A MUST READ ALASKA EDITORIAL

For weeks, the business of the people of Anchorage has been conducted in what can be fairly described as a political cloister.

In late July, Mayor Ethan Berkowitz forbade the public from entering the Loussac Library’s Assembly Chambers, which is the seat of government in Anchorage.

The public may not observe the Assembly, nor the Planning Commission, nor any other quasi-judicial body performing the public’s business, except via a camera operated at the direction of the Assembly. There is no independent observation, just the government-controlled camera.

The State of Alaska’s Open Meetings Act (AS 44.62. 310-. 312) requires that all meetings of a public entity’s governing body be open to the public. The act also says the meetings may be attended by the public via teleconferencing.

But it’s highly doubtful that the authors of the Open Meetings Act ever intended that meetings conducted in a highly accessible city like Anchorage would be held behind locked and guarded doors, where the taxpayers and civically minded are kept out, even though they have made the effort to get out of their easy chairs and get their weary bodies down to the Assembly Chambers to monitor the political process.

Chapter AS 44.62.312 states that governmental units exist “to aid in the conduct of the people’s business; it is the intent of the intent of the law that actions of those units be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly; the people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them;  the people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know; the people’s right to remain informed shall be protected so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created; the use of teleconferencing under this chapter is for the convenience of the parties, the public, and the governmental units conducting the meetings.”

The section also says that exceptions must be constructed narrowly so as to “avoid exemptions from open meeting requirements and unnecessary executive sessions.”

What is going on at the Anchorage Assembly is the big work-around, designed by Mayor Berkowitz with his emergency powers, and aided and abetted by the presiding officers of the Assembly — Chair Felix Rivera and at other times Vice Chair Meg Zalatel.

The mayor has been granted extended executive powers by the Assembly, and he has used those powers to burden the public. Now he uses them to also exclude the public, so that they may not look their lawmakers in the eyes while laws are broken, spending is appropriated, and ordinances are passed.

The defense will be, of course, that it is televised, but that is a defense that cannot stand. Nowhere in the history of the State have people been under orders to not attend public meetings, and the use of cameras is an inadequate substitute. Viewers cannot see the entire body of lawmakers, but are limited to watching one or two at a time; indeed some of the lawmakers are not even attending the meetings themselves. Viewers are only seeing what the cameraman allows them to see. Anchorage voters cannot see if the mayor is in the back of the room conferring with his advisers, or on the phone. The public cannot witness if their lawmakers are chatting off camera during testimony.

Those who signed up to testify by phone are occasionally hung up on mid-sentence, or they cannot put their views on the record at all because the call-back to them from the clerk does not go through for one reason or another.

The Anchorage Assembly is deep into troubled waters with its flouting of the Alaska Open Meetings Act, and it’s provoking a lawsuit. Already, one member is now subject to recall (Meg Zalatel) for being arbitrary and capricious with the “no public” rule, by inviting one member of the public into the meeting for the purpose of testimony, while excluding all others.

The Municipal Attorney Kate Vogel went further, as she tried to explain why a protest of that emergency order was illegal:

To be clear, the Assembly in Juneau is also in violation of the Open Meetings Act, as it conducts its meetings remotely via Zoom, without the public being present. Assembly members do not need to feel the heat of public condemnation when they’re comfortable in their own castles.

Anchorage is now on Day 164 of the Mayor’s Emergency Powers. On Tuesday, the Assembly will hold yet another secretive meeting, at which it will tackle the controversial ban on “gender confusion conversion therapy” for those under 18 years. That proposed law would mean therapists can encourage young people to follow their gay impulses, but cannot advise them to not do so. The ordinance is being advanced by the three openly gay members of the Assembly and the public is not allowed in the building once again.

They’ll also take up a new tax proposal on vaping products. They’ll decide issues concerning who will have emergency powers if the mayor becomes incapacitated. They’ll vote on establishing an Office of Equity and Justice under the mayor. And the mayor will be asked to give a report on what he has done lately; it is unlikely he will discuss his violations of the Open Meetings Act.

How long will the cloistered meetings go on? How long will the public be prevented from looking their lawmakers in the eye? When will the voters say they’ve had enough?