The Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) is charging State Senator Lesil McGuire for failing to disclose income from her husband, even though APOC says they told her several times she needed to.
Legislators are required to file a Legislative Financial Disc
losure with APOC each year detailing where they, their spouse, and dependent children make their money.
The complaint, dated October 7th, says a routine APOC audit of McGuire’s 2015 disclosure, filed March 15th, showed “She did not disclose information regarding her spouse’s income or business interests.”
Sen. McGuire’s husband, Jason Skala, is an attorney in private practice. For his income Sen. McGuire is required to disclose “The name and address of the source and recipient, how the income was earned, the dates and approximate number of hours worked to earn the income, and a description sufficient to make clear to a person of ordinary understanding the nature of the service performed”
APOC staff says they repeatedly tried to get Sen. McGuire to amend her report to comply with the disclosure requirement saying “Staff notified Senator McGuire of the missing information multiple times after the close of the extended legislative session and requested corrective action with no results.“
Lesil not only didn’t come into compliance, the complaint says she doesn’t appear to even try “She neither requested an exemption from filing this information nor filed evidence of a good faith effort to obtain the information.“
As a result of Sen. McGuire’s inaction APOC staff themselves filed the complaint against her. The organization will now investigate their accusation and give McGuire a chance to respond to their charges.. If the APOC board finds against McGuire she is subject to a $10 a day fine, likely from the date of her disclosure filing March 15th, until the complaint was filed on October 7th. That is roughly $1500.
Read the full complaint here
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
