With the Legislature in its final days, I am reminded of the immortal words of the late Gov. Jay Hammond, who told reporter John Greely of a session collapsing “like a gut-shot rhino in a cloud of dust.”

There will be lists of achievements and missed opportunities. High on the list of big mistakes by the 2023-2024 Legislature will be the unethical process by which legislators and Gov. Mike Dunleavy gave themselves and top officials of the Dunleavy administration big pay raises.

The Legislature should have abolished the State Officers Compensation Commission this year and admitted that the process in 2023 was an underhanded scam. That would at least have been a step toward redemption.

But the governor and legislators made things worse by rewarding one of the participants in the compensation commission debacle with a position on the State Personnel Board. Dunleavy appointed Donald Handeland and the Legislature confirmed him.

The personnel board hears complaints related to the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.

A year ago, Dunleavy placed Handeland on the compensation commission to carry out a specific task.

Five days after his appointment, in his only meeting as a compensation commissioner, Handeland was elected as chairman with no debate and no sense of shame. It had all been prearranged.

The only discussion before the vote was this comment by Handeland, “Yeah, I’d be honored to serve.”

The commission was supposed to be “independent,” but Handeland was not.

Administration officials had told him that after he was elected chairman by the other new members of the commission, he could expect a motion from another new Dunleavy appointee to raise legislative pay to $84,000.

Handeland and the four others quickly approved the pay raises sought by the governor and legislative leaders.

Dunleavy appointed Handeland to the personnel board on September 18 last year, filling a vacancy created when Craig Johnson was elected to the Legislature a year earlier.

During a 12-minute confirmation hearing March 21 this year for the personnel board, no one asked Handeland about his participation in the compensation commission coup and what he did to raise salaries for legislators and key members of the Dunleavy administration.

This is my account of that confirmation hearing. It appears that almost no one in the Legislature was bothered by what Handeland did. He should not be judging ethics act complaints against executive branch employees.

In his cursory confirmation hearing, Handeland did not mention that he was the compensation chairman or how he had been instructed in advance on what he was expected to do.

“I was briefly on the state officers’ compensation commission,” is all he told legislators at his hearing.

Handeland was a member of the compensation commission, but not “briefly.” He was a member until his term expired on March 1, 2024.

Legislators may not have talked about pay raises during the session in any substantial way, but the issue is not going away.

I think this column I wrote in January, which I include here as a refresher, is still relevant:

Anyone who runs for the Legislature this year against an incumbent has a ready-made campaign issue—the underhanded manner by which legislators raised their pay from $50,400 to $84,000, starting this week.

Candidates can send thank-you cards to Gov. Mike Dunleavy and incumbents in both parties.

Dunleavy and legislators conspired last year to give themselves raises without taking an honest vote or admitting that they corrupted a so-called “independent” salary commission.

Instead, Dunleavy and legislators are pretending the extra walking-around money is the result of a bureaucratic system over which they had no control.

I don’t object to the raises, but to the process used by Dunleavy and legislators to evade and violate the law. I think a pay raise is justified, but it has to be done in the open.

That didn’t happen.

The State Officers Compensation Commission refused to approve salary increases for legislators in the report it submitted a year ago, while endorsing raises for the governor and top executive branch employees.

By state law, the report’s recommendations become law unless the Legislature formally rejects them. The Legislature set up this system because legislators never like voting to give themselves pay raises.

The commission’s refusal to grant a salary increase for legislators led the Legislature to unanimously reject the commission report—meaning no raises for the governor or his top staff.

Dunleavy responded by doing away with the message and the messenger. He subverted the process in state law to overturn the commission’s action.

“He said, ‘I’m gonna do something about that.’ And he did. But I had nothing to do with what happened,” Senate President Gary Stevens told the Anchorage Daily News last March.

Despite his denials, Stevens had a lot to do with what happened.

If he was unaware of Dunleavy’s salary subterfuge, it was only because Stevens didn’t ask questions and chose to remain uninformed so he could plead ignorance and claim he had nothing to do with the scam.

Dunleavy couldn’t rewrite the salary commission report to approve legislative pay raises, but he could change the members of the commission and get them to rewrite the report, which is what happened. He orchestrated the removal of the five members of the commission and the substitution of five pliable people.

Legislative leaders wanted to raise the pay for commissioners to $168,000 and make legislative pay half of that, $84,000.

Dunleavy appointed three new members, a working majority of the commission, who met for 15 minutes and gave him a new report—one that included raises for the governor, his staff and legislators. Senate President Stevens and House Speaker Cathy Tilton each appointed one member who took their lead from the Dunleavy majority at their one and only meeting.

The key figure on the commission who had opposed a salary increase for legislators was Lee Cruise, who had been one of the dozens of co-treasurers of the Dunleavy 2022 reelection campaign and a campaign employee.

Dunleavy placed Cruise on the salary commission in spring 2020.

Dunleavy did not fire Cruise from the volunteer salary commission.

Dunleavy gave Cruise a state job as a “policy analyst” in the revenue department, which made it impossible for Cruise to stay on the commission at precisely the moment last March when Dunleavy wanted all members of the commission removed.

Cruise, a Republican Party activist and Dunleavy loyalist, has a bachelor’s degree in business from UAA, which he finished in 2016, and a master’s in finance from APU, which he completed in 2020.

In a 2021 meeting of the salary commission, Cruise complained that legislators should get paid less. He submitted this typo-heavy document that claimed legislators were ineffective and should be punished by having their pay cut.

“What I’m saying is we do not need these people to live well, we need them to live. The general public lives, they don’t live well,” he said at a meeting, according to reporting by Matt Buxton. “You’re saying they can’t make ends meet? Maybe that’s from personal choices. $50,000 is very good money for working 120 days out of the year.”

At a press conference last March, Dunleavy denied that Cruise was given a state job in the revenue department to get him off the salary commission. “No. That wasn’t the reason at all,” Dunleavy said. “He was hired because of his competence.”

Cruise was not hired because of his competence. He was hired because it was convenient for Dunleavy.

At the press conference, Dunleavy asked Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum to expound on why Cruise left the volunteer post on the salary commission to collect a state paycheck. Crum had a hard time expounding.

“To be honest up until a week ago, I think myself, like most Alaskans, did not know what the salary compensation committee was,” Crum said. “And so this is an item, this was an individual, we’re looking for a job he applied for, and he hit the specs we were looking at. Therefore, I brought him on board.”

But the “specs we were looking at” didn’t keep Cruise at the Department of Revenue for long. He was moved from the revenue department directly to Dunleavy’s office in Anchorage, where he is now listed as a “special assistant.”

The other four commission members were fired or resigned from their volunteer positions just before the 15-minute meeting set up by Dunleavy to have the new commission rewrite its report and endorse a 67 percent legislative pay hike.

The state law establishing the State Officers Compensation Commission requires that “Notice of a meeting shall be mailed to each member at least 20 days before the date scheduled for the meeting.”

The commission violated that law with the blessing of the governor’s office. The public should have had a chance to comment.

The three brand new members of the commission chosen by Dunleavy had met with members of the administration about strategy before they gathered for their illegal meeting March 15, 2023.

The three people Dunleavy chose to carry out his wishes were GOP activist Donald Handeland, former Dunleavy employee Miles Baker and Dunleavy booster Duff Mitchell.

Before the group ever met, Handeland had been told by Dunleavy administration officials to expect a motion to set pay rates for legislators at $84,000, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

It was Mitchell, managing director at Juneau Hydropower, who made the motion in the 15-minute meeting to raise salaries to $84,000. Funny thing though. He couldn’t remember where the number came from.

He later told the Daily News he might have talked about it with the Dunleavy administration.

He refused to give an answer to reporter Iris Samuels of the Anchorage Daily News about whether the Dunleavy administration told him to push for $84,000.

“I think I picked it up, there was some discussion, or read something where, I don’t know who it was, I don’t know where I picked it up, but they were talking about some kind of benchmark to the commissioners,” Mitchell said.

This happened at the same time that Dunleavy appointed Mitchell to his state energy task force.

Did the governor’s office tell Mitchell to introduce the $84,000 salary for legislators?

“I let it be known that there was $84,000, that . . . I was involved with $84,000,” he told Samuels.

Samuels persisted. She hadn’t asked Mitchell if he was involved with $84,000. She asked if the governor’s office gave him the number. Listen to the exchange on the ADN politics podcast.

“I think like I said I read this on, on some things. You’re trying to get me into something I can’t remember if there was like any mention that I mentioned to them on it. So yeah, I mean the bottom line is I own the motion. I made $84,000.”

While Mitchell claimed to be unaware of where the number came from, Dunleavy made it clear at the same March press conference that he told his new appointees to the commission that he and the leaders of the Legislature wanted $84,000. Dunleavy owned the motion.

So much for the independent commission.

Part of the legislative con job here is that the state House approved a bill on May 16, 2023, House Bill 135, pretending to reject the pay increases. They did this in the closing hours of the session when there was no chance to turn the bill into a law.

If any of the 33 House members who pretended to vote against the pay raise refuse to take the extra pay starting this week, I will be the first to say that they are not hypocrites.

The House vote was an attempt by Rep. Craig Johnson to create political cover, allowing him and others to vote against the pay increase on a bill that they knew would never emerge from the Senate.

This story needs to be told and retold this year so that Alaskans understand exactly how the public process was corrupted to achieve a 67 percent pay increase for legislators and a $31,000 increase for Dunleavy. Legislators have no one to blame but themselves for going along with Dunleavy’s machinations.

Every incumbent will be on the defensive, especially those who will claim they opposed the 67 percent increase but did not make a serious effort to expose the deception that allowed it to happen.

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