The Alaska Supreme Court delivered a unanimous ruling last month finding Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration had violated a litany of state labor laws when it unilaterally changed how union dues are collected with what the court recognized was “abundant evidence of anti-union animus.”
The ruling also affirmed a Superior Court ruling that awarded about $450,000 to the Alaska State Employees Association, which brought the lawsuit challenging the administration’s actions, covering the cost for the group to bring the suit and damages from its actions.
What’s unclear, though, is just how much the state spent on the litigation and, interestingly, just how it got the money for that fight.
That’s because of a long-running legislative battle over the purse strings and control of the state’s Department of Law. The state handled this lawsuit through a pair of contracts with conservative Trump-aligned legal firm Consovoy McCarthy at an “Alaska discount” rate of $600 per hour. Over the course of the pair of contracts approved in 2019 and early 2020, the Dunleavy administration authorized more than $650,000 for the suit and related work.
Critics of the suit argued that the involvement of the conservative Trump-aligned firm (which was handling the effort to keep Trump’s finances secret) made it clear the administration was trying to run the case to the U.S. Supreme Court to undermine public sector unions further.
Labor-friendly legislators sought to put a stop to it, including the unusual move of reworking the Department of Law’s budget so the roughly $48 million in the Civil Division’s budget was labeled “Civil Division Except Contracts Relating to Interpretation of Janus v. AFSCME.” The move was intended to separate the funds, leaving $20,000 expressly set aside for “Legal Contracts Relating to Interpretation of Janus V. AFSCME Decision.”
Dunleavy, who contended the separation of funds was improperly interfering with the Department of Law’s ability to pursue the litigation it felt was necessary, vetoed the $20,000 appropriation.
You’d think that would stop the state’s efforts to outsource the litigation to Trump-friendly law firms, but you’d be wrong.
In October 2020, months after the budget had been finalized and signed into law, an amicus brief was filed on behalf of Alaska in a Janus-related lawsuit challenging the governor of Washington. The firm handling the brief was Consovoy McCarthy.
It raised alarms for Anchorage Democratic Rep. Andy Josephson, who helped put together the budget for the Department of Law. By the end of October 2020, Josephson had filed an audit request with the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee, hoping to get answers.
“Though I have made multiple inquiries to Attorney General Designee Ed Sniffen and DOL staff about how this recent amicus brief was funded, I have not received a timely response,” he said. “If the DOL has continued to spend on contracts related to Janus in FY 2021, this would be an active effort on their part to circumvent the legislature’s power of appropriation.”
The committee approved the audit, and according to its website, a draft report is in the works.
When reached about the status of the spending and audit last week, Josephson said that he was hopeful that the results would be released later this summer. He was
“They’re wasting state resources and are trying to blow up the Janus decision,” Josephson said, stressing that the Janus was strictly about forcing nonunion employees to pay union dues as part of the condition of their employment and not anything dealing with union employees. “It’s a limited ruling, and they wanted more. This is clearly an anti-union administration.”
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.