Something about Tshibaka's $81,277 moving bill to Alaska has never added up
The state paid $81,277 to move Kelly Tshibaka and her family from Virginia to Alaska in 2019.
Her explanation for the excessive cost has never added up. Now that her moving costs are featured in attack ads paid for by groups backing Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the details are worth examining.
Tshibaka claims the state was a victim of fraud and that she gave the information to the attorney general’s office, but the Dunleavy administration did nothing about it.
Alaskans deserve to know if there was fraud, which was ignored by the Dunleavy administration, or if Tshibaka is just trying to shift the blame away from herself.
Tshibaka is accusing one or more of the moving companies she hired of breaking a contract and overcharging the state. But she won’t name names. This is one sign that she can’t back up her claims.
She quit her job as administration commissioner two years later to run for the U.S. Senate, just after the deadline that would have required her to pay the money back.
Her high-priced move first drew public notice on Feb. 1, 2020 when I posted the totals on my blog.
The state paid $8,731 for lodging the Tshibakas, while meals and incidentals cost $1,005 and transportation was $71,541.
The Tshibakas billed the state starting in February 2019 for flights from Washington, D.C., meals and house-hunting expenses in Anchorage.
After Tshibaka filed for the U.S. Senate in 2021, the Anchorage Daily News reported that she wouldn’t have to reimburse the state for moving costs because the two-year minimum had passed.
Tshibaka claimed then and now, as the Daily News put it, that the problem was “a state policy that forced her to accept bids from fraudulent movers, driving up the cost.”
Tshibaka says that the state requires the person being moved to take the lowest bid, which she did, and she claimed she was cheated.
But here’s one of the things that doesn’t add up. The state doesn’t pay in advance. Why didn’t Tshibaka insist that the state withhold payment until the moving contract was completed? Are her claims legitimate?
It was Tshibaka’s responsibility to get three bids on her move, based on this state chart, meaning she had the responsibility to select legit companies.
“if you’re the lowest vendor, you’re likely to get a fraudulent vendor,” Tshibakka told a crowd of supporters, the Daily News said,
Not if you choose three good vendors.
The form she sent to the state shows three payments in April 2019 to One Way Van Lines and a $13334 refund to Tshibaka. There were other payments in June 2019 to other companies.
Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka claims the state was defrauded on her moving expenses and that she turned the details over to the attorney general’s office but no action was taken. The bills on moving are not paid until after he move is complete, so why did she allow the payments to go ahead if the contract had been broken?