Haines Borough Assembly candidate Greg Goodman this week said he believed he meets residency requirements to run for office.
Goodman, a former Haines Police chief who worked as a flight engineer in Anchorage between June and April 2008, responded to questions raised by residents, including Republican Party activist Bill Kurz.
“My primary residence is here in Haines. It always has been. I’ve been between Anchorage and Haines many times in the last year and a half,” he said. Goodman compared his residency to that of North Slope workers, teachers on sabbatical or residents needing medical care out of state.
“When we came back from Anchorage, everything fit in the back of a pickup truck plus 12 boxes I mailed. It was never our intent to live in Anchorage permanently. I’ve always considered Haines our home.”
Kurz questioned why Goodman registered to vote in Anchorage and points to a section of borough code titled “qualifications for nominations” that says elective office holders must “continuously” reside within the borough at least one year immediately preceding the election.
“He doesn’t appear to have lived in the borough one year before the election, which is the qualification to be there,” Kurz said this week.
Borough clerk Julie Cozzi, who certified Goodman as a candidate, discussed his qualifications with a borough attorney, including that Goodman had registered to vote in Anchorage and that on a permanent fund dividend application listed his physical address as Anchorage and his mailing address as Haines.
“I had my questions but none of it was conclusive enough” to keep Goodman off the ballot, Cozzi said.
Neither state nor borough laws contain provisions for a candidacy challenge before the election, but it could be challenged in a contest of the election after votes are cast, Cozzi said. “Voters always maintain their right to contest an election,” she said.
Residency requirements for office holders are addressed in at least three different sections of borough law, with slightly varying language.
The borough charter says: “A candidate for the office of assembly member shall be a qualified voter of the Haines Borough and a resident for at least one year immediately preceding the election.”
The definition in code under “qualifications for nominations” says, “Any person who is a qualified voter of the borough and at the time of the person’s election has resided continuously within the borough for a period of at least one year immediately preceding the election shall be qualified to hold any of the elective offices of the borough.”
In an interview this week, Goodman pointed to a third section, “qualifications of assembly members,” which says: “Only an individual qualified to vote in any borough election and qualified as a resident of the borough, as identified below, shall be eligible for the office of borough assembly member… For the purposes of this section, an individual qualifies as a resident of the borough if the individual continues to maintain the individual’s principal place of residence” in the borough “and has done so for at least one year” prior to filing for office.
In a letter to the borough Tuesday, Goodman said his airline job was “temporary,” that he lived in a small apartment by the airport, and that his wife stayed in Haines through March 2009.
Kurz said this week he consulted lawyers about Goodman’s residency and didn’t anticipate taking legal action before the election. Disproving residency may be difficult, he said. “You can say it. But then you have to prove it.”
Kurz said the wording about residing in the borough “continuously” for a year before the election was inserted for a case similar to Goodman’s, where a long-time resident moved away and returned to run for office.
A court challenge based on residency may hinge on the definitions of “continuously” and “immediately,” he said.