Alaska legislative ethics committee to consider reforms after identity of a complainant was exposed online

Alaska’s legislative ethics committee will consider new state laws after an individual who filed a complaint against a lawmaker said his identity was revealed online, leading to derogatory comments from one of the lawmaker’s supporters.

Ivan Hodes, an outspoken critic of Wasilla Republican Rep. David Eastman, said he filed a complaint against Eastman last year alleging Eastman had violated laws prohibiting legislators from accepting campaign contributions during the legislative session.

The complaint was ultimately dismissed by a bipartisan committee made up of legislators and members of the public. Eastman, a controversial lawmaker who has drawn multiple ethics complaints during his time in the Legislature, accused progressives of weaponizing the ethics committee against conservative lawmakers.

Hodes said that one of Eastman’s supporters posted a screenshot of the complaint form, including Hodes’ name, in April. The post has since been deleted, Hodes said. It is not clear who made Hodes’ identity public, and whether Eastman was aware of the release of Hodes’ name. Eastman did not respond to a request for comment.

Hodes said that after his name became public, one of Eastman’s followers sent him a message with derogatory slurs targeting Hodes’ Jewish identity. The Eastman supporter, a Wasilla resident named Pete Peterson, doubled down in attacking Hodes’ identity after Hodes posted about the incident online.

Following the incident, Hodes said he turned to the legislative ethics committee requesting an investigation into whether his right to confidentiality was violated. But members of the legislative ethics committee said that Alaska law currently protects the identity of the subject of the complaint, but if the subject of the complaint — in this case Eastman — waives that right, there is no guaranteed protection for the identity of the person who filed the complaint.

According to state statutes, ethics complaints are “not subject to inspection by the public,” but the confidentiality “may be waived by the subject of the complaint.”

The ethics committee’s rules state that “the subject may not waive confidentiality for others, including those involved or assisting in the committee’s investigation of the complaint.”

“After the waiver the existence of the complaint and the subject’s alleged behavior are clearly no longer confidential. It is more difficult to determine the remaining confidentiality, if any, associated with the identity and identifying information about the complainant,” wrote legislative counsel Noah Klein in a January memo.

In a meeting of the ethics committee Thursday, members said they would form a subcommittee with the intention of considering reforms to Alaska’s legislative ethics laws, including possible clarifications to the laws that provide guaranteed confidentiality when ethics complaints are filed.

The subcommittee is set to be chaired by Wasilla Republican Sen. David Wilson. Wilson said Friday that the goal would be for the ethics committee to present proposed changes during the legislative session that is set to begin in January.

“I think within reason, some confidentiality may need to be maintained unless both parties waive confidentiality,” Wilson said.

Anchorage Democratic Sen. Löki Tobin, who also sits on the legislative ethics committee, said the goal of the changes would be to ensure that both the person filing the complaint and the person named in the complaint have their identities protected.

“There is unfortunately that gap in the ethics statutes that I don’t think anyone foresaw would be an issue,” said Tobin.

“No law is perfect,” Tobin added. “This is one where we didn’t realize there was such an egregious loophole in the statute and now that we’ve seen it play out repeatedly, we’re working with as much haste as we can to close it.”

Eastman has been a lightning rod of controversy during his time in the Legislature. In 2022, he was sued by a former constituent who claimed Eastman’s membership in the far-right Oath Keepers group disqualified Eastman from serving in the Legislature. A judge ruled in Eastman’s favor.

Earlier this year, Eastman was stripped of his only committee assignment after angering some members of the Republican House majority. Last year, the House voted to censure Eastman a second time for asking about the economic benefits of deaths of abused children. (Eastman was also censured in 2017.) In 2022, Republican lawmakers removed Eastman from the minority caucus after he angered some GOP lawmakers with his uncompromising tactics. Since then, Eastman has been excluded from both minority and majority caucuses in the House.

In this year’s election, Eastman is facing a challenge from Jubilee Underwood, a Mat-Su school board member who has highlighted her conservative policy agenda alongside a willingness to work with other GOP members. A defeat for Eastman could be a win for other GOP lawmakers, who see him as an obstacle to forming an all-Republican majority in the House.