Assembly transparency? Not so much. Congratulating Berkowitz was slipped into the order of business, without notice

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The Anchorage Assembly on Tuesday passed a resolution thanking former Police Chief Justin Doll. They passed another one thanking former Fire Chief Jodie Hettrick. They thanked Robin Ward, the manager of the Heritage Land Bank. All were retiring with the changing of the guard in Anchorage, as incoming Mayor Dave Bronson takes the reins. All of those resolutions were in the Assembly meeting packet.

But then there was the unnumbered resolution, slipped in at the last minute.

The Anchorage Assembly didn’t put it on the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting. And neither the members nor the Municipal Clerk included the flowery resolution in the meeting packet available online. It was a secret.

The public sitting in the audience never saw it coming, wasn’t prepared to give public testimony about whether it was appropriate, or even put up more than a rather solitary “boo.” The public cannot even see a copy of this particular resolution because it’s still invisible. You can hear it read aloud by Assemblyman Chris Constant below.

The unannounced, but carefully planned glowing endorsement of former disgraced Mayor Ethan Berkowitz and Acting Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson was read into the record and approved as a resolution.

Berkowitz resigned in October after a scandal involving a former news anchor and some nude selfies. Quinn-Davidson, who was Assembly chair, took over as mayor and served for eight months. During their combined reign, Anchorage slipped into an economic spiral that is still impacting the community today. The Assembly’s Leftist majority, led by then Acting Chair Felix Rivera, blocked election for a new mayor and instead, Anchorage lived under an acting mayor, an acting Assembly chair, and a vacant Assembly seat for eight months.

Read: Journalists cover for Berkowitz again and again

The Assembly, in its recognition of the Berkowitz-Quinn-Davidson era didn’t give each of them their own recognition, but combined the resolution into one laudatory summation of all the good things that Berkowitz and Quinn-Davidson had done for Anchorage, as though they were one administration.

Quinn-Davidson stepped to the podium to accept. For the first time in over 10 months, the plexiglas sneeze barrier that the Assembly had put in front of the podium was gone, and Quinn Davidson was there to receive the thanks of her colleagues on the Assembly, where she will return to her unfilled seat.

Assemblyman Constant had to remind the audience that it was inappropriate to boo as he read the long list of accomplishments ascribed to the two mayors. At the end of the presentation, there was polite applause from mainly the staff in attendance.

17 COMMENTS

  1. Almost as laudatory, and interesting an echo-chamber as the Academy Awards… AQD & the Berk each are given a shiny “Felix”…

  2. How ridiculous,
    Yes, cheating, lying, stealing, under the cloak of darkness.
    What do you expect from the evil, leftists, democrats, whatever you want to call them.

  3. Typical Democrat back-slapping. Another shameless congratulations to the little mayor who doesn’t know how to pull up his own pants. What a laughable moment for this corrupt Assembly. They fooled no one.

  4. Please forgive me but an old logger told me that if Berky got into that news babe’s pants then he deserves special recognition. The trouble is, I doubt he did. I think she saw the photos and laughed. She may have even expressed sympathies for Berky’s wife.

  5. Obviously Berkowitz knew about this. Obviously, since Berkowitz signed off on this obscene commendation, his lack of character is unchanged. One would think that the better half of his marriage would have had a saner perspective and stopped this in it’s tracks……. Evidently, birds of a feather do flock together…….

  6. Did they give little Ethan’s wife an award for what she had to put up with?
    .
    Cannot fathom what positive attributes the dilutive dictator brought to Anchorage.

  7. The assembly spends way to much time in front of mirrors.

    Carpet bagger politicians.

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