Public comments are unanimous in opposing Dunleavy plan for free legal aid in ethics cases. Again.

If public comments mean anything to the Dunleavy administration, the proposal to allow the governor and attorney general to approve free legal help for each other in ethics cases will die a second time.

But if public comments meant anything to the Dunleavy administration, Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor would never have resurrected this plan, which first died in 2020 during the reign of Attorney General Kevin Clarkson.

Every Alaskan who commented on the latest edition of the proposed regulations did so in opposition to the proposed Dunleavy mutual legal aid society.

The proposal would allow the attorney general to approve free legal help against ethics complaints for his boss, the governor, and the lieutenant governor. It would also allow the governor to approve free legal help against ethics complaints for his political soldier, the attorney general.

In a volume that runs to 147 pages, some commenters condemned the proposal as encouraging corrupt behavior, while others attacked it as unconstitutional, unethical, a waste of state money and a prime example of self-dealing. No one had anything nice to say about it.

Add these to the 321 pages of public opposition submitted in 2019 to the identical proposal floated by Clarkson, and the perfect record remains intact—this is a rare case in state government of unanimous public opposition.

The Alaska Public Interest Research Group acquired the latest public comments through a records request to the attorney general’s office. Here is the full catalog of the 2023 comments.

The scratch-my-back conflict of interest is obvious and unaddressed. The AG owes his or her job to the governor and will always be inclined to sign off on free legal help, regardless of circumstances. Likewise, the governor will always want to keep the AG happy unless he or she wants a new one.

A 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.

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.

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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