When Dunleavy agreed to stop pleading the Fifth Amendment and have his state-funded campaign respond to written questions from Alaska news organizations, the end result was another exercise in evasion.
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After having his state-paid spokesman announce his refusal to answer written questions from news organizations in July, Gov. Mike Dunleavy or his spokesman, Andrew Jensen, reversed their decision and replied to a set of questions from four Alaska news organizations. There has been no news coverage of Dunleavy’s reversal or of the Jensen/Dunleavy claim that Dunleavy had answered all important questions in the past so there was no need to do so again.
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The two good Fairbanks school board candidates—Brandy Harty and Kaneisha Radgosky—did not respond to Mahatma Jim Minnery’s culture war quiz. Les Nichols and Melissa Burnett, on the other hand, have shown they want to bring sideshow zealotry to the Fairbanks school board, where it doesn’t belong.
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There will be a lot to say about this report, but I think the recommendation for independent audits to get a better handle on AIDEA’s situation is essential. AIDEA claims it already has audits, but those deal only with the math questions, not with the essential policy questions about value to Alaska that have never been addressed.
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Sen. Dan Sullivan is begging the Washington Post and the New York Times to report on Alaska’s hypocrisy about federal disaster relief. He’s not putting it that way, of course, but that’s what he’s asking for
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The Legislature, which has long ignored a state law that requires it to prepare an annual operating and performance evaluation of AIDEA, should be looking into the turnover rate and how much is related to the pandemic and how much to management issues.
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On May 31 the public learned that Gov. Mike Dunleavy had quietly given a no-bid $50,000 state contract to his friend Brett Huber, who was working to reelect Dunleavy. Huber and Dunleavy defended the no-bid deal as legal and a bargain for the state. But Dunleavy’s lawyer now says the contract was cancelled the same day the administration was claiming it was necessary to promote “statehood defense.”
If so, why was Huber paid $8,000 nearly a month later for providing consulting services to the governor’s office?
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Public relations woman Mary Vought of Arlington, Virginia, who claims to be a fiscal conservative, has collected more than $100,000 in public money from Alaska with no justification and no competitive bidding.
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Former Gov. Bill Walker opposes a constitutional convention, supports the ranked choice voting system, would consider taxes as a part of a complete fiscal plan, accepts the science that humans contribute to climate change and believes that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
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I want to commend four of the state’s major news organizations for agreeing on written questions to ask the candidates for governor, but complain about their decision to wait until the end of the month to release them.
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