Dunleavy wants $2 million more for statehood defense industry; existing court fights will soon hit $15 million

Gov. Mike Dunleavy wants $2 million more from the Legislature for the statehood defense industry to “support continued statehood defense efforts across multiple agencies.”

The total cost of Dunleavy’s anti-overreach campaign, coordinated by $12,000-a-month contractor Craig Richards, has already consumed more than half of the $11.5 million the Legislature has approved.

The current crop of lawsuits about grievances real or imagined will require $3.5 million more from the Legislature, according to Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor.

Before any more state money goes into this inflated political campaign, waged in the federal courts at great expense with lawsuits hither and yon, Alaskans deserve an accounting of the $15 million.

So far, there is a bumper crop of bluster. Dunleavy and his overreach team love to portray Alaska as a hapless victim of federal interference.

There has been little news coverage of the anti-overreach sector and no oversight by the Alaska Legislature.

The Dunleavy administration has entered a host of contracts with little or no competition. In several cases, the state has ignored specifics in the state laws on procurement.

After I asked for copies of the statehood defense contracts, many of them with law firms Outside, the Dunleavy administration invited the recipients of the money to claim that the per-hour wages paid by the state to top personnel should be concealed. All the contractors had to do was ask, the AG’s office said.

The information was public the moment the contracts were signed, but the Dunleavy administration invented a cover story that contractors are allowed to claim after the fact that this information is a trade secret.

The information is not a trade secret. And it is not legal to decide retroactively that public information in a state contract is secret.

Some of the recipients of state money have taken the Dunleavy administration up on its invitation and have declared that they won’t reveal how much their top people are getting from Alaskans.

A Texas law firm that didn’t object to the release of this public data is paying $672 per hour to one of its lawyers and $588 to another,

One of the questionable no-bid statehood defense contracts that has had no news coverage is the Dunleavy arrangement with Craig Richards, a Dunleavy supporter and former AG who is on the board of the Permanent Fund.

With no public notice, Dunleavy hired Richards last summer for $12,000 a month to be the statehood defense coordinator.

It’s not clear why this information was withheld from the public.

Here is Richards’s contract to coordinate the statehood campaign.

I wrote about this on November 28 and November 30, detailing how the contract with Richards violates state regulations:

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.

* REST IN PEACE: Newspaperman Howard Weaver has died at 73. Alaska writer Tom Kizzia offers this worthy tribute to Weaver in the Anchorage Daily News. Kizzia refers to Weaver as “the preeminent Alaska journalist of his generation.” That he was.

Weaver was a great reporter and columnist and an inspirational editor. He was a leader and a man with a big heart whose personality could fill any room. He learned as he went along, changing with the times. Weaver made enormous contributions to Alaska. I was lucky to know him.

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