According to a government specialist with the Alaska Division of Community and Regional Affairs, the Haines Borough Assembly “should have appointed somebody” to fill a vacated seat earlier this month, but “there’s no real code police” to enforce any penalty.
Glen Hamburg, who advises and assists local governments, said the borough code is “quite clear” about a requirement to fill a vacancy within 30 days.
“There’s nothing in the code that says what happens if they miss that deadline, and so the only advice that I can say is that they need to be appointing somebody,” Hamburg said. “They can’t really just create a new rule right there on the spot that they’re not going to do that, and have the voters choose at an election.”
Juneau Superior Court Judge Philip Pallenberg in mid-May declared Greg Goodman’s assembly seat vacant and ordered the borough to call another election, because Goodman did not meet borough residency requirements. Karen Hess, a write-in candidate in last October’s election, filed the suit.
At an assembly meeting on June 13, Hess could not tally the necessary four votes for an interim appointment that would have run until the October municipal election. The assembly instead moved to set a special election to run with the October election.
Borough attorney Brooks Chandler earlier advised the assembly to make an appointment, since a special election could not meet the borough’s 30-day timeline to fill the vacancy.
After the meeting Chandler said he is “not retracting my opinion” that an appointment would best adhere to borough code.
Hamburg said he heard about the assembly deadlock and has since listened to the meeting.
“From what I could infer from the discussion, they decided to have the decision made by the voters at the upcoming election, simply because they couldn’t come to a decision of who to appoint,” he said. “That’s not a viable alternative to the actual duties that they have as elected representatives, according to the code.”
Hamburg said the election motion was “a nice, soft compromise” that’s “not really following the rules.”
“What if the elected representatives choose not to follow the established rules?” he asked. “Well, maybe the voters have reason to file a recall petition, if they think, ‘Hey, the people we elected aren’t doing the job that they’re supposed to do.”
Borough clerk Julie Cozzi said she’s received inquiries about recalls in the past week, but no one has officially started the process.
Assemblymen Jerry Lapp and Scott Rossman refused to appoint anyone other than Hess. Assembly members Daymond Hoffman, Steve Vick and Joanne Waterman supported appointing former assemblyman Norm Smith and then considered a few “compromise candidates.”
Vick on June 13 said he wouldn’t “knowingly break code” and was the lone dissenter in the vote that scrapped the appointment process and set an election.