(Capitol Research Center) Taxpayers paid more than $129 million in salaries and benefits to federal employees for doing “official” union work in 2009. These federal employees logged about 3 million hours and received government paychecks for doing union work. How can this be? Title V of the US Code allows federal employees to do union work while on the job working for the taxpayer. This is called “official” time in the Code. In effect, the taxpayer pays for activities which provide literally no direct public benefit. This can also include union lobbying activities for federal legislation. So, you may be paying for a union representative to complain about inadequate bathrooms, parking spaces or inadequate windows in offices. This happens while the union representative (federal employee) is collecting a paycheck from you, the taxpayer. (read more…)

Recently, there has been much discussion in Anchorage regarding  public employee wages, education and property taxes. Folks on both sides tend to throw out numbers regarding whether or not public employees are paid enough, and whether Anchoragites pay high property taxes. The Policy Forum has posted salary and benefit information for Anchorage Municipal employees and Anchorage School District employees on our website: http://www.alaskapolicyforum.org/resources/municipality-of-anchorage/homepayroll/. This has been done to clear away the “clutter” and provide transparent information to the general public. Armed with this information, citizens can debate the issues on a more rational basis.

To further clarify the debate concerning whether or not Anchorage property taxes are too high, too low or just right,  we provide this informational graph. The data for this graph is provided by The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan educational organization which promotes a sense of “tax consciousness” in the public.

The Anchorage Assembly voted down the three year nearly 15% increase in wages for plumbers (most at AWWU). Was this the right decision? The average AWWU plumber receives about $109,000 annually in pay and benefits; the average Anchorage non-AWWU plumber gets about $68,000 annually(not including benefits, if any). If you want to know what your public employee plumbers make go to: http://www.alaskapolicyforum.org/resources/municipality-of-anchorage/flowchart42/.

You decide if current wages are fair and what you think the pay raises, if any, are deserved. By the way, our military members will onlyget a 1.6% pay raise next year.

Executive Director Jeremy Thompson explains Why Alaska Government Transparency is a Worthy Cause

Here at the Alaska Policy Forum we believe that transparency is always the best public policy. As the state’s only free-market think tank, we believe transparency is the key to a more educated, involved, and successful Alaska. We believe that public record information should be readily available to the public, so that decisions can be made in a context of accountability.

Are your tax dollars being leveraged effectively? Are federal, state, and municipal programs reaching the goals promised by various administrations? Are the desired results measureable? These are the questions that we want the average voter to ask.

When it comes to state employment, it can be difficult for the average voter to get their minds around the costs. Recognizing this, Alaska Policy Forum has collected payroll data from the State of Alaska, the Municipality of Anchorage, and the Anchorage School District and – for the first time – this information is available to Alaskans in one on-line location. Why did APF gather thousands of pages of public record documents and present them to the public? It was not, as some have suggested, to expose hard-working Alaskans and have the ultimate ‘gotcha’ moment. In case you need further proof, both my wife and my mother-in-law’s salaries are now listed online – and any married man will tell you nothing is worth jeopardizing his relationship with his mother-in-law.

No. We tackled this project because we are committed to transparency and to fostering a more educated, involved, and successful Alaska. The time for the fiscal conversation is now: Current government spending is at levels that are unprecedented in our state’s history.

Our hope is that Alaskans will review the information provided here http://publicpayroll.alaskapolicyforum.org and educate themselves on Alaska’s fiscal situation, that they will call their legislators, their assemblyperson and their PTA and let them know what they want to see happen. Voters are a very persuasive people when they act. Our state’s future and our children’s future – yours and mine – depend upon it.

Press Release

See the vision? Partner with us. Every dollar counts.

Update: The spreadsheet has been updated to reflect some information that was misplaced in the APOC records. The new spreadsheet reflects 24 hour reports as of April 4, 2011. Please see the new revision for updated figures. The figures quoted in this post reflect an earlier version.

The Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) is responsible for collecting and enforcing campaign finance laws in Alaska state and local elections. APOC uploads a voluminous quantity of individual campaign contribution reports filed to its website in a timely manner, however, it can take months, well after any election, before APOC processes this information into the APOC website (which has many usability problems). The filings are not really practical to summarize cash flows in a campaign that the voters can use before they make their ballot choices.

This year, the Alaska Policy Forum has entered the campaign filings into a newly designed central database and volunteers have worked on data entry of the hand written filings to integrate the dozens of separate spreadsheets filed by candidates to produce a summary for voters. Everything in this spreadsheet is public record from the Alaska Public Offices Commission. We included all candidates, whether they had filed anything with APOC or not, and indicated which seats were being sought.

Our investigation found more than $645,000 came from all sources to all candidates. Total candidate self funding was $72,226. Total individual giving was $434,623. Labor-related Political Action Committees representing municipal employees and Davis-Bacon contractors gave $117,477. Other corporate, trade association, union and special interests gave $16,022. 

Please consider partnering with the Alaska Policy Forum to make it possible for us to do this for all state and local elections in Alaska.

Click here to download the summary spreadsheet of APF’s findings.

The Alaska Policy Forum has now made available the payroll data for positions inside MOA that are grant funded. Visit the MOA payroll data homepage and click on the blue block titled “Grant Funded Positions.”

The Alaska Policy Forum has set up a series of websites for the citizens of Anchorage and MatSu to view the salaries and benefits of civil servants inside local government. The data can be navigated by a clickable flowchart. The goal is to acquaint users with the structure and layout of local government while navigating the data. APF has also compiled a list of Frequently Asked Questions. Please be sure to read them first.

Help us spread the word: Tweet the URL, talk about us on Facebook, or email the link to everyone in your personal email list.

Anchorage School District Payroll Data Available
Most recently, the Anchorage School District payroll data was made available. Jeremy Thompson, Executive Director of the Alaska Policy Forum, praised the District administration staff for its cooperation in obtaining the data. “Some local governments can be stubborn about sharing public records. I’m happy to say this wasn’t the case with the Anchorage School District. The Municipality of Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough were also very responsive. Staff from all entities did their best to understand what we were requesting and to fill the request quickly.”
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Find and Bookmark the Alaska Policy Forum Payroll Portals

Municipality of Anchorage click here.
Anchorage School District click here.
Matanuska-Susitna Borough click here.
Check back with this page for a list of all payroll data portals from the Alaska Policy Forum. We are currently working with Mat-Su school district.
Find this useful? Think it should continue?Donate to us to keep this online and updated. It’s tax-deductible and you’ll get a gold star for making government more transparent. How about partnering with us today? Your donation of $50, $100 or $500 is more effective with us.

Anchorage, Alaska – Continuing with its efforts to advance government transparency, the Alaska Policy Forum has launched a new portal which allows citizens in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough to view the salaries of its public employees. Like the previously launched website, the data can be navigated by an intuitive flowchart, which allows taxpayers to form an image of the way their local government is structured and where current employees are focused.

View the payroll data here.

To view a list of all payroll data portals, click here.

Partner with us to make this information better. Your donation will ensure that this information is made available in the future, and in a better format. Alaska Policy Forum is doing research on how to make this information easier to access and easier to provide. We can’t continue without your support.

If you have comments or questions, please contact us at the Alaska Policy Forum by clicking the link at the top of the page.

The Alaska Policy Forum has launched a transparency website for the Municipality of Anchorage payroll. The website allows citizens to view payroll and benefit data for nearly all Municipal employees by navigating an organizational chart. The data provided lists the employee, the position title, bargaining unit, salary (includes overtime) and benefits.

“It’s important that citizens have all the information they need to make informed decisions about whether we are spending too much or too little on government services,” said Jeremy Thompson, Executive Director of the Alaska Policy Forum. “Not only should data be organized in an intuitive way, it needs to be organized in a way that depicts the structure of government. We wanted citizens to learn something about government structure when they use this tool. Transparency is a mix of useful information and a better informed consumer.”

The website is part of Alaska Policy Forum’s focus on government transparency.

To navigate the payroll data, click here.

Frequently Asked Questions.

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(Sunlight Foundation) The transparency group Sunlight Foundation has followed up on its 2007 list of “8 Principles of Open Government,” extending the list to ten must-do’s for proper public access to information.

Read the article <here>