On Wednesday, almost a full decade after the FBI raided the offices of six Alaska Legislators, the Alaska Legislature\u2019s Select Committee on Legislative Ethics has recommended an $18,100 fine against a former Juneau Representative.<\/p>\n
The ethics committee said Juneau Republican Bruce Weyhrauch violated the Legislative Ethics Act by seeking work from oil services company VECO in exchange for pushing legislation that favored the company. <\/p>\n
The committee has issued several other opinions on other legislators implicated in the VECO scandal, but the latest before Wednesday\u2019s was in 2012, according to committee records.<\/p>\n
In addition to asking Weyhrauch to pay the fine, the committee asked him to write a \u201cpublic letter of apology\u201d to lawmakers and the public.<\/p>\n
According to state law, Weyhrauch can abide by the committee\u2019s request or challenge it in a public hearing or a confidential meeting with a subcommittee.<\/p>\n
Weyhrauch, an attorney, represented Juneau in the Legislature for two terms between 2003 and 2006. He defeated Tim Grussendorf in the 2002 election and Bob Doll in 2004.<\/p>\n
In Weyhrauch\u2019s final year in office, FBI wiretaps overheard him soliciting work from VECO, which was pushing a bill for lower oil taxes.<\/p>\n
Weyhrauch was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2007. The jury supported charges of bribery, extortion, fraud and conspiracy. Fellow legislators Pete Kott and Vic Kohring were also charged.<\/p>\n
Kott was convicted and sentenced to 72 months in prison, while Kohring received a 42-month sentence. Both men were released by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2009 when the Justice Department acknowledged flaws in the federal government\u2019s prosecution of the two men. <\/p>\n
In 2011, Weyhrauch pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of \u201cengaging with unregistered lobbyists\u201d as part of a plea deal with prosecutors. He received a suspended jail sentence a $1,000 fine, and probation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Wednesday, almost a full decade after the FBI raided the offices of six Alaska Legislators, the Alaska Legislature\u2019s Select Committee on Legislative Ethics has recommended an $18,100 fine against a former Juneau Representative. The ethics committee said Juneau Republican Bruce Weyhrauch violated the Legislative Ethics Act by seeking work from oil services company VECO […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2589"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}