Yesterday, the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (APFC) Board of Trustees held an emergency special meeting to discuss the leak of emails to the Alaska Landmine.

The emails obtained by the Landmine showed that Trustee Ellie Rubenstein had set up meetings with Permanent Fund staff and her billionaire father David Rubenstein, as well as money managers who are investors in her own private equity fund.

After the public portion of the meeting, the board voted 4-2 to go into executive session to discuss the leak. Interestingly, Board Chair Ethan Schutt, along with Trustee Craig Richards, voted not to take up the matter in executive session. Trustees Adam Crum, Jason Brune, Ryan Anderson, and Ellie Rubenstein voted to go into executive session. Four votes are required on the board for a majority.

During the public portion of the meeting, Crum and Brune defended Rubenstein. But Richards, without naming Rubenstein directly, was critical of her interactions with staff as well as her attempts to directly engage money managers on behalf of APFC. The discussion and vote for executive session demonstrated a clear divide on the board.

The meeting was held virtually on Webex. The executive session portion of the meeting was supposed to only include board members and some staff, but for unknown reasons members of the public were able to attend. This allowed members of the public to observe what should have been a closed executive session. This was akin to a door being left open in the Capitol during an executive session of a committee, allowing anyone outside to listen in.

A member of the public who attended the entire two and a half hour executive session provided extensive notes to the Landmine. The source also provided multiple screenshots of the executive session, proving that they were able to attend. We have redacted their name to protect their identity.

Rubenstein, who remained quiet during the public portion of the meeting, became animated during executive session, according to the notes.

The notes suggest a high degree of palace intrigue within the Permanent Fund board and staff. For example, at one point APFC CEO Deven Mitchell and Scott Balovich, the head of IT for the APFC, were asked to leave the executive session at the request of Rubenstein, according to the notes.

After Mitchell and Balovich left, Rubenstein said she was surprised that they had not been more concerned about forwarding APFC emails to personal email accounts. Richards then weighed in, saying that staff are “covering their ass” by documenting things. Richards also said he was more concerned about employees feeling uncomfortable than about the leak itself, according to the notes.

There was discussion about the original Landmine story, and speculation about which staff could have been the source of the leak, according to the notes. There was also discussion about a possible external investigation into the leak. Oddly, the notes do not indicate any substantive discussion about the content of the leaked emails. Instead, the meeting was intensely focused on identifying the source of the leak.

According to the notes, Brune and Crum seem to think CEO Deven Mitchell was the source of the leak. Rubenstein then voiced concern about staff writing unsecure memos. She then asked Richards for his opinion, and mentioned that they had gone out of their way to not put their suspicions about Mitchell in writing, according to the notes.

Crum and Rubenstein then both voiced concerns about staff, according to the notes. Crum said that he no longer wants to have one on one meetings with staff. Rubenstein then stated she has issues with the CIO, Marcus Frampton, and does not trust him to handle private equity.

Earlier in the executive session, the notes stated Rubenstein expressed frustration that some staff may have transferred APFC emails to private email accounts. Extensive discussion followed regarding IT policies about emails, according to the notes. Rubenstein mentioned that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) does not allow forwarding emails to private accounts, and accused Frampton of having done so.

Brune referenced an email he sent to Mitchell with a list of questions about the source of the leak, according to the notes. Mitchell said he asked all the staff who received emails if they were the source of the leak. They all said no.

Rubenstein then asked if “Rachel” was the source of the leak. It’s unclear who Rachel is, but Balovich responded that she did not show up on the Exchange system, according to the notes.

The notes also stated that Anderson asked whether possessing the leaked emails was a crime. Mitchell said that that was Rubenstein’s concern as well. But Mitchell indicated that he felt possession of the leaked emails itself was not a crime, but that the release of the emails may have been a crime, according to the notes. Mitchell also said he hoped there was not someone in the organization trying to undermine it.

The notes stated that Rubenstein expressed concern about staff making “unchecked allegations.” She went on state that there had been no head of private equity for nine months, and that Frampton had worked to undo relationships. She said it was “baseless” to conclude that she had pressured Frampton into investing Permanent Fund money into companies she’s connected with. She also said she had no idea a Permanent Fund staffer had met with Carlyle, according to the notes. Schutt then weighed in, saying that she was straying from the executive session topic.

The notes state there was extensive discussion about whether to issue a statement that the board had conducted an investigation into the leak. Mitchell pushed back, stating that that an IT review had been done, not an investigation.

Rubenstein asked if there was a way to check if personal cell phones had been used to forward emails, and added that it appeared someone had taken photos of the emails, according to the notes.

Brune asked if a search had been done to see if anyone “was stupid enough” to email Jeff Landfield. Balovich said it had not been done, but they could, according to the notes.

Brune also seemed to want to look at who has cultivated relationships with Jeff Landfield, according to the notes.

Yesterday, the APFC issued a statement that they were aware the public had been able to access their executive session.

What in Alaska counts as a village? When it comes to state money for drinking water improvements, the definition can be fraught.

In a close vote, the Alaska House on Wednesday passed a bill that would add six road-system communities to the list of rural communities that qualify for the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Village Safe Water program.

Technically, the measure, House Bill 114, would expand the definition of “village” as used by the program, to include communities of up to 1,500 people from the current 1,000 threshold. It would also allow unincorporated census-designated places to be added to the list of eligible villages.

If it wins final passage in the Senate, the measure would expand the list of program-eligible villages to include Talkeetna, Sutton-Alpine and Buffalo Soapstone in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Funny River on the Kenai Peninsula, Tok in the Interior and Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope.

The bill’s consideration comes at a time when abundant federal money, much of it made available through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is flowing into Alaska for rural water and sanitation upgrades. Much of that funding comes to the Village Safe Water program through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Alaska Native Villages and Rural Communities Water Grant Program.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, said the Village Safe Water program has done much over the years to improve Alaskans’ lives and that more Alaskans should have access to its benefits.

The program “stands as a beacon for our commitment to public health and environmental stewardship providing essential aid to upgrade sanitation and water facilities in rural areas,” McCabe said in floor debate.

Four years after the last federal census, the Village Safe Water program is now due for a revision in the way qualifying villages are defined, McCabe said. The last such revision was in 2011, after the 2010 Census, he noted.

The 22-18 vote followed floor debate that was emotional at times.

Opponents said they worried that adding the six road-accessible communities to the village list would put them in competition for funds with truly needy and remote rural communities.

“There are a number of communities that are struggling – struggling to get basic water infrastructure, that don’t have access to the road system, that don’t have the ability to take an hour and half drive to Fred Meyer’s, that have to deal with a number of insanely high grocery prices, that have to deal with realities that are completely departed  from the rest of the state,” said Rep. CJ McCormick, D-Bethel. His rural district encompasses Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta villages that are poverty-stricken, remote and, in many cases, lacking basic water and sanitation services.

Rep. Alyce Galvin, D-Anchorage, recounted a visit she made to a Tanana Chiefs Conference event where she learned about the dire water and sanitation needs in remote Indigenous communities in Alaska’s Interior. Solutions for those villages could be delayed if new communities compete for program funds, she said.

“We’re looking at making a change that will have a deep effect on many Alaskans who have been waiting a long time for their share of the pie. What I mean by that is, there are a finite number of dollars going to water and sewer projects,” she said. In contrast to the truly rural areas, which are remote, challenged by environmental conditions and high costs, for communities closer to urban areas, “there are boroughs, there are municipalities, there are ways we can put together money,” she said.

Rep. Ashey Carrick, D-Fairbanks, said the six communities that would be added include some connected to very large cities. Talkeetna, for example, is an hour’s drive north of the fastest-growing urban communities and less than two hours’ drive from Anchorage, she said.

“And then there’s Prudhoe Bay. I almost have to laugh at that one because I’m not quite sure how an industrial population technically connected by a haul road used to haul a huge variety of goods and services up the road is technically a village,” she said.

Others criticism focused on what opponents said was a lack of vetting by the public and by rural-serving organizations. Rep. Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, named the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the Alaska Federation of Natives as organizations that needed to be better consulted.

“If this measure doesn’t make it through this year – and I have my doubts – let’s have this conversation. Let’s do it right. Let’s bring everybody to the table,” he said.

Bill supporters, however, said an expansion of eligibility for the Village Safe Water program is justified and that water and sanitation needs extend beyond rigid geographic boundaries or classifications.

Rep. Mike Cronk, R-Tok/Northway, reeled off a list of villages in his sprawling Interior district that are on the road system but are officially classified as villages and are facing some of the same water and sewer problems that exist off the road system: Northway, Tetlin, Tanacross, Dot Lake, Eagle, Chitina, Tazlina, Copper Center, Gulkana, Mentasta, Gakona, Minto, Circle and Tanana. And he added in larger communities with significant Native populations: Kenny Lake, Nenana, Manley, Central and his hometown of Tok. Tok would be among the six communities added to the list of qualified villages.

He grew up in Northway, he noted, and the first house he bought was a cabin without running water. “I had two kids, and I hauled water, and we used an outhouse. So I know how that feels,” he said.

Rep. Frank Tomaszewski, R-Fairbanks, another bill supporter, said that even in Fairbanks, Alaska’s second-largest city, there are hundreds and possibly thousands of people who live in “dry cabins,” homes without running water.

House Majority Leader Dan Saddler, R-Eagle River, recounted 1990s-era pledges of former Gov. Tony Knowles to “put the honey bucket in the museum,” a slogan that the Democratic governor used to refer to retiring the plastic-bag-lined buckets that rural residents sometimes use as toilets.

“Over the last 30 years we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and untold hours of labor to do that, using federal money, using state money, using state labor, to the undisputed benefit of Alaskans,” he said. There has been “tremendous progress” over the years through the Village Safe Water program, he said. “This measure, I believe, seeks to extend the benefit of that program simply to more Alaskans,” he said.

McCabe, in his wrap-up pitch for the bill, pointed out that villages getting grants through the state program must pass through a qualification test that assigns scores.

And he defended the idea of Village Safe Water grants for Talkeetna, a community about 60 miles up the highway from his hometown of Big Lake.

“People are stopping alongside the road on the way to Talkeetna to their dry cabin in the middle of the winter in the dark, when it’s icy and cold, to fill up their water jugs,” he said. “I’m wondering why Talkeetna can’t have some part of the pie that we talked about, that the representative from Anchorage talked about.”

The bill is now on track to be considered by the Senate, though it may get a reconsideration vote in the House.