AIDEA refuses to say who approved AIDEA plan for vast expansion of AIDEA’s ability to act without legislative approval
The Alaska Industrial Development & Export Authority refuses to say who approved its plan to ask the Legislature for a major expansion in its powers.
The authority is run by Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s former chief of staff, but has a board of directors—all appointed by Dunleavy—that is supposed to act in the open. More than any governor in our history, Dunleavy is using AIDEA to act in ways that bypass any meaningful public process.
The plan to expand AIDEA’s powers is a case in point.
There is no record that the AIDEA board considered and approved the plan to take on hundreds of millions in new debt and bypass the legislative process for borrowing up to $100 million.
Starting in 1990, the law required advance legislative approval of any borrowing over $10 million, but the Legislature gave AIDEA the power to borrow up to $25 million without advance approval in 2015.
Now the agency wants the freedom to approve borrowing $100 million without legislative action.
The AIDEA expansion plans surfaced in a legislative hearing March 14 with no advance public notice and no public discussion.
HB 122 is now in the House Finance Committee.
The details of the AIDEA plan were not available to the public when the hearing began and the GOP majority on the transportation committee asked few questions.
The committee wasted no time in saying that AIDEA could borrow $300 million—to be paid back with AIDEA earnings—to build and finance infrastructure to support “critical mineral and rare earth projects located in Alaska.”
AIDEA has not revealed what it plans to borrow the money for, but it could be for the West Susitna access project or the Nova Minerals processing facility in that region.
McCabe was in such a hurry that he did not bring up the second AIDEA amendment, which is more significant than the first.
The second amendment says that the corporation should be allowed to borrow $100 million without bothering with legislative approval, up from the current $25 million.
It also says the corporation should be able to increase the amount it borrows in a single year from $400 million to $600 million.
McCabe said he was told by AIDEA that it would get this language inserted into a bill in another committee.
When I asked AIDEA when the AIDEA board of directors debated these proposals in public and acted on them in public, the agency deflected the question with a response that said “HB 122 is legislator-led and the legislature is able to make changes or amendments without AIDEA board authorization.”
The amendments did not come from the Legislature, but from AIDEA, McCabe said.
AIDEA has refused to respond to additional inquiries about who approved the request for expanded powers and why the board never debated a major change in agency powers in public or approved a resolution asking for this change.
The AIDEA board, Dunleavy political allies, includes Dana Pruhs, Bill Kendig, Adam Crum, Randy Eledge, Albert Fogle, Julie Sande and Bill Vivlamore.
I have filed a public records request to try to find out more.
Meanwhile, this week reporter Nat Herz revealed that AIDEA has hired four political operatives for $120 an hour, $175 an hour, $283 an hour and $295 an hour. Here are the details on those contracts.
The new political consultants with ties to Dunleavy “join several other former employees of Dunleavy’s executive office now working for AIDEA. They include (Randy) Ruaro, who was the governor’s chief of staff until 2022; Brandon Brefczynski, AIDEA’s deputy director, who was previously Dunleavy’s deputy chief of staff; and Dave Stieren, Dunleavy’s former communications director, who was hired by AIDEA last year,” Herz wrote.
More and more, the agency is becoming the most powerful branch of the governor’s office, one that operates with little or no legislative oversight.
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This is the AIDEA amendment that would allow the authority to issue bonds of up to $100 million without approval from the Legislature. If enacted, this would be a major change in the corporation’s powers, but the corporation board never acted on this idea in public.