Permanent Fund's Anchorage office debacle remains unexamined

Alaska news organizations have still not reported on the bureaucratic machinations that led the Alaska Permanent Fund’s chief operating officer to quit his job without notice just as the fund announced plans to open a new office in Anchorage.

This story by the Alaska Beacon treats the decision to open an Anchorage office as normal state business, buried in two paragraphs at the bottom of this financial update. The warning signs are all there about political interference with the operation of the fund and the failure of the trustees to be independent of the governor.

The six Permanent Fund trustees, all appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, couldn’t stop patting themselves on the back at their Sept. 6 meeting at which they formally voted to open the Anchorage office on an emergency basis in temporary quarters.

There was clearly outside political pressure applied to the Permanent Fund staff sometime after the July meeting in which Chief Operating Officer Mike Barnhill promised to get back to the board with information on the Anchorage office plan this month.

Here is an excerpt from the minutes of the July 12 meeting about the Anchorage office planning.

But then came a policy directive in August to open a new Anchorage office without delay and without waiting for a report from Barnhill on how it would be implemented.

Barnhill, who was hired early this year, quit his job over this on Aug. 7.

As I wrote here early this month, the Aug. 10 press release, and another bizarre press release issued Sept. 1 by the trustees, do not align with the statements the trustees made during their public meeting in July. I suspect they held one or more illegal meetings to decide on these missives and that the governor inserted himself into this.

If the trustees did not meet illegally, they can explain how they managed to get a majority to approve these announcements. So-called “bicycle meetings” in which one person talks to another who talks to another, are not allowed under the open meetings law, as any competent local government official knows.

For a $75 billion fund, the “temporary” office is an embarrassing and inept way to handle questions about office space, one that will surely cause potential job recruits to doubt the people setting policy for the fund. The incident reeks of political interference.

The trustees keep complaining about the open meetings act and why no more than three of them can meet at one time without doing so in public. They want an exemption from the law so they can meet more in secret. They are not going to get that from the Legislature.

This is a worrisome episode that is far more important than whether and when a temporary Anchorage office is established in vacant office space not being used by the Department of Environmental Conservation.

It illustrates the lack of internal and external controls necessary to insulate the corporation from politics.

Blame this on the individuals selected by Dunleavy and by the structure in state law that allows for no legislative role in the selection process of trustees and no confirmation vote. The trustees haven’t spoken out about why the informal agreement they made in July was abandoned.

Add to that the failure by the Legislature to perform the legally mandated oversight of the Permanent Fund and the danger signals should be obvious to all.

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