Spending proposal offers new positions, but won’t be enough to resolve Alaska’s public guardian shortage

Funding increases proposed in Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s spending plan would not solve crisis-level public guardianship caseloads, according to Office of Public Advocacy director James Stinson.

The public guardian section in the Office of Public Advocacy, or OPA, is an option of last resort for adults in Alaska who are deemed by a court to need a guardian who makes all major decisions on their behalf, including on finances, housing and health care. OPA’s public guardians oversee nearly 1,700 Alaskans — many of whom are disabled or otherwise incapacitated.

By its own account, OPA has for months been embroiled in an ongoing staffing crisis that has led it to impose a moratorium on accepting new public guardianship cases, and last year prompted the agency to offload dozens of cases to an unvetted private guardianship agency that imploded — leaving some vulnerable Alaskans without the public benefits on which they depended.

Dunleavy proposed creating five permanent positions and four temporary positions to address the crisis, but that wouldn’t be enough to substantially reduce the public guardians’ caseloads, according to Stinson, who was appointed by Dunleavy in 2019 to lead OPA.

The proposed budget “reflects the governor’s commitment to meeting the state’s obligation to provide qualified and professional guardians,” Dunleavy spokesperson Jessica Bowers said in an email. “The workforce shortage both nationwide and in Alaska continue to be a challenge. The added positions in the Governor’s budget are one part of a solution to this complex issue.”

Stinson said the number of public guardians required to meet Alaska’s need is “an open question,” given a recent Alaska Supreme Court decision that the public agency could not turn down guardianship cases when assigned them by Alaska courts. Until that decision was handed down last week, the agency had a moratorium on new cases in place.

Since the agency is currently handling around 1,700 cases, Stinson said it would need more than 40 guardians to achieve its goal of limiting caseloads to 40 per staff member — a ratio Stinson said is needed to ensure every client receives adequate attention and to ensure public guardians don’t burn out and quit. But the agency only has around 17 certified guardians on staff, Stinson said in an interview last week.

[Gov. Dunleavy’s budget draft has hundreds of new funding proposals. Here are a few.]

“I don’t think the hiring pool in Alaska is going to support us ever having enough public guardians,” said Stinson, who noted that he had convinced five different public guardians not to quit in recent months.

Past staffing increase

In an April letter, Stinson said that the public guardian caseloads had “become overwhelming.” But the numbers were far from new: According to budget documents, the agency’s caseloads have hovered near 1,700 at least since 2018, and a staffing boost of more than 40% in 2018 appeared to do nothing to change the situation.

In 2018, the Legislature and then-Gov. Bill Walker signed off on adding eight new positions to the public guardian section, increasing its staffing from 19 to 27 and boosting its funding by more than 30%, from $2.2 million to $2.9 million. The staffing boost was prompted in part by a lawsuit filed in 2015 by a public guardianship client who alleged the agency’s high caseload led it to violate the law.

The following year, Dunleavy assumed office, and appointed Stinson, a former municipal attorney who supported Dunleavy’s campaign, to lead OPA. Stinson said that under his guidance, the public guardian section was restructured.

Until Stinson was appointed, public guardians all worked under a supervising attorney. Stinson said that “was no longer working” because “people were simply getting overwhelmed and quitting.”

The restructuring created a new “master guardian” classification — staffed by experienced public guardians who oversee newer public guardians — and new “eligibility technician” positions to handle public benefits. In practice, that meant that even though additional positions had been added, the number of certified public guardians remained largely unchanged.

The year after the new positions were created, OPA reported that it had reduced cases from around 90 cases per guardian to around 65. However, the following year, Stinson said that OPA had “yet to enjoy the full amount of relief these positions should provide” and that some guardians’ caseloads were still around 100. The same was reported the following year.

The number of cases has remained largely unchanged under Dunleavy’s tenure, at around 1,700. The caseload briefly declined when the agency imposed a moratorium on new cases and offloaded around 60 clients to a private company last year, but when that company imploded, 97 of its cases were re-assigned to OPA, bringing it close to 1,700 cases again.

‘A lot better than nothing’

Stinson has repeatedly said that without a significant change to how guardianship cases are assigned to his agency, the agency would collapse. Dunleavy’s spending plan has only a limited solution.

A supplemental spending plan for the current fiscal year includes a proposed $411,000 to add “four non-permanent positions to address a backlog of cases” in OPA. Only two would be public guardians. The others would be an eligibility technician and a paralegal. The plan will be taken up by the Legislature for consideration when it convenes in January. Since the proposed positions aren’t permanent, they would disappear in June unless the Legislature acts to make them permanent.

The governor also proposed diverting existing funds within the Department of Administration for “five positions to provide additional support to the public guardian program.” The positions would include three public guardians and two eligibility technicians, with funding diverted from the department’s “travel and services” budget — at no additional cost to the state.

The Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority recommended creating a new public guardian position at a cost of $138,000. The grant-funded position would be available through 2027, specifically to serve public guardianship clients “who are aging out of the Office of Child Services system.”

[ADN Politics podcast: The crisis at Alaska’s Office of Public Advocacy]

“This is a heck of a lot better than nothing, and it’s definitely going to help give people hope that there’s light at the end of the tunnel, that maybe long-term cases can go down,” said Stinson.

Stinson said more guardians are needed to reduce the caseloads per staff member, but he said that funding for additional positions would not necessarily solve the problem.

“I’m not going to deny that throwing more bodies at it is part of the solution, but I am worried that it can’t be the only part of the solution,” he said.

Stinson pointed to other states, some of which have put strict limits on the number of public guardianship cases they can take on. In Nebraska, the limit is 20 wards per guardian. In Vermont, the average number of cases per guardian last year was 32. In Oregon, the state has a capacity to handle less than 200 guardianship cases. States can augment limited capacity with private guardianship services, or with nothing at all — in some cases leaving vulnerable adults, including those with disabilities, to fend for themselves. Public guardianship services are dictated by state law, with little federal oversight or national standards.

“Other states just recognize this as a finite resource, and we’re not,” said Stinson.

Stinson said that the recent Alaska Supreme Court decision, which took away OPA’s ability to refuse public guardianship cases, enforces a “mismatch of incentives” — by encouraging courts to appoint a public guardian even when the agency is overburdened.

“I will ask for and get any resources I can to help mitigate this, but I think there needs to be a recognition that there’s a structural deficit,” said Stinson.

Court positions

Separately, the court system requested $417,000 to fund three positions “to assist guardians and monitor compliance with the statutorily required reports.” The new positions would replace two positions previously funded through a federal grant.

Family members or friends are appointed as guardians in 71% of cases, but family guardians “often struggle to meet the ordered reporting requirements,” according to the budget document.

“The total volume of open guardianship and conservatorship cases has continued to grow and has been on a steady upward trajectory for many years. All indications are this trend will continue with aging baby boomers and the fact that a large proportion of those over age 85 experience significant decline in cognitive functions, often losing the capacity to care for themselves and their finances,” the request from the court system states.

In 2021, Alaska courts received a three-year federal grant “to improve the handling of guardianship cases.” The grant covered the cost of two positions “to monitor compliance and sufficiency of required reports and bring red flag issues to the judicial officer” in Anchorage, Bethel, Kenai and Homer. The grant also covered a statewide telephone helpline for questions about the guardianship process.

The courts said in the funding request that “there are issues with recently licensed new professional guardians who are inexperienced and concerns about their fitness to serve as guardians. There is already a shortage of private professional guardians.”

“The court system believes these monitoring positions provide the accountability and support to ensure family guardians are successful in fulfilling the protective services role for which they are appointed,” the request states.