Dunleavy, shadow AG need to update the bogus financial disclosure ‘investigation’

By now everyone understands that the so-called “investigation” the Dunleavy administration conducted of financial disclosure statements by state candidates bordered on fraud.

It led to headlines that said 91 candidates out of 121 had filed flawed financial disclosure statements.

There weren’t 91 flawed financial disclosure statements. We have no idea what the right number is because the state claims were based on shoddy research conducted in a day-and-a-half and no one bothered to check the results before releasing them to the public.

We need an accurate report, not the slapdash document produced for political purposes.

Dunleavy officials promoted the notion that this review showed almost everyone ignores the financial disclosure rules so putting Tregarrick Taylor back on the ballot was the right thing to do.

It appears to have been a way to create an excuse for Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom to claim that the violations of the law are so widespread that Taylor’s violations could not be singled out.

The big thing missing in that version of events is that Taylor refused many times to follow the law. He still hasn’t followed the rules and claims that while the law requires he list names of people who pay him at least $1,000, it doesn’t say he has to reveal full names.

Regarding the state report that amounted to Dunleavy & Co. deciding that “everybody violates the law,” Dunleavy, shadow Attorney General Stephen Cox, acting AG Cori Mills and Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom are going to try to bury their mistake.

They should not be allowed to get away with it.

The Legislature and the candidates on the ballot in November should demand that the administration accept responsibility, apologize and produce a reliable report. They should also face the reality that the eight employees of the APOC can’t do everything they are supposed to do.

The Alaska Beacon had the best coverage.

Its story began this way: “Rep. Andrew Gray of Anchorage is not a Swiss businessman. Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon is not selling fire sprinkler systems. Lieutenant governor candidate Zac Johnson isn’t running an equestrian fox-hunting club in Indiana.”

Many of the so-called errors the state claimed that candidates made were not errors at all. Many others were minor mistakes that should have been flagged without including them in a report suggesting that they were of real consequence.

Rachel Witty, director of the civil division of the Department of Law, told the Beacon that the review was done so fast no one could say what was accurate.

“So I can’t emphasize enough that this is a preliminary review. We didn’t have time to contact candidates. We didn’t have time to verify every apparent match. Nor is it our role to do that. There might be mistaken identities. It was not conducted with the kind of due diligence that APOC would do before making a determination that someone had violated the law,” she told the Beacon.

In other words, everything in the report might be wrong because it was done in a day-and-a-half by paralegals. Nobody did any checking or due diligence and that doesn’t matter anyway. This is not the job of the Department of Law, so forget about all the mistakes we made. By calling it “preliminary,” we can pretend our errors never happened.

Nonsense.

There is plenty time now to go back, contact candidates and “verify every apparent match,” which is what any competent researcher would do.

Witty should stop making excuses for this sham, which has unfairly damaged the reputation of every professional within the Department of Law. It has also unfairly damaged the reputation of many candidates who correctly filled out the forms.

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.