State defends $300,000 no-bid contract with Dunleavy friend named to judicial council
The Dunleavy administration says that attorney John W. Wood, who is getting $300 an hour as a Dunleavy consultant, can serve on the Alaska Judicial Council despite the ban in the Alaska Constitution that says council members may not have a “position of profit” with the state.
Alaskans for Fair Courts has filed a lawsuit challenging his appointment.
The attorney general’s office says that Wood “may receive compensation,” a strange choice of words because he is getting $300 an hour.
Dunleavy has given Wood, a 79-year-old former employee of Dunleavy’s, a series of no-bid consulting contracts since 2019 with total potential compensation of about $900,000.
Here is Wood’s latest contract.
He is to be paid up to $300,000 over the next two years to negotiate union contracts and do other work that is often assigned to attorneys.
Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor’s office says that the constitutional ban on holding a state position of profit can be ignored in Wood’s case because other members of the Alaska Judicial Council also have state contracts.
Two wrongs make a right, according to Tregarrick.
“Mr. Wood’s contracts with the state do not render him ineligible for appointment any more than other members of the Alaska Judicial Council with contracts under which they are entitled to payment by the state,” wrote attorneys Claire Keneally and Robert Kutchin on Taylor’s behalf.
This legal reasoning would not be out of place in the third grade, where a child breaking the rules will defend himself by claiming that the other kid did the same thing and got away with it.
Arcticle IV, Section 8 of the Constitution says in part: “No member of the judicial council, except the chief justice, may hold any other office or position of profit under the United States or the State.”
If any other members of the Alaska Judicial Council have a position of profit with the state government, those contracts should be cancelled right away.
But Wood has refused to give up his $300-per-hour gig with Dunleavy. He says his $300,000 contract is not a position of profit since he is not a state employee.
Wood has occupied the equivalent of a fulltime state job for the entire Dunleavy administration. In the last year he has made more than $165,000.
His contract is one of two main reasons why he is ineligible to be on the council.
The second reason is that Wood is an attorney and the position to which he was appointed is for someone who is not an attorney. The Alaska Constitution is clear on that point.
Taylor’s office, which is representing Wood so he doesn’t have to hire his own attorney, denies that Wood is an attorney, which makes him a non-attorney.
As a non-attorney, Wood is eligible to fill a seat designated for people who are not attorneys, according to Taylor.
This analysis is also worthy of a third grader. Wood is listed by the Alaska Bar Association as a “suspended attorney,” so he is an attorney.
He was admitted to the bar on May 1, 1972. When Dunleavy appointed Wood to the fish board in 2019, he submitted a resume that would lead any reader to believe he was an attorney, not a suspended attorney or a former attorney. In the legislative minutes of his confirmation hearing, he was listed as “John Wood Esq.”
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. He said he closed his office in 1995.
“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 censure. He was suspended in 2000 for not paying his dues.
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