Alaska Communications Chairman Charles Robinson said, "The universal service fund is important to every telephone company in Alaska." He said Stevens had "done a great job in preserving it."
The senator said his actions had "benefited all Alaskans and all Alaska communications companies."
Stevens stands to be an even more valuable ally in 2005, when he's scheduled to take over as Commerce Committee chairman.
Robinson combined the Fairbanks and Anchorage phone companies to create Alaska Communications in 1999, and took it public in the fall of that year.
As is common before companies go public, a select group of insiders was allowed to buy stock at a bargain price, in this instance $6.15 a share, the documents show. In this group were several financiers and others involved in creating the company, including Bittner, who was and is the company's Washington lobbyist.
Though she was not on record as an officer or financier for the company, Catherine Stevens ended up with some of the bargain shares. Robinson said he knew she had shares but did not remember how she obtained them.
Alaska Communications issued 42,248 shares to Chamer Co., which Catherine Stevens owns with Bittner, their sister and their mother. She purchased 16,250 of those shares and sold them a year later, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Ted Stevens did not report the shares on his ethics report for 1999, the year Chamer acquired them.
Ethics rules require disclosure of activity by a family-owned business, in detail and in the same year a transaction occurs.
The deal was not reported until 2000, after Catherine Stevens had sold her shares, most of them at $9.25, for a profit of at least $47,000.
Rubini, the developer of Centerpoint I, said Chamer also had an interest in that project. He said Chamer put up $250,000 for a 3% short-term stake in Centerpoint I that earned a 15% return on investment.
Records show Chamer also invested $125,000 in an earlier Rubini syndicate.
Stevens did not disclose either of these investments on his Senate financial forms.
Although Senate ethics rules encompass his wife's financial activities as well as his own, Stevens sought to distance himself from Chamer.
"I have no interest in that company, do not participate in its meetings, nor do I participate in any decisions related to its business activities," he said Monday. His wife did not respond to telephone messages on Tuesday.
Back in Washington
Stevens continues to push for money and other benefits for Alaskan interests -- including nearly $400 million in pending legislation to help tourism, education, the environment, scientific research, roads, fisheries and the war against fetal alcohol syndrome.
There's also $2.5 million to survey the seabed for a fiber-optic cable connecting Kodiak Island, Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula; Alaska Communications Systems serves both Anchorage and Kodiak.
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Researcher Mark Madden in Washington assisted in this report. Staff writer Judy Pasternak in Washington also contributed.
