Alaska state elections attorney says it’s OK for candidates to temporarily conceal finances

An attorney defending the Alaska Division of Elections against a lawsuit argued in state court Friday that candidates for state office are not obliged to disclose their finances when they file for office.

If that argument is upheld in court, it would upend existing practices and could end voters’ ability to examine political candidates’ personal finances in the early stages of a primary election.

The lawsuit in court on Friday was filed by the Alaska Democratic Party, which is challenging the eligibility of Jose Roel Tagle to run for Alaska House District 22. Tagle, a Republican, is the only challenger to incumbent Rep. Ted Eischeid, D-Anchorage.

The Alaska Democratic Party challenged Tagle’s eligibility after he filed a completely blank Public Officer Disclosure Form alongside his candidacy application. State law requires candidates to use that form to list all income — including Permanent Fund dividends — that a candidate and their immediate family received during the previous year.

The Division of Elections frequently rejects candidates who file no form at all.

Despite Tagle’s blank form, the Division of Elections accepted his candidacy and rejected the Democratic Party’s challenge, causing the party to file suit. 

In front of Anchorage Superior Court Judge Josie Garton, Alaska Department of Law attorney Griffin Deitz said that filing a blank form is acceptable because the relevant law gives candidates 30 days to make corrections.

“A candidate could comply — they could submit a financial disclosure, as Mr. Tagle did here, that was blank, and then if there are financial interests to be reported, could report those at a later date,” Deitz said.

This year, Alaska’s candidate filing deadline was June 1 and election day is Aug. 18. If a 30-day delay becomes common, almost half the primary campaign season could elapse before voters are informed about candidates’ personal wealth.

Garton, from the bench, asked: “Why wouldn’t every candidate file a blank form?”

Deitz appeared to briefly struggle for an answer.

“In this case — well — I couldn’t begin to guess why candidates would or wouldn’t do so,” he said. “But they have that 30 days. So the presumption that the (Division of Elections) would make in this case, Your Honor, is that the Legislature intended to provide this grace period so that people could file at the very last minute and then bring that financial disclosure into compliance before the election.”

Attorney River Sterne, representing the Alaska Democratic Party, said that position is unacceptable.

“An important thing here is that filing a totally blank POFD is the same as not filing a POFD at all,” he said, arguing that the Division of Elections should have excluded Tagle from the primary election ballot.

In written arguments before Friday, and again in court, Deitz argued that the Alaska Public Offices Commission — not the Division of Elections — is the agency that should determine whether a POFD is properly filed.

The Division of Elections does not have investigation powers, he said, and is thus unable to judge. Tagle may have no income to report, Deitz suggested.

Sterne countered that other public records clearly list Tagle as the officer of a privately held company, and there is no “de minimis” exemption for reporting shares of a privately held company if the profits are vanishingly small or nonexistent. Given that, he said, the Division of Elections could easily conclude that Tagle’s filing was incorrect.

Neither Tagle nor the Alaska Republican Party filed legal briefs in support of Tagle’s candidacy ahead of Friday’s oral argument. The party’s chair, Carmela Warfield, did not answer a phone call or email asking why not. 

Regardless of how Garton rules on the lawsuit, Tagle’s candidacy appears unlikely to proceed. As of Friday, Tagle had not amended his financial disclosure form, meaning that even under the Division of Elections’ interpretation of the law, he is beyond the 30-day grace period.