In early 2019, Gov. Mike Dunleavy appointed former Rep. Craig Johnson to the Alaska Personnel Board, the three-member agency that found little merit in the ethics complaints against Dunleavy regarding the $35,000 in state money spent by the governor’s office last year for partisan purposes.

The personnel board enforces the state ethics act.

The way in which Johnson is allowed to withhold key information on his financial disclosure form reveals a problem in the law and the way in which the Alaska Public Offices Commission enforces the law.

Johnson’s case is a textbook example of a broken system.

Johnson is required to report the range of his wife’s income, among other things, on the financial disclosure forms many elected and appointed officials have to file.

But he found a way around this spousal requirement starting at least in 2008, as a legislator. He has used it ever since.

State officials looked the other way, accepting the charade that Johnson didn’t know how much his wife made so he didn’t have to report the range of her income on the form or face criminal charges.

I learned about this because Anchorage activist Andree McLeod has been asking the Alaska Public Offices Commission about it and corresponding with KTUU about another issue. She shared emails and documents from the APOC that show the loophole.

Craig Johnson’s wife, Nancy Johnson, has worked at KTUU in Anchorage since 1981, holding a variety of jobs. She is now vice president and general manager.

The range of her income should have been reported on Craig’s disclosure documents, but during his years in the Legislature, he routinely had her employer write a letter to Craig claiming the information was a secret.

The law and state regulations require that officials make a “good faith effort to ascertain the information” about how much their spouses make and report it as a range. An exact number is not required.

“The disclosure statement of a public official must contain the required information for the public official and each family member of the public official,” state regulations say.

Part of the alleged “good faith effort” is to inform the spouse that the public official is “required to provide the information under oath and penalty of perjury” and that the official may be subject to penalties described in the law for refusing to provide the information.

The fiction here is that Craig Johnson has never known how much money his wife makes and doesn’t look at or sign a joint tax return or have any other way of getting the information.

Now he is on the board responsible for making sure the ethics law is followed. It’s time for a higher standard.

Year after year, Johnson’s disclosure forms included letters from his wife’s various employers, the different owners of KTUU, addressed to Craig, claiming that she was not allowed to disclose her salary to him or anyone else.

For some reason, the APOC accepted the lame annual letters as a “good faith effort” by Craig to find out how much his wife made at KTUU.

“This letter will confirm that, as an employee of Channel 2 Broadcasting Company, Nancy Johnson is prohibited from disclosing salary information for any of our employees, including her own,” General Manager Al Bramstedt said in 2008.

Prohibited from disclosing her salary to Craig, so he would be unable to legally fill out his disclosure form? Yes.

in 2009, Susan Lucas of Northern Lights Media, made the secrecy call: “This letter will confirm that, as an employee of Northern Lights Media, Nancy Johnson is prohibited from disclosing salary information for any of our employees, including her own.”

In 2010 and 2011, the letter was recycled and accepted. In the 2012 version, Craig was told that Nancy’s salary at KTUU was a “privileged trade secret.”

An APOC attorney, who audited Craig’s filing, first questioned Craig that “No income source is listed for Mrs. Johnson. Please confirm that Mrs. Johnson did not work in 2011.” The APOC staff soon heard back and said it “understands” that her salary was a trade secret, not available to Craig.

In 2013 and again in 2016, KTUU General Manager Andrew MacLeod said that Nancy, as general sales manager, was prohibited from revealing confidential information, such as her salary to her husband.

Johnson filed his final disclosure form as a legislator in 2017. He listed his income, saying that as a fulltime legislator he earned between $50,000 and $100,000 in 2016. He said his wife’s income was her permanent fund dividend.

After his appointment to the personnel board, he was required to start filing again. He didn’t mention his wife’s income at all in his 2019 filing. This year, he listed his family income as PFD checks for himself and Nancy and $10,000 to $20,000 from his state pension. He didn’t mention his wife’s income.

Five months later, only after McLeod wrote to KTUU on Aug. 8 questioning its reporting on another issue, did Nancy Johnson write the 2020 version of the letter, claiming she was unable to tell her husband how much she earns.

“This letter will confirm that, as an employee of Gray Media Group Inc., I am prohibited from disclosing employment records, including salary, for any Gray Media employees,” Nancy wrote to Craig on Aug. 14.

Getting the same “Dear Craig” form letter every year from your spouse saying that your income is a secret should not qualify under state law as a “good faith effort to ascertain the information” for disclosure. It’s not an effort at all. It’s not even a good excuse.

Lots of people fill out these forms and disclose information they would rather keep quiet, but the law is an important one. There are legitimate arguments for keeping some details secret. This is not one of them.

Either tighten the law or change the APOC enforcement to end this charade.

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