Colberg vetoes ethics ordinance

PALMER — Mayor Talis Colberg is now 2-1 in his veto record.

The Mat-Su Borough mayor has issued three vetoes since he came into office in a special election a year ago. Most recently, he struck down an ordinance that would have made it so borough employees who leave their jobs can’t come back as a consultant for three years.

Colberg said in his veto memo that he wanted to give a committee re-working borough ethics rules time to do its work. That committee hasn’t finished yet, but has looked at the relevant sections of code and decided on a one-year hiatus for former employees looking to get into consulting work.

Colberg also wrote that he also saw a danger that the ordinance could have been construed as applying to just one employee — outgoing borough manager John Duffy, who has since left his job as manager and said he has no plans for what to do next.

“In order to avoid that implication I am vetoing this ordinance,” Colberg wrote.

In the meeting at which the assembly voted 5-2 to pass the ordinance, no one mentioned Duffy by name. The ordinance’s sponsor, Jim Colver, said he just thought it was good public policy.

Reached Friday, Assemblyman Mark Ewing said the vote to override the veto Tuesday flipped the margin by which it passed; this go-round five of the seven assembly members sided with the mayor.

Ewing wasn’t one of them.

“The board of ethics — they’ve had two years to play with it,” he said. “They’ve done nothing.”

As for the charge that the ordinance appeared directed at Duffy, Ewing didn’t dispute that. Although he could only speak for himself, Ewing said his vote on the matter was, indeed, aimed at Duffy. Ewing has made no bones about his feelings for Duffy; he has said many times that he didn’t see eye-to-eye with the former manager.

Colberg has vetoed two other ordinances. One put a possible borough sales tax to a vote of the people. The assembly overrode Colberg’s veto on that one. The sales tax measure failed resoundingly at the polls.

The second ordinance gave $100,000 in funding to the Renewable Energy Alaska Project to build an Alaska-specific website where state residents could track their energy consumption. The borough would have been the first community to sign on to fund the project. REAP said at the time it hoped to get more on board. The assembly sided with Colberg and upheld that veto.

Ewing said that for Tuesday’s vote, Colver was the only assembly member to join him on the losing side.

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