By ART CHANCE

I went to a fundraiser for a citizens group dedicated to challenging the Municipal Assembly’s decision to close Assembly meetings to in person testimony for a period.  

They have re-opened them, but Mayor Berkowitz still has the dictatorial power to close them at his whim.  

The group is going to sue, and the objective is to nullify all decisions the Assembly made while meetings were closed to in-person testimony.  I support the endeavor and will help them as I can, including reaching for my checkbook.

I was in a discussion with some attendees of some influence, including a sitting legislator, and there was some interest expressed in revisiting the Open Meetings Act statute and using the original “Sunshine Law,” introduced by then-Alaska House member Ted Stevens back in the Sixties as the starting point.   

Uncle Ted’s version didn’t pass and one of its features that didn’t make the final version was a proposed misdemeanor criminal penalty for public officers who violated the Open Meetings Act.   

Most of the early statutes addressing the ministerial authority of the State included penalties, usually misdemeanors, for State officers and employees who violated them. In my time with the State I never saw criminal charges preferred against a State employee for violating some State act, but we all knew they were there. By the Seventies and Eighties criminal penalties for State employees had become unfashionable and most of the later statutes don’t include them.

As I have argued in other writing, it is a fundamental problem with the organizational culture of the State that it is nobody’s job to make sure the State follows its own rules and laws. In my observation the retirement of longtime members of the workforce has left an organizational culture whose only guiding principle is “we’ve always done it this way,” and few State employees have a clue as to their actual statutory powers and duties; they could plow right over laws and not know it.   

The Commissioner of Administration has made some noises about an inspector general function and a fraud, waste, and abuse investigation unit, but to my knowledge nothing has come of it, and it is getting a bit late in the administration to do something and have it survive the next election.

The most difficult task in writing an open meetings law is defining a “meeting.”  This caused a lot of controversy in Alaska and around the Country in the early days of sunshine laws and open meetings laws. It settled down to a grudging consensus that gatherings of public officers that could produce an action that had the force of law were meetings for the purposes of the laws. But there can still be controversy, especially in the executive branch.

It is pretty straightforward in the legislative branch; a gathering that can result in a decision on the passage or failure to pass of a bill, a repeal, a confirmation of an appointment or rejection of an appointee are clearly subject to open meetings laws. 

Legislative caucus meetings held as deliberative meetings that do not result in a decision with the force of law, are not public meetings. This gets some grousing but it is generally accepted. 

It gets to be an interesting question if posed regarding a majority caucus that has the votes to pass the law or take the action. If the decision is made in caucus, taking it to the floor and just voting your majority makes the minority’s votes a mere formality. Fortunately, nobody has ever put that question to the courts to my knowledge.

It becomes more complicated with the executive branch.  Executive branch officers don’t make laws but they do interpret them and they also promulgate and implement regulations. 

Is a division director, a commissioner, and a lobbyist discussing a policy decision over drinks and dinner at the Baranof Hotel in Juneau a meeting for purposes of the Open Meetings Act? Is a meeting of a commissioner and his directors behind a closed door in the department conference room that results in a decision to take an action, a meeting for purposes of an Open Meetings Act? Is a cabinet meeting that results in a decision a meeting for purposes of an Open Meetings Act? These questions have never been seriously asked, although they have been threatened, and I lived in fear of the answer that our liberal and generally hostile-to-Republicans judiciary might give.

I always took the position that formal contract negotiations with the unions were public meetings, and the unions hated it. I knew that once the Legislature, public, and press saw how boring it was, you’d never see them again. That said, I believe all those cozy agreements to keep negotiations closed, limit press contacts to joint releases, and the like are illegal.   

The biggest driver of the cost of government is the cost of labor, and that cost is largely dictated by the labor agreements; the public should be able to see it done. That said, I’ve negotiated the general terms of a whole labor agreement with just the union’s negotiator out on my boat or on a cocktail napkin in a bar. So, I don’t know how you do business if all the business has to be in a formal public meeting. I think the right answer is much like the answer for the Legislature; the only thing that should be public is something that results in a final product.

In sum, I believe we should revisit the aging Open Meetings Act which dates to a time when the only means to appear other than in person was by telephone on a shaky phone system. The attitude toward that was something like the one-time attitude about voting absentee; you needed a good reason to vote absentee.   

As soon as we got a functional phone system throughout Alaska, the Legislature made telephonic participation from the LIOs so that people in the remote areas didn’t have to make a $1,000 or more trip to Juneau to give five minutes of testimony.  

 I believe the closing of Assembly meetings in Anchorage was a product of a combination of arrogant elitism and ideology.  The very last thing they wanted was to have a “horde of deplorables” descend on them and question their enlightened views. 

We need to fix that.

Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon. 

I am not supporting Ballot Measure 2.  Let me make that more clear: I support any effort to defeat Ballot Measure 2. 

First, I believe in the right of political parties to select their best nominee in a primary. This ballot initiative would leave parties less effective by making their freedom of association less authoritative. 

Even though I was not selected as the Republican nominee this last primary, I support the process for Republicans to elect Republicans.

I am disappointed in the outcome of this year’s primary and think some of the policy priorities were not correct, however the voters spoke and I respect that. I firmly believe that too few vote in a primary, and that is a shame, but it is their choice to leave the outcome to those who do vote.

This initiative also changes some important reporting measures that should be debated in detail and be open to amendment through the legislative process. Too often, complicated measures are proposed to us Alaskans without a good understanding of the context of current law. This portion of the initiative should be rejected.

Finally, the change in voting is wrong. This has a style of first, second and third choice if no clear majority wins. If we can only support one candidate and cast our only vote for them and a majority for that person isn’t achieved, then our vote is thrown out and the others who have many choices will have their vote counted again.

Ballot Measure 2 takes the “one person one vote” away from us and I can’t let that happen.

Sen. John Coghill is the senator for Senate Seat B, Fairbanks.

Ballot Measure 2’s main purpose is not to rid Alaska politics of so-called dark money as its proponents claim. Far from it.

Backers of the 25-page, confusing, and convoluted proposition are trafficking in dark money. They’re deep in it. If dark money had that same red dye as money stolen from banks, you could spot backers of Ballot Measure 2 in a crowd of thousands. 

Ninety-nine percent of the money behind Ballot Measure 2 comes from out-of-state billionaires from New York and California. They aim to disrupt, corrupt and wreck Alaska’s election process. For these outside fat cat Leftists to sell themselves to Alaskans as anti-dark money represents the purest form of hypocrisy. 

What do they want? Most of all they intend to save one of their own. Prop Two backers have a lot riding on the vibrancy, health, and welfare of the Washington D.C. Swamp. 

Ballot Measure 2’s first and foremost objective is to save the Senate seat of the Alaska queen of the D.C. swamp, Lisa Murkowski. For the past 18 years, Murkowski has elbowed, nudged, and positioned herself into the deepest end of the D.C. Swamp. Her reelection is crucial to her fellow swamp creatures. 

Murkowski’s swampiness is why she so fervently and ferociously opposes President Donald Trump on just about everything. Trump came to D.C. to drain the swamp. Murkowski is the embodiment of the swamp. Ranked choice voting proposed by Ballot Measure 2 is a byproduct of the swamp. Ballot Measure 2 = Murkowski reelected = swamp sustainability. 

The ballot measure is intentionally designed to confuse. But its objective is simple: Weed out conservative candidates.    

Murkowski is toast if she runs for reelection under Alaska’s current primary system. She could never again win a Republican primary after she single-handedly saved Obamacare and refused to back U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

The passing of Ballot Measure 2 is her only hope. The swamp needs her back in the Senate in two years. Screwing up Alaska’s election process is the only way that’s going to happen. 

What’s a few million here or there for Lower 48 billionaire swamp creatures to drop into the state to save one of their own?  

It’s important to note that Alaska’s current election system isn’t broken. We saw several Juneau swamp creatures like John Coghill, Cathy Giessel and Gabrielle LeDoux ousted in August. 

Swamp creatures tried this so-called rank choice voting in Maine and it was a disaster. Swampy billionaires spent enough to convince Maine voters in 2016 to fall for their scheme. Like Alaska, Maine is a cheap media market. 

In Maine’s 2018 Second Congressional race among four candidates, rank choice voting allowed the winner to get fewer than 50% of the vote. More than 8,000 ballots were exhausted through multiple rounds of counting. 

“A ballot becomes exhausted when a voter overvotes, undervotes or exhausts their choices. For example, a voter accidentally ranks two candidates as their first choice, or only ranks one candidate who is eventually eliminated from the contest,” wrote Jacob Posik of the Maine Heritage Policy Center.

“The ballot becomes exhausted and no longer contributes toward the final denominator used to determine a majority winner. It’s as if these voters never showed up on Election Day,” Posik concluded.

Ballot Measure 2’s greatest sin is to violate the long American tradition of one person, one vote. 

This is not the first time Murkowski backers were willing to manipulate the election process to make sure she kept her place in the D.C. Swamp. 

During her write-in campaign in 2010 after losing the Republican primary to Joe Miller, state officials changed election rules that year to benefit her. Murkowski’s name was prominently displayed on a list with other write-in candidates outside the polling place. That had never been done before. 

Native corporations danced around the edges of campaign finance laws and dumped millions into Murkowski’s election efforts. The oil companies, lobbyists, the nonprofit cabal, the healthcare industry, deep-state types, and anyone benefiting from federal government bloat and largess also poured in millions to help Murkowski return to the swamp. 

You must admit Murkowski is sly and conniving when it comes to keeping her place in the deep end of the D.C. Swamp. It’s no coincidence many of those working on promoting Ballot Measure 2 are former Murkowski staffers and current supporters. Will voters fall for it? Murkowski hopes so.   

Dan Fagan hosts the #1 rated morning drive radio talk show in Alaska weekdays on Newsradio 650 KENI. He splits his time between Anchorage and New Orleans.