The Mudflats

The mayor of the town sat with his feet on the desk, sucking on a chicken bone and looking out the window, surveying his kingdom. OK, it wasn’t really a kingdom, but that would come. He tossed the chicken bone in the trash can and it landed with a clang as he enjoyed the view from his window. This was a very comfortable chair.

The man who previously sat in the comfy chair didn’t like this new mayor, and the new mayor didn’t like him.  The new mayor didn’t like the old mayor especially because now the old mayor had left the little town and lived far away, and had an even better chair, and a bigger office and the people liked him. He thought about the former mayor and his success as he sucked a piece of gristle from between his teeth. Nope, he didn’t like that guy one little bit.

Into the office came minions. The mayor smiled.   He liked having minions. Even though the minions were smarter than the mayor, they tried not to let him know that. A minion spoke. The minion was slick and he had an ironed shirt and a nice belt, and he used hair products. “The city is in debt,” he said grinning from ear to ear. “This is going to be great.”

“How is it great?” wondered the mayor aloud. The mayor was gazing out the window wondering what the view was like from that other office far away, so he didn’t see the minion roll his eyes.  “It’s great because we can blame Mr. Bigpants the Senator just like we planned, you idiot!”  He didn’t say “you idiot” out loud, but he thought it.

“But, didn’t he inherit a giant debt when he became mayor too?  I don’t remember him blaming that other guy, did he?  How will we get away with that?”  The minion’s patience was wearing thin. He took a deep breath and decided to explain this to the mayor like he was an 8-year old.

“Look. We don’t LIKE this guy. It doesn’t matter what he did, and it doesn’t matter what history looks like, and it doesn’t matter about the actual facts. We’re going to make him LOOK bad. He’s on the other side, and people are starting to figure out that the other side is better than we are, and if this guy does well then it’s going to be bad news for us.  Bad news here, and bad news there.” He gestured in the general direction of the big office on the east coast. “If we can get him out of there, then one of us can take his job!” The minion looked at the mayor for a long time to make sure he understood, and finally a little spark lit up his eyes.

“Ohhhh. I get it.”

“Good.  So here’s the plan.” The minion pulled over a chair and leaned close to the mayor. “We say that he never told us anything.  He never told us there was a problem, he kept all that information to himself, and didn’t let us know. He kept it a big dark secret. He just wanted to be Mr. Bigpants and didn’t care about anyone back here in the town.”

All this thinking was making the mayor warm and sweaty. He grabbed a large stack of crisp $100 bills and began to fan himself. The minion stared at him with a strange expression.

The mayor stared. “What.  I have to use new crisp ones otherwise they’re all floppy and they don’t work.” he said, anticipating the wrong question.

“Where did you get that money?” the minion asked, his eyes squinting almost imperceptibly.

“Oh, I started paying myself a few weeks before I was mayor.  I thought, heck, why not?  $12,000 and change! Although the change doesn’t work very well as a fan so I just threw it in the drawer.   I’m pretty sure nobody’s going to notice, either.  If they did I’d probably look like a raging hypocrite when I talk about trying to save the town money…. But the townsfolk will never figure it out.  People are pretty stupid,” said the mayor with a chuckle.

The minion’s blood pressure rose. “Let’s just review the talking points.  It’s all his fault.  He didn’t tell us.  We had no idea.  And his deals with the firefighters and police will doom the city.”

A voice piped up. A small minion in the corner whose job it was to be the Devil’s advocate said, “But what about all those meetings and work sessions where we did talk about the finances? Don’t they know that there’s paperwork?”

“There was lots of paperwork, but the Assembly didn’t know what was in it! It’s complicated and hard and they couldn’t be expected to go through all of it and understand it… I mean, come on!” said the large minion.

“But isn’t that somebody’s job, to analyze all that paperwork and tell everybody that there’s a problem?”

“Well, it WAS somebody’s job, but no worries. The conservatives on the Assembly got rid of the budget analyst’s office a few years ago,” said the minion, barely able to contain his  glee.  “And now we have to cut services to the townspeople.  They’re going to be so mad! Like if one of them has a house that burns down? We’ve cut back on firefighters! We’ve cut back on the bus service too. We completely eliminated it on the day after Thanksgiving – the biggest shopping day of the year! Retail workers will have to take a cab.  It’ll be awesome.  Libraray hours? (the minion drew his index finger across his throat) Man, they’re going to hate this guy when we get done blaming him.”

“But, don’t we actually have enough money to pay for everything? What about the $10 million we have on hand for such things?”

The minion’s eyes flashed. “Nobody is going to talk about that,” he said with finality. “They’ll be so busy blaming the previous mayor because of our firestorm, they won’t even think of it.”

The Devil’s Advocate was getting tired. “How much is this whole investigation thing going to cost the city? Aren’t you talking all the time about saving money? Shouldn’t you be restoring some of those services and figuring out what will make the town better so people can still use the bus and the library, and have adequate fire and police protection?”

The mayor and the minion looked at each other in silence. “Will you put that damn fan away?” the minion barked.

“And who’s going to write up this report telling everyone our talking points?”

The minion and the mayor both smiled. “Leave that to us.”

***********The End**************

I hope you enjoyed the parable.  I’m sure there will be more chapters in the future.

When Sarah Palin called Alaska “a microcosm of America” she was wrong in a lot of ways. But I’ve been watching with growing fascination how a small group of  conservatives have decided to prove her right in the matter of witch hunting politics, and blaming Democrats for all their problems.

Something amazing happened in Anchorage during the last round of Assembly elections. The Anchorage Assembly all of a sudden went progressive. Nobody was more surprised than I was. It was as though a cloud had lifted.

And, on top of that Alaska elected a Democratic Senator for the first time in decades. Alaska’s congressional delegation had a new kid on the block, and he was a Democrat.  Change was in the air.

Meanwhile, the old cabal did not like it. They did not like it one little bit. A crowded field of progressives and moderates in the mayor’s race split the vote, and a run-off election gave the greater turnout to the conservative candidate, and former member of that Assembly cabal, Dan Sullivan.

So, they decided to do what conservatives do best – whine about things, screw the little guy, manipulate the truth to serve your purposes, blame other people, and do exactly what you accuse others of doing.

Here’s the short story: Dan Sullivan decided to start paying himself with our money not only before the mayor’s chair was cold, but while the last mayor was still actually sitting in it.  Matt Claman was still working as our Acting Mayor when Dan Sullivan decided to start collecting a paycheck on our dime.  He pulled in $12,000 before he even became the mayor. Nice work if you can get it.

When Mark Begich became mayor, he got a city with a $33 million budget gap, and he thought to himself, “Wow. We’d better get to work.” But Sullivan decided he’d take another approach.  And welcome to the blame game.

There are other ways of demonstrating concern and accountability. If the Borough of Anchorage is in financial ruin, why doesn’t Mayor Sullivan do what nearly every other city administration has done, and that is tax to the cap? Instead, Sullivan decided to play political games with real people’s lives in a shameless display of politics and simultaneous self-promotion.

Dan Sullivan has an additional $10 million dollars that would fully fund the municipality. But Sully and his have theirs. They aren’t concerned with the little people; little people that depend upon bus schedules, libraries and emergency services  -  life and death matters that are measured in precious minutes… Minutes that matter when there’s an emergency and the closest fire station is closed-closed because Dan Sullivan would rather cut emergency services than access $10 million in available funds.

Yesterday Dan Sullivan’s attorney Dennis Wheeler released a report saying that Begich:

missed a series of opportunities at meetings and work sessions to spell out how poorly some city investments and revenues were performing as the Assembly deliberated the 2009 budget and four long-term labor contracts approved late last year.

Wheeler also says that “reasonable minds may disagree” with his assessment.  That’s nice to know.  It makes many of us feel reasonable.

Sharon Weddleton, the Chief Financial Officer of the city at the time has documents showing that the Assembly was in fact notified of the problem.

According to a report in the Daily News, she also has found 60 mistakes in the first 43 pages of the report.

Oh, and Dennis Wheeler, who released the report?  He’s wanted his position as city attorney for a while now.  He applied for it when Mark Begich was mayor in 2003, but he didn’t get the job.  Then he resigned from the department and went to work for Governor Frank Murkowski.

When Dan Sullivan got elected, he asked the municipal attorney who had worked for Begich for a ruling about taking that $12,000 before he started working as mayor.  He said no way.  He was not retained.  Imagine that.  But Wheeler was hired as municipal attorney and said it was perfectly fine to take the money!  Whew.

So here we sit, in the middle of the microcosm of national politics today coming in the form of a Mark Begich witch hunt.  Whine, blame, create facts to suit the purpose, and make a big stink to people who have already decided what they think.  Usually trends and fads take a while to come to Alaska, and we’re a bit behind the curve.  Not this time.

Here is Mark Begich’s statement about the piece of swiss cheese also known as “The Wheeler Report.”

It comes as no surprise that the report issued by Municipal Attorney Dennis Wheeler is critical of me and my administration. We should not pretend that this review of the facts was objective, fair or complete. The Sullivan Administration, in concert with a handful of Assembly members, is determined to tarnish the record of my administration and this is just the latest step in that effort. “I cooperated with the Municipal Attorney, provided documents showing information the Assembly had about the state of city finances in 2008 and throughout my tenure as mayor, and supplied facts and information to put those documents in context. I sent Mr. Wheeler several letters inviting him to submit any additional questions he had, but it wasn’t until Nov. 12 – after receiving my fourth such letter and three days before he released his report – that any questions were submitted. I promptly answered those questions (see attachment).

“As I have said since day one, the Anchorage Assembly was fully apprised of all financial information related to the Municipality throughout my terms as mayor. The suggestion that the Assembly was not fully informed about the Municipality’s financial condition is absurd and totally at odds with the record. We held multiple work sessions, issued reports and memos, and fully answered all questions. I could not, however, hold their collective hand to make sure they retained and analyzed the information provided. I think what we’ve seen is the result of an Assembly that eliminated its own budget analyst office and then was unable to keep up with the job they were elected to do. It’s regrettable that some have tried to gain political advantage calling into question labor contracts that were vigorously negotiated and contained terms that were fair, both to the Municipality and to the police officers and fire fighters who put their lives on the line for us every day.

“When I was elected mayor in 2003 and inherited a $33 million budget gap, I didn’t complain about the previous administration. We got to work, closed the gap and pulled the city together. I would urge the Sullivan Administration and the Anchorage Assembly to stop trying to divide the community, deal with the budget challenges they face, and put the citizens of Anchorage above political games.

Here’s a cover letter that accompanied a giant pile of supporting documents, and then a link to the answers to the questions that were finally sent to the Senator just days before the report.

Begich questions