Legislators ignore AG Treg Taylor's deception about Ben Stevens ethics waiver

The Alaska Public Interest Research Group made a strong case why AG Treg Taylor should not have been confirmed by the Legislature. But a majority of legislators ignored his track record and confirmed him on a 35-24 vote Tuesday.

The problem is that Taylor did not tell the truth about the ethics waiver for former Dunleavy Chief of Staff Ben Stevens during his confirmation hearings.

On March 15, Taylor said he “determined that, with the general job duties as described and then talking with Ben Stevens and with the governor’s office, that there was no need for a conflict waiver at this time because there was no conflict.”

Taylor said he had no doubt that a waiver was not needed “because of the activities that Ben Stevens is currently doing.”

On March 19, Taylor said, “I’m guessing” that Stevens would ask for specific waiver in the future.

“At that point the governor and I would sit down and discuss what the aspect of that waiver was,” said Taylor.

On March 31, Taylor continued the deception, saying, “we sat down with Mr. Stevens, with ConocoPhillips, and we went through exactly what he'd be doing to see if there was a need for Mr. Stevens to apply for a conflict and we ultimately determined that was nothing in his duties that constituted that would currently require the state to entertain a waiver of that conflict.”

0n April 7, Taylor appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and again failed to reveal that Stevens had asked for a waiver in a letter March 12.

He also failed to reveal that Gov. Mike Dunleavy had already approved the waiver on April 5, two days before the hearing. Instead, Taylor kept talking about hypothetical waivers that might or might not be approved in the future.

Taylor signed the Stevens waiver April 8, the day after that hearing, clearing Stevens after the fact to help promote the Willow project for ConocoPhillips.

There is no excuse for what Taylor did on March 15th, March 19th, March 31st and April 7th to conceal an important piece of information from legislators and the public.

The AG’s office claimed to Alaska Public Media that the state ethics law banned Taylor from telling legislators the truth about the Stevens waiver, inventing a story that this was a request for an ethics opinion from the AG and it was confidential.

But the sections of the law the state claims grant a blanket waiver of secrecy do not cover the conflict of interest waiver process. The information was not secret as the waiver is dealt with in a separate section of the law. Alaska Public Media should correct the record.

What I think happened is this.

Taylor’s department first claimed, inaccurately, that no waiver was needed because Stevens would not be a “lobbyist,” That was on March 5th, after Stevens had already taken the job. ConocoPhillips also claimed, inaccurately, that there was no need for a waiver.

AKPRIG filed a complaint March 8 and asked for an investigation into why Taylor, Dunleavy and Stevens had ignored the waiver process, a safeguard in state law for good reason.

Stevens wrote a letter seeking a waiver March 12, which Taylor would have known about before his March 15 hearing. Rather than admit that the earlier statements by his department and the governor and the oil company were wrong, he concealed the Stevens waiver request from legislators.

Now we have Taylor’s department claiming Taylor was banned from telling the truth to lawmakers.

There was zero news coverage by Alaska news organizations of Taylor’s repeated deception and it only came to light because AKPIRG got involved. Not that any of this mattered to the 35 legislators who looked the other way.

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