Subscribed to by 11.5% of Alaska's Total Population!

Speaking of housing, I know many providers in my field do not have enough staff to provide services to waiver recipients, including those who live in group homes. Since the end of the public health emergency, we also have a wave of children discharging from out of state residential facilities because the Medicaid "medical necessity" requirement is back in full effect, but these kids have nowhere to go because their parents can't take them, OCS doesn't have enough foster homes, and there aren't enough Medicaid waiver providers to go around for them. I also know OCS' turnover rate is over 60% or so now, so even if they had enough foster homes, there aren't enough workers. The last citizen review panel focused on their turnover, but since leadership in that agency hasn't been changed in years, it's unlikely to matter: https://crpalaska.org/wp-content/uploads/2021-2022-Annual-Report.pdf

I don't know what there is to really do about any of this, but I feel like people deserve to know what's happening to our most vulnerable citizens. The public sector has never had great pay or benefits, and we've always been "short," but I don't think it's ever been this dire. Dunleavy is also very anti public sector, and SOA employee pay/benefits has fallen quite a bit since he's been in office, and we also have to deal with him slashing budgets every year. He definitely seems intent on making all of these problems worse, and the few commissioners he has left are doing a good job making sure very little gets fixed.

We all notice when when roads don't get fixed or snow doesn't get plowed, but I think it's important to know the extent of the harm Dunleavy and his administration is doing to the public sector. DPA made the news recently because of how backed up they were on processing applications, but regardless of what Dunleavy says about why state agencies are short staffed, we aren't quitting because of the pandemic or because "no one wants to work," it's because no one wants to work for his incompetent administration. He doesn't want us to get raises, wants to gut our benefits, and during the last round of union negotiations, he wanted the ability to unilaterally contract out any state job he wanted, regardless of cost.

I know there are other state employees on here, and I'd be interested in hearing about what's going on in other agencies, especially those that provide vital services that most people aren't aware of unless they work in the same field.