Dunleavy creates jobs Outside with millions for lawyers in burgeoning statehood defense industry

The Dunleavy administration continues to create new jobs in the statehood defense industry, most of them with lawyers Outside earning several hundred dollars an hour, promoting the political opinions of Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor.

There is no evidence that before creating statehood defense jobs—spending hundreds of thousands or millions in the process—that anyone in state government investigates the chances of success or whether the money could be better spent elsewhere.

There is no oversight by the Legislature, which provided millions for feel-good lawsuits, happy to throw money at grievances real and imagined. Press release bluster may appear to take on added weight when it comes with a lawsuit attached.

A case in point is the legal arrangement with the Houston office of Kelley Drye & Warren, a law firm hired by Taylor on February 4, 2022 for $500,000 to demand federal action to clean up polluted lands held by Native corporations.

On March 1, 2023, Taylor gave the Texans a $2.1 million bump in the contract, upping the total to $2.6 million.

The state says the fivefold increase in the no-bid contract is allowed by boilerplate language that says the contract amount “may be amended.”

We don’t know exactly what we’re getting for this, but we know the lead lawyer, Texan Bill Jackson, charges the state $672 an hour for his services, which he says is a 30 percent discount from his regular rate.

The contract, along with many others, was released to me by the state under a public records request for the statehood defense contracts. The first contract I wrote about was the one that pays former Attorney General Craig Richards $12,000 a month for part-time work as statehood defense coordinator.

Kelley Drye & Warren were hired to push the Dunleavy/Taylor political opinion that the federal government should clean up pollution on lands provided to Alaska Native corporations.

The Dunleavy/Taylor opinion is that Congress ordered the executive branch to do this. But it shouldn’t have taken a $672-an-hour man to find the fatal flaw in the Dunleavy/Taylor master plan.

On July 17, federal District Judge H. Russel Holland tossed out the case, saying that Congress had certainly ordered the executive branch to plan and prepare reports. And the federal government prepared the reports as ordered. But Congress did not order action.

As Holland wrote, “Congress was in control of the situation.”

Dunleavy complained that Holland’s rejection was “maddening” and based on a loophole. But wishful thinking by Dunleavy and Taylor is not a loophole. It’s a waste of time and money.

Dunleavy/Taylor and their high-priced lawyers made two fundamental mistakes.

First, they did not have Alaska Native corporations join the lawsuit as injured parties. That’s the biggest one. Second, they claimed that Congress ordered the lands cleaned up, but it never did that.

This should have been a painful lesson on the difference between the political whims of Dunleavy/Taylor and the law, but the statehood defense industry will not rest as long as state money remains and the Legislature is unaware.

Look for an appeal and the creation of more statehood jobs.

An essential part of the Kelley Drye & Warren contract is being kept secret

Taylor wrote that the decision to hire Kelley Drye & Warren was authorized by AS 36.30.305 and 2 AAC 12.430.

The first reference, AS 36.30.305, describes the legal requirements for allowing so-called “limited competition procurements,” meaning no competition in this case. The second reference, 2 AAC 12.430, requires a written explanation and evidence about why competition is not in the state’s best interest.

The only information redacted from the contract and kept secret is from a section listing the services to be performed by the law firm. The state hasn’t explained the need for secrecy.

The Dunleavy administration says that some of the services to be performed by a Texas law firm under a $2.6 million statehood defense contract are secret and have been redacted from the contract released under a public records request.

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