For two years, Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson watched as some of his most ardent supporters vacated the eighth floor of City Hall. But there’s a confidante who refuses to quit him, and whom Bronson cannot quit either.
Larry Baker, the man whose fingerprints are smeared all over Bronson’s most salacious scandals, is back, working for the city on another contract designed to skirt approval by the Anchorage Assembly, according to a photo of the contract obtained by The Current.
Baker is a long-time conservative political operative who previously served on the Anchorage Assembly from 1983 to 1989, ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1987 and worked as chief of staff for former Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan. The 81-year-old has been a close ally to Bronson since the beginning, including being selected to co-chair his transition team when Bronson came into office in 2021. But prior to that, Baker was at the center of a fight against turning the former Golden Lion hotel in Midtown — near his Geneva Woods home — into a treatment facility.
One of Bronson’s biggest campaign promises was to sell the city-owned hotel on his first day in office. That didn’t happen, and the building has haunted him for two years. The Golden Lion is now being transitioned into a housing facility for people with severe mobility issues, and coincidentally or not, Baker finds himself back on a consulting contract with the Mayor’s Office.
The Current first learned of Baker’s new deal three weeks ago from a source inside City Hall, who said the contract was worked on by Purchasing Director Rachelle Alger and Chief of Staff Mario Bird. The source said the three intentionally kept the contract under $30,000; the threshold that requires Assembly approval. A sole source contract report for the month of June does not show the new Baker contract.
The Current has obtained photos of the contract, corroborating the original tip.
This $29,500 contract is Baker’s fourth, all of the same amount, and runs from June 29 to Dec. 31. All four contracts include a vague scope of work identifying Baker as a policy advisor or consultant, but do not go into details about what he will work on or list any deliverables.
In addition to the vague description, all four contracts have another peculiarity: They’ve had the boilerplate indemnity clause language struck through, removing Baker from legal liability for the work he does for the city. This means the public would pay any damages stemming from Baker’s work, rather than Baker himself being liable. This type of protection has potentially paid off, with Baker previously playing a central role in green-lighting construction on Bronson’s proposed Navigation Center on Tudor Road. That project was not approved by the Assembly and resulted in a $2.4-million tax-payer-funded settlement to a local contractor.
According to a wrongful termination letter from former Municipal Manager Amy Demboski, Baker pressured former Maintenance & Operations Director Saxton Shearer to start work on the Navigation Center without approval, and personally supervised some of the initial work. When the code violation was discovered and a stop work order was issued, Baker continued to push construction of the project, and Demboski said she had to physically go to the site to stop the work.
Perhaps the most striking oddity is that there is a fourth contract at all. The first three contracts came under intense scrutiny after Demboski’s 11-page letter, alleging illegal contracting, corruption, and overseeing a toxic and sexualized workplace. The letter also alleged Baker was attempting to interfere in the prosecution of his business partner, Brandon Spoerhase, who was charged with domestic violence.
The letter listed one allegation after another, almost all including Bronson and Baker working together to do something they weren’t supposed to. It also included an explanation for why Bronson would sign Baker to three contracts in quick succession, rather than just hire him as a city employee in the mayor’s office.
“One possible motivation for this scheme could be to defraud the PERS (Public Employees’ Retirement System) system — that is, Mr. Baker could act essentially as a Municipal employee, while pretending to be a private contractor, allowing him to ‘double dip’ — collecting retirement payments and contract payments simultaneously,” Demboski’s attorney, Scott Kendall, wrote.
Baker’s latest contract was signed by Bronson himself. While municipal code allows for a mayor to sign contracts, they are normally signed by the municipal manager. Anchorage Assembly Chair Chris Constant said Bronson signing the contract rather than Municipal Manager Kent Kohlhase is “highly unusual.” The routing slip for the contract is also generally signed by the municipal manager, but Kohlhase’s signature is absent.
Kohlhase did not return a request for comment Monday.
The relationship between Bronson and Baker has been long and loyal. It included Bronson allegedly showing up to Baker’s house with a gun following a trespassing call, and was problematic enough to prompt the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica to partner on a near 4,000-word story devoted to untangling their destructive but loyal alliance.
Baker’s third contract ended Jan. 31, about two weeks after the Anchorage Daily News broke the news of a domestic violence case that Baker’s friend and business partner, Spoerhase, was embroiled in. Demboski alleged that Baker got involved, attempting to pressure the city attorney to influence the outcome of Spoerhase’s trial. She also said that Baker attempted to interfere with Spoerhase’s victim being hired by the administration.
While there was a lapse between contracts, several sources told The Current they believed the two were still in close communication, and were seen regularly meeting at the Petroleum Club. Bronson also made a July 12 appearance with Baker at the Geneva Woods Homeowners’ Association summer picnic outside Baker’s house. If past behavior is any indication, Baker could have started back with the Mayor’s Office before the contract was signed.
When told of the contract, Constant wasn’t surprised, and correctly assumed it came in just under the threshold for Assembly approval.
“I guess that’s an alarm reminding the Assembly to be wary and to pay closer attention,” he said.
