Onus rests with Arvin

Just for fun, pull out your company handbook or your school’s code of conduct. Turn to the section about excused absences and required notice.

Anything in there about it being your boss’ or teachers’ responsibility to report you absent? Anything in there that says an excused absence can come after the fact, by several months?

Around the Mat-Su Borough Assembly table, that is what we are being told.

Apparently, it was our job as community members to notify Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss that Assemblyman Ron Arvin needed to be excused last year from his elected role representing the residents of the Mat-Su Borough on the assembly. Arvin hasn’t physically attended a meeting since he was re-elected last October. He has maintained a telephonic presence at the assembly table from his job in

Taiwan.

“Telecommuting” as an elected official to a public meeting is a matter of evolving law, as governments across the country struggle to find a proper balance between fair representation and 21st century technology. So it is encouraging that the borough will likely come out of this current controversy with refined rules about what constitutes “attendance” at a meeting.

But for now, all we have is existing borough code. And under the “Vacancy on the Assembly” section – 2.12.040 – Arvin’s unexcused absence is a violation.

Section D of the code spells out conditions under which a seat may be declared vacant. Arvin has run afoul of Part 2 of this ordinance, which stipulates that the assembly must approve physical absences longer than 90 days.

We imagine the people who wrote this section of code had in mind their own common sense, life experiences with absences and excused absences, and how those processes typically work when drafting the language.

But no scenario for absences in the world of work or school extends to a 90-day grace period. To us, three months is ample time for a person to fulfill his or her responsibility to have the absence excused, or physically return to work.

This window of opportunity wasn’t enough time for Arvin, though, who has not been physically present at the assembly table since Sept. 24, 2012. He wasn’t even in the United States when he was sworn in over the phone as deputy mayor in October 2012.

At no time in the past six months has Arvin asked for his absence to be excused. Nor at any time during his candidacy did Arvin tell voters it was his plan to serve on the assembly from overseas.

Regardless, this is all about the rule of law. And the borough’s rules are clear — Arvin’s extended absence remains unexcused.

To make Arvin’s violation of borough ordinance go away, DeVilbiss has drafted Resolution No. 12-042 — it’s that doctor’s note Arvin needed months ago — to be introduced at the March 19 meeting. We’ve posted a copy of it online with this editorial. Among its other nonsensical notions, the mayor’s resolution says voters waited too long to cry foul, so Arvin’s six-month unexcused absence is moot.

Regardless of the resolution’s verbiage, the onus to report the absence and have it excused, as required by borough code, rests squarely with Arvin. It’s wrong for the mayor to suggest otherwise.

Most wrong of all, though, is the underlying suggestion that the people of Arvin’s district are receiving the same level of representation as others in the borough who have regular access to their assemblymen.