Dunleavy administration blocks disclosure of records on snowmachine/ATV plan

The Dunleavy administration does not want public records about Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s plan to allow snowmachines and ATVs on public roads to become public.

I filed a simple request with the Department of Public Safety and received the attached reply, the bureaucratic version of “Go away and leave us alone.”

This information should be made public, though I can see why Dunleavy wants to keep the internal dispute secret. That the Department of Public Safety is helping hide the information is a poor reflection on its leaders.

The Department of Public Safety opposed the Dunleavy snowmachine plan and proposed amendments that the governor did not want to hear, according to former DPS Commissioner Amanda Price.

Price, the fired commissioner, wrote on Facebook that the governor refused to take steps to mitigate the risks of his plan.

“Internally it was widely discussed and assumed that this was a pet priority of one of his friends/donors that he had made a promise to. There is a solid pattern of that behavior,” Price wrote on Facebook.

I asked the department for emails related to the proposals exchanged between the governor’s office and Dave Donley, a deputy commissioner of administration; Leon Morgan, a deputy commissioner of public safety; and Price, the former commissioner.

Anyone can understand that request.

In response, the public safety department said it couldn’t comply with it because I did not mention a name of anyone in the governor’s office involved in the correspondence.

The reply is dishonest. The department also claimed it needed a date range about when the emails on the proposed regulations were written. That’s not hard to figure out either.

The state claimed it needs “search terms” for the emails about the proposed regulations.

If you want to set up a process so that it doesn’t work and the public is excluded, this is how you do it.

Finally, “DPS cannot grant your fee waiver request because you have not met each of the requirements of 2 AAC 96.470,” the Dunleavy administration claimed.

What requirements do I not meet? Note that the department does not bother to identify any specifics. I do meet all of the requirements for a fee waiver. This topic is in the public interest.

What’s happening here is that Dunleavy doesn’t want this out in the open, and his staff is eager to create roadblocks.

Comments on the governor’s plan are due by Sunday and can be made by writing to dps.awt.directors.office@alaska.gov

More information on the regulations and how to comment can be found here.