Alaska’s embattled economic development agency signs contracts with 7 law firms

Alaska’s embattled economic development agency has signed new contracts with seven law firms — reflecting what its leader says is a desire to handle its legal issues more quickly, and independently from the executive branch.

The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, or AIDEA, is pushing an array of controversial projects across the state, from oil leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to proposed roads through wild areas in the northwest and southcentral regions of the state.

It chose all seven law firms earlier this year, according to copies of their contracts obtained by Northern Journal through a routine public records request.

The firms AIDEA selected include two run by Alaska attorneys who have worked for the state before — Peter Caltagirone, a former legal adviser at the state Department of Natural Resources, and Craig Richards, the former attorney general who has another legal contract with Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office.

The other firms include Minnesota-based Dorsey & Whitney, Anchorage-based Birch Horton Bittner & Cherot, Washington, D.C.-based Van Ness Feldman, Texas-based Haynes and Boone, and California-based Nossaman. All seven contracts are open-ended, without specific assigned tasks, with caps ranging from $100,000 to $985,000.

The firms won’t be paid unless AIDEA authorizes specific work or billing, said AIDEA’s executive director, Randy Ruaro.

Ruaro, a former chief of staff to Dunleavy, said AIDEA has long used outside attorneys hired under contracts. What’s new, he added, is having the firms selected in advance — which he said will allow his agency to get legal help more quickly than if it has to go through the state’s procurement process each time an issue comes up.

“What we’ve done is kind of create this stable of attorneys who are ready at will if we have an assignment for them, that they can jump on right away,” Ruaro said in an interview.

Ruaro added that agencies like his should also be “entitled to their own legal counsel” when they encounter conflicts with other state agencies represented by the Department of Law.

In a two-and-a-half-page prepared statement released with the contracts, Ruaro said that legal services have been “particularly vital” for his agency in the past two years.

Two oil companies that it loaned money to “fell behind on payments” to AIDEA amid state cuts to tax credit payments, requiring the agency to negotiate and draft financial agreements, Ruaro said.

AIDEA has also filed and intervened in federal lawsuits involving Arctic Refuge oil leases it owned — which were canceled by the Biden administration last year — and a Northwest Alaska mining road project. And it also had to review and draft commercial agreements on new infrastructure projects on the North Slope and at Anchorage’s international airport, Ruaro said.

The seven legal contracts raise questions, said Anchorage Democratic state Sen. Matt Claman, though without further information, it’s hard to say if they’re appropriate, he added.

“I’d like to know more,” said Claman, an attorney who chairs the Senate’s judiciary committee.

It’s common for an entity like AIDEA to have independent counsel separate from the executive branch, Claman said. But, he added, “if I were a partner in a major law firm, I would be saying, ‘Can’t we provide all their independent counsel needs from this one firm?’”

Nathaniel Herz is an Anchorage-based reporter. Subscribe to his newsletter, Northern Journal, at northernjournal.com. Reach him at natherz@gmail.com.