Kodiak lawmaker to pay fines after APOC finds years of campaign finance

JUNEAU — A Kodiak state representative has agreed to pay more than $2,000 in civil penalties and repay nearly $14,000 to her campaign account after the Alaska Public Offices Commission found she violated numerous state campaign finance reporting requirements over five years.

Among the violations, APOC found that Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, failed to properly describe expenditures, improperly reimbursed herself for campaign expenses, used campaign funds for legislative business and filed incomplete campaign finance reports.

The violations amassed a maximum civil penalty of $264,350, though APOC reduced the penalty by 99% to $2,643.50 under a negotiated consent agreement.

Stutes acknowledged the violations in a December 2025 letter to APOC two months after former Alaska GOP Chairman Randy Ruedrich filed the complaint last fall.

A July 28 consent agreement between APOC and Stutes said the agency took into consideration how she “immediately acknowledged the mistakes in her reporting and has worked with APOC to bring her reporting into compliance” when deciding to reduce the fine. The agreement was approved at a hearing Monday.

Stutes, a member of the current bipartisan majority, is running for the state Senate seat representing Kodiak, Seward and Cordova after Senate President Gary Stevens, another Kodiak Republican, announced his retirement. She is running against two other Republicans: Carrie Smith from Anchor Point, and Heath Smith from Homer.

APOC found numerous violations against Stutes, with incorrect filings spanning the three legislative campaign cycles in 2020, 2022 and 2024.

The commission wrote that their investigation found “nothing to indicate” that the more serious violations were “intentional or provided a personal benefit to the candidate.”

“But the penalty must also reflect the serious lapses of accountability created by several of (Stutes’) errors,” the consent agreement states, including the failure to identify campaign contributors and failure to account for several thousand dollars across campaign report filings.

Stutes said she found the process to be fair.

“There were mistakes made. I readily admitted to that without issue,” Stutes said in an interview. “Clearly, they were unintentional. There was no intent of defrauding the government or defrauding the state, or trying to sneak anything through, and that was evidenced by the amount of information that I would put on my reports.”

Ruedrich, who filed the initial complaint against Stutes in October 2025, believes that the penalty did not go far enough to address Stutes’ violations.