Attorney General invents 'trade secret' cover story to keep from revealing how much state pays statehood defense contractors
The office of Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor is waiting to hear from the Holland & Hart law firm about whether the company wants to help hide public information about how much the state paid per hour for legal services from former Gov. Sean Parnell and others.
This is rich. Here is the $2 million contract.
The information is not a trade secret. And having the attorney general invite private contractors to define public information as a trade secret is going to fail.
Under state procurement law you cannot decide retroactively that something in a contract is a trade secret.
One reason I can safely make that claim is that this $2 million statehood defense contract with Holland & Hart came about in response to this public request for proposals.
The document should put the argument to rest.
It’s clear that nothing in the Holland & Hart proposal could be treated as a trade secret unless the company made the claim in advance and got the state procurement officer to agree in writing.
That Tregarrick Taylor is now inviting Holland & Hart to claim confidentiality three years later on Contract No. 21-218-1157 proves that the company did not claim the per hour rates to Parnell and others were trade secrets in advance. The assertion cannot be made now.
Parnell was named chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage in May 2021. A spokesman at UAA said Parnell has not been employed by the law firm since taking the university job and has not done work for AIDEA or received compensation for any work.
He had been the contact person for the contract. Holland & Hart was one of four law firms that could have been chosen for the job after procurement officials reviewed the matter.
The work was for the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and the Alaska Energy Authority on these two lawsuits, among other things decided by the AG.
The contract is one of many released to me by the state about the so-called statehood defense campaign. The state has invited contractors, after the fact, to claim that per-hour payments are trade secrets, according to this letter from the AG’s office.
I suspect this is because I have written numerous blog posts over the past several years mentioning per hour payments for contract lawyers and the state considers this bad publicity.
Your contributions help support independent analysis and political commentary by Alaska reporter and author Dermot Cole. Thank you for reading and for your support. Either click here to use PayPal or send checks to: Dermot Cole, Box 10673, Fairbanks, AK 99710-0673.
Write me at dermotmcole@gmail.com.
From a letter to me by the attorney general’s office that says that the per hour rates for a $2 million statehood defense contract with Holland & Hart will be kept secret unless the company decides the information should be made public.
