Over $17 Million Spent On State Lobbyists This Year

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Just before the legislative session began I did a breakdown of which lobbyists would be lobbying for which interests. Some lobbyists, however, don’t report many of their clients until the session gets underway and many acquire clients as the session progresses. So now that the Legislature is going well into overtime, the lobbying picture is much clearer.

With that in mind, here is an update to our “Who is lobbying for who” breakdown.

A couple of caveats before we begin, this breakdown is based on lobbyist registration reports filed with Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC). As we found out with our previous breakdown, lobbyists can be prone to making mistakes on their reports. For instance, sometimes they list annual pay as monthly pay or vice-versa. If any such errors are noticed by those mentioned below, please email me at [email protected] and we will make the correction.

It is also important to note that APOC only ask lobbyists to disclose whether their pay is annual or monthly, but if it is monthly there is no requirement to disclose if the contract is for a specified number of months and if so how many. This is a weakness APOC should address, but for now this is how it is. For this analysis I assumed all monthly contracts for for the full year (multiplied them by 12).  

With that calculation done I added the total amount of annual lobbying contracts ($10,996,192), monthly lobbying contracts ($4,697,971), and the salaries of in-house lobbyists ($2,120,037) and we arrive at a total amount spent lobbying the Legislature and Governor this session: $17,784,201.

That doesn’t even count the hourly-rate lobbying disclosures because we have no idea how many hours are actually billed, there is no way to accurately gauge the total amount billed to the client.

With all that said, let’s start by looking at the biggest of the big-time schmoozers in Juneau. Here are the lobbyists reporting at least $500,000 in contracts this year:

The Power $500K

First Name	Last Name	Amount Billed	# of Clients	Notable Clients
Kent	Dawson	$1,055,750	17	Usibelli Coal Mine. Inc., The Pew Charitable Trusts, City of Seward
Robert	Evans	$823,008	12	Neeser Construction Inc., Koch Companies, Pfeffer Development LLC
Wendy	Chamberlain	$741,000	19	Municipality of Anchorage, Northwest Arctic Borough, Yoga Alliance
Ashley	Reed	$660,200	19	Armstrong Oil & Gas, Inc., ENSTAR Natural Gas, GCI
Jerry	Mackie	$644,000	16	Holland America Line, Donlin Gold LLC, Alyeska Pipeline Service Company
Theodore	Popely	$629,000	13	Bristol Bay Native Corporation, APDEA, Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Inc.
Eldon	Mulder	$603,000	15	Anthem Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., GCI
Frank	Bickford	$557,073	16	Dave & Buster’s of Alaska, Inc., Verizon, Oracle America, Inc.
Raymond	Matiashowski	$540,000	10	Xerox, Microsoft, Alaska Communications
Kim	Hutchinson	$538,500	15	Alaska Airlines, Municipality of Anchorage, Alaska Communications
Linda	Anderson	$523,000	10	Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska Bankers Assoc, Fairbanks Memorial Hospital

Largest Individual Annual Contracts

First Name	Last Name	Contract	Client
Michael	Tibbles	$140,000	Alaska Cruise Association/CLIA Alaska
Kent	Dawson	$120,000	The Pew Charitable Trusts
Charles	Miller	$105,000	Alaska National Insurance Company
Robert	Evans	$100,008	Neeser Construction Inc.
Linda	Anderson	$100,000	Fairbanks North Star Borough

Largest Individual Monthly Contracts

First Name	Last Name	Contract	Client
Yuri	Morgan	$15,000	Anderson Group, LLC
Fate	Putman	$12,000	ASEA/AFSCME Local-52
Bruce	Baker	$10,416	North Slope Borough
Don	Etheridge	$10,000	Alaska AFL-CIO
Jack	Ferguson	$10,000	Prepared Response
David	Parish	$10,000	NovaCopper Inc.

Notable Union Lobbying Contracts

First Name	Last Name	Contract Type	Contract Size	Client
Fate	Putman	Monthly	$12,000 ($144,000 Annualized)	ASEA/AFSCME Local-52
Don	Etheridge	Monthly	$10,000 ($120,000 Annualized)	Alaska AFL-CIO
tom	brice	Monthly Salary	$6,900 ($82,800 Annualized)	Alaska District Council of Laborers
Mark	Hickey	Annual	$60,000	NEA-Alaska
James	Lottsfeldt	Annual	$50,000	International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1547
Theodore	Popely	Monthly	$3,000 ($36,000 Annualized)	Anchorage Police Department Employees Assoc.
Kim	Hutchinson	Annual	$17,500	APEA/AFT
Jerry	Reinwand	Annual	$17,500	APEA/AFT
Paul	Grossi	Annual	$17,000	Alaska State Pipe Trades UA Local 375

In-House Lobbyists

Some interests prefer to have someone on staff as opposed to or perhaps in addition to a contracted lobbyist. Here are the folks with the biggest in-house lobbying gigs in the state.

First Name	Last Name	Salary	Employer
Carol	Steckel	$213,000	WellCare Health Plans, Inc.
REBECCA	HULTBERG	$184,000	Alaska State Hospital & Nursing Home Association
Elizabeth	Gianini	$177,000	WellCare Health Plans, Inc.
Paul	Nielsen	$172,000	Alkermes, Inc.
Michelle	Arnold	$152,000	The College Board

Largest Lobbying Contracts For Governments

Alaskans always love to see their money used for one level of government to beg another level of government for something. Here are the folks with the biggest contracts for another government entity to ask the state for stuff.

First Name	Last Name	Contract Type	Contract Size	Client
Bruce	Baker	Monthly	$10,416 ($125,000 Annualized)	North Slope Borough
Linda	Anderson	Annual	$100,000	Fairbanks North Star Borough
Kent	Dawson	Annual	$96,500	City of Seward
Wendy	Chamberlain	Annual	$80,000	Northwest Arctic Borough
Bruce	Baker	Monthly	$7,000 ($84,000 Annualized)	Northwest Arctic Borough School District

Most lobbying contracts are for boring things like the Port of Anchorage expansion or new school construction…BORING (Though there’s a lot of money behind boring topics). Then there are a few that are interesting and fun. Wendy Chamberlain nailed down a contract to lobby for something called “Yoga Alliance” and Denali Daniels gets to push on behalf of Alaska Rolfers.

Ashley Reed on the other hand gets to chat with lawmakers both on behalf of GCI and the group GCI formed to push their ideas on a state fiscal plan “Alaska’s Future Inc”. Way to double up, Ashley.

Then there is Jeffry Cook, who will be carrying the flag of every liberal’s favorite villains the Koch brothers.

Fun/ Interesting

Lobbyist		Employer	Contract Type	Amount
Wendy	Chamberlain	Yoga Alliance	Annual Fee	$30,000
Denali	Daniels	Alaska Rolfers	Salaried Employee: Annual Wage	$1,900
Jeffry	Cook	Koch Companies	Hourly Fee	$100
Ashley	Reed	Alaska’s Future Inc	Annual Fee	$30,000
Ashley	Reed	GCI	Annual Fee	$50,000

In case you wanted to review all of the lobbying contracts for yourself or maybe just look in more depth at any one of them you can do so here.