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Palin freezes energy lobbying, ad contract Questions about how Pac/West Communications spent funds raised; no-bid $3M award an issue for some from the beginning The Associated Press
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has frozen the contract of a firm originally hired with a no-bid contract to push for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to petroleum drilling.
Palin at first supported continuing and expanding the contract awarded to Pac/West Communications, based in Oregon. But the week of May 21, after questions were raised about how the company had spent $1.3 million in state funds, Palin reconsidered.
Palin’s concern was not with the campaign itself but with the hurried $3 million contract, which “was not part of an open and transparent process,” said spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton.
Palin plans to “re-evaluate the needs of those dollars and, if appropriate, start a new award process” with competitive bids, Stapleton said.
Pac/West, a company with conservative Republican ties, conducted Alaska political campaigns opposing efforts to ban bear baiting and to impose new taxes on cruise ships.
Pac/West was coming off its successful bearbaiting campaign and talking to legislators and Alaska’s congressional delegation about an ANWR effort when U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens visited Juneau in March 2006 to urge funding a last-minute campaign.
State House Speaker John Harris, R-Valdez, said he understood the need to develop grass-roots support in key congressional districts for ANWR drilling. The state went with a no-bid contract because time was short, Harris said.
Ben Stevens defended no-bid deal Though criticized by some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, the no-bid deal was defended by Stevens’ son, then-Senate President Ben Stevens, R-Anchorage.
“It’s obviously a strategic maneuver at the national level, so why would we put it out to an RFP (request for proposals) and tell the opposition what we want to do?” Ben Stevens said at the time.
The Legislature in May voted to extend the contract for Pac/West Communications another year and broaden its mission to include “continued education efforts on Alaska energy issues.”
Bills filed by Pac/West with the state Department of Commerce and interviews with officials indicate that much of the ANWR campaign was focused in several locations in May and June 2006.
Radio and newspaper advertisements urged voters in four key western states to push Congress to allow more oil drilling on U.S. soil in the name of national security and cheaper gas.
The ads were identified as coming from Americans for American Energy, which described itself a “grassroots-based group” with support from coast to coast.
However, Americans for American Energy was set up by Pac/West.
The state-funded campaign included paying subcontractors to write opinion columns for newspapers and appear on talk radio, according to spending records.
Katz: officials uneasy about sole-source contract John Katz, head of Alaska’s Washington, D.C., office, defends the work done by Pac/West as an essential part of today’s political system. The state needs to combat work done by environmental groups, he said, which exert pressure in key congressional districts with imported money and groups with “interesting sounding names.”
Katz said Pac/West did a good job, though his main concern was that “the money is properly expended and accounted for and everything is ethical and legal.”
Whether the campaign accomplished anything is the most difficult question, Katz said.
“It’s so hard to see the causal relations,” he said.
Pac/West President Paul Phillips called the company’s effort “phenomenal” given how little time it had to prepare. The U.S. House voted to open the refuge to drilling, as expected. Though the Senate could not muster enough votes to override a filibuster, Republican leaders were poised to push the matter again after the 2006 election, Phillips said.
The chances for ANWR drilling dimmed when Democrats took control of Congress.
In the nation’s capital, the state’s concerns have turned to defending resource development, Katz said.
The Palin administration at first proposed changing Pac/West’s contract to reflect those new concerns, Katz said.
“Sometimes the best defense is a good offense,” he said. “We don’t want this to be an easy environmental vote for someone to take.”
But Katz said officials with the former administration of Gov. Frank Murkowski, as well as Palin, were uneasy all along about the sole-source nature of the contract.
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