Matt Buxton

Important to note, though, that oil prices are currently "crashing" after Trump said he has a plan.

After oil prices opened near $120 a barrel (before retreating to the mid-$90s), the Senate delayed its vote on the supplemental budget request.

The House had passed it under much different circumstances last month, where the ~$500M spend was expected to come from savings.

#akleg

A brown penguin chick of some kind. It looks very much like a man in a suit. It is bedraggled and miserable

Made it to Friday but at what cost

As legislators rail against feds accessing voter info, Dunleavy officials say they'd do it again State officials say they wanted to be good partners with the Trump administration.

This week's hearings on the Dunleavy administration's decision to hand over Alaska's voter rolls, including confidential information like private addresses (you're allowed to list a mailing address in the public-facing file), have been fascinating and a bit frustrating.

My write-up:

#akleg

North Pole mayor, council spar over alleged HR complaints Tension between the North Pole mayor and City Council boiled over into a Festivus-like airing of grievances Monday night as councilmembers argued with Mayor Larry Terch over his job performance.

"A persistent matter has been Terch’s use of ChatGPT for city business, which the City Council nixed his business subscription to last year"

The NP mayor that's accused of creating a toxic workplace was overly reliant on ChatGPT. It's always the ones you suspect.

www.newsminer.com/news/local_n...

Not a lot more after that.

Thanks for following along!

Witty says that the state had a "compelling interest" in working with the feds and providing this information.

Claman asks what the compelling interest actually is. You can't just say there's a compelling interest.

She says that it's about voter roll maintenance and election integrity.

Sen. Claman also notes that, for all the references to existing laws, why have they not once mentioned the Alaska Constitution's right to privacy?

Witty: "Yes, but we also presume the statute is constitutional. ... The right to privacy is not absolute."

Wielechowski asks if they'd do it again.

Beecher says, yes. They still believe the request and the decision to provide it follow the law.

Sen. Gray-Jackson: "Many of us make mistakes, and then we fess up to our mistakes and realize we made a mistake. ... Do you think that, because this is a gross mistake, that maybe you made a mistake in releasing this information to the Department of Justice?"

Beecher: "I do not."

Back to questions for Division of Elections Director Beecher

Wielechowski: Will you release all correspondence you've had with the Department of Law on this issue?

Beecher: I'll have to confer with the Department of Law.

Wielechowski: It's in your power to say yes!

Bothelo: "Alaska's election should be administered by Alaskans under Alaska law, consistent with narrowly drawn federal statutes, not by confidential agreements that seat our voters' personal information and our sovereign control of our roles to an agency (who keeps losing in court)."

Bothelo, on the argument that the state couldn't have known it was illegal because other cases hadn't been resolved: "The warning signs were clear."

The former AG says the delay suggests there were internal disagreements on the legality and worries the DOL leadership "made a grievous error."

Up now is former AG Bruce Bothelo, who has been similarly critical of the MOU.

He says that the state cannot hand over the maintenance of its voter registration to the federal government, "It's ultra vires," an act without legal authority.

Becker also adds that it's always been clear that the states have the ultimate say in voter registration maintenance.

"The sole responsibility for conducting that list maintenance resides in the States. ... And it's unclear how any state could have reached a different conclusion."

There's some talk about the SAVE America and MEGA acts giving the DOJ the precise power to get these lists that they claim to have. Doesn't that suggest they don't believe DOJ currently has that power?

That'd be correct.

Becker also notes that the DOJ has already shown it's not particularly shy about sharing information with bad actors, citing a case in which the feds shared sensitive information with a political advocacy group.

He asks whether the info would have been handed over to a Dem. president.

Up next is David Becker, the director/founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, who has a long history of litigating voting laws.

He says it's really not clear what the DOJ is doing with the data and whether it's legal.

Wielechowski asks whether the Legislature could stop this agreement from going forward.

Witty had said that it would impair contracts, what's the state getting out of it?

Witty says that it's a legal term referencing how you can't pass laws that are specifically aimed at impairing agreements.

Witty on working with the feds: "In this case, we have a mutual interest in maintaining our voter list and election integrity. We thought the interests were aligned. "

Sen. Wielechowski, heated up, asks what happened to the stand-up-for-Alaska mindset.

"You filed 53 lawsuits against the federal government! ... You've never been shy about filing lawsuits against the federal government when there have been tremendous encroachments on Alaska's sovereignty."

Department of Law's Witty says the administration has a guiding philosophy: "We want to cooperate with our federal partners, but we also want to be careful because we understand that it is sensitive data."

She says we "were made to understand that this was a standard MOU."

Beecher says she can't discuss the kind of advice the Department of Law gave her.

Wielechowski, "You can reveal it! They can't. You can. There's an attorney-client privilege that flows with the attorney. The attorney can't, but you can."

Sen. Wielechowski, warming up a heater, notes that the Department of Law initially advised the Division of Elections AGAINST providing confidential data to the Department of Justice before changing its mind.

"What changed?"

Witty says "we view" the MOU as limiting the use of the voter roles to enforcing federal voting laws.

Kiehl notes that the MOU also says that it doesn't bind the DOJ from doing its duties. Those duties include sharing information with other agencies.

Kiehl: "I think they get to share it."

Law's attorney, Rachel Witty, says the expectation is that the DOJ would follow the law and keep it for the purposes listed in the MOU (list maint.).

Keihl notes the federal privacy act allows DOJ to share confidential information with Congress.

Could a Congressional Committee pull this info?

Sen. Kiehl also notes that the DOJ "has records on every Alaska voter without personal identifiable information, our voting behavior."

"How do we keep Alaskan voters' personal identifiable information from going to the next version of Bennie Thompson's committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot?"

Beecher gets a little defensive, saying that there are guardrails in there.

"We understand it to be the list that we provided initially."

Sen. Kiehl says there are laws that require the Department of Justice to maintain its lists.

Kiehl: "Is there any situation in which you can foresee the Department of Justice fulfilling its purposes here and following federal law, not asking us for this information over and over again?"

What did the feds get that the public list wouldn't have?

-Date of the most recent change
-Private residence that would otherwise be marked private
-Condition code
-Date of birth
-Last four of SSN
-If no SSN on record, then the state driver's license number