Day 23: 'It's like you don't give a hoot about our community.'
“Have you seriously considered resigning?”
Good mid-morning, Alaska! It’s day 23 of the Alaska Legislative session.
It’s a jam-packed week already, so here’s the high points: Things with Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson are getting worse by the day and the Anchorage Assembly is demanding answers and accountability. In one of the more heated hearings in a while, Assemblymembers voted to sue the administration for the release of what they said is a hollow investigation conducted into the hiring of a health director with a phony resume. They won’t let the city’s executive session laws protect the administration’s secrets, they argued. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan called on the Legislature to show its support for the Willow project during his annual address; An odd note about crime in Anchorage, Mat-Su and Kenai; and a hearing with mostly Republican men on contraceptives went about as you’d expect. Also, the daily schedule.
Current spice level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
‘It’s like you don’t give a hoot.’
Amid the ever-worsening tire fire that is the Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration—whose many controversies were encapsulated in the latest product of the Anchorage Daily News/ProPublica partnership entitled “From Penis Cookies to Spying: A Growing List of Allegations at Anchorage City Hall”—the Anchorage Assembly came loaded to its Tuesday-night meeting loaded for bear.
“My husband and I decided to make Anchorage our home, we decided to raise our children here and to see it being handled like this is so incredibly painful, and so unnecessary,” said Assembly Chair Suzanne LaFrance. “Yes, I am upset, forgive me folks, but this is really hard to take, Mr. Mayor. I don’t understand your behavior. It’s like you don’t give a hoot about our community. So, I think it’s time you address us all and tell us what the heck is going on with your administration.”
Assemblymember Kameron Perez-Verdia noted the many high-profile resignations and allegations that Bronson has not only condoned a toxic work environment rife with retaliation and harassment, but has personally contributed to it.
“Your administration is crumbling. What’s going on and what are you doing about it?” he asked. “Have you seriously considered resigning?”
“I have not considered resigning in any way, in any fashion whatsoever,” Bronson replied, and then responded—as he has done with any efforts to shed light on the situation in City Hall—that it’s all wrapped up in personnel issues that he will not publicly address in any fashion whatsoever.
Also: It Was Good to Be Friends With the Mayor. Then the Investigations Began.
To that end, the Anchorage Assembly responded by authorizing a lawsuit to force the release of the investigation that now-former HR Director Niki Tshibaka apparently did into the administration’s failure to vet former Health Director Joe Gerace and the tapes from corresponding executive session to discuss the investigation. An Alaska Public Media investigation found that Gerace had fabricated large swaths of his resume, confirming allegations raised at the time of his confirmation. The Bronson administration pledged an investigation into the issue.
Tshibaka—who during the confirmation process dismissed the easily verifiable allegations as “pure character assassination”—was set to answer a second Assembly subpoena on Tuesday night, but resigned on Monday. In his letter, he indicated he was only given a day to vet the concerns.
When asked about that line by Anchorage Assemblymember Meg Zalatel, Bronson again hid behind the claims of it all being a personnel issue.
Members of the Anchorage Assembly said they had little choice but to move ahead with releasing the investigation and corresponding meeting to the public. They didn’t offer any details of the investigation during the meeting, except to say that there wasn’t much there and what was there wasn’t confidential.
Anchorage Assemblymember Austin Quinn-Davidson said there’s no reason to keep any of it secret other than to protect the mayor’s secrets and conduct.
“I’d like to say to the public we were duped into going into executive session. The reason we were given wasn’t really valid and when we got into executive session, we learned there was nothing confidential there, and that’s a dangerous precedent. It’s us, as the assembly the legislative and oversight body that represents the people of Anchorage, being asked to keep this administration’s secrets,” she said. “That’s not OK. I think we definitely need to demand transparency and this is one way to do that. Really, put it to the courts to decide if the document and/or tapes be made available. We wouldn’t be here had the administration been honest with us in the first place.”
The Anchorage Assembly voted 11-1 with only Bronson-friendly Assemblymember Randy Sulte voting against the measure.
Why it matters: I’ve increasingly been hearing questions about why the Anchorage Assembly doesn’t move ahead with removing Bronson from office, but I think that would be the easy way out. What they’re looking for here is accountability and clarity on what’s going on with the Bronson administration. A full public record will be better than letting him crawl back into the shadows or, worse, become a political martyr fueling the far-right heading into an election with a big chunk of Anchorage Assembly seats on the ballot. Still, it doesn’t exactly help getting the roads plowed.
Follow the thread by Anchorage Deadbeat: The Anchorage Assembly meeting
More reporting: Alaska Public Media/Anchorage Daily News/KTUU
A (grim) silver lining for Anchorage, of sorts
Not everything is bad news for Anchorage.
In a joint hearing of the House and Senate State Affairs committees, Department of Public Safety Commissioner Jim Cockrell had this to say about how and why the crime rates differ between Anchorage, Mat-Su and the Kenai.
“A lot of our serious crimes in the Mat-Su Valley are committed by Anchorage residents. Part of the reason I think it is is because Anchorage has stepped up their patrols, stepped up their number of officers, so it’s a lot easier to come to the Valley and rape and pillage than it is in Anchorage, and that’s what we’re seeing,” he said. “If you look at our crime stats in the Mat-Su Valley, it’s staggering. Our troopers are getting run ragged, and I could say the same thing about the Kenai Peninsula.”
Background: The fact that much of the Mat-Su Valley has its policing provided by the state has been a long-simmering issue that comes up whenever Valley legislators start grousing about all the state services provided to other parts of the state, like the Alaska Marine Highway and rural power cost equalization. Areas like the Mat-Su, Kenai and the Fairbanks North Star Borough (outside of the cities, which mostly do have their own police) have much of their policing done by the troopers despite having the tax base to feasibly stand up their own police forces. The boroughs have refused to voluntarily take those powers and duties on.
You’re so close!
The House Health and Social Services Committee heard Fairbanks Democratic Rep. Ashley Carrick’s House Bill 17, which would require insurance companies and Medicaid to cover 12-month prescriptions of contraceptives. It’s a long sought-after piece of legislation that aims to take the headache out of having to regularly refill such prescriptions.
This being a committee chaired mostly by Republican men, it was about what you’d expect with a question that conflated emergency contraceptives with abortifacients, and several questions that essentially boiled down to “If 12-month coverage for contraceptives is so good, then why don’t we do it for everything?” So close, guys!
Here’s Rep. Carrick’s far more diplomatic answer:
“There is a substantial population of Alaskan women who are asking for this legislation, and so this bill could potentially could be more comprehensive and include other types of medications but this is in direct response and proportion to the amount of previous testimony in previous legislatures, individuals in rural Alaska who have asked for this, women who work in professions outside of an urban area,” she said. “That’s why this bill has been brought forward.”
Division of Insurance Director Lori Wing-Heier also chimed in that point, noting that frequently the shorter-term prescriptions have a therapeutic purpose like doctors wanting to check in on blood work and other levels. She said that’s not really the case with contraceptives, but a doctor could give a shorter prescription if it was a concern.
Daily schedule
The House Education Committee gets an overview of the Alaska READS Act at 8 a.m.
The House budget subcommittee on Education meets at 9 a.m. to get an READS act overview
The Senate Finance Committee has a pair of non-budget bills on the agenda at 9 a.m. in SB25, which seeks to clean up the state’s defunct accounts; and SB38 dealing with interference with emergency services
The House Committee on Committees is set to meet at 10 a.m. to update standing committee assignments to reflect that Rep. Stutes is officially in the minority
The House budget subcommittee on Natural Resources has a noon overview
House Judiciary meets at 1 p.m. to get an overview of the Law’s Civil Division
House Resources meets at 1 p.m. to get an overview on project permitting
House Finance meets at 1:30 to get an update on federal infrastructure spending
Senate Judiciary meets at 1:30 for an “Informational hearing on Department of Justice investigation of the State of Alaska’s behavioral health system for children”
Senate Labor and Commerce meets at 1:30 for workforce challenges
House Labor and Commerce meets at 3:15 for hearing on affordable housing
Senate Education meets at 3:30 to hear SB14, which deals with reemployment for public employees and teachers; and to take public testimony on SB52, the BSA increase bill
Senate Resources meets at 3:30 to get an overview of the Cook Inlet tax structure
The House subcommittee on Labor gets a department overview at 5:30
House Ways and Means meets at 6 p.m.
Dan Sullivan addresses the Legislature
Alaska U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan delivered his annual address to the Alaska Legislature on Tuesday. It was a long one that ran past noon, touching on issues like resource development, legislative accomplishments, Big Bad Biden and Chinese balloons.
His main call to action for the Alaska Legislature is for them to quickly pass a resolution supporting the permitting of the Willow project on the North Slope. The project recently got good news in the form of the latest environmental impact statement from the Bureau of Land Management, which found it could meet environmental standards if they limit it to three of the five planned wells.
“Please draft up another resolution, pass it, so we can show people in D.C.—by the way, certain congressmen are claiming Alaskans and Alaska Natives don’t want the Willow project—so we can show them and say, that’s not correct,” Sullivan said.
The release of the BLM report gives the Department of Interior 30 days to finalize the decision, which Sullivan warned could be impeded by villainous environmentalists.
Stay tuned.
I wonder what we'd find if we checked Dave Bronson's ....."credentials."