Today’s Must Read

Until now, real estate developer Bob Penney looked like maybe he just enjoys helping out Alaska politicians. (Like giving Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) half off on a prime piece of land.) But in today’s edition of The Hill, it’s starting to look more likely that at least his relationship with Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) fetched him more in return than he’s admitted. And Stevens’ help neatly coincided with his involvement in a highly profitable land deal orchestrated by Penney.

Reporter Manu Raju trolled through public documents and spoke with Alaska officials to confirm that Stevens quietly slipped Penney’s group, the Kenai River Sportfishing Association, $4.5 million in earmarks between fiscal 2004 and 2006 to research salmon populations in the famed river and a connected stream.

The spending laws do not specifically say the money was targeted for the group, but the funds were given to it after Stevens’s office instructed the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to do so, according to officials there.

Penney has long fought for sport fishermen to get increased access to the Kenai, much to the chagrin of commercial fishing industry groups, which are fierce competitors with sport fishermen over salmon allocations. Officials from the commercial fishing industry say that the group shut them out of determining how to spend the earmarked dollars, alleging the sporting group is using the funding to lay the groundwork to help them at the commercial sector’s expense.

All of the fish-money funneling took place right around the time Penney brought Stevens in on a Utah land deal that turned a $15,000 investment into $125,000 in just one year. Penney told the Anchorage Daily News at the time (2004) that he and his fellow investors invited Stevens in “appreciation for all he’s done for Alaska and the country. We respect him very, very much.”

Stevens has strong ties to the Kenai River Sportsfishing Association. Every year he co-hosts a $1 million fundraiser with Penney called the Kenai River Classic. The Fourth of July event brings pols and CEOs together for a weekend of fishing, eating cigar smoking, and influence swapping. The Anchorage Daily News heard Stevens describe the event in 2002:

”We invite people we think can afford to put a contribution into the till,” [Stevens] said, ”and people they want to meet.”

The Hill noticed a few other perks Stevens received the same years as he earmarked the money: a $1,400 rifle in 2003; a pistol worth $1,800 in 2004; an $800 revolver in 2005; and an $850 Marlin Guide gun in 2002.