Lawsuit raises unanswered questions about Stoltze's short-lived job with Dunleavy

Former Sen. Bill Stoltze, who worked for Gov. MIke Dunleavy for less than three weeks, resigned Dec. 21 as director of the Mat-Su office.

The Republican Party unofficial blog said Stoltze “wasn’t enjoying the work,” so he left the job.

A story in the Anchorage Daily News about Kellsie Green raises new questions about why Stoltze was hired and why he departed so quickly.

Green, who worked as a massage therapist and a dancer at Fantasies on Fifth Avenue in Anchorage, died in January 2016 after five days in the Anchorage jail. She was 24 and addicted to heroin. The substandard care she was given while in state custody is a disgrace.

She and Stoltze knew each other, but the relationship is not clear. Stoltze was 54 at the time.

Stoltze had a long career as a legislative aide and a legislator before quitting the Senate in 2016. His announcement that he would not run for re-election was made a few weeks after Kellsie’s father, John Green, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the state, the Daily News said.

The state has now settled the case for $400,000. John Green, the newspaper reported, said he “was willing to settle, rather than go to trial, because of the judgment agreement and because the state authorized the release of video, audio and hundreds of pages of depositions and reports that detail how the system failed his daughter.”

On the day Kellsie was jailed, she called Stoltze and later he visited her. Kellsie asked Stoltze to pay her $2,200 bail.

The Daily News said that Stoltze balked at doing so and said one reason was that he would not want it make public.

“Well, I hate having my, you know, my name there on CourtView and everything on that stuff, you know what I mean?” he said of he online records. “You’re listed as a poster there when you secure the bond.”

Stoltze offered to give the money to Kellsie’s mother if she would contact her mom. “She said no one was answering,” the newspaper said. Stoltze never contacted Kellsie’s mother about the bail request or to mention that she was sick, the newspaper said.

Stoltze would not comment for the story. One of the unanswered questions is whether the governor knew of this case when he hired Stoltze to run his Mat-Su office.

Read the full story here.