Dunleavy asks Trump for 6 new federal bureaucrats to make sure agencies follow orders

Gov. Mike Dunleavy asked Donald Trump to reverse a wide range of Biden Administration policies with an executive order on his first day in office, create an Alaska task force, and hire six new high-level political employees to make things happen within agencies.

The plan to grow the federal bureaucracy in Alaska is driven by Dunleavy’s distrust of other government employees and an overreaching desire to insert loyal followers into federal positions of power.

This will be hard to explain to Trump’s alleged efficiency experts at DOGE.

Dunleavy also wants his office to be consulted before the federal government hires people for these 15 top administrative and political employees in various agencies.

Dunleavy and his employees want to be able to tell Trump if the top federal candidates who deal with Alaska have the right political ideas.

Dunleavy’s office says it is essential that the “right candidates with the right direction and drive,” be placed in the 15 positions to make decisions on federal matters in Alaska.

That means the federal employees must have opinions about mining and oil and gas development that Dunleavy deems acceptable.

Here is the Dunleavy report titled “Alaska Priorities for Federal Transition.”

The document portrays Alaska as a hapless and helpless victim of the Biden administration, as does the November 15 letter Dunleavy sent to Trump, just after Dunleavy learned he would not become Trump’s Interior Secretary.

Of the Dunleavy plan to increase the size of the federal bureaucracy, the six new “Schedule C” political appointees would report to a task force and cabinet secretaries.

If hired under the usual practice, the new federal workers would probably be making at least $160,000 a year in Alaska. In total, the expert watchers would cost the federal government about $1 million in wages alone, not counting benefits.

They would personify redundancy, as they would be hired to “oversee the implementation of each action directed by the Executive Order,” duties that other people are already getting paid for.

The new federal jobs could be created by a Trump executive order on Day One, according to Dunleavy’s plan.

The six workers would be there to “carry out” the orders of the president and be placed within the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Alaska office of the Environmental Protection Agency.

This is to counter “four years of disingenuous and partisan infringements,” according to Dunleavy.

“These Alaska Policy Coordinators should report directly to their respective secretary or administrator on the cabinet level task force and form a working-group that meets regularly to coordinate the expeditious implementation of the President’s policies outlined in the Alaska Specific Executive Order,” Dunleavy’s federal transition plan says.

Former Attorney General Craig Richards, who had been getting $12,000 a month under no-bid contracts as the statehood defense coordinator, may have been involved in creating this report. The governor’s office said in November that Richards’s contract ran out September 30.

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