Four Alaskans appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy to serve on various state boards and commissions recently resigned ahead of a legislative confirmation vote expected May 7. Dunleavy told legislators in a series of letters on Friday and Monday that the four had left their seats.
His office did not respond to questions asking whether the appointees had been asked to resign, but two were the subject of significant controversy.
Alaska Judicial Council member John Wood, faced legal challenges over whether he was eligible to serve on the judge-selecting body. Wood is a former attorney with a suspended law license and was appointed to a seat reserved for non-attorneys.
A Superior Court judge found he was eligible, though an appeal remains unresolved.
In a phone interview, Wood said was not resigning over the controversy, nor was he asked to step aside. Instead, Wood said he’d simply rather not have to schedule family reunions around the Judicial Council’s activities.
“I'm going on 80 years old next month,” he said. “You’ve got a limited amount of time on this Earth, and I've decided I'm going to reserve that time for what John Wood wants to do, when John Wood wants to do it.”
House Judiciary Committee Chair Andrew Gray, an Anchorage Democrat, said he’d heard from many Alaskans opposing his appointment. He’d planned to hold a confirmation hearing for Wood on Wednesday.
“We received a lot of emails, phone calls,” he said. “I even spoke at a couple of forums where people brought him up as somebody that they really opposed for a number of reasons.”
Also among the four resigning appointees was Veronica Lambertsen, who made headlines last week when senators questioned her on a number of fringe beliefs she’d posted about on social media, including an assertion that the public was not “being told the true story” about the Holocaust.
She also faced questions over whether she was eligible to serve on the council, given that she was appointed to a seat reserved for people representing communities of under 2,500 people, and Lambertsen lives within Anchorage’s municipal boundaries.
The other two resigning appointees are North Pole resident Victoria Acree, who Dunleavy appointed to the Board of Massage Therapists in November, and Board of Nursing appointee Ashley Scholle. Neither faced a public hearing or were the subject of controversy.
Legislators have the power to reject nominees with a simple majority vote. They rejected two of Dunleavy’s picks last year.
