Recall cash, expenditures remain secret

It is mind-boggling and nearly unbelievable that backers of the Recall Dunleavy effort, or any other such groups, do not immediately have to tell the Alaska Public Offices Commission where they are getting or spending their money.

The gap in state law revealed earlier this week by MustReadAlaska.com allows those groups – unlike individual political campaigns for office – to gather unlimited funds secretly from just about anybody, but foreign nationals, it turns out. And they do not have to say how they are spending the cash or disclose in advertising who is behind the effort. In short, there are no rules governing what the effort does or does not do.

The same rules – or lack of rules – also apply to anybody backing Dunleavy.

Backers of the effort to recall Dunleavy, headed up by former Gov. Bill Walker’s chief of staff and with heavy Democrat ties, say they have amassed nearly 40,000 signatures in the wake of his budget veto decisions.

Almost any elected official in Alaska can be recalled and state law stipulates that the grounds for recall are lack of fitness, incompetence, neglect of duties or corruption, and it lays out the complicated, time-consuming process.

The recall effort needs 28,501 verified signatures, or 10 percent of the votes cast in last year’s general election, just to apply to the state director of Elections for its recall application certification. If successful, the group then must collect signatures equaling a whopping 25 percent of the previous general election, or 71,252 signatures. Once those are certified, then the group must wait for a special election to be called.

If the recall petition application is certified and a special election is scheduled, any funds pro- or anti-recall organizations have remaining cannot be used to campaign for the recall without disclosure to APOC.

Under state law, until the actual campaign begins, and that could be months away, the sources and expenditures of pro- or anti-recall efforts remain unreported.

That plays fast and loose with Alaskans’ right to know, and flies in the face of free and open elections. Allowing pro- and anti-recall forces free rein to collect and spend cash secretly for months is a glaring problem with current election regulations. A recall is every bit as political as an individual election campaign for public office, if not more so. The same rules must apply.

Special interests have myriad reasons to want anonymity, but Alaskans should be able to find out who is spending cash to recall or retain any elected official, especially the state’s chief executive, and how it is being spent. It is unfathomable and deeply wrong that such secrecy in an election process of such magnitude is permitted.

What we have now is an unacceptable election loophole that works directly against the public interest and needs to be plugged.

Quickly.