What does FoHP group really want?

A Spectrum by Michelle Church

The display of hypocrisy demonstrated at the [Sept. 4] assembly meeting by the Friends of Hatcher Pass (FoHP) and the Citizens to Restore Open and Honest Government (CROHG) was an amazing thing to see. Who are the lead players in FoHP/CROHG? They would include former mayor Darcie Salmon, former assembly member Jim Turner, former borough manager Michael Scott and former planning commissioner Bill Moll.

With indignation in his voice, Mr. Turner, FoHP president and CROHG treasurer, stood righteously before the assembly demanding the resignation of Mr. Duffy for "leading the assembly into an illegal meeting" in March 2001.

The meeting referred to was an executive session to discuss purchase of the privately held lease for the Hatcher Pass development. This meeting was recently determined to be illegal by Judge Smith because the ordinance the assembly was relying on to discuss such a matter in executive session was too broad an interpretation of the state Open Meetings Act.

I received a copy of the speech Mr. Turner gave to the assembly the other night. In it he refers to a "dispassionate review of the record." Seemed like a reasonable thing to do, so I did a little reviewing of the record myself. Lo and behold, exactly one year prior to the hideous 'professional and ethical misconduct' that Mr. Duffy is supposedly guilty of, members of FoHP/CROHG, who at the time were elected officials, invoked the same ordinance to discuss the same issue in an executive session!

The record shows that on March 21, 2000, a special meeting of the Mat-Su Borough Assembly was held. The purpose of the executive session was ". . . specifically for land acquisition or disposal, and particular, matters relating to Hatcher Pass, but outside of the special use management area." Never mind that no land was actually being acquired or disposed of. But wait, the hypocrisy gets better.

"Those present for the executive session were the mayor (Salmon), entire assembly, manager (Michael Scott), attorney, clerk, finance director and Mr. Romack." The last person is the interesting one here. You see, Mr. [Greg] Romack was the private developer who held the Hatcher Pass lease.

In Judge Smith's recent decision, the attorneys for FoHP cited a Supreme Court case, the Brookwood decision, to support their argument that "something smelled" with what the current assembly did in their executive session. In the Brookwood decision, the elected body had, in fact, met with a developer in private -- something Judge Smith stated ". . . was just a really inappropriate thing to do."

Because Mr. Duffy and the assembly had not met with the developer in private, Judge Smith disagreed with FoHP's attorney, stating that the same situation did not exist here. Isn't it interesting that the situation Judge Smith said would have made the March 2001 executive session "smell" was in fact exactly what happened in the March 2000 executive session, led by then borough manager (and present FoHP members) Michael Scott and former mayor Darcie Salmon?

Not only was no land being acquired or disposed of but a private citizen was included in the conversation outside public process.

Now, FoHP stands before the court seeking to be called a public interest litigant. They want the taxpayers of the Mat-Su Borough to reimburse their attorney fees for the lawsuit they brought to stop the lease sale. And they seek to have the man who took manager Mike Scott's place fired. That is the extent of what they feel must happen to right a public wrong. They do not ask that ordinances be rewritten, they do not ask that procedures be changed to make public access to records more understandable.

They want money and they want vengeance. Period. Again, I remind you that FoHP leaders are "guilty" of the same act they so righteously point fingers at now. In FoHP's world, what is good for the goose is definitely not good for the gander. I hope that Judge Smith sees past the flag, moms and apple pies being waved here and determines that FoHP is not a public interest litigant. FoHP is a private interest litigant interested only in using the public process for private gain, something their key members attempted over and over in their tenures in office, earning them a resounding vote of no confidence in the 2000 election.

Michelle Church is the executive director of Friends of Mat-Su.