Barbara Haney: Eight questions the Fairbanks Assembly should answer before voting on 2026-25

By BARBARA HANEY

Sept. 13, 2026 – Ordinance 2026-25 was introduced on Sept. 10 at the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly. It would rewrite Title 16 of the borough code to require that every borough construction project over $3.5 million be reviewed for a community workforce agreement, and it declares it borough policy to use such agreements to the fullest extent the law allows. Adopted, it takes effect ninety days later.

This is not a question of whether you like organized labor. It is a question of procurement, of who bids on borough work and what the borough pays for it. Before the Assembly votes, eight questions deserve answers on the record.

First: how many contractors bid on our large projects now, and how many would be shut out?

The chief procurement officer has the bid tabulations for every borough letting above $3.5 million for the past five years. Publish them. In competitive bidding, the price the public pays falls as the number of serious bidders rises, and it falls fastest at the low end of that count. Moving from six bidders to three does not trim the premium the borough pays. It roughly doubles it. If most recent low bidders were already signatory contractors, the sponsors have little to worry about. If they were not, this ordinance has a price tag, and the Assembly should know it before it votes, not after.

Second: what does this add that state law does not already require?

Alaska’s Little Davis-Bacon Act already sets minimum wages and fringe benefits on public construction contracts over $25,000 awarded by the state or any political subdivision. Every borough project above that figure already pays prevailing scale. What 2026-25 adds is not higher pay for workers. It is a requirement that every contractor and subcontractor become signatory to an agreement, which for an open-shop firm can mean paying benefits twice, once into its own plan and again into trusts its employees will never vest in. Money spent that way reaches no worker. Where is the public benefit?

Third: who sits on the review team, and who does not?

The ordinance seats five people. Three come from the administration. One represents the Fairbanks Building and Construction Trades Council. The fifth is described as a contractor representative, chosen by mutual consent of three associations whose membership is substantially signatory already. Associated Builders and Contractors, whose members are precisely the firms a signatory requirement excludes, has no seat and no voice in filling one. If the intent is a balanced evaluation, why is one side of this industry absent from the table?

Fourth: why is the borough not a party to the agreement it is mandating?

Read Section F carefully. The parties to the community workforce agreement are the contractor and the trades council. Once imposed, the agreement may be revised only by their mutual written agreement. Grievances and arbitration run between the contractor and the labor organizations. The borough mandates the instrument, pays for it, and then cannot amend it or enforce it. The borough receives one seat on an oversight committee that reports on hiring preferences, with no obligation to report on cost at all. Why would the Assembly accept the bill and hand away the pen?

Fifth: if there is a shortage of tradespeople, how does narrowing the field of bidders help?

The ordinance opens by asserting a shortage of skilled trades in the borough. If labor is the binding constraint, restricting who may bid does not produce a single additional worker. It routes the same workers through a narrower channel at a higher price. The apprenticeship provisions may pay off in three to five years. The added cost begins with the next letting.

Sixth: where is local hire?

Search the text. There is no residency preference, no Interior hire requirement, nothing that keeps these dollars in the borough. The preferences run to apprentices, veterans, disadvantaged workers, and those reentering the community, all dispatched through union hiring halls that can and do dispatch from Anchorage and from outside Alaska. If the promise is local jobs for local families, the ordinance does not make it.

Seventh: what has Anchorage’s experience actually been?

The sponsors cite Anchorage and Juneau as precedent. Anchorage adopted its ordinance in 2018 at the identical $3.5 million threshold, then suspended the effective date while it worked out a template agreement. Seven years of bid histories exist. If that precedent supports this ordinance, produce the bidder counts and the unit costs. Assertion is not evidence.

Eighth: why now?

The borough election is Oct. 6. This ordinance makes a permanent change to how the borough buys construction, and it takes effect ninety days after adoption, well after the new Assembly is seated. The members who will live with the consequences are not necessarily the members casting the vote. A structural change to procurement can wait six weeks. If the case is strong, it will be just as strong in November.

None of these questions require anyone to take a side on labor. They require the borough attorney, the chief procurement officer, and the sponsors to put answers in writing before the Assembly acts. If the answers are good, the ordinance will survive the scrutiny. If they are not available, the Assembly should postpone the vote and let the incoming body take it up with the facts in hand.

That is not obstruction. It is the ordinary diligence owed to the people whose property taxes pay for every one of these projects.

Barbara Haney, Ph.D., served on the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly from 2022 to 2025. She holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Notre Dame and lives in North Pole. She is running for Alaska House District 33.