The Dunleavy administration’s $12,000-a-month statehood defense contract with former Attorney General Craig Richards is not authorized by state regulations and should be revoked.

The contract says Richards will be paid for seven months, but it only includes $50,000 to pay him, which is $34,000 short. This is not an accident.

The no-bid contract claims that the Richards deal is “Authorized by 2 AAC 12.400[b] 7,” which caps such no-bid agreements at $50,000.

That designation refers to a line in state procurement regulations detailing the “authority to make small purchases,” defined in this instance as a legal service costing no more than $50,000, requiring no competitive bids.

The Dunleavy administration and Richards cut this deal in June with eyes wide open, knowing that the alleged $50,000 price of the contract was not the real price of the contract.

They knew they would amend it later to increase the total.

The wink-wink $50,000 claim was a bureaucratic ruse, an attempt to evade a requirement in state law that requires written bids for contracts of more than $50,000.

A key part of statehood defense, it seems to me, is defending the laws of the state. Setting an artificially low contract number to avoid competitive bids, with both sides knowing an increase was coming later, is indefensible. And this from the state’s chief law enforcement official and a former chief law enforcement official.

Cori Mills, the director of the civil division of the Department of Law, said the state is amending the Richards contract now to increase the amount so that Richards can be paid his $12,000 per month and extending the contract.

The attorney general, the governor and Richards will claim that Article 1.3 of the contract provides their legal fig leaf—”Unless the contract is amended in writing, the total sum expended under this agreement shall not exceed $50,000 including all out-of-pocket expenses”—but that doesn’t justify this bait-and-switch scam.

The state procurement regulations require that for contracts such as this one, with a real cost of more than $50,000 and less than $100,000, that at least three firms be contacted for price quotes and that the responses have to be in writing.

If the Richards contract is extended to cost more than $100,000, more stringent state procurement rules should apply, in theory.

Another violation in the contract concerns the date that Richards began to get paid. The contract wasn’t signed until June 16, 2023. But it says he started to get paid 10 days earlier. That is not the right way to conduct business.

The contract does contain a laughable clause on page 5 saying that Richards could get paid before the contract was signed “because immediate performance is required to serve the best interest of the state.”

Here is Richards’s contract.

Here is the “executive guide” for state procurement.

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