Following a Haines Borough committee meeting last week during which two assembly members publicly derided a resident’s concerns, two other assembly members spoke at Tuesday’s meeting about respect and the group’s role in setting a tone for the community.
At last week’s Government Affairs and Services Committee meeting, assembly member George Campbell called one of resident Mike Denker’s presentation points “bullshit,” while Mike Case told Denker he was wasting the committee’s time.
During the assembly comments period at the end of Tuesday’s meeting, assembly member Diana Lapham read a statement she had prepared, though she didn’t directly reference the GAS committee meeting or address the comments to anyone in particular.
“We’ve been elected to the assembly to get a job done, but we are also here to listen to the concerns of the community and each other. Not only do we represent the voters who voted for us, we represent – and it’s hard – the ones that didn’t vote for us. In order to be respected, we have to be respectful. We lead by example,” Lapham said.
Assembly member Ron Jackson, who has been out of town for medical reasons and called in to Tuesday’s meeting, said he was “really upset” to hear what happened at the GAS committee meeting.
“I really think despite our beliefs, our impatience, whatever else, if we can’t respect others we can’t respect ourselves,” Jackson said.
Jackson suggested holding some kind of team-building assembly training to learn how to deal with differences. He warned about the risks of letting an incident like the one at the GAS committee fester, as it promotes a situation “where groups just accept certain behavior as a way of business.”
“It’s really important that we get on top of this, because this can easily become the group norm,” Jackson said.
Neither Case nor Campbell spoke on the issue at the meeting. Mayor Jan Hill also did not address the incident publicly.