Anchorage Assembly majority leaders Suzanne LaFrance and Chris Constant issued statements on Monday opposing a draft ordinance that would have the people of Anchorage elect the Municipal Clerk, rather than having her appointed by the Assembly.

At the Regular Assembly Meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 23, the Assembly will take up AO 2022-13, an ordinance put forward by Mayor Dave Bronson that would ask voters if they want to amend the Anchorage Charter. With the statements issued by the two leftist leaders of the Assembly, it’s clear that the ordinance will fail.

At least some members of the public would like to take away the power the the Assembly over the Clerk, especially after numerous instances of election irregularities, refusal to release petitions that have been requested, and stonewalling members of the public who make public records requests.

The Municipal Clerk is responsible for a broad range of municipal functions, including clerking Assembly meetings, overseeing municipal business, running municipal elections, administering certain business, liquor, and marijuana licensing, coordinating and staffing the Boards of Adjustment and Ethics, and maintaining Assembly records. 

Assembly Chair Suzanne LaFrance said that if a clerk was elected who had no professional credentials for the position, the clerk could end up being a partisan politician “who is beholden to political leaders and campaign donors to retain their position.”

Currently, the clerk is beholden to political leaders on the Assembly.

“The proposed ordinance is a solution in search of a problem,” said Assembly Vice Chair Constant. “The Clerk’s Office runs efficiently with high ethical standards in service to the public and this proposal could damage that high level of service and proficiency. Given the current events around the mayor’s staffing and human resource practices, he’s not in a good position to make recommendations for how other branches of government should be organized, so we look forward to putting this idea to rest permanently.”

Constant is the politician who delivered an expensive bouquet of flowers to Clerk Barbara Jones during the middle of the counting of ballots last year, while he was working feverishly on the mayoral campaign of Forrest Dunbar. Clerk Jones owes her job to people who can remove her if she does not comply with their instructions or bend to their political pressure.

The ordinance offered by Bronson asks the public if they want the position to be elected by the people. It is not a vote on whether Jones should be the clerk.

Last year, the voters in Carlsbad, Calif. were asked whether or not they wanted their city clerk to continue to be elected or to be appointed. The citizens, allowed to vote on the matter, chose to continue with an elected clerk.

The Anchorage ordinance, which proposes a change to Anchorage Charter, requires a two-thirds affirmative vote by the Assembly. If passed, the change would be presented to qualified Anchorage voters as a ballot proposition in an upcoming election.

Assembly leadership, which has managed the Municipal Clerk in such a way as to sow distrust in the public, submitted an Assembly Memorandum with their position on the item: ancgov.info/AM455-2022.

The Assembly meeting starts at 5 pm on the ground floor of the Loussac Library. The meetings are also live on YouTube, although the video feed is often muted during times when the Assembly chair doesn’t want the public to view what is happening in the chamber.

More information about the meeting is at this link.

Dark-money political group Sixteen Thirty Fund, an arm of Arabella Advisors, are active in Alaska elections again. This year, it will be Ballot Measure 1 they will try to defeat.

Ballot Measure 1 on the November general election ballot asks voters if they are ready for a constitutional convention to make adjustments to Alaska’s Constitution that the people feel are appropriate. Constitutional convention ballot questions come up every 10 years, and Alaskans have always voted them down.

But after former Gov. Bill Walker destroyed the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend calculation, which was in statute, lawmakers in Juneau have fought over the dividend for months on end every year.

Some would like the calculation of the PFD to be set into the Alaska Constitution and out of the hands of legislators. That could be done through a constitutional convention. Alaskans could also reform how judges are appointed; right now, the Alaska Bar Association has near total control of that process, which has led to an activist judiciary branch.

The leftists and their lawyers of Alaska, after working for over a year to fight a constitutional convention, created “Defend Our Constitution” to scare Alaskans. The top three funders of Defend Our Constitution are the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the National Education Association, and IBEW-Alaska’s political action committee.

“A single, cryptically named entity that has served as a clearinghouse of undisclosed cash for the left, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, received mystery donations as large as $50 million and disseminated grants to more than 200 groups, while spending a total of $410 million in 2020 — more than the Democratic National Committee itself,” The New York Times reported in January.

Last year, the Sixteen Thirty Fund funned money to support Forrest Dunbar for mayor of Anchorage. It was one of many Democrats the group funded with contributions from a Swiss billionaire trying to sway American Elections.

A complaint filed by the Americans for Public Trust said that a $35,000 contribution to a Dunbar-boosting group called “Building a Stronger Anchorage,” was financed with foreign money.

According to Defend Our Constitution, “We don’t want special interests to remake Alaska’s constitution for their own gain. Alaskans across the spectrum are committed to defending our document and keeping it in the best interests of Alaskans. In 1955, dedicated public servants came together to draft Alaska’s state constitution. The document they produced is renown for its thoroughness, protection of individual liberties, and functionality. It’s worked for the last 50 years and been held up as a model to other states, so let’s not let politicians scapegoat our constitution for their dysfunction.”

In reality, the group is made up of special interests instructing Alaskans to vote against the convention, and thus in favor of groups such as the NEA, which stand to gain every dollar taken from Alaskans’ Permanent Fund dividends.

“Calling a constitutional convention would open a Pandora’s box,” the group writes on its website. “Calling a constitutional convention would create political chaos, cost millions of dollars, and create negative consequences for Alaskans. If dark money special interest from the Lower 48 were allowed to re-write our founding document, they’d change it to benefit themselves. Our founding document has served us well for over 50 years. If it needs to be amended, there’s a way to do that – and we’ve done it before. Calling a constitutional convention is unnecessary and will create a host of problems for Alaskans for years to come.”

Part of the Sixteen Thirty Fund web of influence

Even Alaska’s biggest political news organization, the Alaska Beacon, is part of an organization founded and originally funded through the same umbrella Arabella Group.

“The nonprofit watchdog OpenSecrets (published by the Center for Responsive Politics) reported in May 2020 on Arabella’s involvement in numerous “fake news sites,” pouring millions of untraceable dollars into advertisements and other digital content “masquerading as news coverage to influence the 2020 election,” wrote InfluenceWatch.

“OpenSecrets identified five Facebook pages (Colorado Chronicle, Daily CO, Nevada News Now, Silver State Sentinel, Verified Virginia) that “gave the impression of multiple free-standing local news outlets,” but are in fact “merely fictitious names used by the Sixteen Thirty Fund,” Arabella’s 501(c)(4) lobbying nonprofit. These pages published Facebook political advertisements that favored Democrats and left-wing causes during the 2020 election. After the report was published a number of these pages were deleted,” InfluenceWatch reported.

“States Newsroom, which runs another network of left-wing “fake news” websites, was originally created as “Newsroom Network,” a project of the Arabella-run 501(c)(3) Hopewell Fund,” InfluenceWatch wrote.

“In June 2019, States Newsroom was spun off as an independent nonprofit with its own 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, but a number of its local affiliates are used by the Hopewell Fund as its own legal aliases,” InfluenceWatch wrote.

According to the New York Times in January, the largest left-leaning non-profits funneling money to Democrats are:

Alaskans don’t yet know how much the Sixteen Thirty Fund is willing to spend to make sure Alaskans don’t approve a constitutional convention, but it will likely be in the millions.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund recently awarded Alaskans for Better Government, a group pushing a tribal sovereignty initiative onto the ballot, seed money of $250,000. But a law signed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy has removed that ballot initiative from consideration, since the state has now formally recognized tribes through statute. It was because of the funding from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, funneled through the liberal Anchorage-based campaign entity Ship Creek Group, that lawmakers took action and ensured the passage of the look-alike legislation in the Senate and House, thus avoiding a ballot measure that would drive liberals to the polls in November.