Layoff notices mailed

ANCHORAGE — Layoff notices went out to more than half of all state of Alaska employees Monday, the result of a continuing budget impasse among state legislators.

Perhaps as a sign of growing frustration with the holdup in the Legislature, Gov. Bill Walker also announced he had hired a prominent Alaska attorney, Matthew K. Peterson, to mediate between the sides. Peterson said he was “optimistic” that mediation could work, given the opportunity.

Legislators had rebuffed an earlier offer for mediation, Walker said.

“After the first extended session, the day after, I sat down with the Legislature and the different groups, the House Minority, the House Majority … the Senate Minority,” Walker said, at an afternoon press conference announcing Peterson’s hiring. “I met with them about 12 times. My first meeting with them I said ‘Let us suggest a mediator, let’s bring in the meditative process to get you through this process.’ They declined. They thanked me for the offer.”

Notices were sent to about 10,000 state government employees Monday, Walker said.

“We were pretty hopeful with the work they had done,” Walker said, of a last-minute compromise reached among Democrats and Republicans in the Alaska House of Representatives. Ultimately, the Senate rejected the compromise, setting the stage for a government shutdown if consensus cannot be reached by July 2.

Members of the House have been at loggerheads since at least the end of April, when legislators passed a budget, but lacked the votes to tap the Constitutional Budget Reserve to fund it. Declining oil revenues have resulted in a projected budget gap of between $3 billion and $4 billion.

No one has yet proposed a solution to close that gap, though lawmakers and the governor have cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the budget.

“There’s no one number that fixes the problem,” Walker said. “No one’s number fixes it.”

Some portion of the remaining roughly 6,000 remaining state employees would be subject to layoffs but would not receive written notices, like Sarah Heath, the director of the newly appointed Mat-Su governor’s office.

“I’m hoping that the legislators come to an agreement soon,” she said.

Heath said at-will employees could be dismissed with a notice of mere minutes since they serve at the pleasure of the governor.

“There’s 30 days, and I’m confident the legislators can come together for a Hail Mary,” she said.

No immediate estimate for the number of state employees who are also Valley residents was available Monday afternoon, state officials said.

“We all look at July 1, we think that’s a month out,” Walker said. “If you’re an employee, you think ‘That’s a house payment out, that’s a car payment out, that’s summer camp.’ So they have to plan, anticipate what happens if that comes about.”

In a flurry of afternoon press releases, heads of the majority of state government departments detailed likely consequences of a shutdown:

Department of Corrections, Department of Public Safety, and Department of Health and Human Services operations would not be altered in the short term, though the Department of Public Safety press release did observe that long-planned cuts to some programs, including the grounding of the department’s two search-and-rescue helicopters, the closing of the Girdwood Alaska State Troopers Post, Cold Case Unit, and the elimination of 27 trooper positions would go ahead as planned. The Talkeetna post has already closed.

Virtually every other department listed some effect.

The impact of the shutdown would likely land most heavily on Alaska island communities, where the 11 vessels of the Alaska Marine Highway System would immediately enter layup status, according to a Department of Transportation and Public Facilities press release.

The shutdown would also require prosecutors to forgo prosecuting all but violent crimes in district courts, according to a Department of Law press release.

School systems would be the most severely impacted statewide in the event of a protracted shutdown, with funds available for only three of 12 months. The start of fiscal year 2016 coincides with the August start of the school year, which leaves the short-term impact uncertain. The department also will be able to cover the first quarter of transportation funding.

Commercial fisheries could continue to operate under the guidance of a group of core employees of the Department of Fish and Game, but support staff for the Board of Game and the Board of Fisheries would be laid off. Subsistence harvest surveys would also cease.

Beyond the short-term wallop caused by budget negotiations, the long-term question of matching revenue to expenses remains, Walker said.

“We cut spending 1 percent, but we have to go out and fix the 99 percent,” he said.

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