The attorney general’s office asked those assembled at the statehood defense trough if they wanted to keep their hourly rates secret. Great idea, said three law firms.
Read MoreThe Dunleavy administration continues to create new jobs in the statehood defense industry, most of them with lawyers Outside earning several hundred dollars an hour by promoting the political opinions of Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor.
There is no evidence that before signing contracts to create statehood defense jobs—spending hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions in the process—that anyone in state government investigates the chances of success or whether the money might be better spent elsewhere.
Read MoreThe most comprehensive news article written so far on the Tetlin gold mine and the Kinross ore-hauling plan comes from a freelance reporter for Grist, a nonprofit news site. I recommend it to anyone who wants to be informed about the matter.
Read MoreThe Dunleavy administration’s $12,000-a-month statehood defense contract with former Attorney General Craig Richards is not authorized by state regulations and should be revoked.
The contract says Richards will be paid for seven months, but it only includes $50,000 to pay him, which is $34,000 short. This is not an accident.
Read MoreWith 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.
Read MoreRick Van Nieuwenhuyse, who makes about $2 million a year from Contango ORE for developing the Manh Choh and other Alaska mining ventures, says that a future project near Willow may one day lead to ore hauling on the Parks Highway from Hatcher Pass to Fort Knox.
Read MoreI want to thank everyone who reads this blog all the time or just once in a while. It means a great deal to me. I take it as a compliment that you spend time reading what I have to say, whether you agree or disagree with the contents.
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Bob Ballinger of Arkansas and Rep. Sarah Vance share a connection though the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, “godly leaders” who want to impose their interpretation of the Bible on all levels of government in the United States. Vance has given Ballinger, who lives in Arkansas, a state job.
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Alaska Transportation Commissioner Ryan Anderson called a halt to the Transportation Advisory Committee meetings as of Thursday, a surprise announcement at the end of a four-hour meeting.
Now we know why the state had planned a “virtual only” meeting of the group until community pushback caused the department to reverse its ban on in-person participation.
The commissioner instructed the consultant to have the committee studying the Kinross ore-hauling project end its meetings and finish its work by email and phone calls, assembling a final report with no meeting to vote on a draft or even a final report.
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I don’t know how it happened, but the Dunleavy administration reversed itself on the Transportation Advisory Committee meeting plan, dropping the ban on in-person participation.
The meeting is set for Thursday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Key Bank Building at 100 Cushman Street in downtown Fairbanks.
This was the right thing to do. The wrong thing to do was the earlier decision by Transportation and Public Facilities Commissioner Ryan Anderson to ban in-person participation to better control the group.
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