State sends threatening letter to hundreds of Alaska retirees, questioning their residency with false evidence

A total of 574 state and local government retirees who live in Alaska are on the receiving end of the most arrogant Dunleavy administration letter of 2021.

The letter from the state Division of Retirement and Benefits says the recipient is not eligible or did not apply for a Permanent Fund Dividend and questions whether the retiree should be getting a Cost of Living Allowance for residents.

There are two problems with the state letter. First, the mailing lists are screwed up. I’ve heard directly from retirees and seen social media accounts from others who got this letter though they did qualify and receive the PFD.

It turns out that 560 of the letters went to people who should not have been on the mailing list, James Puckett of the Department of Administration said. That means that the letter should have only gone to 14 people.

“An apology letter will be sent to all affected retirees/survivors in today’s mail, Friday, December 3, 2021,” Puckett said.

I was glad to hear that.

The arrogant and threatening tone of this missive was wrong.

“Our research has indicated that you are either not eligible to receive the PFD or you may not have applied for the PFD, and you may no longer be eligible to receive a PERS or TRS COLA,” the division told the 574 recipients.

Retirement Division Director Ajay Desai and Administration Commissioner Paula Vrana should explain the tone of the letter and the incompetence of this “exercise.”

Puckett provided this explanation: “A DRB IT technician performed a data pull from appropriate databases. They made a mistake during the ‘sorting’ process of that data pull. This error inadvertently left in the data pull retirees/survivors who should have been removed. This resulted in those retirees/survivors mistakenly receiving a letter.”

The letter said this all began with a request from the Legislature to compare the PFD list and COLA lists. But the residency requirements for the two are not identical.

No doubt there are people who lie about meeting the PFD requirements and lie about the COLA requirements. The state could stand to be more diligent in policing both of these programs. But to write a letter to retirees that comes off like an internet scam shows terrible judgment.