Anchorage Equal Rights Commission outlines reforms after internal audit

Jennifer Bose, executive director of the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, told the Municipality of Anchorage Audit Committee that the commission has implemented a set of changes intended to address five findings from internal audit report 2025-03.

Bose said the office has experienced 100% turnover in commission staff since the audit and introduced new case-management rules designed to meet the Title 5 requirement that cases be completed within 240 days unless there is documented "good cause." The reforms include weekly case-investigation review meetings, a rule that "all cases must be touched every 10 days" after the initial fact-finding conference, a requirement that case reports and recommended next steps be submitted to the executive director within 10 days, and a standardized continuance letter and coded "good cause" entries in the tracking system for any extension beyond 240 days. "When cases are approaching 200-day date, we have a review conference to determine if that case can be closed within the 240 or if there's good cause to issue a continuance," Bose said.

The commission also consolidated and relabeled existing procedures in a central G Drive folder and is creating desktop manuals and a process-template so new or amended procedures are immediately added to the manuals rather than treated as one-off fixes. Bose said staff aim to complete those desktop manuals by the end of June.

On record-keeping and public posting, Bose said the executive assistant has been designated as the board-and-commission liaison and ADA/web-compliance lead, and that rosters, minutes, meeting dates, and videos are now on a regular update schedule to maintain municipal compliance. Bose said an online inventory and outreach-tracking system is now in place to log office equipment and track outreach events and distributed resources.

Bose described a new approach to measuring outreach impact, including both quantitative and qualitative assessments, a "where did you hear about us" question in intake, counts of outreach visitors, tracking outreach expenditures, and greater coordination and partnership with municipal offices (for example, the Ombudsman's Office and the Office for Equity and Inclusion) to reduce duplication of effort and costs.

To strengthen financial oversight, Bose said the office now requires direct approval of expenditures by the executive director followed by a second approval via the municipal manager's office; monthly commission reports now include office expenditures so commissioners can monitor spending.

Committee members asked follow-up questions. Mr. Faussett asked how people are finding the commission; Bose said referrals from people who previously had good experiences are the most common source so far, and she flagged opportunities to expand social media and event outreach. Faussett also noted the audit response had been largely authored by Paula Avosti and asked whether a standing commission committee or routine reporting had been established to provide oversight; Bose said she includes case-counts, closure rates, conciliations, and explanations for cases over 240 days in her monthly executive director's report to the commission.

Bose reported the office currently has about 50 active open cases (excluding intakes not yet processed and cases in conciliation) and that five active cases presently exceed the 240-day limit; she said those cases can be pulled from the tracking system to show the documented cause for each extension. Bose also said one investigator is expected to leave due to illness in early April and that the current investigator distribution is roughly two investigators with about 20 cases each and one investigator with about 10 cases.

Public commenter Jamie Lopez told the committee he is concerned about shelter practices that frequently remove residents for rule violations, the lack of phones and supports for people exiting shelters, and repeated returns to homelessness; Lopez suggested those issues might be better addressed in a different forum.

The committee thanked Bose for the update, noted that the audit and the commission's responses appear to be prompting concrete changes, and adjourned at 2:24 p.m. No formal motions or votes were taken at the meeting.