ANCHORAGE, Alaska—
A memo sent to the city's executive employees has some city lawmakers objecting Thursday. In it, Mayor Dan Sullivan says he has authorized 3 percent pay raises for executive city employees -- all 160 of them.Sullivan said Wednesday that he's anticipating a budget shortfall, and that's what's so upsetting for some: the concept of Sullivan offering executive employees raises on the same day he was batting around the idea of some unions giving up raises for the year.
But some Anchorage Assembly members say it's only fair, because the city executives have already taken a big pay cut.
To help fix a possible budget shortfall of up to $18 million, Sullivan said Wednesday that he’d go to individual unions to ask for concessions like a 37.5-hour work week, or giving up raises to help close the budget gap.
“That’s the kind of cooperation we need -- this city has a continuing budget problem, and we'd like everyone to participate in the solution,” Sullivan said.
That's why a lot of people say they were shocked to see the mayor release a memo, written Wednesday, announcing a pay raise for executive employees.
“Asking the union employees for concessions and then giving executives an increase?” said Assembly member Elvi Gray-Jackson. “It's just really really poor timing; it really is.”
Gray-Jackson says if Sullivan was hoping to get unions to help close the budget shortfall, this was not the way to do it.
“Of course it’s going to hurt him,” Gray-Jackson said. “If I was a union employee and I was asked to make a concession because of a budget shortfall, and then I found out that the mayor’s executives -- I believe there are 146 of them, the Assembly has a few -- are getting a 3 percent increase, I would be very, very upset.”
Rod Harris, the president of the Anchorage Firefighters Union, says Alaska's economy is turning around, so asking for concessions -- especially before an announcement of executive pay raises -- doesn't make sense to him.
“It’s a mixed message right now: we're hearing one thing with the unions, yet the business community is painting a different forecast on the city,” Harris said. “What the mayor has said with his memo, 3 percent increase to the executives, supports that what the business cocmmunity is putting out.”
But Assembly member Jennifer Johnston says the pay raise is really just a smaller pay cut, because all city executives took a 5 percent pay cut in 2009, shortly after Sullivan took office.
“These increases will now bring their cut in salary to 2 percent, so it’s not as much a 3 percent raise as it’s only a 2 percent cut now,” Johnston said.
Johnston says the city's executives have done a good job making the city government more efficient in times of major budget shortfalls, both this year and last year.
“You have to, at some point, reward them for doing the cost savings they've done,” Johnston said.
Sullivan's office sent out a chart Wednesday showing that from August of 2009 through the end of 2011, he will have saved nearly $500,000 from those executive pay cuts. The chart showed the increases in pay for union employees will cost the city nearly $16.5 million over that same time period.
Sullivan declined to comment on camera Wednesday, sending out a statement instead saying in part that city executives are the only group not to get a pay increase over the last 14 months.
Contact Jason Lamb at jlamb@ktuu.com
