|
Tackling the regulator hiring challenge
The regulatory agencies need highly skilled and experienced staff, but hiring and retaining regulators in a world where industry tends to pay much higher salaries than do government agencies is a major challenge, Mark Myers, vice chancellor of research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a previous director of Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas, told an Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission hearing on Sept. 15. To regulate an industry that features constant technical innovation, requiring people with experience and recurrent training, agencies need to be competitive with industry when hiring staff, Myers said.
Oil and gas development in the Arctic offshore, in particular, will require major technical advances, with high-quality experts needing to be available in government agencies to work with the oil industry, he said.
Makeshift system Myers said that Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas had in the past developed a makeshift system in which the division has been able to hire petroleum geologists and geophysicists at somewhat competitive salaries through a process of statutory exemption from the normal state hiring process. To achieve this, however, hiring of individual employees has required approval through the governor’s office, thus potentially placing these key staff positions under the vagaries of political decision making. And the division has still encountered huge problems in recruiting experienced engineers in mid career, Myers said.
A system of adequately paid, senior technical ranks within agencies is really needed, with employees in these ranks being appointed and managed entirely by the agencies, Myers said. State commissioners and key division directors should also be afforded some level of political independence by being appointed for six-year terms, out of cycle with the political process, albeit with the appointment of officials having to be confirmed by the state Legislature, he said.
—Alan Bailey
|
