Legislature(2003 - 2004)
03/06/2003 10:15 AM House STA
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ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE
HOUSE STATE AFFAIRS STANDING COMMITTEE
March 6, 2003
10:15 a.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT
Representative Bruce Weyhrauch, Chair
Representative Jim Holm, Vice Chair
Representative Nancy Dahlstrom
Representative Bob Lynn
Representative Paul Seaton
Representative Max Gruenberg
MEMBERS ABSENT
Representative Ethan Berkowitz
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
OVERVIEW: DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION & PUBLIC FACILITIES
[For the regular meeting minutes, see the 8:01 a.m. minutes for
this date.]
TAPES
03-18, SIDE A
CHAIR BRUCE WEYHRAUCH called the meeting of the House State
Affairs Standing Committee back to order at 10:15 a.m.
Representatives Weyhrauch, Seaton, Gruenberg, Holm, Lynn, and
Dahlstrom were present at the call to order.
SUMMARY OF INFORMATION
JOHN MacKINNON, Deputy Commissioner, Department of
Transportation & Public Facilities (DOT&PF), explained the
definition of "Public Facilities" as those buildings in the
state that are owned and operated by the State of Alaska.
Presently the Alaska Court System (ACS), the Department of
Administration (DOA), and the Department of Transportation &
Public Facilities have jurisdiction over state owned facilities
within Alaska.
MR. MacKINNON, in response to questions, said that the Alaska
Court System often contract with Department of Administration or
DOT&PF to maintain its buildings because it is not set up for
such; that the Capitol Building is managed by the Legislative
Affairs Agency (LAA); and that the DOT&PF is in charge of
highway maintenance. He went on to say that the mission of
statewide facilities maintenance and operations is to improve
the quality of life for Alaskans by cost-effectively providing
environmentally-sound and reliable public facilities. It is to
benefit the traveling public in Alaska communities through sound
and effective leasing of property management practices at the
state's airports and harbors.
MR. MacKINNON also went on to say that there are three separate
regions in the state - Central, "Northern," and Southeast - and
that each region is responsible for the maintenance of its
respective facilities. The facilities components furnish basic
services, utilities such as electricity, water/sewer, waste
disposal, janitorial. The facilities component also provides
preventative and routine maintenance, repairs/remodeling, and
major maintenance of all state owned facilities. The
department's component of this maintains and operates 618 state
owned buildings with over 2.6 million square feet of space.
MR. MacKINNON said that this square footage is only 37-39
percent of the total square footage of space used by the State
of Alaska. Budget appropriations totals approximately $12
million annually, and there are 79 employees maintaining and
operating the facilities. In October of 2000, a number of
unoccupied, state-owned buildings were transferred to the
Department of Administration for its use and maintenance. The
DOA, in turn, contracts back to DOT&PF for routine and major
maintenance for many of the DOA's buildings, many of which are
multi-agency use. In addition, the DOT&PF administers over 200
contracts and work orders for construction, maintenance, and
janitorial projects. If there is not in-house expertise, the
DOT&PF contracts all construction, maintenance and janitorial
projects out. Compliance with the Americans With Disabilities
Act (ADA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)
is a major part of DOT&PF's workload.
MR. MacKINNON relayed that the key issues for the DOT&PF involve
maintenance of the facilities. Lack of maintenance in any
facility results in condemnation: in the last two years, four
maintenance stations were condemned due to lack of major
maintenance on an aging facilities. One of those is scheduled
for replacement this year. The department has identified
between $45 million and $55 million worth of deferred
maintenance backlog, and include door replacements, window
replacements, roof replacements, electrical upgrades, fuel tank
replacements, installation of oil and water separators, safety
issues such as the replacement of overhead cranes and hoists and
repair and replacement of heating systems. Projects are
prioritized first by health and safety issues, and then by code
compliance.
REPRESENTATIVE HOLM asked about the budget process that should
include maintenance of facilities but doesn't. He suggested
that the DOT&PF's budgeting process should include monies are
needed for repair and maintenance. Rep. Holm strongly expressed
his opinion on the importance of asking the legislature for
annual maintenance and repair funding rather than letting the
buildings fall into ruin and require replacement.
MR. MacKINNON agreed, and expressed a desire to have DOT&PF
begin to include repair and maintenance in the budgeting
process.
REPRESENTATIVE GRUENBERG commented that maybe now would be a
good time to introduce legislation requiring that repair and
maintenance be included in the annual budgeting process.
MR. MacKINNON, in response to a question regarding bonding for
repair and maintenance, said he thinks it would be good to
include a certain amount in the budget for maintenance costs for
facilities. After building facilities, it is the obligation of
the state to maintain them, regardless of what department of the
state being discussed. In the budget process, when the
departments and the legislature are looking for places to cut,
repair and maintenance is an easy place to start. The public is
not affected as much by low maintenance as are the employees who
use the buildings. Bonding for repair and maintenance would be
a call for the Legislature to make. In 1997 and 1998, there was
a deferred maintenance task force that identified a large number
of needs for repair and maintenance throughout the state -
largely for education facilities (rural and urban schools, etc.)
Due to the high cost of this item, nothing ever came of it.
REPRESENTATIVE GRUENBERG asked why there are so many departments
owning buildings. Is it not more efficient to have one
department in charge, to standardize procedures and the
personnel with expertise, and get the economies of scale and
coordination?
MR. MacKINNON replied that it would make a lot of sense to do
something like that. The department is in the business of
building and maintaining highways and buildings. The largest
issues facing DOT&PF for not funding repair and maintenance are
safety issues for employees and the public who enter the
buildings. Most rural maintenance shops have had a safety
assessment done in the recent past. It was discovered that four
of them were in serious danger of collapse, totally because of
lack of maintenance. Some state maintenance shops date from the
1940s.
REPRESENTATIVE DAHLSTROM asked whether the aforementioned figure
stated for deferred maintenance included all facilities.
MR. MacKINNON replied that the absolutely essential life/safety
issues are taken care of by DOT&PF with funds it scrapes up.
The funding needs reflected in the aforementioned deferred
maintenance figure is prioritized, and cosmetic work is not a
priority unless it will also extend the life of a facility. In
response to the question of whether the state was being fined
for not maintaining facilities, he stated that safety issues
such as boiler and furnace annual inspections are completed and
rarely do they not pass inspections. He went on to discuss
improvements that have been made to many public facilities
including energy saving projects statewide. Replacing lighting
fixtures in an office building with more efficient fixtures has
about a three-and-a-half year payback on the costs of materials
and labor. There are several DOT&PF buildings in the process
of receiving upgrades at this time.
REPRESENTATIVE GRUENBERG suggested looking into the idea of
putting together some legislation or good public policy that
would help the department along.
REPRESENTATIVE HOLM said he would like to reference a letter to
Mr. MacKinnon with further questions and then review the
response, and offered to share that response with the rest of
the committee members.
REPRESENTATIVE SEATON raised the issue of state equipment
leases, and asked whether the equipment lease arrangement is
such that all heavy equipment is leased from the state for 10
years and at the end of that 10-year period the state has paid
for the entire unit, but does not have the piece of equipment to
sell or do anything else with. He mentioned that there is also
a $40 per hour maintenance charge that the agencies pay to the
state rather than the standard $28 per hour. This seems, he
added, to be very inefficient and costly for the departments to
pay interdepartmentally. Is there a way to allow each region to
purchase their own equipment or work it out to pay less for the
maintenance? This makes for a large tap on their budget for no
real gain. "Davis-Bacon" requirements dictate a higher rate be
charged on equipment repair, and this is a big drain on budgets
regionally. He also asked about a fuel contract for state
vehicles in order for the state not to pay a higher rate due to
pump prices being charged for a very large portion of the state
fleet.
MR. MacKINNON responded that the state equipment fleet is not a
moneymaker, it is designed to be a break-even program: pay for
the use of the equipment and build up a replacement fund to
replace the equipment. Costs of new equipment currently exceed
the money sitting in the lease account; for example, the
original cost of a grader is $150,00 and the replacement cost 10
years later is $220,000. By using a competitive bidding
process, the state ends up with several different types of
equipment and manufacturers and so there is a difficulty in
maintaining parts and training maintenance staff.
NANCY SLAGLE, Director, Division of Administrative Services,
Department of Transportation & Public Facilities (DOT&PF), added
that equipment fleet headquarters does contract with a fuel
provider, and this takes about $.10 off of the pump price for
state vehicles.
REPRESENTATIVE SEATON said that last year, state research
vessels were not able to dovetail onto the contract that the
Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) utilizes, and this resulted
in a loss of about $40,000.
MS. SLAGLE said that the department would look into utilizing
the state contract with other departments.
GEORGE LEVASSEUER, Maintenance and Operations Manager,
Southcentral District, Northern Region, Department of
Transportation & Public Facilities (DOT&PF) , relayed that he'd
worked the area from Cordova to Delta for almost 30 years and is
now filling in on an interim basis for the State Maintenance
Engineer.
CHAIR WEYHRAUCH thanked everyone for coming and speaking before
the committee. He spoke to Rep. Gruenberg's comment about the
possible need to have the committee get together and work on
legislation that would be of benefit to the DOT&PF.
REPRESENTATIVE GRUENBERG suggested that the chairs of the House
State Affairs Standing Committee and the House Transportation
Standing Committee and their staff get together to see how they
could help the department. He went on to list several items he
had concerns about: one, should there be one department in
charge of public facilities; two, should there be a maintenance
component as part of the budget requirements; and three, should
the legislature revisit the concept of the Deferred Maintenance
Task Force.
CHAIR WEYHRAUCH stated that he would prefer to work on this
project as a whole committee before going to a sub-committee.
He also voiced his opinion that since both Representative Holm
and Representative Gruenberg have concerns, it is important to
ask questions and get responses to the committee in order for it
to move forward.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
There were no announcements.
COMMITTEE ACTION
The committee took no action.
ADJOURNMENT
There being no further business before the committee, the House
State Affairs Standing Committee meeting was adjourned at 10:50
a.m.
NOTE: The meeting was recorded and handwritten log notes were
taken. A copy of the tape(s) and log notes may be obtained by
contacting the House Records Office at State Capitol, Room 3,
Juneau, Alaska 99801 (mailing address), (907) 465-2214, and
after adjournment of the second session of the Twenty-Third
Alaska State Legislature this information may be obtained by
contacting the Legislative Reference Library at (907) 465-3808.
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