City mistakenly pulls permanent fund cash from more than 100

WASILLA — City officials said Thursday they mistakenly garnished up to $500 from the Permanent Fund Dividend checks of about 130 city residents.

The garnishments came about as a result of an error in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet formula used to match the list of dividend-eligible Alaskans from the Department of Revenue with a database of names of people who owed money in court fees.

City finance director Troy Tankersley said officials had designed a spreadsheet to match three data points for each individual to ensure the correct person was receiving a courts garnish. In this case, the three-point data match incorrectly matched some names of people who did not owe court fees and funds were incorrectly garnished from more than 100 people’s PFD checks, Tankersley said.

City officials only recently took over the responsibility of matching the two lists of names, after becoming dissatisfied with costs and privacy rights associated with the use of a private contractor, Tekmate, who had previously performed the function, Mayor Verne Rupright said.

“They were looking at this information from a proprietary basis,” he said. “This should be a government-to-government function.”

The new process allows city officials to address concerns raised by individual dividend recipients without having to consult a third party, Rupright said. It also created the situation that lead to the error.

The number of people affected is “more, to my mind, as the administrator, than are acceptable,” he said.

This year marks the first year officials designed their own spreadsheets instead of using a contractor, Tankersley said.

“I broke away from that process and created this new process, by which everything has proved to be accurate, except for this one piece to get in there,” he said. “I take full responsibility for this. We’ve mitigated, corrected the issue.”

The incorrect information has already been transmitted to the state-level permanent fund managers, and officials there have told Wasilla officials the error could take until Nov. 20 to correct, though people impacted by the error could be reimbursed sooner. City officials also say they won’t refund individual checks without verification from state officials, with an eye toward preventing correction fraud.

Taxpayers who have contacted city officials about the discrepancy have been good-natured about the mix-up, Rupright said.

“Nobody’s up in arms over this,” he said. “The city isn’t trying to hide the error.”

Letters were distributed to the affected residents stating the amount incorrectly taken and apologizing for the mix-up. Residents should check their bank statements carefully: $500 represents an estimate of the largest amount incorrectly withheld, but the amount may actually be less, according to city officials.

Rupright said he doesn’t think the blunder will have much of an impact on the November election where he faces incumbent Rep. Lynn Gattis in a legislative bid.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com.