COMPASS: Points of view from the community
By LORI BACKES
Published: September 2, 2006
Last Modified: September 2, 2006 at 04:38 PM
Editor's note: This column originally ran in the Anchorage Daily News March 03, 2006. It is being credited as the article that launched the name of the 'Corrupt Bastards Club.'
http://www.adn.com/news/government/veco/story/8149379p-8042343c.html
Water bomber gained fame in '80s legislative scandal
By Martha Bellisle
Anchorage Daily News
(Published April 6, 2001)
Juneau -- The only case of an Alaska legislator convicted on bribery charges involved a senator on a finance committee and two Canadair CL-215 water-scooper firefighting planes. These are same type of aircraft now in dispute between some Senate Finance Committee members who want the planes and state fire managers who do not.
It's a coincidence and nothing more, said Sen. Loren Leman, chairman of the subcommittee that recommended that the division use the CL-215 air tanker. Leman said that, while discussing the planes this week, he remembered the old case.
Senator George Hohman
Sen. George Hohman, D-Bethel and Rep. Russ Meekins, D-Anchorage, were on a House-Senate budget committee in 1980. According to Dan Hickey, chief prosecutor on the case, Hohman offered to share up to $30,000 in exchange for Meekins' support of an appropriation to buy two of the aircraft.
Meekins reported the offer. In May that year, a state grand jury indicted Hohman on the charges that he offered to split $20,000 with Meekins, with the understanding that another $10,000 might be added later.
Hohman was convicted in 1982 of two felony counts of bribery, was expelled from the Senate and served a year in prison before his release in 1985.
No bribes have been offered this time, Leman said.
"No, no one has approached me with a brown paper bag," Leman, R-Anchorage, said Thursday. "In fact, nobody has ever, in the 13 years I've been here, approached me with any proposal like that."