Campaign should’ve been more forthcoming, Miller says

ANCHORAGE — In a conference call with selected reporters, U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller spoke in depth about the contents of his personnel file during his time at the Fairbanks North Star Borough.

The personnel records have lately been the subject of a court case brought by two Anchorage and one Fairbanks news outlet. The media sought an un-redacted copy of Miller’s records. A judge has since ordered them released.

Having handed all 60 pages to the invited media prior to the start of the conference call, Miller said it was probably a mistake to have fought so hard to avoid their release in the first place.

“I think that we should have probably just produced it at the beginning,” Miller said. “We started this campaign with this idea, ‘hey we’re going to put everything out there.’”

But parts of those records contained things that could be considered attorney-client communication, which he is bound not to disclose. On top of that attorney-client duty of confidentiality, Miller said he also had confidentiality agreements with the borough.

“Kind of the self-defensive response to that was, ‘well, let’s not let that out,’” he said.

The piece of the records that have seemed most debated in recent weeks revolvs around what happened in March 2008 when Miller was trying to oust Randy Ruedrich, head of the Alaska Republican Party.

Miller was disciplined after using other employees’ computers on his lunch break to participate in an online poll. He said the poll was something he and others in the group of Republicans trying to oust Ruedrich had set up. It was akin to a reader poll on a newspaper’s website.

Notes from a discussion with Miller at the time quote him describing himself as “beyond stupid” and the incident was a “lapse of judgment” and a “total screw-up.” Miller offered to resign over the whole thing.

In a letter he wrote at the time he said he didn’t know that after he’d emptied the cache on the various computers he used that the employees would lose passwords and other information they’d been using to access various websites.

“I did not clear the cache to cause harm to anyone and was not aware of the impact that would cause to my fellow employees,” he wrote.

Miller admits in the file to denying he’d used the computers, then to lying about what he’d used them for before finally coming clean.

Speaking Tuesday, Miller pointed out in his defense that after the incident he went on to work for two years for the borough, which obviously thought he was worth keeping around.

One thing he couldn’t discuss in depth were his eventual reasons for departure. He said part of it was that his supervisors were playing games with approving him to take leave to go hunting with his sons on Afognak. But the bigger piece of why he left was that he had significant policy disagreements with the borough attorney he worked under and with the borough mayor.

“I can’t talk further about that without release from the borough and they have not given me release to do that,” he said.

But he did note that it’s something he thinks the people of Fairbanks deserve an open and honest discussion about. The only place they’re mentioned in his personnel file is a somewhat oblique reference in Miller’s resignation letter.

“The backdrop to all of this is our significant difference of opinion regarding the North Haven Community PILT, continued retention of Brena’s firm (last year) and the partial contingency fee agreement, matters directly and indirectly related to the ongoing TAPS litigation,” he wrote in the letter dated Aug. 28, 2009.

TAPS is a common acronym for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, and PILT, at least in the federal government, is most commonly an acronym for payments in lieu of taxes. North Haven Communities provides housing for military families stationed at Fort Wainwright and Fort Greely.

In the conference call, Miller said he’d always seen the borough job as akin to public service — it only occupied four hours of his day — and that another reason he left was money. He could make more working elsewhere.

“It played a role in my life, not a significant role, though probably more of a significant role now,” he said of his stint at the borough.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.