In a report kept secret by the state for years, an independent lawyer hired by former Gov. Bill Walker to review the Fairbanks Four case in 2015 concluded that the wrong men had been jailed for the 1997 killing of John Hartman.

“I have come to the firm belief,” wrote attorney James N. Reeves on October 1, 2015, “that the Fairbanks Four did not commit the crimes of which they were convicted. In other words, in my view the information I reviewed constitutes clear and convincing evidence that they are innocent.”

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Brian O’Donoghue, one of the best investigative reporters in Alaska, is nearing completion of his long-awaited book “The Fairbanks Four: Murder, Injustice and the Birth of a Movement.”

O’Donoghue is to speak Friday at 3 p.m. at the Morris Thompson Center auditorium. His book, to be published by Sourcebooks, is available for advance ordering now at major outlets.

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Anyone who runs for the Legislature this year against an incumbent has a ready-made campaign issue—the underhanded manner by which legislators raised their pay from $50,400 to $84,000, starting this week.

They can thank Gov. Mike Dunleavy and incumbents in both parties for this 67 percent gift.

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Someone once said that whether auld acquaintances should be forgot really depends on what kind of old acquaintances you have.

On New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, “Auld Lang Syne” gets ritualized or loving attention that is denied auld acquaintances 363 days a year.

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In the middle of the last century, Larry Fanning was a premier editor in San Francisco and Chicago. After he moved to Alaska in 1966, newly married to Kay, his third wife, the only thing he didn’t have much left of was time.

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Tim Ames was desperate that December day in 1988.

“I was in a blind panic,” he wrote. “I had been asked to paint a cover for Heartland magazine; the theme was ‘Christmas in Fairbanks.’”

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The Dunleavy proposal would increase dividend spending—$882 million this year—by $1.4 billion, the biggest factor in creating the proposed $1 billion Dunleavy deficit.

Dunleavy has refused to propose taxes, reductions in services or changes in the dividend formula in state law, ignoring his responsibility as governor to balance the budget.

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What Porcaro doesn’t mention when he boasts about his personal budget discipline and self-sufficiency as a model for others is how much Gov. Mike Dunleavy is now subsidizing his lifestyle.

The subsidy is in the form of a full-time state job that requires little work and should be a 15-hour-per-week job with no benefits, as recommended in a 2015 state audit.

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In the past, Deena Bishop made a clear case for increasing the Base Student Allocation to offset the bite that has been taken by inflation since 2017. Bishop wrote in the 2022-23 Anchorage School District budget that the purchasing power of state school funding with no increases had cost Anchorage $40 million over five years.

Along with declining enrollment, the flat funding “continues to negatively impact ASD’s ability to maintain smaller class sizes to better address student learning,” Bishop wrote.

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The Pebble case has nothing to do with the Kuskokwim fishing case, so this should have been a separate procurement, but the Dunleavy administration prefers doing business with Consovoy McCarthy and avoiding competitive bids, so it added the Pebble mine case to an unrelated contract to keep the work with a law firm it likes.

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Former Sen. Mark Begich is among those getting paid under a no-bid statehood defense contract for the Dunleavy administration.

The contract is for $50,000 and it runs from September 11 until January 30. Had it been a $50,001 contract, the state would have had to seek some competition.

The contract is so short and so small that I suspect that the state intends to extend the duration and amount, contrary to a procurement regulation cited in the contract that allows no-bid deals only if the cost does not exceed $50,000.

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There are at least a half-dozen major legal deficiencies with one of the statehood defense contracts the Dunleavy administration has with Holland & Hart LLP, a contract under which former legislator Drue Pearce collected $450 an hour.

Last week I wrote about the $2 million contract the state has with Holland & Hart to handle legal issues for the Alaska Industrial Development & Export Authority.

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy wants $2 million more from the Legislature for his statehood defense campaign over grievances real and imagined. Before this goes any farther, let’s see an accounting of the millions spent so far, starting with the illegal contract with former Attorney General Craig Richards, which has numerous legal problems.

With no public notice, the state hired Richards under a no-bid contract for $12,000 a month to be the statehood defense coordinator.

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The sentence that stands out in the state job offer is this: “There is a process which we must follow when making a hire of this senior level in state government in Alaska which includes the approval by Governor Dunleavy’s Chief of Staff.”

But there is no process like that in state law. It is a Dunleavy policy to extend his political reach throughout state government.

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Sean Thomas, the executive chosen by the Alaska Aerospace Corporation board to serve as president of the state rocket company, says he believes that Gov.Mike Dunleavy intervened to deny him the job because Thomas and his wife signed the recall petition, he told the Anchorage Daily News.

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The Dunleavy administration and its consultant tried to decide “The Way Forward” for the Transportation Advisory Committee reviewing the Kinross ore-hauling project on the afternoon of November 13.

The so-called “Way Forward” is being kept secret, as shown in the blacked out section of the email below, though other information shows the general idea was to shut down the committee as soon as possible. The committee was scheduled to meet November 16.

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At a minimum the state should set operating conditions and specific safety rules for the Kinross operation, recognizing that the number of trucks will likely be increased after the project gets moving because this is expected to be a highly profitable venture.

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The Dunleavy administration claims that a new analysis of the Steese Expressway bridge over the Chena River has led to a reversal of its previous position—that the ore-haul trucks should not be allowed to use the downtown bridge.

There is reason to be skeptical of the timing and substance of this revelation by the Dunleavy administration.

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When Gov. Mike Dunleavy launched his energy task force last spring, he said he wanted to see plans by the end of this year to cut electricity prices in Alaska to 10 cents per kilowatt hour by 2030.

“Now some people will say that’s incredibly optimistic, we can’t do that, etc., etc., etc. But I’ve gotta remind you of a couple of things done in history here in the not-too-distant past. 1961, John F. Kennedy said we’re gonna go to the moon by the end of the decade,” Dunleavy told his task force on April 25.

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In an attempt to escape an obvious legal snafu, Kinross and its trucking contractor now reveal in court documents that they will have their trucks run on the Steese Expressway instead of the route identified by the state.

But the court documents don’t say that would mean crossing the Chena River on a 46-year-old Steese Highway bridge that the chief state bridge engineer said in July should not be used by “heavy ore loads.” The state has long banned the heaviest trucks from the Steese bridge because of safety concerns.

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