Former Sen. Mark Begich is among those getting paid under a no-bid statehood defense contract with the Dunleavy administration.

The state contract pays a total of $12,500 a month to Begich and two others—a former employee of his in the Senate, Clare Boersma, and former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. The contract doesn’t specify how the $12,500 in monthly payments are divided among the three.

Boersma is a former staff member for Begich and they are both part of Northern Compass Group. Begich is president and CEO of the consulting company.

Begich is also a “strategic consulting advisor” in the Washington lobbying firm of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP, which holds the $50,000 contract.

Begich has also worked as a state lobbyist for the gas pipeline. The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation had been paying Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP $12,500 a month.

The new contract is for $50,000 and runs from September 11 until January 30. Had it been $50,001, the state would have had to seek some competition.

The contract is so short and so small that I suspect that the state intends to extend the duration and amount, contrary to a procurement regulation cited in the contract as the justification for this agreement. The regulation allows this no-bid deal only if the cost does not exceed $50,000.

The tactic of getting in under the no-bid ceiling and amending the deal after the fact to evade the legal limit is being used with Statehood Defense Coordinator Craig Richards, who signed a seven-month contract that is to pay him $84,000, though his no-bid contract caps payments at $50,000.

Richards is the former attorney general and now a member of the Permanent Fund board of trustees.

As with the Richards contract, $50,000 is not enough to pay for all of the contracted services mentioned in the contract. The contract is nearly $10,000 short, more if there are any out-of-pocket expenses, which are likely.

Half of the $50,000 is for work with the attorney general’s office for statehood defense work, while half is for work with the governor’s office on “general issues” important to Alaska.

Statehood defense consists of the ill-defined cornucopia of complaints the Dunleavy administration has with the federal government, creating legal disputes with a cost that will soon exceed $15 million, though the Legislature has only appropriated $11.5 million.

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