Supreme Court ruling today awarded full attorney fees to citizen advocate Russell Biggs, after the Anchorage Municipal Clerk obstructed and delayed 10 months the release of a recall petition against Assembly member Meg Zaletel.
The blocking of the citizen recall effort against Zaletel cost the city $30,000 in legal fees, as well as another $100,000 for a special election that had to be held, when the delay prevented the recall from being placed on a regular election ballot.
The recall was prompted after Zaletel and leftists on the Assembly improperly closed the Assembly chambers to the public in July of 2020. The public could not witness the diversion of millions of dollars in CARES Act funds that were funneled to special project of the former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz and his Assembly allies.
Zaletel joined the municipal lawsuit in an attempt to block the recall petition. Biggs appealed this issue to the Supreme Court of Alaska, where Zaletel and Clerk Barbara Jones lost. The recall effort went forward, but the delays cause by by the Municipal Clerk Jones and Zaletel, led to the recall having to go to a special election, which gave Zaletel time to get national Big Union money to help her. Because it was a low participation election, she was able to survive. The delays worked.
The Recall process is incredibly difficult, expensive, and time consuming, Biggs said. It should not be made harder by highly partisan meddling of the Anchorage legal team and should not take a court case costing tens of thousands of dollars to work the mechanism that is available to citizens that allow them to hold their Assembly members accountable for clear violations of law.
Why isn’t Zaletel footing the bill for this?
Why should she? That’s what the serfs of the Muni are for.
I wouldn’t be surprised he gets worse hate mail than mrak. Here’s a thank you note- thank you Biggs for your persistence, courage, and intelligence to call out these bad shepards out slaughtering helpless docile sheep one by one. I know there are more private citizens like Biggs whom he serves as others example knowing they need to use the same skills they possess for anchorage.
I can iterate with enough emphasis: When municipal elections (assembly) were perverted into ‘non-partisan’, THAT was the evil empire’s rise. If I do not have enough information about a candidate on a ballot, or took/had the time to research it, their party affiliate has historically been my sufficient decision – unapologetically. This was TAKEN AWAY FROM ME at the ballot box, and with deliberated strategy. The last thing evil is is ‘stupid’. This was a coordinated election-meddling tactic, costumed with ‘unification’ rhetoric that has PROVEN anything but unifying. They know full well that people vote party lines, and knew removing party identification was a means to aspire to the seat along with their campaign disinformation, omissions, lies and misdirection. My right to know the party affiliation of the people on a muni ballot was stripped from me, and I want it back.
Zalatel and Jones should be personally liable for these expenses. Although this was a leftist majority hit job, personal liability may help the socialists reconsider their tactics if they had personal skin in the game.
It’s hard to believe that anchorage doesn’t have a newspaper that would allow journalism such as this
Thanks Suzanne and MRA
It doesn’t matter to the majority voters as they believe their tax dollars are not wasted. Until it affects their wallets they won’t get in gaged to vote. If the media would publish where the money goes and stay on it like the do Trump more people would get involved. The city spends thousands of dollars on this BS.
The majority of the people who bothered to vote are just fine with it. The Assembly has been up for change repeatedly since the beginning of the Berky takeover.
Zero seats have changed hands.
Simple math says the people who bothered to vote are happy with Soviet style life. The ones who didn’t bother to vote deserve what they are getting.
Anchorage is lucky to have Russell Biggs. God bless that man’s indominable spirit.
Municipal Clerk Barbara Jones is grossly incompetent & eventually will cost the City serious money. Why does this troll even have a job at this point?
Thank you Mr. Biggs for your efforts.
Good luck on actually being compensated for your costs. Sadly, I don’t doubt that there will be more appeals and delays in processing the funds, lack of funds available, forms improperly filled out, forms lost, forms inadvertently lost and or destroyed and a lack of experienced personnel to process the refund.
AND WE HAVE A WINNER !!!!!! the once 50 people waving signs has finally accomplished something BIGGS ! 3 years of this %$#*&^$%^&%)*&$)_%^$
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