,” Stevens said last month. “They have never done their job or looked at things seriously.”

In an email sent Monday to staff at the Department of Administration, former commission chair Olson said he had “mixed feelings” about stepping down. Olson cited the votes this year and in 2022 by the Legislature to reject the commission’s recommendations in his email. He said “several members” of Senate leadership had worked to block the proposed pay bump for the executive branch.

Olson did not respond to a request for comment on his departure from the commission, nor did Cruise, the other member of the commission who left voluntarily.

Cruise was hired as a policy analyst in the commissioner’s office at the Department of Revenue. As a state employee, he is now ineligible to serve on the commission that recommends salary adjustments for the governor and the heads of state agencies.

Cruise, who had been appointed to the commission by Dunleavy, was the field director for Dunleavy’s re-election campaign in 2022.

Three other commissioners were told by the governor’s office Tuesday afternoon that their services were no longer required.

“I’m glad to not be part of the news story anymore, even though I think legislators deserve a raise,” said one of the removed commissioners, Larry Persily, a journalist and former deputy commissioner of the Alaska Department of Revenue. He had described recent meetings about legislators’ pay as “unproductive” and “contentious” and not coming close to an agreement.

Another commissioner, Carrigan Grigsby, vice president of Avis Alaska, declined to comment about being abruptly removed from his position.

“I was happy to be of service and wish the new commissioners best of luck going forward,” he said by text message.

A fifth commissioner, Aryne Randall was also removed from her position Tuesday. Randall was appointed by Dunleavy in 2022 and is the chief operations officer of C.E.F. Properties, a Wasilla-based commercial real estate development company. She did not respond to a request for comment.

Persily’s term was set to end 2025. Grigsby’s and Randall’s were set to end in 2024. All three were told by email that they serve at the pleasure of the governor and received an emailed letter signed by Dunleavy, thanking them for volunteering on the commission.

‘A huge disservice’

Proponents of a pay increase for lawmakers have said that increasing lawmakers’ compensation would boost the diversity of the Legislature by make it more financially viable for young parents to run for office.

According to data gathered by the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 30 states offer lawmakers lower base pay than Alaska’s, including several states that offer no base pay at all and guarantee only per-diem payments when lawmakers are in session.

Stevens said that it can be particularly difficult, financially, for lawmakers with young families to serve in Juneau and maintain another home in their districts.

Heidi Drygas, executive director of the Alaska State Employees Association, a union representing about 8,000 state employees, said Wednesday she supports a pay increase both for the governor and for lawmakers.

“We are doing our state a huge disservice by not properly compensating these public servants shaping policy for our entire state. We want and deserve the best of the best. Not just folks who are independently wealthy, retired, or left to struggle in order to serve,” Drygas wrote in a social media post.

Samuels reported from Anchorage. Maguire reported from Juneau.

This story originally appeared in the Anchorage Daily News and is republished here with permission.