Alaska recipients of Permanent Fund investments say disclosure would harm their businesses. No it won't.

The board of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp., pushed by chairman Craig Richards, decided a couple of years ago that $200 million of public funds should be invested into companies with some connection to Alaska.

All of the details of the investments made by two private equity funds can be kept secret, the fund attorney claims, unless the recipients of the money agree that their names and the amount of the investments are made public.

So far, the 14 companies that have received about $135 million have agreed that their names can be made public.

But the Permanent Fund, the financial firms hired to oversee this project and the recipients of state cash still refuse to reveal how much each company is getting.

They say it is in the public interest that this information remain secret.

They are wrong.

Barings and McKinley Capital decided “that it could be harmful to the returns of investments, and in turn the Alaska Permanent Fund, to disclose this information,” the Permanent Fund says.

That the Permanent Fund and the companies don’t recognize the dangerous implications of their position is astonishing.

The Permanent Fund says the information is private because of a line in a 42-year-old law that says information that discloses “the particulars of the business or affairs of a private enterprise or investor” are to be kept confidential.

But getting state money from the Permanent Fund does not disclose “the particulars of the business or affairs of a private enterprise or investor” in the way that fund attorney Chris Poag claims.

Under the fund’s interpretation of the law, if billions are eventually invested in private companies doing business in Alaska by private equity funds, Alaskans will never know who is getting the money and how much, unless the companies approve.

It is obvious that if the state takes public money and invests it in a private company, the amount of the investment and the recipient of the investment should be public information. Barings has invested in five ventures, while McKinley Capital has made a total of 10 investments in 9 firms.

The Legislature needs to change the law if the fund does not adopt a more reasonable approach.

The investments are supposed to be chosen so that they match opportunities Outside, but this is a subjective matter. Secrecy doesn’t help build trust.

Of the $200 million allocated for in-state investments, $100 million went to Barings and $100 million to McKinley Capital Management, the Anchorage firm established by the late Bob Gillam that is now run by his son Robert A. Gillam.

Barings established the Alaska Future Fund, while McKinley started the Na’-Nuk Investment Fund, with visions of establishing a second fund with $250 million more.

It should not be up to the recipients of state cash to decide if in-state investments are to be revealed to the public. And it should not be up to the recipients of state cash to decide that they’d rather keep the dollar amounts secret.

This is public money and the public deserves disclosure. Open records are part of the checks and balances needed to limit political favoritism and backdoor dealing.

The only investment to which a specific figure has been attached is the $10 million provided by Barings to Contango ORE, a minority partner in the joint venture to run a trucking operations from Tetlin to the Fort Knox Mine.

We know that Contango ORE collected $10 million because the company highlighted that as a signal to private investors that the state is backing the trucking plan.

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