AIDEA violates public records law by withholding $250,000 analysis

The $250,000 examination of AIDEA’s history that the state agency refuses to release to the public can be kept secret because it is a draft report, according to AIDEA Executive Director Randy Ruaro.

“Under Alaska law, until a report is final, it is not required to be released,” Ruaro wrote in a letter to the editor accusing me of being a bad guy.

But that is not what Alaska law says.

In 1990, before Ruaro enrolled in law school at Williamette University, the Alaska Legislature amended the public records law to include draft reports as public documents.

This is what the state law actually says about draft reports:

This is how public records are defined in the Alaska Public Records Act, which is AS 40.25.220.

Under the terms of AS 40.25.220, the $250,000 report prepared by Northern Economics for AIDEA is a public document.

AIDEA and every other part of state government reflexively claim to be exempt from the clear language in state law, however, because of an Alaska Supreme Court decision in 2000, known as Gwich’in Steering Committee v. State.

But the question in that case dealt with what the lawyers called “predecisional” matters in which the state was trying to decide what to do, a so-called “deliberative” process.

In this case, the state paid for a $250,000 report for an independent review of the agency. By its very nature, that means there was nothing predecisional or deliberative about the report.

There is also nothing predecisional or deliberative about the correspondence between AIDEA and Northern Economics regarding the contract. AIDEA claims that any and all emails between AIDEA and Northern Economics are secret.

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

AIDEA received the contracted report from Northern Economics and paid the company in full. Now it says the independent, unbiased document is a secret.

In response to a public records request, AIDEA said the last invoice from Northern Economics was submitted on March 1.

Marcus Hartley, president of Northern Economics, who was getting $215 an hour, has not replied to emails asking when the company last did any work on this contract.

If it has done so since March 1, the company is working for free.

It is possible that AIDEA, which is revising the report to insert positive material about AIDEA, will ask Hartley to accept AIDEA’s revisions as the work of his company and call it good.

Northern Economics will obviously try to keep on good terms with AIDEA and Gov. Mike Dunleavy to get more work in the future, so it’s not clear how this might play out.

STATE SALARY STONEWALL: The long-awaited $800,000 state salary study that Dunleavy wants to keep secret is being withheld from Alaskans under similar claims to those made by AIDEA.

The Alaska Political Report says that Dunleavy’s deputy chief of staff, Rachel Bylsma, sent a note to commissioners claiming there hasn’t been a preliminary report or a final report on the study, so there is nothing to see.

But I’ve been told by more than one source that there is a report and it is in the governor’s office. The report was due last June. The timing was to allow the information to become part of budget planning.

Bylsma said the contract has been extended and extended again, so that a final report will not appear until the middle of the 2025 legislative session.

That means that when Dunleavy releases his proposed budget next week, it will not include important information on state salaries that will be vital to preserving, improving or reversing the decline in state services that has taken place under his watch.

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