Dunleavy's unconstitutional judge panel pick prompts legal challenge

Gov. Mike Dunleavy failed to follow the Alaska Constitution when he tried to appoint Alaska attorney John W. Wood, 79, to a position on the Alaska Judicial Council reserved for non-attorneys, Alaskans for Fair Courts says in a complaint filed in Anchorage Superior Court.

“Being an attorney, Mr. Wood is not a ‘non-attorney,’” the complaint says.

The Alaska Constitution spells out the rule: “Three non-attorney members shall be appointed for six-year terms by the governor subject to confirmation by a majority of the members of the legislature in joint session.”

The court complaint also says that since Wood was under contract with the Dunleavy administration at the time of his appointment, he is also ineligible to serve on the commission.

The Alaska Constitution prohibits judicial council members from holding a “position of profit” from the state or federal governments.

I wrote about these major constitutional problem with Wood’s appointment on June 25.

The Judicial Council, one of the few entities created within the Alaska Constitution, plays a key role in the selection of state judges based on merit, not politics.

Dunleavy has complained endlessly about the council and his inability to appoint judges that share his right-wing opinions. The Alaska Judicial Council has served Alaska well for decades, in part because of a structure that insulates us from an overreaching governor.

The Alaska Constitution aims to strike a balance in judge selection with three lay members, three attorney members and the chief justice of the Alaska Supreme Court as the chair of the group. The chief justice only votes if there are ties when the six members vote on judge nominees to be forwarded to the governor.

Wood, a former Anchorage assembly member, is from the select group of Alaskans who has been appointed to multiple positions by Dunleavy and given state contracts as well. Dunleavy placed Wood on the Board of Fish in 2019, making the appointment after the Legislature adjourned.

Early in his first term, the governor also rewarded Wood with a contract to give Dunleavy advice on labor negotiations. Wood told legislators at a 2020 confirmation hearing that he reported directly with the governor.

Wood has been a beneficiary of no-bid contracts from Dunleavy ever since, collecting a total of from $280,000 to more than $600,000 for part-time contract work since 2019, performing lawyer-like duties for Dunleavy and helping on labor negotiations.

Those figures are based on financial disclosures Wood filed with the Alaska Public Offices Commission since 2019. Here is his 2024 report.

In the last fiscal year, Wood has collected at least $150,473 from the state under an arrangement to provide “hearing, mediation” services, according to the state checkbook. The most recent payment was in May.

Dunleavy has been among those saying attorneys have too much of a say in the process by which Alaska judges are selected. Now he is trying to add an additional attorney so that attorneys will have a 4-2 majority, excluding the chief justice.

When Dunleavy served in the Legislature, Wood worked for him as a legislative aide.

This year Dunleavy waited to appoint Wood to the Alaska Judicial Council until nine days after the Legislature adjourned in May.

The lawsuit alleges that Dunleavy failed to follow the constitutional requirement about the timing of the appointment. The vacancy on the judicial council took place during the legislative session, but Dunleavy does not have the power to make a “recess appointment” to the council, it says.

“Until resolved by this court, this controversy will impair the ability of the Alaska Judicial Council to carry out its essential work or considering applicants for judicial positions and selecting nominees to be forwarded to the governor,” the suit says.

It could also prevent new judges from taking office and create a risk that their standing will be challenged in future proceedings.

Here is the letter in which Dunleavy named Wood. It does not mention that this is for a “non-attorney” position and that Wood is an attorney.

The argument that Dunleavy and the attorney general may make is that Wood is not an attorney because he says he retired in 1995.

Or they may say that Wood is not an attorney, but a suspended attorney.

There have been many accounts over the years referring to Wood as a lawyer, including the biography that Dunleavy’s office provided in 2019 when Dunleavy placed Wood on the fish board.

The Alaska Bar Association still lists him in his directory of Alaska attorneys. It says he is not a retired attorney, but an attorney whose membership in the association was suspended in 2000 for failing to pay his dues.

Wood came to Alaska after finishing law school at Louisiana State University in 1971.

He worked as a lawyer in the courts and was involved in a case he took to the Alaska Supreme Court four decades ago saying he should have not been required to defend an indigent person.

A document filled out by Wood before his fish board appointment mentioned that he was admitted to the Alaska Bar in 1972, but does not assert that he is no longer an attorney.

In seeking the fish board appointment he did not mention his Alaska Bar Association suspension for not paying his dues, just that he had been in the “private practice of law from 1972 to early 1990s.”

During confirmation hearings in 2020 for the fish board, he said he "discontinued" his law practice in 1995 "or thereabouts."

On Feb. 10, 1995, the Alaska Supreme Court publicly censured Wood, following his 1993 conviction in federal court for failing to file his federal taxes in 1987.

“Wood agreed to discipline by consent under Bar Rule 22(h) for engaging in conduct that adversely reflected on his fitness to practice law,” the bar association says in its account of the action.

In his fish board application, he said he “pled to one misdemeanor of failure to file federal income tax return in early 1990s which resolved long standing dispute with IRS.”

In the federal court case, Wood was sentenced to four years probation and 150 hours of community service, the Anchorage Daily News reported on Oct. 7, 1993.

In May 1992 the IRS won a judgment of $151,080 to cover unpaid income taxes and employment taxes between 1977 and 1985.

The federal prosecutors charged that Wood "arrogantly and unfairly forced the IRS to devote an inordinate amount of its time and resources (at taxpayers' expense) to the collection of his taxes.”

In 1986, the federal government filed a lawsuit trying to force a sale of Wood’s house to pay back taxes, the Anchorage Daily News reported on March 2, 1986.

The government claimed Wood owed personal income tax from 1977 to 1984 and that he failed to pay taxes withheld from employees of his law office from 1981 to 1984.

A federal judge blocked the sale because Wood’s wife, Mari Wood, owned half the house and the two never filed joint tax returns, the Daily News reported on July 24, 1993.

“An avowed libertarian, by philosophy although not by party registration, Wood is broadly anti-government and anti-taxes but does not characterize his differences with the IRS a tax protest,” wrote reporter Sheila Toomey.

"I just simply got behind the eight ball financially and it just snowballed,” he said. He said the IRS was "using the criminal system to collect a debt.”

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