Dunleavy seeks to spend $10 million more on political complaints against Biden administration

Gov. Mike Dunleavy plans to reorganize the state law department to promote his political attacks on the Biden administration, hiring more contract lawyers and transferring 52 state employees into a new “Statehood Defense and Resource Development” office within the department.

Dunleavy plans to transfer attorneys and support personnel from natural resources, environmental law, transportation, business and other sections of the department to staff the new anti-federal office, costing about $14 million a year.

Year by year, Dunleavy has tried to direct more millions into grandstanding lawsuits against the federal government, launching each one with celebratory press releases that falsely equate lawsuits with leadership. Anyone can file a lawsuit.

in 2021, he created a job for his former campaign manager as head of statehood defense, which was really a campaign job for Brett Huber.

The state has 50 ongoing complaints in the federal overreach industry, an increase of about 10 during Dunleavy’s tenure.

Last week Dunleavy said he wants a $10 million slush fund in the governor’s office so he can fight the feds. This would be in addition to the $14 million in the Statehood Defense and Resource Development office.

Alaskans have an interest in natural resources that goes beyond resource development, but that is lost on Dunleavy and Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor who behave as if they work for the oil and gas industry, the mining industry and anyone else who wants to use public resources for private gain.

Taylor, a former oil industry lawyer, cries nonstop about “unconstitutional overreach by the federal government,” and comes off like a right-wing political hack, not a constitutional scholar.

In 2016, when running for the Anchorage assembly, Taylor had this campaign song about his philosophy and posed for a photo with some of his kids and a campaign sign that said he was “the only South Anchorage candidate that owns a gun!”

During that campaign he said there were road districts in his neighborhood with private plowing and he wanted more government services privatized.

He and his wife are connected to a right-wing group that attacked Democrats and moderate Republicans. Running for the school board in 2011, Taylor complained about the cost of public schools, objected to tenure for teachers and building “museum-like schools.”

Dunleavy has yet to reveal the creation of the new AG statehood defense division, but budget documents released Dec. 15 say the transfers are “part of a broader restricting of the civil division” in the law department.

Legislators with expertise in the law, such as the incoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Matt Claman, will give this empire-building plan the scrutiny it needs.

The contracts already in effect need to be examined to see where the money is going. For instance, the state has hired Fennemore Craig, an Outside law firm, to push the state’s claim that the Arctic ringed seal is not endangered.

Assistant Attorney General Ron Opsahl, admitted to the Alaska Bar on Aug. 9, 2021, is the state attorney working on this and other anti-fed matters for the state. Fennemore Craig, the company hired to do the work, is Opsahl’s former employer.

The state has had a hard time keeping lawyers on its payroll and more than half of its civil division lawyers have been working for the state for less than three years. The law department says it is holding onto more of its current work force because they just got a 20 percent pay raise. There are four vacancies now, down from 20 to 25 in recent months.

A bill granting the pay raises to 540 lawyers on the state payroll, sponsored by Anchorage Rep. Andy Josephson, became law without the governor’s signature last summer. Dunleavy didn’t want to be attacked by his supporters for backing higher pay for state workers, but he was unable to tell the truth about this.

Dunleavy made up a story to the Anchorage Daily News that he didn’t sign the bill because he didn't want to have a bill-signing ceremony. Signing a bill does not require a ceremony.

The bill also provided a 5 percent salary increase for exempt and partially exempt staff in all three branches of government.
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