Mary Vought’s contract to burnish the national image of Gov. Mike Dunleavy has been extended eight times over nearly four years, a textbook case of ignoring the state procurement law that requires competitive bidding. Two more contract extensions are already in the works.

The Vought contract, which could cost nearly $400,000 by the end of 2026, does not match up with any of the nine examples mentioned in state regulations about instances in which sole-source contracts might be appropriate.

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If you haven’t done so already, read the latest investigation by Kyle Hopkins of the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica.

Hopkins’s investigation of the deaths of Jennifer Kirk and Sue Sue Norton reveals an outrageous failure of the justice system in Alaska.

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A reader writes that the questions I put to Sen. Dan Sullivan’s office about the delay in selecting potential judicial nominees for a vacant federal court position in Alaska were of the predictable kind, all guaranteed to produce pat answers. I missed the big picture, the reader said.

I thought it over and came to the same conclusion.

It is not mentally rewarding or enlightening to read Sullivan’s pre-packaged statements that senators have many different ways of recruiting and vetting nominees for federal judicial appointments, and that his new committee is nonpartisan, etc.

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The Dunleavy administration ignored the legislative limits placed on the hiring of former President Donald Trump’s lawyer for $600 an hour for the continuing anti-union crusade that has cost hundreds of thousands.

A legislative audit has concluded that the Dunleavy administration acted illegally, spending $315,034 that it did not have legislative authority to spend with Consovoy McCcarthy.

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Sen. Dan Sullivan’s committee to pick right-wing judicial nominees, led by former Gov. Sean Parnell, has already met twice, with no public notice, and plans to continue operating in secret, according to Sullivan’s office.

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Citing a host of transportation regulation violations by the state and safety questions, the Committee for Safe Communities is seeking a preliminary injunction, pending a trial, to decide if the Kinross ore-haul plan “can ever go forward in light of public nuisance laws, general public safety and particularly the safety of our children.”

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The inescapable Kinross “Just the Facts” ad campaign in Fairbanks could benefit with more facts about its ore hauling project.

The company has a highly selective notion about just what Alaskans should know. The facts about corporate economics are nowhere to be found.

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I’ve written many times about the wasteful state contract Gov. Mike Dunleavy has with Washington, D.C. publicist Mary Vought that now pays her $5,000 a month.

No one has ever justified this expenditure, which will soon top $200,000 in total since 2020. Vought’s husband is playing a key role in plotting by Donald Trump to seek revenge on his political enemies if he is elected in 2024.

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It took him a long time to get to this point, but Sen. Dan Sullivan has made the right call on Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s obstruction of promotions and transfers for hundreds of military members over an unrelated Pentagon policy about access to abortion.

Read the Congressional Record to see what Sullivan and other GOP senators had to say about five dozen senior military members who are stationed in limbo because of the Alabama senator who likes to be called Coach.

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Last week at a conference in Saudi Arabia, Gabrielle Rubenstein, one of the six trustees of the Alaska Permanent Fund, predicted that the group would make a fundamental policy shift this week that would transform the fund into a $100 billion operation within three to five years.

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