For the past 14 years, U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miler has owned or controlled 40 acres with a two-story house near Willow, but he does not report it in his Senate financial disclosure statements.
The deed for the property is recorded in the name of something called "The Wilmington Trust," but the woman named as the trustee says she had no idea of the exact nature of her legal connections and obligations to the property. Whether a trust actually exists is unclear.
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When he took a job as a state magistrate in the late 1990s, he filed an Alaska Public Offices Commission report that listed the owners of the property as three of his children and their interest in the property as a "trust.'' The property was at that time reported to be vacant. In the years that followed, Miller added additional children to the list of named owners, and changed the state of the property from a trust to an "ownership-trust,'' or an "ownership, trust.'' The property was reported to be a "rental'' in a 1999 report and a "rental-farm" in a 2000 report.
The land was purchased in 1996. Former owner Arnie Hrncir said he gave in to a low-ball offer from Miller because he really needed to sell. Hrncir didn't say how much Miller paid, but land in the Willow area was going cheap at the time.
Miller had been working for a year or so as an attorney at an Anchorage law firm, although in 1995 he'd signed a sworn statement that he was indigent. That claim allowed him to save $50 on a state hunting and fishing license; he got a license reserved for the poor for only $5.
Before purchasing the cabin, he and his wife, Kathleen, began work on a costly addition to their Anchorage home that more than doubled the assessed value of what had been a $93,100 house. And shortly after that, the Millers went shopping for their out-of-town hideaway.
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On paper, the land Hrncir sold to Miller is in the name of "Bobbi Reed,'' trustee for The Wilmington Trust. Reed is an old friend of Miller's wife, Kathleen.
Reed lives in Anchorage, but tax statements are sent to her at an address in Fairbanks. The address is the post office box for the Law Offices of Joseph W. Miller.
In an Oct. 19 interview, Reed said the property is Miller's. Attorneys familiar with federal campaign disclosure laws say that if that is the case, Miller should have reported it on his Senate filings.
