BEN STEVENS FINED $150; 'CONSULTING' WON'T BE PROBED

KTUU 2 & ANC Daily News
Submitted by Ray Metcalfe
Anchorage, AK
Dec. 3, 2005

APOC: The commission set aside a complaint that fees the senator received were disguised graft.
By RICHARD MAUER
Anchorage Daily News
Published: December 2, 2005

The Alaska Public Offices Commission fined Senate President Ben Stevens $150 Thursday for failing to disclose his chairmanship of a marketing board that has doled out millions of federal dollars to fishing interests.

But the commission rejected a citizen complaint that sought an investigation into the work Stevens performed for more than $1 million in fees from Alaska and Seattle businesses over the last five years. The commission said Stevens' description of the work as "consulting" was adequate, setting aside the complaint by Ray Metcalfe, a former legislator, who claimed at least some of the fees appeared to be thinly disguised graft.

And in a policy ruling, the commission said that politicians should generally report stock options as income or assets in their annual financial disclosures.

But it declined to fault Stevens, an Anchorage Republican, for his failure to report his 2002 option to purchase 25 percent of Adak Fisheries at a large discount. Acting commission chairwoman Sheila Gallagher said the rules weren't clear enough to hold Stevens accountable for past filings, but expected new guidelines or regulations will strip away doubt in the future.

Stevens claimed victory, though he walked out of the meeting without speaking to reporters. He is still facing one APOC complaint brought by Metcalfe too recently to make it onto the agenda of the commission, which meets quarterly. And Metcalfe said he has delivered evidence of Stevens' conduct to state and federal law enforcement officials.

The Adak Fisheries option, consulting income and undisclosed membership on the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board have been the subject of persistent news coverage in Alaska and, to a lesser extent, in national newspapers, partly because they closely track issues before his father, Ted Stevens, the senior Republican in the U.S. Senate.

The elder Stevens, for instance, created an exclusive, $10 million pollock allocation for the Aleut Corp. which Ben, as a director of an Aleut Corp. subsidiary, voted to assign to Adak Fisheries. Aleut Corp. officials said they had no idea Stevens had an option to buy into Adak Fisheries at the time. One Adak Fisheries owner estimated the net worth of the option was at least $1.5 million plus future fish-processing profits.

Ted Stevens also was responsible for federal legislation that created the marketing board in 2003 and for the millions of dollars that have since flowed through it. Metcalfe said some of the beneficiaries of Ben Stevens' allocations of that money were also paying him for consulting work. In a complaint to the commission, he described those consulting fees as "kickbacks."

After listening to the commission's assistant director, Christina Ellingson, acknowledge that the term "consulting" was vague but adequate, Metcalfe took the microphone and challenged the commission's reason for being.

"I just heard staff describe a loophole that makes APOC pointless," said Metcalfe, who served in the Legislature that created the agency in the 1970s and is now chairman of the independent Republican Moderate Party. "I don't think there's a person in this room that doesn't have a pretty good idea why Ben Stevens doesn't want to shed a little more light on what he did for those payments."

Metcalfe said that if an elected official is allowed to mask any payment as a consulting fee, "there's no limit to the amount of money they could pay them. The corruption that will happen -- it's already happening."

Ellingson said allegations of criminal wrongdoing are outside the scope of the agency, which is primarily to collect reports on lobbying, campaign finance and financial disclosure.

Stevens, required to be sworn in like Metcalfe, only briefly addressed the issue.

"The information I provided on all my APOC filings from 2001 have all been correct," he said. "The allegations that Mr. Metcalfe and the Republican Moderate Party insinuate that I've been influence peddling are baseless and unsubstantiated. That's about the extent of my comments."

The option first surfaced this summer during a court battle between the owners of Adak Fisheries. Joined in the case over the option, Stevens asserted in pretrial motions that he had a legal right to 25 percent of the company.

But at the APOC meeting, Stevens downplayed the value of the option. Under the law, income or assets in excess of $5,000 must be reported. The document granting the option in 2002 said it was partially given as payment for services that Stevens had provided and was expected to provide the company in the future.

During a break at the meeting, Stevens told a reporter that the option was worth less than $5,000. Asked how much he was paying his attorneys to defend his right to that option, Stevens said, "That's none of your damn business."

Commissioner John Dapcevich, a Democratic appointee from Juneau, said Stevens should have disclosed the option.

"The public has the right to know that this, being one of our legislators, has an interest in a particular business," Dapcevich said. "They have a right to know so they can see that they're not going to be voting to benefit this business."

Stevens faced a maximum fine of $2,120 for failing to disclose his membership on the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board to the APOC. Following its usual guidelines, the staff reduced the fine to $150, an amount affirmed by the commission.