The attorney general’s office asked those assembled at the statehood defense trough if they wanted to keep their hourly rates secret. Great idea, said three law firms.
Read MoreThe Dunleavy administration continues to create new jobs in the statehood defense industry, most of them with lawyers Outside earning several hundred dollars an hour by promoting the political opinions of Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor.
There is no evidence that before signing contracts to create statehood defense jobs—spending hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions in the process—that anyone in state government investigates the chances of success or whether the money might be better spent elsewhere.
Read MoreThe most comprehensive news article written so far on the Tetlin gold mine and the Kinross ore-hauling plan comes from a freelance reporter for Grist, a nonprofit news site. I recommend it to anyone who wants to be informed about the matter.
Read MoreThe Dunleavy administration’s $12,000-a-month statehood defense contract with former Attorney General Craig Richards is not authorized by state regulations and should be revoked.
The contract says Richards will be paid for seven months, but it only includes $50,000 to pay him, which is $34,000 short. This is not an accident.
Read MoreWith no public announcement, the state hired Dunleavy ally Craig Richards, a trustee of the Alaska Permanent Fund, to serve as “statehood defense coordinator” under a no-bid seven-month contract that pays Richards $12,000 a month for part-time work.
This is in contrast to the big public show Dunleavy made on July 9, 2021 when he hired former employee Brett Huber to perform the statehood posturing exercises that are part of Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor’s daily workout.
Read MoreRick Van Nieuwenhuyse, who makes about $2 million a year from Contango ORE for developing the Manh Choh and other Alaska mining ventures, says that a future project near Willow may one day lead to ore hauling on the Parks Highway from Hatcher Pass to Fort Knox.
Read MoreI want to thank everyone who reads this blog all the time or just once in a while. It means a great deal to me. I take it as a compliment that you spend time reading what I have to say, whether you agree or disagree with the contents.
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Bob Ballinger of Arkansas and Rep. Sarah Vance share a connection though the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, “godly leaders” who want to impose their interpretation of the Bible on all levels of government in the United States. Vance has given Ballinger, who lives in Arkansas, a state job.
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Alaska Transportation Commissioner Ryan Anderson called a halt to the Transportation Advisory Committee meetings as of Thursday, a surprise announcement at the end of a four-hour meeting.
Now we know why the state had planned a “virtual only” meeting of the group until community pushback caused the department to reverse its ban on in-person participation.
The commissioner instructed the consultant to have the committee studying the Kinross ore-hauling project end its meetings and finish its work by email and phone calls, assembling a final report with no meeting to vote on a draft or even a final report.
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I don’t know how it happened, but the Dunleavy administration reversed itself on the Transportation Advisory Committee meeting plan, dropping the ban on in-person participation.
The meeting is set for Thursday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Key Bank Building at 100 Cushman Street in downtown Fairbanks.
This was the right thing to do. The wrong thing to do was the earlier decision by Transportation and Public Facilities Commissioner Ryan Anderson to ban in-person participation to better control the group.
Read MoreDepartment of Transportation and Public Facilities Commissioner Ryan Anderson still has time to correct the blunder he made by ordering that a Thursday meeting of the committee reviewing the Kinross ore-hauling plan will be “virtual only.”
The meeting of the Transportation Advisory Committee is from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday is a crucial one for preparing its final report. It needs to be held in person. Those who can’t make it in person can use the online approach.
Read MoreI think I made it clear in a series of blog posts over the last two months that the trustees of the Alaska Permanent Fund were on the wrong track with their strategic plan because they failed to include the public and the Legislature.
In the end, they did the right thing and followed the advice of financial experts by pulling back. What I don’t understand is why they waited so long to ask for advice. Or why they aren’t making a concerted effort to ask Alaskans what the strategic plan should include.
Read MoreMary Vought’s contract to burnish the national image of Gov. Mike Dunleavy has been extended eight times over nearly four years, a textbook case of ignoring the state procurement law that requires competitive bidding. Two more contract extensions are already in the works.
The Vought contract, which could cost nearly $400,000 by the end of 2026, does not match up with any of the nine examples mentioned in state regulations about instances in which sole-source contracts might be appropriate.
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If you haven’t done so already, read the latest investigation by Kyle Hopkins of the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica.
Hopkins’s investigation of the deaths of Jennifer Kirk and Sue Sue Norton reveals an outrageous failure of the justice system in Alaska.
Read MoreA reader writes that the questions I put to Sen. Dan Sullivan’s office about the delay in selecting potential judicial nominees for a vacant federal court position in Alaska were of the predictable kind, all guaranteed to produce pat answers. I missed the big picture, the reader said.
I thought it over and came to the same conclusion.
It is not mentally rewarding or enlightening to read Sullivan’s pre-packaged statements that senators have many different ways of recruiting and vetting nominees for federal judicial appointments, and that his new committee is nonpartisan, etc.
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The Dunleavy administration ignored the legislative limits placed on the hiring of former President Donald Trump’s lawyer for $600 an hour for the continuing anti-union crusade that has cost hundreds of thousands.
A legislative audit has concluded that the Dunleavy administration acted illegally, spending $315,034 that it did not have legislative authority to spend with Consovoy McCcarthy.
Read MoreSen. Dan Sullivan’s committee to pick right-wing judicial nominees, led by former Gov. Sean Parnell, has already met twice, with no public notice, and plans to continue operating in secret, according to Sullivan’s office.
Read MoreCiting a host of transportation regulation violations by the state and safety questions, the Committee for Safe Communities is seeking a preliminary injunction, pending a trial, to decide if the Kinross ore-haul plan “can ever go forward in light of public nuisance laws, general public safety and particularly the safety of our children.”
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The inescapable Kinross “Just the Facts” ad campaign in Fairbanks could benefit with more facts about its ore hauling project.
The company has a highly selective notion about just what Alaskans should know. The facts about corporate economics are nowhere to be found.
Read MoreI’ve written many times about the wasteful state contract Gov. Mike Dunleavy has with Washington, D.C. publicist Mary Vought that now pays her $5,000 a month.
No one has ever justified this expenditure, which will soon top $200,000 in total since 2020. Vought’s husband is playing a key role in plotting by Donald Trump to seek revenge on his political enemies if he is elected in 2024.
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