Statehood Defense Coordinator Craig Richards inks another dubious no-bid state contract
Anchorage attorney Craig Richards, who helped defend Gov. Mike Dunleavy against the recall, has been getting $12,000 a month from the state for the past year as “statehood defense coordinator.”
As I’ve written here before, the no-bid contract the Dunleavy administration created for Richards violated numerous procurement regulations.
Now he has a new contract, which again makes a mockery of the state procurement laws. Richards has basically become a part-time political employee of Dunleavy.
The new contract promises to pay Richards $70,000, but it is written for a maximum of $50,000. This is not a mistake. It’s an attempt to evade the rules that put limits on sole-source contracts.
Richards, a former attorney general under Gov. Bill Walker, has been a trustee of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation for most of the past decade.
There is a conflict of interest with him serving in that position and as a no-bid political contractor for the Dunleavy administration.
Here is a March 26 account backing up my allegations about his original contract, with links to the documents and regulations.
The original June 16, 2023 no-bid contract claimed that the Richards deal was “Authorized by 2 AAC 12.400[b] 7,” which caps such no-bid agreements at $50,000.
Citing that small purchase regulation as the authority for the Richards contract allowed the attorney general’s office to steer the contract to Richards without competition.
But it was clear from Day 1 that the attorney general’s office was violating the regulation because the contract promised to pay Richards $12,000 a month for eight months. That’s more than $50,000.
As expected, the state revised the contract and upped the total to $98,000, claiming it would keep paying him until May 31, 2024. But the amended contract also did not authorize enough money to continue to pay what was promised him.
The attorney general’s office never explained the discrepancy and there has been no news coverage of Richards’s stint as statehood defense coordinator beyond what has appeared in this space starting November 28, 2023.
Now we know what the attorney general and the governor did to keep the money flowing to Richards last month—he is the recipient of a new no-bid state contract that began May 1.
Here is the new Richards contract.
The new deal pays him a flat fee of $10,000 a month and requires that he work 15 hours a week, about $166 an hour.
Whatever Richards did as statehood defense coordinator—coordinating lawsuits against the federal government and complaining about federal overreach—remains his main duty under his new no-bid deal.
His work will be on a “federal transition plan” until the end of November, which will either be a second Biden term or a second Trump term.
The governor’s office is claiming that Richards is no longer statehood defense coordinator, a title that has been stripped from the contract. He is statehood defense consultant.
And the new no-bid deal is with the governor’s office, directed by Tyson Gallagher, the governor’s chief of staff, not with the AG’s office.
The master plan, it appears, is to claim that the new no-bid deal has nothing to do with the old no-bid deal, as it is improper to string no-bid deals together to disguise the real cost.
He is no longer coordinating. He is consulting.
The contract says Richards will “work with the office of the governor to create a statehood defense federal transition plan in preparation of a new term in office or for a presidential administration change.”
The contract also says the governor’s office will decide what else Richards should do.
The original no-bid deal from a year ago said the Richards contract was authorized under a specific regulation. The new Richards contract provides no authorizing statute or regulation at all.
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