A new study ranks Alaska as one of the most corrupt states in the Union. KDLG’s Chase Cavanaugh has more.
Researchers at the University of Hong Kong and Indiana University recently released a study examining state-by-state corruption. They examined convictions of public officials under federal statutes from 1976 to 2008, as well as patterns of state spending. From this information, they constructed a corruption index to rank each state. The top three were in the South, consisting of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee, but Alaska placed 7th on the list.
Zack Fields is communications director with the Alaska Democratic Party. He says there are several cases where Alaska legislators have clear conflicts of interest. One involved Republican Senators Kevin Meyer of Anchorage and Peter Micciche (Muh-chick-eee) of Kenai.
"Those two state senators voted to take our oil wealth and transfer some of it to their private sector employers. That's a clear conflict of interest. Now, I don't want to speculate about the motives of those two senators, but I think most reasonable people would conclude that's a clear conflict of interest."
He said another case involved District 27 Representative Mike Hawker, who Fields says benefited off of a mega project.
"Here in Anchorage, one Republican legislator negotiated a sole=source no-bid deal to build a brand new fancy state office building with glass elevators and maple doors, and the guy who got that contract is a big Republican donor. That contract increased taxpayer costs by 500%. Same building, but suddenly taxpayers are paying 5 times more to somebody who's a regular donor."
Some of these incidents are the result of individual interests, but Fields says there are structural impediments to rooting out conflicts of interest.
"The way that Alaska state law is structured right now, when an elected official says "Hey, I have a conflilct of interest on this bill," a single member of the legislature can object and say "No, I want you to vote on that bill anyway," and the legislator who's objecting is not identified in the public record."
Democratic legislators introduced a proposal to reform this structural flaw, but it was not passed by the Republicans.