Alaska's audit watchdog gets a new leader, inheriting a fisheries probe and a new power over the governor

Alaska's independent audit office is changing hands. Mark Lundahl takes over as acting legislative auditor on Aug. 31, the day after Kris Curtis steps down, and a legislative committee voted Thursday to nominate him for the permanent job. Because the legislature is out of session, he can start running the office right away, before any confirmation vote.

The office is the state's spending watchdog: it audits agency budgets and checks whether the government is following its own laws. Curtis leaves it after 34 years with the division, the last dozen as its top auditor, and drew unusually warm send-offs. Committee chair Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson said every reference Lundahl provided recommended him "with flying colors," and Rep. Andy Josephson praised Curtis pointedly: "She stood up for us, and she stood up for the power of the auditor under law, even when it was under attack."

Lundahl, a certified public accountant who was Curtis's deputy and says she mentored him for years, inherits two consequential pieces of work.

One is a special audit of the state Board of Fisheries, ordered by the committee in July after complaints about how the board operates. It will examine whether the board followed state law, ethics rules and public-notice requirements when it adopted regulations and took up proposals outside its normal cycle.

The other is a power the office won over the governor's objection. During the August special session, lawmakers overrode the governor's veto of a bill requiring the Department of Revenue to hand over oil and gas tax records to the legislative auditor, giving the office a look into state oil and gas taxes it did not previously have.