Senator: Data shows state jobs are leaving Juneau

Juneau's state senator said he has the numbers to prove what many in town already suspect: State jobs are drifting away from the capital city at a pretty fast clip.

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At a news conference Friday in his capitol office, Sen. Kim Elton, D-Juneau, told reporters that about 140 state jobs had left town in the past 18 months. The figures, which were provided to Elton at his request from the state division of personnel, pin the bottom line for those job losses at about $641,000 a month.

Elton said that breaks down to about $4,700 a month per job that's "not being spent at car lots in Juneau, it's not being spent at restaurants.

"When a deputy commissioner moves from town, there's not another deputy commissioner coming in to buy a house," Elton said. "It has ramifications."

Those numbers don't tell the whole story, however. The personnel department's report also indicated that about 82 state jobs had moved to Juneau from other parts of the state in the same time period, for a net loss of about 58 state jobs. About 21 of the jobs that have moved to Juneau are still vacant, compared to about 29 of those that have moved elsewhere, according to Elton's office. And there are some high paying positions that have been filled outside of Juneau but haven't been officially transferred and don't show up in his report, Elton said.

There are about 15,000 executive jobs in Alaska, according to state statistics cited by the Associated Press. Of those, about 3,400 are in Juneau compared to 5,090 in Anchorage.

Elton stopped short of criticizing Gov. Sarah Palin for allowing so many jobs to leave the capital, but did point out that the bulk of the jobs (about 100) moved during her one-year tenure. He called on the governor to institute a "soft-freeze" on jobs moving out of town, whereby Palin would have to approve job transfers away from Juneau.

"There has to be some accountability," he said. "She is the only one who can say this is a priority."

Elton also said he would share his findings with Juneau's private sector leaders, whom he described as being wrapped in a "blanket of quiet" for not speaking out against the job loss as forcefully as they did when previous government jobs either left town or were proposed to leave.

Juneau residents protested the loss of about 44 ferry service jobs to Ketchikan several years ago and so far have successfully blocked a proposal to move 24 federal jobs with the Bureau of Indian Affairs out of town, Elton said, but the city's private leaders had done little so far to protest the disappearance of state jobs.

"It's like somebody has thrown a quilt over these people," Elton said. "The fact of the matter is, these state jobs, each and every one of them, are every bit as important as a BIA job."

Win Gruening is chairman of the Juneau's Alaska Committee, which was formed to counter any attempt to move the state capital away from the city. He said there hadn't been hard numbers showing how many jobs were moving out of Juneau in years and called Elton's report a "good first step." But he cautioned there was little context to Elton's report and further study was needed.

Annette Kreitzer, commissioner of the state department of administration and chairman of the governor's work group to recruit and retain state workers, said the there is a constant "drum beat" coming from other department heads that it is difficult to find qualified job candidates in Juneau. She said the city's high housing costs make some lower-paid state jobs unattractive.

Palin spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said the governor is "absolutely" committed to keeping Juneau as the state capital, and that Palin would look at Elton's report for problems that need to be fixed. She added that the governor already approves or denies job transfers from Juneau by members of her top level staff, but trusts them to make staff placement decisions themselves.

"Gov. Palin is not going to micro-manage state departments," Leighow said.