AG Tregarrick Taylor and $600-an-hour lawyers peddle a $700 billion farce; and a $630 billion math mistake
No one checked the math on the state’s $700 billion lawsuit against the federal government, leading to a $630 billion error. $700 million a year for 100 years is $70 billion.
Before filing one of the largest lawsuits in the history of the United States, Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor must have put a lot of deep thought into his claim that the state is owed more than $700 billion from the federal government.
And he would have quoted chapter and verse of multiple documents to keep from making himself and his $600-an-hour attorneys the subject of ridicule in the legal world, right?
And he would have had someone check the grade-school math.
Nope.
The only justification for one of the largest lawsuits in U.S. history is no justification at all.
It consists of this sentence on page 9 of the lawsuit: “In 2010, one EPA estimate of the Pebble deposit was $700 billion, or $700 million per year for 100 years.”
That’s it.
As one of my math-conscious readers noted, $700 million a year for 100 years does not add up to $700 billion. It’s $70 billion, which is $630 billion less than the state is asking.
The governor, the attorney general and their $600-an-hour attorneys of Arlington, Virginia could not perform simple math or come up with anything solid to defend a monetary claim that stands zero chance of success.
They don’t mention the person at the Environmental Protection Agency who created the $700 billion guess 14 years ago or the circumstances under which that number was offered.
Maybe it was an offhand remark overheard in a hallway. Maybe it was office gossip.
In any case, the $600-an-hour guys surely would have included a footnote in their lawsuit to justify the enormous figure if they had math on their side.
The $700 billion claim, if at all legit, would feature prominently in hundreds of the many thousands of documents created about the Pebble project over the years.
The state and its lawyers manufactured the statistic to be quoted in news stories and to show that they are really mad.
Tregarrick Taylor is proud of his $700 billion prophecy and says in his press release, that “This amount may be among the highest sought in the Court of Federal Claims.”
He should be embarrassed.
The $700 billion claim is about as reliable as the press release from Taylor’s office—which remains uncorrected on the AG’s website—that claims the federal government has violated the “statehood act of 1953.”
Perhaps the attorney general doesn’t know the year that statehood was approved.
Taylor claims that mining is the only economic option for the lands the state acquired where the Pebble copper deposit exists, and the action by EPA means the federal government has taken the land and it is now worthless to Alaska. Thus he is waiting for a check of more than $700 billion. It will be a long wait.
This is the latest political diatribe from Dunleavy and Taylor in the form of a lawsuit.
Contract attorneys J. Michael Connolly and Steven Begakis work for Consovoy McCarthy, a leading beneficiary of federal overreach industry contracts from the Dunleavy administration.
In 2022, Taylor and three other Dunleavy commissioners, collaborated on a letter claiming that the loss to the state would be much less than Taylor now claims, perhaps $5.4 billion. Here is that letter.
There was nothing close to any claim of $700 billion in that missive.
A 2022 study for Pebble also made no mention of a $700 billion value. It said the state might get up to $4.5 billion over 25 years. Here is that study.
The project description prepared by the Pebble developers and updated in 2020, also doesn’t mention the $700 billion claim. Here is that document.
We should not forget that Consovoy McCarthy is representing the state in this case under suspicious circumstances.
The lawyers were hired to handle a separate federal court case, this one dealing with fisheries management on the Kuskokwim River.
On June 17, 2022, the Dunleavy administration gave a $50,000 contract to lead a Kuskokwim subsistence fishing rights lawsuit, asserting it was a “small competitive procurement.”
The contract paid Michael Connolly, partner in the firm, the discount rate of $600 an hour.
Three weeks after approving the contract on the Kuskokwim case, the state issued a request for proposals for a larger contract to handle the Kuskokwim fishing case.
The earlier no-bid contract on the same case gave Consovoy McCarthy an advantage over potential competition.
On August 19, 2022, the state had said Consovoy McCarthy was the “most advantageous” bidder, beating out Latham & Watkins and Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders.
Here is the second contract with Consovoy McCarthy to handle the Kuskokwim lawsuit, starting off at $750,000. The lead attorneys get $600 an hour.
The state revised the Kuskokwim River contract a year ago to include the Pebble mine case. The two cases in two courts are to be billed separately.
The Pebble mine case has nothing to do with the Kuskokwim fishing case, so this should have been a separate procurement, but the Dunleavy administration prefers doing business with Consovoy McCarthy and avoiding competitive bids.
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