Unlike those seeking to defund the police, two Eagle River Assembly members and the president of the Alaska Black Caucus will work together to find the money to pay or equipment for Anchorage police, including body cameras and replacements for squad car camera systems.

Assembly members Jamie Allard and Crystal Kennedy, along with Alaska Black Caucus President Celeste Hodge Growden, are opposed to a proposed special tax levy on Anchorage private properties to pay for the equipment. They think there is a better way than to tax people at this time of economic stress.

The special tax is being proposed by Assembly members Forrest Dunbar, Meg Zaletel, John Weddleton, and Acting Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Allard and Kennedy asked the Assembly to hold off on an ordinance that would have placed the additional property tax on the April ballot.

Allard believes the money should come from the alcohol tax and Hodge Growden believes this is the wrong time for a new tax. She said she is willing to search for grants to help pay for the equipment.

The group will need to come up with $3 million to fund the list that was proposed to go before taxpayers.

Hodge Growden was one of several people who testified Tuesday that this is not the time for new taxes. She reached out to Allard and Kennedy to see if the three women could work together, and on Thursday, they announced their plan to do so.

The Municipality of Anchorage appears to want to make an example of activist Dustin Darden, who is involved in a legal action to recall the acting mayor. They’ve now arrested him twice for trespassing on public property.

On Tuesday, Darden was arrested and removed from an Assembly meeting, after shouting at the Assembly for its actions on emergency orders that have shut down commerce in Anchorage.

But then on Thursday, he was cited again for trespassing for an incident that happened on Monday.

On Dec. 7, Darden showed up at a joint meeting of school board and the Assembly at the Boniface Education Center. When he realized there was no meeting at that location, he left. The meeting had been moved to Zoom. On the ASD website, however, the meeting was noticed for the Boniface location.

It was Thursday when Anchorage police showed up at his workplace and issued him a notice of trespass for the Monday incident. The court file at this point says he remained on the property after being told to leave, but that is not his recollection of the events.

Darden frequently testifies at public meetings in Anchorage and is often passionate and loud in his testimony. His supporters say that he is expressing some of the anger that is felt by Anchorage residents who feel their government is oppressive.

He and David Nees on Thursday had filed a lawsuit to force the City Clerk to give them a recall petition so they can work toward recalling Acting Mayor Quinn-Davidson and Assembly member Kameron Perez-Verdia.

Darden has cited Alaska Statute 11.76.110, which makes it a Class A misdemeanor for someone to interfere with someone else’s constitutional rights.

AS 11.76.110 states: A person commits the crime of interference with constitutional rights if

(1) the person injures, oppresses, threatens, or intimidates another person with intent to deprive that person of a right, privilege, or immunity in fact granted by the constitution or laws of this state;

(2) the person intentionally injures, oppresses, threatens, or intimidates another person because that person has exercised or enjoyed a right, privilege, or immunity in fact granted by the constitution or laws of this state;  or

(3) under color of law, ordinance, or regulation of this state or a municipality or other political subdivision of this state, the person intentionally deprives another of a right, privilege, or immunity in fact granted by the constitution or laws of this state.

(b) In a prosecution under this section, whether the injury, oppression, threat, intimidation, or deprivation concerns a right, privilege, or immunity granted by the constitution or laws of this state is a question of law.

(c) Interference with constitutional rights is a class A misdemeanor.

In a related incident, Must Read Alaska’s coverage of Darden’s initial arrest prompted Assembly member Chris Constant to accuse her of trying to have the Assembly killed.

Constant had been caught on hot mic saying that Darden needed to be thrown out of the meeting, and Assembly member Pete Petersen, also on hot mic, said Darden needs to be “86’d.”

Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s conservative base wants him to sign on as a “friend of the court” in the Texas Attorney General’s lawsuit against four states, which changed their voting rules in the middle of the election cycle.

But that ship has sailed. Dunleavy wrote on social media that his administration became aware of the invitation to join the election lawsuit on the evening prior to the deadline.

And there was just no time to give it serious consideration. His administration views such an action through a federalist lens, not wanting other states, such as New York, to turn around and meddle in Alaska’s sovereign elections.

“I, along with Attorney General Ed Sniffen and his staff, worked quickly to try to understand the merits and intended outcome of the case. Before we could make a decision, the short deadline to join the case had passed.

“As governor of Alaska, I have an obligation to thoroughly understand the facts at hand before committing to such a suit.

“I’ll be the first to admit that I was disappointed that we didn’t have enough time to thoroughly review the details. Had this not been the case, we may have come to a different decision.

“Regardless, I will be watching the suit carefully. Electoral integrity remains a cornerstone of our democracy, and every American should know that their vote matters,” he wrote.

In fact, Alaska has election problems of its own and may want to “stick to its knitting.”

A lawsuit against the Division of Elections by a group of citizens in District 27, is challenging the decision of the Alaska Supreme Court to order an injunction prohibiting the requirement of a witness signature on absentee ballots for the General Election, due to COVID-19. The election is all about election integrity, which the group says has been broken in Alaska.

Five Republican lawmakers have requested the governor join the Texas lawsuit in some capacity, and comments on Must Read Alaska stories indicate dissatisfaction for him not having done so, after 17 other states and the president had formally joined in the effort to scrap the elections of Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.

The lawsuit by Texas AG Ken Paxton alleges those states ’ “failure to follow and enforce state election laws during the 2020 election.”

The Texas lawsuit seeks to delay the appointment of presidential electors in the four states while allegations of fraud and violations of law can be investigated.

Texas lawsuit detail

• Texas is challenging the way that four states conducted their elections in 2020.  Texas claims that the election in these states was flawed because:
  • Signature-verification requirements were abolished or undermined in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan;
  • Ballots were not handled in a secure manner in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin; 
  • Mail-in ballots were treated differently in different areas of each state;
  • Bipartisan observers were excluded in certain counties;
  • The Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended the deadline to receive mail-in ballots. 

What is Texas’ Legal Argument?

• Texas’s main argument is that the Electors Clause (Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution), which says Presidential electors will be appointed “in such Manner as the Legislature [of the state] may direct,” prohibits non-legislative actors from modifying election procedures during any presidential election.
• Texas alleges that non-legislative actors in each of the four states have altered important statutory provisions enacted by the state’s legislature, and that only the legislature can make rules governing the conduct of elections for federal office.
•  These alleged alterations, largely justified based on the pandemic, were made either unilaterally by officials, through the settlement of lawsuits, or by a state’s highest court after litigation.

What does Texas Want?

• Texas asks the U.S. Supreme Court to deem the presidential election results in those states unlawful and remand the issue to the states’ legislatures to choose presidential electors.
• Texas also asks the Court to delay the electoral college vote pending the outcome of this lawsuit.

Other Challenges to this Conduct.

• Many of the allegations in the lawsuit about unlawful modifications to elections procedures have been brought up in other cases, including in the case challenging a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay. 

Anchorage activists Dustin Darden and David Nees today completed legal filings on two recall petition applications that were denied by the Anchorage Municipal Clerk.

The two are challenging the rejection of their request for petitions to recall Assembly members Austin Quinn-Davidson, who is now the acting mayor, and Kameron Perez-Verdia.

“The recall rights in the Alaska Constitution are a basic right and the clerk has infringed on it,” Nees said. “The Constitution states that all political power resides in the people.”

One of the main gists of the recall allegations is that both Quinn-Davidson and Perez-Verdia were derelict in their fiduciary responsibility as it pertained to the federal CARES Act funds the municipality received.

Darden and Nees allege that Kate Vogel, the Municipal Attorney, advised the Assembly how to do a workaround of federal prohibitions on spending CARES Act funds.

“The Inspector General was very specific on how the money could be spent, and it had to be spent according to the guidelines (See exhibit 3). Assembly member Quinn-Davidson in conjunction with other members decided to reallocate the funds to skirt the prohibition. They revised the Ordinance to funnel the funds into the Police and Fireman Reserve and use the reserve money to purchase the buildings. (See exhibit 4)”

According to the complaint, the courts have numerous times stated that the review of the grounds for a recall is to be construed liberally. In this aspect, the complaint cites the case against Division of Elections Director Gail Fenumiai by the Recall Dunleavy Committee, when Judge Eric Aarseth concluded:

“… noting that the recall is a political process and that prior recall cases show that the current claims are sufficient to get the issue in front of voters.” As for the damage done by the governor’s actions, Aarseth said that’s something for the voters to weigh if the recall reaches a vote.

“This is a political process. Neither side, as you would be at trial, is limited to a particular day or a certain number of hours or even limited to evidentiary rules as to what they can present when they campaign, if the recall ballot is eventually issued. In that campaign, they have the ability to explain to the public what the allegations and defenses mean, and what the evidence is or the lack thereof to support each sides’ position. The point is, is that it really only takes a single sentence with a few words to adequately put a person on notice of the conduct that is being alleged.”

According to Nees, the failure to include the implications from Recall Dunleavy v. State of Alaska in their review is a fatal flaw in the advice given to the Municipal Clerk by Municipal Attorney Vogel.

“The attorney also relied on the current, and probably unconstitutional review process” for the Municipality of Anchorage, Nees wrote.

Darden is the activist who the Anchorage Assembly Chair Felix Rivera had hauled out of the Assembly Chambers on Tuesday in handcuffs. The Municipality of Anchorage had the police arrest him and is charging him with trespassing during a public meeting; he has an arraignment date of Jan. 12.

Case numbers 3AN-29-09618 and 3AN-20-09636 have been assigned to Anchorage Superior Court Judges Gregory Miller and Josie Garton.

Nees, a retired math teacher who is acting as his own counsel, split the cases into two to prevent the Municipality from objecting that the cases are combined, thereby further delaying the recall effort and frustrating the applicants, but the cases will likely be joined into one by the court, as they are identical.