Party politics has no place at assembly table

What political party does your Mat-Su Borough assemblyman belong to? Do you know?

Because we would argue that you shouldn’t, or at least that it’s irrelevant.

Officially, at least, those seats are nonpartisan. Aside from how this affects the process of local government, keeping the assembly nonpartisan is also a statement of intent. We, as a community, believe partisan politics do not belong in local government.

There’s good reason for this. At this level of government, we aren’t debating abortion or national defense or gay marriage. We’re doing much more run-of-the-mill things, like paving roads and building wheelchair ramps.

We elect assembly members — and city council members and school board members, for that matter — to keep an eye on the public dollar and not worry about how conservative or liberal they are or appear to be.

Lately, though, party politics have started to creep into borough government. We recall a forum sponsored by the Mat-Su Democrats when now-mayor Larry DeVilbiss was running for office in which his party affiliation was the first thing he mentioned in his opening statement.

He was probably just reacting to the fact that the forum was sponsored by a party.

We’ve also seen it happen a few times since. Assemblyman Steve Colligan and Lynn Gattis — currently a state representative but formerly a school board member — held state Republican Party offices while serving or immediately beforehand. Assemblyman Warren Keogh has joined the Alaska Democrats in a suit against the Alaska Redistricting Board.

While this might seem like griping without showing any examples of how this has colored the process in a negative way, there are reasons for concern. One of the most recent is in that redistricting fight Keogh has joined.

The state redistricting board recently decided to forward on for approval a map with only minor alterations from the one drawn up by Alaska’s Republican Party. Colligan, who runs a business that does some pretty high-tech mapping, drew a lot of the maps the board considered.

DeVilbiss endorsed a map without first getting approval from his assembly. He doesn’t think he did anything wrong and claims to have been speaking for himself.

But when Keogh tried to censure him for it, the measure he would have used to do that was dismissed out of hand and in its place the assembly passed a resolution endorsing the plan the redistricting board forwarded on.

This is a pretty clear-cut case of partisan bickering spilling over into the assembly.

While the Mat-Su certainly has an interest in how that fight plays out, we wish the assembly were capable of providing more interesting and useful input beyond “we agree with what the party wants” or “don’t listen to what the mayor said, he doesn’t speak for us.”

Maybe we could weigh in on where it’s best to carve the Valley up, what roads make most sense as dividing lines, which communities resemble one another and should be roped together.

That seems to be the fair thing to do in a democracy, but there appears to be no room for that when the party is at the table.