The Alaska Industrial Development & Export Authority continues to claim that the $250,000 “independent economic analysis” of AIDEA can be kept secret because it is a draft and not subject to the public records law.

Randy Ruaro, the executive director of AIDEA, has denied my appeal of the agency’s refusal to release the report. The report was supposed to be released in late 2023.

Ruaro said if I want the document my only option is to appeal to Alaska Superior Court.

But the public records law in Alaska is clear that draft reports of this kind are public information. Here is what the law says, a provision that was added by the Legislature in 1990:

AIDEA hired Northern Economics to counter what it claimed was “disinformation” in a report by Gregg Erickson and Milt Barker that was highly critical of AIDEA’s economic record. But even before AIDEA hired the contractor it announced: “AIDEA Debunks Report and Announces Independent Economic Analysis.”

Northern Economics was paid in full for the $250,000 debunking report, with its last invoice submitted March 1.

As I have written here before, although Northern Economics finished its work in early 2024, I suspect the finished document did not do enough debunking to suit the Dunleavy administration so the report was buried to suppress its contents.

I have asked Northern Economics President Marcus Hartley if his company has been working for free for AIDEA, but he has declined to respond. Its last invoice was March 1.

AIDEA promised a robust, unbiased, independent analysis by Northern Economics and promoted the deal as the work of experts not beholden to AIDEA: “Northern Economics to Conduct Independent Analysis of AIDEA.”

Northern Economics, which calls itself “Alaska’s Trusted Economics Expert,” says it undertakes “meaningful, unbiased analyses throughout Alaska and around the world.”

The AIDEA contract with the company, which contains errors in grammar and usage, required the company to “draft a final comprehensive report containing the results the robust qualitative and quantitative analyses of the authority’s economic, fiscal and functional impacts made on the State of Alaska its inception since 1967, and present said report to the authority’s management and members of its board.”

In denying my appeal, Ruaro said that AIDEA may extend the contract with Northern Economics, 10 months after the company collected its last check.

Rurao said the report by Northern Economics submitted to AIDEA did not include enough about “the health and social benefits for Alaskans from jobs and economic development.”

“AIDEA would like to include a section in the report on this very important topic, as well as several others. Work is underway and the contract may be amended to include it and other important items,” Ruaro said.

Amending the contract would erase the question about whether Northern Economics will be working for free in the future. But it does not resolve the question of what work, if any, has taken place since February.

Northern Economics is unlikely to publicly kick about pressure from AIDEA to change its report, as Hartley probably wants to keep the door open for more work from the Dunleavy administration. Under the contract Hartley billed $215 an hour.

But the refusal of AIDEA to accept the Northern Economics report as submitted destroys the claims that this report is an independent review of AIDEA by a third party.

Ruaro claims the report is “predecisional,” the unfortunate term inserted into government jargon that deals with communications that precede an actual decision by a public entity and are essential to the deliberative process.

The state paid for a $250,000 report for an independent review of the agency. Draft or not, there is nothing “predecisional” about the report, contrary to Ruaro’s claims.

I’m surprised that legislators haven’t insisted on seeing this public document.

SALARY STUDY STONEWALL: The Dunleavy administration is pulling a similar stunt with drafts of the $800,000 salary study that it will not release to the public. The Anchorage Daily News has this update.

The research in that report, paid for with public funds, should be made available to the public. That Dunleavy may or may not act on the contents is another matter.

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