This article was originally published on dermotcole.com.
With no public announcement, the state hired Dunleavy ally Craig Richards, a trustee of the Alaska Permanent Fund, to serve as “statehood defense coordinator” under a no-bid seven-month contract that pays Richards $12,000 a month for part-time work.
This is in contrast to the big public show Dunleavy made on July 9, 2021 when he hired former employee Brett Huber to perform the statehood posturing exercises that are part of Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor’s daily workout.
The Richards contract is among the documents released by the Dunleavy administration in response to a public records request I submitted for details on how the state is spending millions of public dollars on the amorphous topic of “statehood defense.”
It means whatever you want it to mean, a catch-all term for the potpourri of political disagreements that Dunleavy has with the Biden administration on land, water, energy, etc.
So far this has produced an impressive stack of tough-guy press releases, a growing pile of expensive state lawsuits and costly legal contracts with law firms.
A year ago the state had 50 ongoing complaints in the federal overreach industry, an increase of about 10 during Dunleavy’s tenure. The total has climbed since then as Dunleavy and General Taylor test their manhood by picking fights with the feds, courtesy of a spendthrift Legislature.
The Richards contract, signed June 16, asserts that his compensation is not to exceed $50,000, but that is a phony number, as a seven-month contract will cost at least $84,000.
Boilerplate contract language inserted by the state gives the Dunleavy administration the power to extend the cost and duration.
The state is in the process of upping the deal with Richards to $100,000, which would be enough for nine months of part-time statehood coordinating, so there will be more $$$ headed his way.
(The regulation authorizing this contract limits the amount to $50,000, so it appears we may have a legal problem here. I will write about this in a future post.)
Here is what he is doing part-time: “. . . contractor’s duties will be to coordinate strategies and budgets for bringing/overseeing statehood defense cases, lead the inter-agency sub-cabinet meetings on statehood defense issues, and, upon request, attend meetings and events by phone or in person related to Alaska’s efforts to coordinate statehood defense matters with other states and parties. The contractor will not be engaging directly in litigation.”
Richards served as attorney general during part of former Gov. Bill Walker’s term.
Walker later appointed Richards to the board of the Permanent Fund and Dunleavy reappointed him on June 3, 2021, which was after Richards became an attorney for the Dunleavy support group “Stand Tall with Mike.” Richards did his part to spread bogus information to the public, while fighting the recall. He was also a Dunleavy campaign donor.
In 2021, Richards led the effort to fire former Permanent Fund executive director Angela Rodell.
On the financial disclosure document required by his membership on the Permanent Fund board, Richards lists the Bering Straits Native Corporation as the highest-paying client of his law firm in 2022. He said the Native corporation provided from $100,000 to $200,000 of the total $200,000 to $500,000 paid to his sole proprietorship by 10 clients.
Serving as a Permanent Fund trustee is not a state job, but it is one of the most important positions in state government. We need trustees who are focused on the Permanent Fund, not those who have time to line up for a wasteful state contract like this one, handed out like a party favor.
The contractural hiring of Richards fits the Dunleavy pattern of repeatedly dipping into the same small group of supporters and rewarding them over and over with state jobs, contracts or plum positions.
We’ve seen this with the previous indefensible editions of the statehood defense coordinator job.
In 2021, Dunleavy created a $140,000 statehood defense job for his former campaign manager and long-time employee, Brett Huber.
What I said at the time is still happening long after the 2022 campaign: “Dunleavy will be filing feel-good lawsuits against the federal government for the course of his campaign, with no regard for what else the state might be doing with its money, how long the court proceedings might last and what the chances of success might be. The Legislature gave him $4 million for the suit-happy exercise called the “statehood defense initiative.”
Huber had no duties except to conduct the chorus making noise about federal overreach, a mainstay of Dunleavy’s political existence. It was a contract with a list of tasks that fell within the usual duties of any number of state attorneys already on the payroll. Huber is not a lawyer.
Huber left his state job in the spring of 2022 to work on promoting Dunleavy’s reelection, paid by a so-called independent expenditure group.
But after he left his state job, the governor’s office gave Huber a no-bid $50,000 statehood defense contract as a going-away present.
The no-bid Huber contract was not revealed to the public until the Anchorage Daily News and the Associated Press wrote about it on May 31, 2022. Dunleavy’s office claimed Huber deserved $50,000 because no one on the state payroll could perform the “unique work” he had been doing.
While the Dunleavy administration and Huber publicly claimed the $50,000 contract was appropriate, they knew it was indefensible.
They canceled the contract the same day without informing the public.
The secret was only revealed four months later because of an Alaska Public Offices Commission complaint filed by the Alaska Public Interest Research Group and the 907 Initiative.
“Strategic Synergies and Brett Huber had indeed entered into a contract with the Governor’s Office to provide consulting services pursuant to a contract signed April 25, 2022, that contract was ended or cancelled on or about May 31, 2022,” Dunleavy’s attorney wrote to the APOC. “Significantly, the consulting services to be provided under that contract were completely unrelated to the 2022 campaign and election.”
Huber’s consulting services had everything to do with the 2022 campaign and election. (On Jan. 9, 2023, Dunleavy appointed Huber to another job—the chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which pays about $150,000.)
To sum this up, we now have Richards conducting statehood defense activities under another indefensible no-bid state contract.
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