Governor Bill Walker, in a press conference today, flashed anger at Alaskans for not giving up to $1,200 of their Permanent Fund dividends to support state services. He appeared miffed that citizens, as represented by their elected lawmakers, didn’t understand the seriousness of the fiscal problem the state faces.
He also issued a proclamation for a special session to be held in Juneau on July 11 to take up three major revenue items that were not settled in the special session that ended today.
In his press availability that lasted just 11 minutes, the governor was asked by Juneau Empire reporter James Brooks why he thinks another special session will be productive.
Governor Bill Walker has told lawmakers they may not use his image without his permission.
Walker’s answer was: “I think it will be because I’ll address some of those issues in the budget. When the budget comes to me and I address the financial situation, it will get the attention of Alaskans. I have the obligation to do some things as governor with the budget.”
The reporter went on to ask the governor if he intends to veto a portion of the Permanent Fund dividend.
Walker responded: “We’ll look at every item individually and decide between now and July 1st what gets vetoed and what does not…I will veto where I think it’s appropriate.”
The governor was piqued that the House Finance Committee refused to send his SB 128 to the floor for a vote. The legislation that would restructure the Alaska Permanent Fund passed the Senate, but was panned by many members of the House. Both Democrats and Republicans received pushback from constituents about taking Permanent Fund dividends, while not cutting government spending enough.
Walker said he his administration has had more than 400 meetings with Alaskans to explain his restructuring of Alaska’s finances.
“The governor’s idea of helping is to keep count of meetings,” said one legislative insider.
GOVERNOR DENIES USE OF HIS IMAGE WITHOUT PERMISSION
Showing his sensitivities to his image, the governor told members of the Legislature that they may not use his image without his permission. A screen shot outlines the terms:
While we wait, news writers find the story fascinating. After all, who can resist the bar napkin?
Newsweek jumped in with a wistful telling of the sad state of the relationship between former Alaska Dispatch editor Tony Hopfinger and the woman who scooped up his property. The property? A successful online news site.
Alaska Public Media’s Zachariah Hughes tells it this way. Hughes gets a statement from Rogoff’s attorney, who says the bar napkin agreement was a loyalty payment — not a buyout. Rogoff intended the payments as insurance that Hopfinger was giving it his all — “that Hopfinger was truly committed to the paper.”
Loyalty contracts lasting 10 years may provide interesting fodder in court, and the pulpit of public opinion.
Craig Medred, who for many years wrote for the Anchorage Daily News, the Alaska Dispatch, and other newspapers, keeps everyone honest with the insider’s view. There’s a good chance he knows a lot more than he’s telling, too.
Alaska Dispatch News gets the story here, buries it quickly in its lineup, and leaves readers wondering why they cannot comment on it, since they are able to comment on all other the news stories.
CONTRACTS ARE WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS
A separate Alaska Dispatch lawsuit reveals the Rogoff view of contract law. This time it was Rogoff, as Alaska Dispatch Publishing, suing the former owner of the Anchorage Daily News, McClatchy Co. The newspaper was consumed by the upstart Dispatch on April 8, 2014. Rogoff became unhappy with the terms soon thereafter and asked for $780,000 as compensation from McClatchy for breach of contract; Rogoff dropped the complaint earlier this month.
But here is what wil come back to bite her: The complaint says McClatchy “failed to perform many of (its) obligations, which was a breach of the SPA (Stock Purchase Agreement) and a violation of the implied-in-law covenant of good faith and fair dealing, which is implied in all contracts.”
In the end, Governor Bill Walker was just unable to make his case with the people of Alaska on his Permanent Fund restructuring bill, SB 128.
Walker is a man who is used to bulldozing his way to a yes and, for the most part, he has gotten his way since becoming governor in December of 2014.
He expanded Medicaid without the Legislature’s approval.
He coaxed out of the Legislature an OK to purchase TransCanada’s portion of the Alaska gasline project – AK-LNG.
He maneuvered the budgets he wanted out of legislators — against the better judgment of many of them.
He fired one Alaska Gasline Development Corp. president and hired another for nearly 1-1/2 times the cost; and fired nearly the entire AGDC board, replacing them with his own compliant people.
But when it came to Senate Bill 128, he could not sell it to the citizenry. That’s his problem — the people who are governed by their own consent simply told him no. He’s not used to that.
Part of his failure on SB128 is that he keeps spending money like a sailor on leave in Shanghai’s red light district: $1.2 million for Rigdon Boykin, the same amount for Radoslav Shipkoff — gasline “experts” for a project that has nowhere to go. His new president of AGDC makes over $500,000 and is an outsider from Houston.
It seems that every chainsaw Walker buys is gold-plated. With all this spending, he then presented a plan to strip $1,000 from every Alaskan, restructure the Permanent Fund and associated trust funds, and use the earnings more smartly in the future.
Egging him on was Alice Rogoff, owner and publisher of the state’s largest daily newspaper, the Alaska Dispatch News. Alice’s family knows a lot about sovereign funds, and she met with the governor on numerous occasions to persuade him in the restructure. Just this week, she opined on the pages of her newspaper that now is the time to pass SB 128. “I want to highlight the basic arithmetic of “saving the Permanent Fund,” and why we need Alaska’s lawmakers to do it now,” she wrote.
And she might be right. The math suggests a restructuring of the fund would be a good plan. Doing it now gives it a chance of working.
But Alaskans have been watching, and they can also do the math. The state budget is still too big, and they know it.
Take a look at the state payroll year over year:
Personal services, as it is known, has been reduced by less than 2 percent: 1.9 percent to be exact. That’s because, in part, very few state jobs have been sacrificed, and for those 16,00-20,000 who remain in state service, merit and step increase just keep bulking up the budget, year after year. The governor has not rolled back these automatic wage increases that cost the state well over $70 million a year.
Take a look at the travel budget, keeping in mind that the governor announced a travel freeze:
Travel in FY2015 was $73.7 million. In FY 2017 it’s down to $68.7 million.
In the governor’s mind, that 6.8 percent cut is his travel freeze.
WALKER DIDN’T MAKE HIS CASE
The vote against SB 128 was amazingly bipartisan in House Finance this afternoon. No musk ox caucus was in play. Legislators voted their conscience — an observer could readily see it — and five voted to move it out of committee, while six said the legislation just wasn’t ready.
Alaskans are clearly — vocally — not ready to give their Permanent Fund dividends to this governor. Why? It’s like writing him a blank check.
Voters haven’t seen the budgetary discipline the governor promised. They aren’t convinced the tough calls have been made. This is a case of the People of Alaska speaking to their governor and telling him: “No.”
Attorneys for Alice Rogoff, owner and publisher of the Alaska Dispatch News, issued the following statement regarding the lawsuit filed against her by her former business partner, Tony Hopfinger, who says he is owed the better part of $1 million in a buyout deal that has clearly gone sideways:
On June 15, 2016, Tony Hopfinger, former executive editor and president of the Alaska Dispatch News, filed suit against Alice Rogoff and Alaska Dispatch Publishing, LLC, a now-defunct online news outlet. Hopfinger’s litigation, which requests over a $1 million in damages, is the unfortunate conclusion to a former business relationship in which Rogoff, through substantial financial assistance, supported and nurtured Hopfinger’s journalistic aspirations and catapulted him into control as editor at the Alaska Dispatch News, Alaska’s most widely-read and recognized news source.
Rogoff’s former business interests with Hopfinger began in 2009 when Rogoff became the 90 percent owner of Alaska Dispatch Publishing, the website created and initially owned by Hopfinger and his ex-wife, Amanda Coyne. In their own words, Rogoff’s involvement gave Coyne and Hopfinger “an amazing opportunity to hire a staff of experienced reporters and editors and to tell that story of Alaska in a way that’s been sorely missing here for a long time.” Shortly thereafter, and after considerable capital contributions made by Rogoff, the site began to receive accolades and national attention for the unique stories it covered, which were typically not covered by the larger Anchorage Daily News.
In early 2014, Rogoff began to make financial and legal arrangements to purchase the Anchorage Daily News with the intent of merging the two news operations into one, in order to expand the ability to connect readers with important coverage of Alaska and the Arctic. At the time, Rogoff expected that Hopfinger would act as the president and executive editor of the paper, appreciating their previous shared success bringing undercovered stories and news to the public. In order to ensure that Hopfinger was truly committed to the paper, Rogoff tentatively and conditionally agreed to provide him with compensation contingent on Hopfinger’s willingness to undertake broad responsibilities for at least ten years and to dedicate himself to the success of the paper much in the same way he had dedicated himself to the success of his blog. Unfortunately, Hopfinger did not live up to his promises and has remarried and permanently relocated to Chicago with no apparent plans to return or to provide support to the Alaska Dispatch News.
Without Rogoff’s significant financial support, neither Hopfinger nor his blog would have achieved success. A 2011 book written by Hopfinger and Coyne recognizes the assistance Rogoff provided to them by saying: “Nobody in our professional careers has believed in us like Alice Rogoff . . . We will forever be grateful for her trust, encouragement, optimism and friendship, as well as her love for Alaska.” With the filing of this lawsuit, Hopfinger appears to have abandoned this sentiment, which is a far cry from the allegations and claims in the complaint Hopfinger filed yesterday. Nonetheless, while Rogoff and Hopfinger have been unable to come to a resolution short of litigation, Rogoff remains dedicated to exploring Alaska’s rich narrative in order to support the journalistic endeavors of the excellent reporters at the Alaska Dispatch News, and this lawsuit will have no effect on her continued devotion to do so.
Many readers noticed that the controversial comment section of the ADN, managed and mediated most recently by Portland-based Civil Comments company, has been disabled for the story on publisher Rogoff and her estranged editor Hopfinger.
(Those who wish to comment on the Dispatch story may do so on this story, whose comments are mediated by MustReadAlaska’s Suzanne Downing.)
Alaska’s Primary election is Aug. 16, eight weeks and change. Before then, General Election and Primary deadlines provide a to-do checklist for candidates, campaigns, and parties:
June 22: Deadline for General Election candidates for federal/statewide offices, candidates for US Senator, US Representative, State Senator and State Representative to file their Official Election Pamphlet materials so that the division can translate it into the appropriate Alaska Native language to assist limited English proficient Alaska Native voters.
June 27: Primary Election withdrawal deadline for political party candidates.
June 27: Primary Election deadline for candidates to change how their name appears on the ballot.
June 28: Primary ballots certified and sent to printer.
July 8: General Election deadline for judicial retention candidates for Supreme Court, Court of Appeals or Judicial Districts 2, 3 or 4 to file their Official Election Pamphlet materials with the division for Alaska Native Language translation.
July 11: General Election deadline for Division of Elections to provide voter lists to political parties. (120 days prior to General)
July 15: General Election deadline for political party submissions for the Official Election Pamphlet.
July 15: Deadline for REAAs (Regional Educational Attendance Areas) to notify Director of Elections of vacancies.
July 16: Regional election offices open for voter registration 10 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
July 17: Regional offices open for voter registration 12 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
July 17: Deadline to register to vote in the Alaska Primary.
July 22: General Election deadline for party and no-party candidates to file their Official Election Pamphlet materials with Division of Elections.
July 30: Deadline for United States President and United States Vice President candidates to file their Official Election Pamphlet materials so that the division can translate it into the appropriate Alaska Native language to assist limited English proficient Alaska Native voters.
Aug. 1: Absentee In Person, Early Vote, Electronic Transmission (for non-UOCAVA voters) and Special Needs voting begins.
Aug. 5: Deadline for candidates for REAA seats.
Aug. 6: Primary deadline to receive Absentee Ballot Applications requesting a by-mail ballot. Absentee and Petition Office open 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.; 10th day prior to the election.
Aug. 13: Regional election offices open 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. for Absentee In Person, Special Needs and Early Voting.
Former Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan withdrew his name from the US Senate race today by issuing the following statement:
“I was asked just one day before the filing deadline, by conservative leaders that I know and respect, to consider running in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate. I filed the following day to keep that option open as I vetted whether or not that would be the best path forward for my family and for Alaska.
“Over the past two weeks, I have had the opportunity to talk to hundreds of people both statewide and nationally about a potential campaign. It is clear that there is significant financial support available from individuals and organizations for conservative candidates like myself. Additionally, polling data shows that this primary could be extremely competitive.
“However, after evaluating that information and discussing options with friends and family, I have decided to withdraw from the August primary election. I believe I can best serve Alaska by staying in Alaska and working on local and statewide issues. Our recent success with the “Save the Tax Cap” initiative (Prop. 8) is an example of the type of issue on which I will continue to lead.
“I know this announcement will be disappointing to those who encouraged me to run and to those who expressed support after I filed. I can assure them that today’s announcement does not preclude my continued involvement in public affairs or from seeking another elected office in the future if I feel I can truly make a difference.
“Lynnette and I love Alaska and the amazing lifestyle and opportunity it provides us. We are truly blessed.”
NO WORD ON GOVERNOR’S RACE
Sullivan filed for US Senate on June 1 to challenge Lisa Murkowski, Alaska’s senior senator. His name has been mentioned in political circles as a strong possibility for governor, a race that will start in 2017 and could be a three-way contest with sitting Gov. Bill Walker, who is not affiliated with a party, and a Democrat such as Mark Begich.
When asked about his interest in the governor’s race, Sullivan said it was far too early to consider it.
There was a time when your word was your bond in Alaska. Not long after that, you could scribble out an IOU on a bar napkin, and take that to the bank. Those were the days.
Those days might be over, but not for lack of trying by an idealistic journalist with ink in his veins and too much trust in his heart.
That would be the co-founder of the Alaska Dispatch, one Anton Hopfinger, who finds himself locked in an epic legal battle with the woman who took over his enterprise, one Alice Rogoff.
Yes, that Alice Rogoff, married to one of the richest men in the world. The woman who is advising the governor on the restructuring of the Permanent Fund into a Sovereign Wealth Fund, whatever that is. The woman who opened up a Native Arts gallery in downtown Anchorage, got hundreds of thousands of dollars in state grants, and then went out of business. The one who had the president over for dinner last year.
Hopfinger filed a complaint this week in Anchorage Superior Court, stating that Rogoff still owes him the better part of a $1 million for his 5 percent share of the Alaska Dispatch. The proof of the deal? In addition to witnesses present, there is Exhibit A, the bar napkin:
The bar napkin that Alice Rogoff signed two years ago. Tony Hopfinger had the sense to preserve it.
THE START UP
Hopfinger, who left the old Anchorage Daily News to start the online-only Alaska Dispatch with Amanda Coyne, details the history of his deteriorating relationship with Rogoff in the 18-page complaint, which lays out everything from the 2013 purchase of the Anchorage Daily News to a December argument between Hopfinger and Rogoff in the parking lot of the Alaska Railroad.
It’s all there, a textbook case of how Dad was right when he said “Get it in writing.”
Like so many partnerships, it started off rocking and rolling. In 2008, Hopfinger and Coyne were running one of the hottest, scrappiest journalistic properties in the nation, but they were vastly under-capitalized and overworked.
When Rogoff caught wind of the startup operation the next year, she offered to come aboard, essentially as an angel investor. Her timing was good; the deal was struck. Alice would own 90 percent of the operation, and Hopfinger and Coyne would split the remaining 10 percent.
Come 2012, Coyne was out – starting her own blog — and Hopfinger stayed on as editor, growing the property and hiring away all of the top talent from the Anchorage Daily News. He had a separate employment contract, which is Exhibit B in the complaint.
Then Rogoff had the idea of buying the Daily News and consolidating operations. After all, Rogoff discovered, there was value to having a printing press.
By 2013 Rogoff and Hopfinger were in discussion with McClatchy Co. But Hopfinger had his doubts: The dead-tree industry of newspapers was failing. Was it really a smart thing to do?
Rogoff was undeterred. She told Hopfinger that she might bring in other investors, naming Jon Rubini, the CEO and chairman of JL Properties, largest real estate firm in Alaska. That rubbed Hopfinger, still a journalist to his marrow, the wrong way, and the two began making plans for Hopfinger to start unwinding from the entire enterprise. But he’d stay on and help with the merger, the editing, the publishing – all the actual running of the newspaper.
According to the complaint, Hopfinger didn’t know that Rogoff had already formed up a new side company, AK Publishing LLC, which would be a holding company for her growing news empire. No one else knew either, evidently, and it did not come up in a lavish profile written about this maverick Washington socialite who had taken Alaska by storm.
As it became clear that Hopfinger would need to be bought out, he asked for $1.3 million, but accepted Rogoff’s $1 million offer, payable over 10 years, plus $300,000 in ownership of the new company.
By March, 2014, the deal was done. The Daily News covered it this way. From what ex-staffers tell us, it was a pretty rocky merger.
But after that, Hopfinger maintains, Rogoff started in with the delays and excuses. She couldn’t put things in writing just yet, because the bank needed to be kept out of the loop. Maybe Hopfinger began to sense that he was being gamed, so he pressed for an agreement, which came on a bar napkin: “I agree to pay Tony $100K at the end of each calendar year (beginning ’14) for 10 years.”
That’s a pretty loose deal for million-dollar promises and doesn’t come close to capturing the interest owed on what is essentially a 10-year loan. But Hopfinger, Rogoff, and her attorneys were all present when she turned over the napkin to him.
“Show this to the judge if I don’t ever pay you,” she said at the time, according to Hopfinger.
DEVIL IN THE DETAILS
Hopfinger stayed on, managing the merger of the Dispatch with the Daily News. They had to move offices, as the building had been sold to GCI. They needed new printing presses. There was the question of merging the two websites, staffs, and sales territories.
Rogoff made the first $100,000 payment to Hopfinger on Jan. 1, 2015, and that year she worked through her loan issues with Northrim Bank and communicated to Hopfinger that she was ready to sign off more formally on their contract, which she was not able to do earlier without spooking the bank.
But she never made any more payments, according to the complaint. In December, the two argued in the parking lot of the Alaska Railroad Building, and soon thereafter Hopfinger went on a pre-approved honeymoon. After he returned, his job at the new Dispatch enterprise was somehow terminated.
So now we come to the counts of the complaint: The promises made. The promises broken. The verbal agreements. The bar napkins. The employment severance.
It’s all over but the shouting.
The shouting, yes, but also the attorney fees and the lost opportunity, the stress, and the uncertainty. Rogoff, with her endless spigot of funds from her billionaire husband, David Rubenstein, could very well starve Tony Hopfinger for the rest of his life through the legal maneuvers that unbalance the scales of our court system.
Of course, Rogoff has another lawsuit going, which has her vs. McClatchy, a company that she claims pulled the wool over her eyes during her purchase of the Daily News, saying that McClatchy “failed to perform many of (its) obligations, which was a breach of the SPA (Stock Purchase Agreement) and a violation of the implied-in-law covenant of good faith and fair dealing, which is implied in all contracts.” (Update: Case was dismissed at request of plaintiff Rogoff on June 1).
Alice Rogoff has all-but disappeared from the public eye since hosting her presidential dinner last summer here in Anchorage, where she served caribou she’d shot. She did throw an engagement party for her PT Capital partner earlier this month, and 100 attended.
But if she seems to have a furrowed brow, it might be due to the troubles: a financially failing newspaper, a tanking readership, and her good will having all but dried up with her potential advertisers as the state sinks into recession. Becoming the “governor whisperer” to Bill Walker, whom she helped create, has not brought profit.
Her ace may be David Rubenstein — philanthropist, millionaire billionaire husband, financier — who may come riding to her rescue with a satchel of cash and a gaggle of lawyers, because settling with Tony Hopfinger is going to be a lot cheaper than letting this case go to trial.
A page-turner found at Costco: “A groundbreaking World War II narrative wrapped in a riveting detective story,” The Devil’s Diary, Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich, delves into a diary of a member of Hitler’s inner circle.
The diary itself was found hidden in a Bavarian castle at the end of World War II. Its nearly 500 pages reveal the seeds of the Nazi philosophy that led to the Holocaust. Alfred Rosenberg himself was tried and convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg and was executed. That’s when the diary disappeared and did not reappear for 50 years.
Author Robert K. Wittman was an FBI agent when the chief archivist at the U.S. Holocaust Museum contacted the agency to report the diary was being offered by a private collector for a million dollars. The Devil’s Diary reads like a detective novel, full of twists and turns, eccentric characters and unlikely discoveries.
(The original review in the June 13 Must Read Alaska newsletter contained review material from HarperCollins, not intended to represent itself as original work -SD.)
