The teenage children of GOP US Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka and her husband Niki were awarded a contract worth more than $18,000 for just over one month of work by a company contracting with the Municipality of Anchorage to do administrative work for the city, including filing for FEMA reimbursement on behalf of the city, according to public documents.
The contractor, LeMay Engineering of Anchorage, provides human resources support for the municipality’s Emergency Operations Center. LeMay hired the Tshibaka kids despite the obvious conflict of interest, as their dad Niki Tshibaka currently serves as the municipality’s human resources director.
“While it may not be technically out of line with the code, without further clarification, it raises questions about nepotism,” said Assembly member Chris Constant in an interview with The Alaska Current.
On June 23, a Purchase Order was processed to pay their daughter, Denali Tshibaka a lump sum of $10,871 for services rendered on April 8, 2022. The paperwork does not say how many hours Denali worked for that compensation, and over what period of time. All it says was that she was paid for “temporary services.”
Additionally, the municipality was billed $5,076 for “administrative, writing, filing and light office duties” performed by Denali over about five weeks in June and July. Denali Tshibaka was not the only Tshibaka kid to gain lucrative summer employment through the municipality this summer. A purchase order for services performed by the Tshibakas’ 15-year-old son shows that the municipality was billed $3,525 for 150 hours of work performed between June 1 and June 16. If the paperwork is indeed correct, he worked far more than 40 hours per week. It is a violation of federal labor laws for an employer to schedule children under the age of 16 for more than 40 hours of work per week. Public documents show he was filing paperwork connected with FEMA reimbursement.
Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson and his administration have often brought up FEMA reimbursement, specifically the possibility of having reimbursement requests rejected by the federal government, in regards to actions taken by the Anchorage Assembly. However, Tshibaka’s son was seemingly contracted by the municipality through LeMay to prepare reports required for FEMA reimbursement which, ironically, may have resulted in a violation of the federal labor laws.
The administration did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Niki Tshibaka himself has an embattled history as Anchorage’s Human Resources director, most notably failing to catch egregious fraud on former Health Department Director Joe Gerace’s resume. According to a memo obtained by Alaska Public Media, Niki Tshibaka is no longer handling employee complaints pertaining to the library after being named in a wrongful termination lawsuit, which involved a clear display of bias after Niki Tshibaka responded to employee complaints regarding Deputy Director Judy Eledge by firing the person investigating the complaints and showing up to work in an “I’m with Judy” t-shirt. Niki Tshibaka’s salary with the municipality was listed in an offer letter as $134,992 per year (Anchorage’s average base salary is $71,800 per year according to Salary Expert).
Allegations that the Tshibakas have been grifting and performing inadequately at their jobs go far beyond Niki Tshibaka’s tenure at the Municipality. He and wife Kelly Tshibaka were hired by Gov. Mike Dunleavy for state jobs in 2019, both making about $140,000. When they moved from Washington D.C., they billed the state $81,000 for moving expenses. Shortly thereafter, Kelly Tshibaka quit her job with the state and is now running for office full time.
The exorbitant moving expenses combined with Kelly Tshibaka’s high state salary were fodder for a recent attack ad from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who apparently finds the more moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski more palatable, despite Kelly Tshibaka having former president Donald Trump’s endorsement. McConnell’s superPAC, Senate Leadership Fund, recently sent full-page mailers to Alaska voters, blasting Tshibaka for using public money for personal benefit, and has repeated the same claims in TV ads.
The allegations amount to a pattern of behavior, one that the National Reconnaissance Office found started as early as 2008. The office’s inspector general found that while Kelly Tshibaka worked at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, she falsified timesheets to get paid for 596 hours she didn’t actually work. The hours were worth $36,000.
What’s still to be determined is how the Bronson Administration will respond, at the very least to provide assurance to the public. So far, no sort of review or investigation has been publicly announced. If they take any real action here, we’ll be sure to update this report.
“It appears several members of the family are beneficiaries of Dave Bronson’s effort to prop up Kelly Tshibaka’s campaign by any means available.” Constant said. “In this case, the Municipal treasury.”
