One year later, AG nominee makes false claims on Penney no-bid contract

It turns out that Attorney General Treg Taylor wrote a memo Jan. 29 about the Clark Penney no-bid contract, absolving everyone involved from any wrongdoing.

If Taylor doesn’t correct this shoddy document, he should be rejected by the Legislature.

The memo says that because the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority had a piece of paper that claimed a no-bid deal was justified and because the price and a copy of the contract was in the AIDEA files, “the Penney Capital contract therefore complied with the procurement process.”

This is not legal analysis. It’s political cover.

On Wednesday, the Anchorage Daily News said it had received a copy of Taylor’s memo through a public records request. I asked the AG’s office Thursday and received it as well.

The memo, dated Jan. 29, the same day Taylor was appointed AG, avoids all of the real questions about the numerous procurement violations that occurred with the Penney contract, which I wrote about a year ago Friday.

Taylor replaced Ed Sniffen, who resigned over sex abuse allegations.

A year ago, Gov. Mike Dunleavy promised a “deep dive” and a press conference to answer questions on the $441,000 Penney deal, which went to the grandson of Bob Penney, who invested $350,000 in electing Dunleavy in 2018.

Nothing more was heard about the alleged dive until the publication of the Jan. 29 memo, which is anything but deep.

In his memo, Taylor did not mention that it is improper to invent a sole-source justification—a waiver to justify avoiding state law requiring competitive bids—after the state had already decided to give the no-bid contract to Penney.

“We will also need to put together a sole source justification,” the chief financial officer of AIDEA wrote on March 12, 2019. The no-bid contract proposal had been under negotiation since at least February 2019.

Taylor did not mention that it was improper to have Penney revise the draft state contract terms and submit them to Julie Anderson, the commerce commissioner, not with AIDEA.

On March 7, 2019, Anderson asked Penney to look at the draft contract, “adjust scope where necessary then return to me for final review. I am working with AIDEA to get a short term contract in place which will allow us time to do a long term contract process.”

It was signed on March 19, 2019, to pay Penney $8,000 a month.

Taylor did not mention that original draft waiver language said the regulatory authority for the process was “by governor’s request.” The Alaska Landmine obtained the draft document a year ago.

The final waiver language said the regulatory authority was that the contract was “within AIDEA’s mission.”

Taylor did not mention that the document used to justify the lack of competition was not an AIDEA waiver request form. It was a Department of Transportation and Public Facilities form.

However, AIDEA chose not to follow DOTPF policies or procedures, which would have required more detail. The Department of Administration form for sole-source contracts requires even more detail than the DOTPF form, so that may be why AIDEA used the DOTPF version.

Taylor did not mention that the sole-source justification was an attempt to create a paper trail to evade the competition rule and that the removal of the “by governor’s request” language was to separate the Penney contract from the governor’s office and the obvious political favoritism being shown to the grandson of a Dunleavy megadonor.

The sole-source justification and Penney’s role in revising his own contract are two of many elements worthy of the attorney general’s attention.

If Taylor is unaware of these details or simply willing to overlook them to help his boss, he doesn’t deserve to be attorney general.

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