The state corporation charged with taking over the massive Alaska LNG project is going to have its finances scrutinized. The legislators who called for the investigation say they want to know what the corporation has done with the $600 million given to it by the state over the last several years.
Outgoing House Rep. Mike Hawker and Sen. Cathy Giessel asked the Legislative Budget & Audit Committee to look into the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation’s finances. The two Anchorage Republicans say they’ve had a hard time getting immediate answers to questions they have about how the corporation is doing business.
“It has been somewhat elusive,” Giessel said. “We see, of course, the cumulative number. But not where the expenditures have happened.”
Hawker and Giessel also asked that the auditor look into whether the corporation’s board of directors had approved significant spending decisions and contracts for senior executive employees and consultants. Keith Meyer, the AGDC president, is the highest paid state employee. He draws an annual salary of $550,000 with an optional bonus of up to $200,000.
Giessel said it isn’t clear how the corporation decided on compensation.
“And so again, just due diligence on how these expenditures are being made and who is stepping up with the authority to make them,” Giessel said.
Rep. Hawker told the Legislative Budget & Audit Committee that he has a vested interest in how the corporation is run. He wrote the legislation that created it in 2009 with former House Speaker Mike Chenault.
It isn’t clear when the audit will be finished, but Giessel said it likely won’t happen before the end of the next legislative session, in April.
“Typically this type of an audit can take, you know, six to eight months,” Giessel said.
Giessel said the audit is partially motivated by the huge amount of risk in the state’s decision to take over the largest private construction project in North America.
The AGDC was supposed to hold a board meeting on Friday, Dec. 16, which would have discussed the audit, but it has since been canceled and the meeting has not been rescheduled.
Rashah McChesney is a photojournalist turned radio journalist who has been telling stories in Alaska since 2012. Before joining Alaska's Energy Desk, she worked at Kenai's Peninsula Clarion and the Juneau bureau of the Associated Press. She is a graduate of Iowa State University's Greenlee Journalism School and has worked in public television, newspapers and now radio, all in the quest to become the Swiss Army knife of storytellers.
