Assembly won’t spend tax money to promote bonds

PALMER — There are a whole lot of bonds on the October ballot in two complicated packages, but the Mat-Su Borough has decided to continue its tradition of not spending public money to advocate for them.

On Tuesday, assemblyman Vern Halter had an item on the Mat-Su Borough Assembly’s agenda that would have paid $9,000 to advocate for the bonds.

His move required a change to a borough ordinance specifically prohibiting that kind of thing. State law says that a borough or city, the University of Alaska, or the state itself can campaign on behalf of bond propositions and ballot questions, but only if the entity puts the decision to spend the money on the record through an ordinance or other official means.

So the assembly can do this, but by the time the item got to the assembly table, it didn’t even have Halter’s support. He took the unusual step of deciding not to move the item forward for consideration. His colleague, Mark Ewing, did it for him.

“I’m going to move this strictly to speak against it,” Ewing said. “It’s not fair to the taxpayers to use their money to influence opinion one way or the other.”

Halter spoke next saying that the packages are a complex lot — $215 million for a myriad of school projects spread over five years and $31 million for a myriad of road projects spread across the borough.

“My impression is that we need to improve these roads. I’m all for it, but I’ll accept that we shouldn’t use taxpayer money to promote it,” he said. “I’ll try to promote it personally, I guess.”

Assemblyman Ron Arvin pointed out that paying to promote ballot measures is a dangerous step for the assembly to take.

“What would happen if a group moved and got signatures by petition to put something on the ballot because the assembly rejected the idea and didn’t vote to put it on the ballot?” he asked. If the assembly spent its money to fight against that initiative, “Now, passage of this thing would pit the assembly against the public, and I can’t imagine a worse situation than that.”

Former assemblywoman Jay Nolfi was the only member of the public to testify on the measure and her opinion of it wasn’t favorable.

“Government presents an ordinance, government presents facts, government has final say of adoption or not,” she said. But with this ordinance, “government goes even farther and wants to spend public money to promote passage.”

Ewing noted that the borough already spends plenty of money just putting together packets of information for distribution to voters before elections.

“I understand Mr. Halter bringing it forward and his concerns about the road bonds, but we already spend quite a bit of public money getting this information to the voters in the form of the voter pamphlet,” Ewing said.

As could probably have been predicted when Halter declined to move the legislation, the measure failed to get any votes.

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