Alaska Owes Its Workers More Than Excuses: Fix the Lost PERS/TRS Earnings Now

By Rick Morgan, President
Classified Employees Association, Mat-Su Borough School District

Nearly a year ago, the Alaska Division of Retirement and Benefits (DRB) froze all PERS and TRS deposits for thousands of public employees. Not delayed — frozen. Entire pay periods passed where Alaska’s workers contributed to their retirement, yet not a single dollar went into their accounts.

Months later, the state acknowledged the failure. But here we are today:

​No make-up payments. No restored earnings. No timeline. No urgency.
For workers who are retiring right now, that delay has real, permanent consequences. When you lose investment time, you lose money — plain and simple. That’s not politics.
That’s math.
And every day DRB stalls, the bill grows larger. Workers lose more of what they earned, and taxpayers inch closer to footing an even bigger liability.
This is not a partisan problem. This is a government accountability problem. And it is long past time for the State of Alaska to clean up its own mess.

Conservatives know that government’s first responsibility is stewardship — not excuses If a private financial firm withheld retirement contributions for months and refused to pay lost earnings, they’d be sued into dust. But when the state does it? There’s a shrug, a press release, and then silence.
Big government loves to manage people’s money — but rarely wants to take responsibility when it mishandles that money.
Public employees kept their end of the bargain. They worked. They contributed. They played by the rules.
Meanwhile, DRB violated the most basic conservative principle of all:
Government must not take from citizens what it is unwilling to safeguard.
When a state agency mismanages workers’ money, that is not a “glitch.”
It’s a breach of trust.

The longer the delay, the higher the cost — for retirees AND taxpayersEvery day DRB postpones these payments:

• Workers lose more potential growth.
• The liability owed grows larger.
• The eventual taxpayer burden increases.
• The likelihood of a political “quiet fix” rises — the kind where workers never get what they’re owed.

A fiscally responsible government fixes problems early, transparently, and fully.
A bloated, unaccountable government lets them fester until people give up complaining.
Right now, Alaska is choosing the latter.

Retirees don’t have time for bureaucratic delay
This is not an abstract future problem. Retirements are happening today.
People who gave decades of service — custodians, aides, mechanics, drivers, educators — are walking into retirement with less than they earned.
Not because of markets. Not because of inflation.
But because the State of Alaska mishandled their money and hasn’t corrected the error.
These workers are not asking for a bonus.
They are asking for the money they earned and the growth that should have come with it.
Anything less is wrong — morally and fiscally.

Alaska must act now It is time for the Division of Retirement and Benefits to:

1. Explain the delay.
2. Provide a timeline.
3. Restore the missing contributions.
4. Pay the lost earnings in full.

Not eventually.
Not “as resources allow.”
Now.
Government has no right to lecture citizens about fiscal responsibility while mishandling their retirement accounts.
Alaskans kept their promise.
It’s time for their state government to keep its promise too.