Acting Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson has a soft spot for municipal workers who have worked through the pandemic.

She has authorized four hours of extra vacation time, so workers may leave early or take a half-day off, as they choose.

In a letter to the municipal employees, Quinn-Davidson wrote that it has been a “very challenging year,” and that beginning Monday, each of the workers will get that extra four hours of leave deposited in their accounts, to use as they wish.

“While 2020 has brought many changes to our daily lives, your commitment to the residents of the Municipality has been steady,” her letter said.

“You make the lives of Anchorage residents easier and happier in so many ways.  Thank you for service and support,” Quinn-Davidson wrote.

For workers, such as code enforcers who make $24 an hour shutting down businesses on behalf of the mayor’s emergency order, that is a $100 Christmas bonus in the form of time off.

In a Zoom conference call with potential supporters, Anchorage Assembly Chair Felix Rivera spoke about how he has a group that is suing to stop a group of citizens from recalling him.

“This is the time to fight,” he said. “This is our time to do good and keep this majority on the Anchorage Assembly. We start that by sending a clear message in court that this is frivolous, that if you want to take me out, guess what, I’m up for reelection here soon. So come at me in reelection if you wanna take me out. But recall is not the way to do it, folks. So let’s win this.”

Rivera and his group called Midtown Citizens Coalition is trying to stop the grassroots group that calls itself Reclaim Midtown, which is trying to recall Rivera and is collecting signature in Assembly District 4 to do so.

Wearing a prison-orange t-shirt, Rivera said that 2020 is “the year of transparency.”

Transparency is at the heart of the recall effort, as it turns out. Alaskans for Open Meetings filed a lawsuit against Rivera and others on the Assembly for violating the Alaska Open Meetings Act in August, passing numerous controversial measures while shuttering the public from the public process, including locking people out of the Assembly Chambers.

Must Read Alaska has learned that a canvasser who answered an petition employment ad placed by the Reclaim Midtown group, was reached out to by Rivera.

“Felix Rivera is paying me more $$$ NOT to petition…Goodbye,” the man told the Recall committee via text, withdrawing his offer to collect signatures.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy appointed Anchorage lawyer Tim Terrell to the Court of Appeals.

Terrell has been an Alaska resident for 49 years and has practiced law for over 29 years. He graduated from the University of Oregon School of Law in 1990, and his Bachelor of Arts in American/United States Studies/Civilization from Pomona College.

He is a senior attorney with the Office of Criminal Appeals, Department of Law, in Anchorage. Terrell is a registered nonpartisan voter who lives in Chugiak.

Alaska Court of Appeals is a three-judge panel made up of a chief judge and two associate judges. The chief judge is appointed by the Alaska Supreme Court’s chief justice to serve a two-year term. The terms are for eight years. Terrell is not subject to confirmation and is taking a new seat on the court.

The Alaska Judicial Council met via videoconference on Nov. 16-17 to interview applicants for a position on the Alaska Court of Appeals. Following its meeting, Brooke Berens, Trisha Haines, and Timothy Terrell were nominated as the most qualified applicants to fill the Alaska Court of Appeals judicial vacancy.

The governor had 45 days in which to make the appointment from among the nominees.

If Ryan Zinke of Montana was a great Secretary of Interior for Alaska, Deb Haaland of New Mexico could be the worst for the state, where oil is the fuel that runs both the state and private sector economies.

Biden’s nominee for Interior has supported the Green New Deal since the beginning, as a backer of the movement to end fossil fuel extraction.

If confirmed, the congresswoman will be in charge of the Biden agenda to keep oil on federal lands in the ground.

“I just feel like our priorities are so messed up right now,” Haaland said in 2018. “We need to protect every single open space that we possibly can,” she told The Guardian newspaper. She evidently appreciated the story the newspaper did on her because she posted it on her official website.

Haaland wants fossil fuel development phased out completely on federal lands. Her home state, however, produces more oil from federal lands than Alaska does, and is the third poorest state in the nation, for income per capita. Her views on oil on public land would be tough on her own people.

Rep. Don Young, a Republican from Alaska, earlier this year praised Haaland as a “consensus builder” and said that at the Department of the Interior she “would pour her passion into the job every single day.” But the confirmation of her doesn’t take place in the House. That’s the job of the Senate, and right now, it’s unclear if the Democrats or Republicans will control the Senate — that decision is up to Georgia voters.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska generally does not comment on nominees before she meets with them and often waits until they’ve gone before committees so she can listen to them.

Both she and Sen. Dan Sullivan will be put into a corner on Haaland’s nomination because, in the Senate, they’ll be on the record, and if she does pass confirmation, a vote against her from Alaska may turn Haagland sour on the 49th State.

“I am wholeheartedly against fracking and drilling on public lands,” she said in 2018. “Public lands are a statement about who we are as Americans The most pristine and beautiful places in our country should never belong to one person.”

Her views on public lands will be considered an attack on resource development for not only oil and gas, but for mining and timber in the West, where the majority of public lands are situated.

But nowhere in America will this nomination matter more than in Alaska, where the federal government owns 62 percent of the land.

You can read more about Haagland at her website at this link.

Vice President Mike Pence received his COVID-19 vaccination on national television today, in what looked like an effort to calm the concerns of the Republican base that the vaccine is safe.

The Kaiser Family Foundation has been monitoring pubic attitudes about the COVID-19 vaccines, to find out how receptive Americans are to getting the vaccine.

In the KFF research, hesitancy among Republicans is at 42 percent, much higher than the national average.

The percentage of Americans who are receptive to the vaccine is growing. 71 percent say they will take the jab, compared to only 63 percent in a September survey that was conducted in partnership with ESPN.

About 27 percent of the general public remains hesitant, saying they either won’t get the vaccine if it’s available to them for free and considered safe by scientists.

The Must Read Alaska poll on Facebook is yielding a different result. Of the over 1,000 who took part in the MRAK poll in a 16-hour period, more than 850 said they do not trust the vaccine, while fewer than 60 said they do.

The MRAK poll is not scientific and the readership of the Must Read Alaska Facebook page leans Republican.

Nationally, vaccine hesitancy tends to reflect political leanings. In the KFF poll, of those ages 30-49, just 36% were hesitant to take the vaccine, and 35% of black adults said they definitely or probably would not get vaccinated. One third of those who say they are categorized as essential workers and 29 percent of those working in health care are also hesitant.