Redistricting issue sparks dust-up

MAT-SU -- Anchorage and Mat-Su Borough assembly members met Thursday to discuss several topics, including their hopes for legislative action on several issues. But a recently publicized issue surrounding redistricting became the focus of the meeting.

Last week, Anchorage Mayor George Wuerch, at the Alaska Municipal League conference in Juneau, spoke at a meeting of the Anchorage caucus, which was attended by several Anchorage legislators and some members of the Alaska Redistricting Board.

"Through that meeting, Fay [Von Gemmingen, another Anchorage assembly member] and I heard for the first time that we were working with the Mat-Su Borough [on a joint redistricting plan]," Anchorage assembly member Dick Tremaine said.

Tremaine said he and Von Gemmingen raised the issue with other Anchorage assembly members and, to their knowledge, no agreement to submit a new Anchorage-Mat-Su plan had been reached.

New plans were accepted by the Alaska Redistricting Board until last Tuesday. The board, earlier this month, received a ruling from Alaska Supreme Court that directed board members to fix problems with the board's originally adopted map that divides the state into 40 House districts.

Among the several changes the Supreme Court outlined, four of five of the judges on the court agreed that House District 12 must be considered, as it is unconstitutional. That district combines portions of the borough from just south of Talkeetna north to the borough boundary and along the Glenn Highway east of Palmer to the borough's eastern boundary with the Denali Borough, Fort Wainwright and nearby areas of the Fairbanks-North Star Borough and Delta Junction.

Tremaine's surprise that Wuerch and the Mat-Su Borough were working together on a new plan to submit to the board came as a result of a previous power struggle between the mayor and the assembly. The Anchorage assembly passed a motion on April 12, 2001, that stated no reapportionment map should be submitted to the redistricting board except with the express approval of the assembly.

But, according to Mat-Su Borough Mayor Tim Anderson and Borough Manager John Duffy, there was little discussion about a joint map.

Anderson recounted events at the AML conference. He and Duffy, he said, were walking up the stairs in the capitol building and Wuerch was heading down the stairs when Wuerch reportedly told the two he planned to submit a plan, and asked if they had any problems with that.

"It was all of maybe 30 seconds," Anderson said.

Wuerch, Friday, agreed that the conversation was short, but he said that was because the groundwork for what he planned to discuss had already been laid in place.

"We had communicated with the borough management about working together," Wuerch said.

Duffy, at the meeting, said he had received a phone call from Wuerch prior to the conference. He was asked if there was a way to come up with a common boundary between Anchorage and Mat-Su districts, to be submitted to the board.

"We needed to get something with less than 1 percent deviation," Duffy said. "[I said] if we're going to shoot for a common boundary, I have no problem coming up with a common boundary …"

Duffy said April 6 he received a second phone call. He said he was told that the boundaries that were included in the plan the borough had previously submitted to the redistricting board did not fit with Anchorage's proposed boundaries.

"They said it's not quite working, we need to change [Mat-Su's boundaries]," Duffy said. "I said no."

Anderson added his agreement.

"Our official position is our official map," Anderson said.

Anchorage assembly member Anna Fairclough said she believed Wuerch's statements at the caucus meeting to be the result of possible miscommunication, something the two bodies should not let stand in the way of continued cooperation.

"I don't believe that the [Anchorage] mayor has been working on this for weeks," Fairclough said. "I believe the mayor believed the planning department has been working on this for weeks with the Mat-Su Borough."

According to Dennis Fradley, Anchorage's director of external affairs, Wuerch knew what was going on -- and most of what happened took place in days, not weeks, with planning staff crunching numbers and changing lines on the municipality's geographic information systems program to make population data work.

Mat-Su assembly member Sara Jansen said she was caught off-guard by being brought into Anchorage's power struggle, and hoped it did not rub off on the Mat-Su assembly.

"It is an issue for me when the mayor of Anchorage goes in and tells something that is not true," Jansen said. "[The Mat-Su assembly] all work toward the same thing. I have to tell you, from an outsider's standpoint, that doesn't seem like that's how it goes in Anchorage, and I don't want to get dragged into that."

Anderson said he believed Wuerch crossed over a line.

"The Anchorage mayor is using the Mat-Su Borough and speaking on our behalf," Anderson said. "Please pass that on …"

Wuerch said he only told the truth. He discussed the issue with borough management, they agreed and he relayed that agreement in the caucus meeting. He later received a letter from Duffy and Anderson stating that Mat-Su assembly members did not agree with the plan. That message, he said, was relayed to Anchorage assembly members last Tuesday.

"I repeated the entire truth," Wuerch said.

Mat-Su assembly member Talis Colberg said while Anderson's comments didn't reflect the feeling of the Mat-Su assembly, he, too, was uncomfortable by the situation the two bodies were now in.

"I really feel like I'm being sucked into a family fight that I don't want to be in," Colberg said.

Anchorage assembly member Dan Sullivan tried to move the discussion forward.

"… Most of this is hearsay, and it's real hard to judge," Sullivan said. "Is there a common redistricting goal that, as two bodies, we can agree with?"

Although the assembly members did not reach a joint decision and realized the submission of any information would likely take place too late for consideration by the board, which began discussion on the newly submitted plans Friday, they did agree the matter should not stand in the way of future cooperation.

"… Ultimately, at least for us, [this is] an intensely political process," said Anchorage assembly member Allan Tesche. "My major concern, though, is that this issue not be any kind of division."