Outside legal firm handling state Pebble mine case doesn't have contract to handle Pebble mine case

When former Attorney General Kevin Clarkson first hired the Virginia law firm Consovoy McCarthy, with a no-bid $50,000 deal in 2019, the claim was made that we were getting the “Alaska discounted rate” of $600 an hour, down from $950 an hour.

The Virigina lawyers are now representing the state of Alaska in two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court—the Dunleavy anti-union crusade and Dunleavy’s attempt to save the Pebble mine.

I’m starting to think that the “Alaska discounted rate” is also the Guam discounted rate, the Florida discounted rate, the Wisconsin discounted rate and the Utah discounted rate, as Consovoy McCarthy has offered similar discounts in those jurisdictions for a variety of Republican causes.

It was William Consovoy, a Trump lawyer who has since died from brain cancer at 48, who told a judge in 2019 that Trump was above the law as long as he was president. The law firm is a conservative favorite. Earlier this year, Consovoy McCarthy won a Supreme Court case rejecting race-based admissions.

Its Alaska business, starting with the 2019 no-bid contract for the anti-union crusade, was bumped up to $100,000 on a no-bid basis before the state issued a second contract for $600,000. The latter contract followed a competitive process that Consovoy McCarthy entered with a competitive edge because of its no-bid contract work for the state.

Consovy McCarthy is still representing the Dunleavy administration before the U.S. Supreme Court in its attempt to overturn the Alaska Supreme Court and revive Dunleavy’s anti-union crusade.

The goal of the Dunleavy crusade is to make it more difficult for unions to collect dues and weaken state unions.

The Legislature sought to limit payments to Consovoy McCarthy on the crusade to $20,000 in recent fiscal years, and called for using state atorneys to push the case, but the Dunleavy administration ignored the law. The Legislature has now approved a lawsuit, bolstered by an audit that said $315,000 was spent illegally by the administration.

Consovoy McCarthy is also one of the key contrators for Dunleavy’s statehood defense campaign—representing the state in a Pebble mine appeal though it doesn’t have a contract for a Pebble mine appeal.

Consovoy McCarthy is working on statehood defense under a contract signed by the state to handle a third federal court case, this one dealing with fisheries management on the Kuskokwim River.

On June 17, 2022, the Dunleavy administration gave a $50,000 contract to the Virginia law firm to handle the Kuskokwim subsistence fishing rights lawsuit, asserting it was a “small competitive procurement.”

The contract paid Michael Connolly, partner in the firm, the discount rate of $600 an hour.

Three weeks after approving the contract on the Kuskokwim case, the state issued a request for proposals for a larger contract to handle the Kuskokwim fishing case.

The existing no-bid contract on the same case again gave Consovoy McCarthy an advantage over potential competitors.

On August 19, 2022, the state had said Consovoy McCarthy was the “most advantageous” bidder, beating out Latham & Watkins and Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders.

Here is the second contract with Consovoy McCarthy to handle the Kuskokwim lawsuit, starting off at $750,000. The lead attorneys get $600 an hour.

The state and Consovoy McCarthy filed a court challenge September 1, 2023.

The state revised the Kuskokwim River contract this year in March to include the direct appeal of the Pebble mine case to the Supreme Court as part of Consovoy McCarthy’s assignment. The two cases in two courts are to be billed separately.

The Pebble mine case has nothing to do with the Kuskokwim fishing case, so this should have been a separate procurement, but the Dunleavy administration prefers doing business with Consovoy McCarthy and avoiding competitive bids.

Anyone should be able to track the status of payments to this firm and others through the Online Checkbook that is supposed to list state vendors, but payments to Consovoy McCarthy are among those that don’t appear on the Online Checkbook,

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