Alaska Dispatch

The Anchorage Assembly's approval of four union contracts in December is now under review as some members question whether their vote was rushed and possibly flawed.

In March, the assembly voted to hire an independent attorney to review the circumstances under which they approved the labor contracts. The review is expected to be completed by the end of this month.

Then-Mayor Mark Begich, now a U.S. senator, supported the contracts and asked the assembly to approve them. Critics claim the contracts were overly generous to unions during lean economic times. Among the assembly's concerns is whether the Begich administration provided accurate information to assembly members on how much money was available to fund the contracts before they voted on them late last year.

"There were a number of questions about process during the whole debate," said Assembly Chairwoman Debbie Ossiander. "Begich specifically said that there was no reason to delay, and that delay could jeopardize the negotiations. There were people, myself included, who did want to delay, but we were in the minority."

At the time the contracts were approved, she said, the assembly had incomplete financial information, the main points of the contracts were not summarized, and the costs of the contracts were not laid out thoroughly.

Julie Hasquet, Begich's spokeswoman, said in an email Thursday that all of the information was available to the assembly before members voted.

"The assembly's job is to review the information that comes to them," Hasquet said in an email. "If some of the members didn't fulfill that duty and didn't perform their due diligence, they should not now be blaming Begich."

The contracts in question are between the city and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Anchorage Municipal Employees Association, and the police and firefighters' unions. All contracts were for five years and specified a 3 percent wage increase the first year, with increases of between 2.5 and about 4 percent over the last four years of the contract, depending on inflation.

Mayor Dan Sullivan, who was sworn in office July 1, sides with Ossiander, saying the contracts were rushed and have now committed the city "to an additional $11 million over this year's numbers, and an additional $110 million over the life of the contracts."

"I believe these were clearly inappropriate contract terms given the known economic circumstances facing our city, state and nation last year," Sullivan said in an email Thursday. "In light of what was going on at the time, the contracts were irresponsible, and we're dealing with the repercussions now."

An assembly memo dated March 24 authorizes up to $5,000 to be paid to Joe Levesque, an Anchorage lawyer, to review the process by which the contracts were passed and to recommend corrective action if necessary. Levesque declined comment, saying he is still conducting his review.

Municipal Clerk Barbara Gruenstein said the review has taken longer than expected, but should be done by the end of this month.

The March 24 memo states that the review is necessary, in part, because the Begich administration distributed a financial report in November that described the city's fund balances as intact. But after the assembly approved the contracts, in January the administration confirmed a drop in the balances for 2008 and projected budget shortfalls for 2009.

Some assembly members felt sandbagged by the revelation that the city was now anticipating a budget shortfall.

"The contracts were brought forward in a context that resources were available, and we were all shocked when two weeks later it was revealed that we had a $9 million deficit," said Assemblywoman Sheila Selkregg.

"I remember being told in February that we were overspent, but not before that," said Bill Starr, an assembly member representing Eagle River and Chugiak.

Both Starr and Ossiander said labor contracts must be certified by the city's chief fiscal officer before the assembly can pass them. But the labor contracts in question were never certified by then-chief fiscal officer Sharon Weddleton.

Weddleton, who is now a corporate tax manager at Bristol Bay Native Corp., said that some documents can't be certified because the expenditures go on to future years, when budgets don't exist yet.

Weddleton also said that before the assembly voted, members asked her whether the police and firefighter contracts could be absorbed into the budget, but that she was ignored when she told them that there was not enough money.

"I wrote a memo saying that there was a shortfall between the budget and the contracts that they were being asked to fund," she said. "If I had done a fund certification for the police and firefighter contracts, [the certification] would have failed."

Hasquet, Begich's spokeswoman, said that when the contracts were negotiated, Anchorage's revenue streams were stable and the city's reserves were healthy.

"The contracts negotiated were fair and reasonable and municipal employees received more modest pay raises under the contracts than state employees," Hasquet said in her email. "And to their credit, many union members have already made concessions to help the city deal with the budget challenges created by the global recession."

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