State won’t investigate Gattis

MAT-SU — The state’s Department of Law says it will not investigate allegations of impropriety a Washington, D.C., watchdog group leveled against Wasilla state Rep. Lynn Gattis, R-Wasilla.

“After review, the Department of Law determined there was insufficient reason to request further investigation into the allegations against Rep. Gattis and her husband,” said Assistant Attorney General Cori Mills.

The allegations, which surrounded a land deal Gattis made with the Mat-Su Borough, came from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a group more often concerned with campaign finance on a national level than with the business dealings of state house members, especially in Alaska.

Gattis seemed unsurprised that the state had declined to investigate.

“We didn’t do anything wrong the first time, didn’t do anything wrong the second time,” she said. “Now we’re into the third time.”

The saga began back in 2012 when the Mat-Su Borough got Gattis and her husband to grant an easement across their Point MacKenzie hay field for an access road to work on the Point MacKenzie Rail Extension.

The borough paid $65,000 and change for the easement. But then the deal fell through because as it turned out, the Gattises couldn’t grant an easement like that because the land was part of a state program to promote farming in the area and can’t be used for anything but agriculture.

The borough wound up not needing the property anyway and let the Gattis’ out of the contract. Since the borough had no legal grounds on which to ask for the money back, it didn’t. The Gattises kept the money.

And this is where the state says its interest in the matter ends.

“The Board of Agriculture alerted Mr. and Mrs. Gattis to the violation of the (Agricultural Revolving Loan Fund) in June 2012. Subsequently, the borough released the easement. At that point, the violation was cured and the issue was resolved, from the State’s perspective,” Mills wrote in an email. “In terms of the contract between the borough and Mr. and Mrs. Gattis, the State is not involved in, nor would the Department of Law have any opinion on, whether there is a civil cause of action between the parties to that contract.”

Gattis said she’s sure it will come back up again. The next election is around the corner, she pointed out.

“It will come up again, and I’ll say the same things,” she said. “And whoever the infamous ‘they’ are will say the same thing, and they will try to gain something on something that has no traction.”

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