AG addresses Ben Stevens conflict of interest with gibberish, doubletalk

Attorney General Treg Taylor offered an absurd explanation Monday for why he and Gov. Mike Dunleavy failed to require a public interest waiver for former Chief of Staff Ben Stevens, now gone to a more lucrative post at ConocoPhillips.

Taylor said he expects Stevens to contact the attorney general’s office every time during the next two years when Ben Stevens thinks he has a conflict of interest at the oil company. Expect those to start soon, he said. Waivers will be granted or not on a case-by-case basis.

So if Stevens is asked by his superiors about oil tax strategy or how to deal with the governor on other big items, we are supposed to believe Stevens will first contact the AG for the Dunleavy/Taylor Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

This strategy from Dunleavy and Taylor is unworkable, impractical and a recipe for wasted state time and money. It ignores the process in a clear state law and does nothing to protect the state’s interest.

Based on this bizarre political attempt to evade a clear law, Taylor doesn’t deserve to be confirmed as AG. I believe that false claims he made a month ago on the no-bid Clark Penney contract also make him the wrong man for the top law job.

Stevens, former Senate president, has a new job as an advocate for ConocoPhillips. He knows things from his time as Dunleavy’s chief of staff that create obvious conflicts of interest and possible violations of Sec. 39.52.180, the “restrictions on employment after leaving state service” segment of state law.

The law says that someone in Stevens’s position can’t work for two years on matters that were “under consideration” by elements of the state government if he “participated personally and substantially through the exercise of official action.” That covers a lot of territory.

Taylor, whose confirmation hearing before the House Judiciary Committee continues Friday, claimed that the onus is on Stevens to avoid doing anything that would put him in violation of Sec. 39.52.180.

Taylor said he “determined that, with the general job duties as described and then talking with Ben Stevens and with the governor’s office, that there was no need for a conflict waiver at this time because there was no conflict.”

But then Taylor spoke from the school of gibberish and doubletalk, saying there will be conflicts of interest, but the state doesn’t know what they are yet and waivers will be processed for Stevens on a case-by-case basis.

(Other waivers granted in the past to ex-officials mentioned specific things they would not do for two years with a new private employer. Dunleavy and Taylor have gone to considerable lengths to avoid putting details on paper that would restrict Stevens.)

Taylor predicted, “You’ll probably see a series of these conflict waivers either being addressed or put into effect to allow Ben Stevens to work in his job duties if it is a benefit to the state. My guess is we’re going to see some in the near future,” he said.

What really happened is that Taylor and the governor, by saying no waiver was needed, granted a wink-wink waiver to Stevens to allow him to take the oil company job. They didn’t follow the law in doing so—the law says the governor can waive the two-year requirement if he finds it is in the public interest. “The waiver must be in writing and a copy of the waiver must be provided to the attorney general for approval or disapproval,” the law says.

Taylor said he has no doubt that a waiver was not needed “because of the activities that Ben Stevens is currently doing.”

As to “the activities that Ben Stevens is currently doing,” Taylor bases his conclusions on comments by Stevens and the oil company, not on legal documents.

“What we don’t want to do as a state is just give a general waiver to everything that Ben Stevens was involved with as a state because we need to go through that criteria, right? We need to make sure that it is in the state’s best interest, given the information that Ben Stevens was privy to,” he said.

Asked about what process would take place, Taylor claimed “the duty lies with Ben Stevens” to seek a waiver.

“If he encounters a question in his mind, he knows that he can contact the Department of Law any time within the next two years, and speak with our ethics attorneys on whether or not a waiver is needed in that specific situation,” Taylor said. 

“We want to attract the best people we can to state government and we can only do that if they have an ability to work after they’re done working for state government,” Taylor said.

He said that under the law, “only under certain circumstances would there be a need arise for a conflict waiver. And then it also makes clear that the governor and the AG would take a look at that issue and it’s to their discretion whether to grant such a waiver. And that discretion is left to what they feel is in the best state interest.”

“I don’t think issuing a broad conflict waiver does anything for the state. It doesn’t protect the state at all in certain aspects that might be confidential. Might be there’s information that he was privy to that down the road is gonna really come in handy for his client, right? That just doesn’t make sense for the state to engage in just granting conflict waivers because people are asking for it. We look at each individual circumstance, we examine it against what the requirements of the act are and then we make the discretionary decision of whether or not one is needed in that case,” he said.

It’s hard to see why any lawyer would make that claim for an unworkable process—except for a case like this in which the governor made a political decision to prevent creating any obstacles for Ben Stevens and the attorney general refused to challenge him or offer a reasonable interpretation of the law.

Your contributions help support independent analysis and political commentary by Alaska reporter and author Dermot Cole. Thank you for reading and for your support. Either click here to use PayPal or send checks to: Dermot Cole, Box 10673, Fairbanks, AK 99710-0673.