By ANCHORAGE DAILY PLANET
It is interesting that the city’s new $115,000-per-year equity officer, heading up the wholly unnecessary Office of Equity and Justice and put on the payroll by the city’s recent appointed mayor, cannot be fired or laid off without the Assembly’s consent.
Clifford Armstrong III, late of Tacoma, Wash., was that city’s equity in contracting and workforce development program manager before he was hired for a four-year term in Anchorage.
An ordinance to form the office, and submitted by former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, was aimed, hizzonor said, at moving the city toward “becoming a more welcoming and inclusive community.”
Berkowitz resigned later in disgrace during a scandal involving a local news reporter. The ordinance won Assembly approval. It created the Office of Equity and Justice and set its $180,000 a year budget. Armstrong then was hired by Assembly-appointed, placeholder Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson.
The office, mind you, was swaddled in bureaucratic gibberish from Day One, with its creating ordinance including a farcical laundry list of duties. For instance, the chief equity officer would “establish baseline equity data targets/benchmarks in collaboration with partners and establish goals and initiatives to make progress and processes to track outcomes” and “develop methods to determine how disparate impacts will be documented and evaluated” and “collect, evaluate, and analyze indicators and progress benchmarks related to addressing systemic disparities.”
Holy cow! Nothing like analyzing indicators, establishing baselines and tracking outcomes to get a city on the right track. Kick in some disparate impacts, documented whatzits and evaluated howzits and you really have something, we suppose.
Creation of the office was little more than a bad joke, a nifty way for the Left to push its agenda with government blessing and at taxpayers’ expense. Anchorage already has the Office of Equal Opportunity, the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, the Ombudsman Office and the Resiliency Subcabinet. (Whatever the heck that might be.) Oh, and and then there is the Alaska State Human Rights Commission and private nonprofit organizations such as the Alaska Institute for Justice. We’ve already got equity and justice up to our ears.
Along with a lot of other malarkey, one of the many things in the ordinance that caught our eye was this: “The office of equity and justice shall have such assistants and employees as are necessary to perform all required duties.”
“As necessary?” How long will it be before the office does what bureaucratic offices do? It will grow, become more entrenched, more costly and more intrusive.
We will wind up paying a bunch for something else we do not need. We can thank our Left-leaning Assembly.
It is bad enough that our country is going to Hell, but somehow it’s even more disturbing to see this level of conspiracy in my home municipality.
I second that!
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And what is even worse than that, is the apparent acceptance and agreement with all this extremist nonsense and power-grabbing moves by the nine sociopaths on the municipal assembly (Kennedy and Allard excluded).
Anything to hurt our new excellent mayor!
Anything to hurt the People!
Let’s just hope that voters don’t become complacent next election day and allow this kind of BS to continue. Was a time when crooked politicians would be run out of town on a rail.
Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson was a joke, unqualified, unethical and corrupt. Anchorage will pay for her mistakes.
Yes, corruption abounds in Alaska! Perfect example is, Berkowitz and Murkowski!!!
Disgusting to say the least?
Years ago when I was just a kid working at BP on C Street, if management wanted to get rid of a problematic employee, they’d put them in a windowed room near the rear entrance to the parking lot so everyone else could see that person sitting at an empty desk doing nothing. The issue eventually resolved itself. Not the most kind solution but, effective. The same could be done with Mr. Equity and Justice if the Mayor’s attorney can’t find a solution. Ironic that our feckless and expensive assembly have, in premeditated fashion, attempted to put a veil of invincibility around both Mr. E&J and the yet-to-be appointed Shadow Mayor. Perceptions are king and these two situations really suck. When you’re writing that check out for your house payment, think about the love letter you received from our illegitimate former stunt mayor decrying state government for having to raise property taxes. Then, add up these two employee’s salaries, the nonrefundable deposit on the vacant Alaska Club and who knows what else they’ve pissed away.
Plaintiffs ER attorneys have cooked up a body of case law. Today if you isolate a problem employee in tiny office with no windows, or all glass, and take away his/ her/ they responsibilities to sweat them out, you will be filed with a lawsuit.
The term is “constructive discharge”.
Liberal judges love to sock it to bosses who try this.. Back pay, damages to reputation and sometimes reinstatement. It’s not like the old days when you called them in the office at 4:30 on Friday and used that famous line “You’re fired! “
I share your views, Brad, but I sometimes feel the deck is stacked with the ridiculous judicial opinions.
Brad! That is absolutely horrible punishment! The management was more out of their minds than the victim.
I think we could never make one person’s life like another’s, and we will never get someone (without Christ) to accept and love someone they dislike and hate.
I can’t believe the Muni charter allows for the assembly to push positions into the Administative branch of the Muni that the mayor has no control over. This violates the separation of powers in the muni, in my view. Adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to the taxpayer’s burden, with no benefit, is NOT representing the constituency.
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