Assembly to mull strong mayor

PALMER — Though he doesn’t think it’s got much of a chance of passing, a Mat-Su Borough assemblyman will ask his colleagues tonight to put a proposition on the ballot that could create a strong mayor form of government.

Assemblyman Mark Ewing, who represents the Wasilla area on the assembly, said the resolution he has had placed on the agenda for tonight’s meeting is all he needs to get the matter put before voters.

Essentially, the measure would place more power in the borough mayor, currently a position whose most consequential role is to break ties on the assembly and occasionally veto assembly actions.

Were voters to approve the measure, the borough would look more like Anchorage, Fairbanks or Wasilla, with the borough mayor making day-to-day decisions rather than the borough manager. The current manager, John Duffy, is just a month away from his announced resignation date.

Ewing said he’s heard criticisms that now is not the time for a change in how the borough does business. Talis Colberg, the current borough mayor, has said previously he thinks such a measure should come at the end of his term and not now, when he’s barely begun to serve.

Ewing doesn’t buy it.

“We have a resignation going on and we have an able-bodied (assistant borough manager) Elizabeth Gray who can man the ship,” Ewing said.

Nevertheless, Ewing said he doesn’t think his measure has a good chance of passing, but he thinks it’s the right thing to do. The way things stand now, he said, the assembly, rather than the voters, pick the person in charge.

“I think it’s an insult to the voters to tell them, ‘We don’t think you’re intelligent enough to pick a leader,’” he said.

He compares the upcoming assembly vote to the one it took on the idea of a borough sales tax. Ewing said in that instance his colleagues misread the voters, who overwhelmingly rejected a borough sales tax. In this instance, he said, he thinks his colleagues will again misread their constituents and choose not to put the question on the ballot.

But, he said, his colleagues do so at their own peril.

“People will remember that vote that really bothered them,” Ewing said, pointing as evidence to what happened in the most recent election to incumbents on the assembly who voted to put the sales tax measure on the ballot. “Not one of them were voted back in.”

And even if it fails, Ewing predicts the idea of a strong mayor won’t die with the assembly. He said he recently got word from the borough clerk that Jennie Bettine, president of the Conservative Patriots Group, has begun the process of putting together a petition to put the measure on the ballot. Bettine testified in favor of Ewing’s resolution when the assembly first saw it in late May. Ewing said he thinks the prospects are good for a petition drive.

“That’s how we’re going to get this on the ballot,” Ewing said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.