Although the Anchorage Assembly held interviews of the five candidates for an open East Anchorage seat in public on Friday, and while the interviews were live on YouTube, they have been not posted for the general members of the public who were not able to watch them during a meeting that occurred during the workday.
Thus, the public knows who won the vote — Stephen “Joey” Sweet — but doesn’t know what questions were asked of candidates or how they answered them.
The Municipal Clerk’s Office was supposed to post the interviews, but only posted the actual vote on the replacement for Forrest Dunbar, who left the Assembly to serve in the Alaska Senate.
Normally, live broadcasts go dark and are reposted on YouTube the following day. In this instance, the interview process went dark, and never came back, at least not as of Sunday afternoon, which means the public doesn’t have access to what should be an open meeting covered by the Open Meetings Act. Several readers have asked for the link to those interviews, which led to the vote for Sweet to serve out the remainder of Dunbar’s term. The public is especially interested in the questions asked of the applicants, since the Assembly has another vacancy to fill this month, this time for Eagle River.
No explanation has been given for blacking out the interviews. The voting for Sweet occurred after the interviews on Jan. 6, and was posted normally:
