Alaska Employment Law

The two new, Palin-nominated members of the Conduct Commission are Jan Ostrovsky (attorney member) and Chris Brown (lay member).

According to their CVs, Ostrovsky is a graduate of Kenyon College (1971) and Ohio State University College of Law (1975).  He was a member of several private law firms (including Bogle and Gates, 1986-1992, and Perkins Coie, 1992-1995) before joining the Department of Justice as the Region 18 Trustee (1995-2001).  He returned to private practice (2002-2007) before becoming Clerk of the District of Alaska Bankruptcy Court in 2007.

Brown has a BSEE (University of South Florida 1974) and MBA (Emory 1987) and worked for various tech companies before joining AT&T Alascom in 2004.  He recently became the Treasurer of the Alaska Family Council, associated with James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.  The AFC website describes him further as follows:

Chris Brown joined the Board of Directors of the Alaska Family Council in early 2008.  Mr. Brown and his family have been Alaska residents since 2004. Chris is a 35 year veteran of the telecommunications industry, and has earned both an Electrical Engineering degree and an MBA, the latter from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.  He has had executive experience in international firms, large US firms, and has participated in several start up and growth companies, including not-for-profit work.  Mr. Brown is active in church and civic activities as an adult Bible study and worship leader, church elder, and men’s ministry leader.  His interests include the study of the origins (WBS: presumably origins of life], a topic on which he has presented to medical students in Romania.  He is active in local, state and federal politics as a volunteer, and serves on the Board of Directors for the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation.  Chris and his wife of 27 years, Margaret, and their son Matthew, an Honors student at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, reside in Anchorage.

Several weeks ago, the AFC formally expressed “disappointment” in Gov. Palin’s recent appointment of Superior Court Judge Morgan Christen to the Supreme Court, and called for reform of the judicial selection process.  The AFC said:

The Alaska Family Council is disappointed that Judge Morgan Christen, a former Board member of the Alaska chapter of Planned Parenthood, was appointed by the Governor to serve on the state Supreme Court.  Regrettably, AFC believes that Judge Christen is likely to align herself with other judicial activists on the high court and thereby undermine the pro-life and pro-family public policies that both Governor Palin and the Alaska Family Council support.  Because of Alaska’s method of selecting judges, Governor Palin’s options in this matter were limited.  The alternatives that were available to the Governor would have been imperfect and politically difficult.  Yet, in the opinion of the Alaska Family Council, these alternatives would still have been preferable to appointing Judge Christen to the Alaska Supreme Court.

We believe this experience underscores the critical need for reforming the way judges are selected in Alaska – and in other states that follow the so-called “Missouri Plan” for judicial selection.  Under this system, non-elected persons with little or no accountability to the public wield enormous influence in determining who controls one of the three branches of government.  Meanwhile, people who actually have accountability to the public, i.e., elected officials in the executive and legislative branches of government, have a minimal or non-existent role in the selection process.  In short, there is a lack of the “checks and balances” that would ordinarily help safeguard against abuses of power, and protect the public interest.  This is in marked contrast to the process for selecting federal judges, as well as the system used by many other states.  The Alaska Family Council hopes that Governor Palin will join with other like-minded leaders in the state and make judicial reform a priority of her Administration.

Ostrovsky’s CV contains no information on his associations outside his professional life.