City document raises APOC concerns

PALMER — The Alaska Public Offices Commission is looking into whether a document distributed at a mayoral candidates’ forum constitutes a violation of election rules.

Palmer City Manager Bill Allen said he had the document on city finances put together and he authorized its distribution at the Sept. 9 forum at the Palmer Train Depot. He said he got the OK from the Greater Palmer Chamber of Commerce, which was sponsoring the event along with the Greater Wasilla Chamber.

The document is seven pages long and deals with the balance of funds the city keeps on hand, the reasons it added staff members and the way it puts its budget together.

“It was not endorsing any candidate; it was just to lay out the facts that had from various sources been misrepresented, and just wanted to set the record straight,” Allen said. “If it’s something where I violated some APOC regulation, that wasn’t the intent.”

He noted that he’d said pretty much the same things in an article he penned for the Frontiersman and said that part of the job of a city manager is to put out facts to knock down misinformation.

At the forum, candidate Kevin Brown, a sitting city councilman, called out mayoral opponent DeLena Johnson for what he said were distortions of the city’s financial record. A lot of his points — that it was worth the money for the city to bring on a head of public safety and a director of public works — are addressed in the document.

Which is probably a big reason outgoing Mayor John Combs has a problem with it.

He said two councilmen running for mayor, Brown and Mike Chmielewski, were familiar with its contents but the third candidate at the forum, Palmer Museum of History and Art Executive Director DeLena Johnson, was not.

“DeLena Johnson never saw it, she had no knowledge of it,” Combs said. “It was done with city resources, personnel and city time for this candidate’s forum.”

So he told the city clerk and attorney to bring the issue up with APOC. He’s been talking with APOC officials since, but hasn’t been given a firm yes or no as to whether this actually was a violation.

“They’re going to chew on it a little bit longer and get back to the city clerk as far as if there’s any action on it,” he said.

But if this document was aimed at Johnson, what does she think about it? Not much, it turns out.

“I don’t know enough about it to have feelings one way or the other on it,” she said. “If it’s something that it needs to be concerned about, then the Alaska Public Offices Commission will figure that out,” she said.

She said she’s looked over the document and didn’t see anything there that was glaringly incorrect — the graphs it contained are the same ones she’s using in her campaign literature. In the end, she called the investigation a distraction from the election and said she doesn’t plan to let it distract her.

“I’m just going to keep going door-to-door,” she said.

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