Despite unanimous public opposition, AG approves disputed plan for free legal help in ethics cases

Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor has signed off on the disputed plan to allow him to provide free legal help to the governor and lieutenant governor in ethics cases, while allowing the governor to do the same for the attorney general.

All of the public comments were against the proposed regulation, which Taylor had resurrected after it was first proposed and rejected in the face of unanimous public opposition in 2020, when former AG Kevin Clarkson pushed the proposal.

A 2019 legislative legal opinion concluded that the idea of state officials bestowing free legal help on each other was a violation of state law and unconstitutional. That should have been the end of this.

The legal aid plan conflicts with a ban in state law on “favoritism and self-enrichment,” Legislative Counsel Daniel Wayne wrote, by offering a benefit to three state officials that is not available to others. It also conflicts with laws that make ethics complaints at some stages are public.

A 2023 legislative legal opinon also concluded that the plan is unconstitutional.

Taylor claims there are “no legal problems” with his proposal. A lot of others say he is wrong. Here are the most recent public comments. Here are the public comments submitted in 2019 against the same plan.

This letter from three legislators in 2019 provides a strong case for why this regulation change should be overturned by the Legislature.

“The drafters of this proposal are simply trying to change the statutory process, enacted into law by the legislature, by means of a regulation, which is not within their statutory authority. The governor and attorney general may not unilaterally change a statute,” wrote Doug Mertz, a former assistant attorney general, commenting the first time this was proposed.

While the public comments were disregarded by Taylor, he offered this bit of irrelevant boilerplate: “When considering public comments, the Department of Law paid special attention to the cost to private persons of the regulatory action being taken.”

It appears that Taylor has a special interest in bringing this back to life. His department provided this FAQ, a rich stew of vague, deceptive and misleading claims. The FAQ did not reveal that these proposed regulations are recycled, why they were abandoned the first time or explain the obvious conflicts of interest. The AG works for the governor and is not a disinterested party. The lieutenant governor is also an underling of the governor.

Taylor, a former deputy AG to Clarkson, wrote the answers to the public in a document defending the plan when the mutual aid society was first proposed in 2019.

But Taylor declined to answer the question, “Who requested the proposed amendments?”

We still don’t know who made the request and why the amendments have been recycled.

In 2019-2020 and again this year, the Dunleavy administration has refused to try to amend the state ethics law through legislative action to provide free legal help. That would force the governor and AG to try to defend their self-serving plan in public. Instead, they are trying to sneak it past the public through regulation.

The Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act says “that a fair and open government requires that executive branch public officers conduct the public's business in a manner that preserves the integrity of the governmental process and avoids conflicts of interest. . .”

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