The Haines Borough administration is grappling with how to deal with complaints about assembly member George Campbell’s continued physical absence from meetings.
About a month ago, Campbell took a job with Harris Air in Sitka. Before that, he worked briefly for Guardian Flight out of Kotzebue. As a result, Campbell has been out of town for large chunks of time, and has either phoned in to meetings or missed them.
Borough clerk Julie Cozzi and Mayor Jan Hill met this week to discuss the issue and review code after receiving multiple complaints from residents, Cozzi said.
“There are people that contend that electing someone who spends most of their time out of the borough, (residents) are being disenfranchised because they aren’t accessible and they are not here with their finger on what is really happening in the community,” she said.
According to borough records, of the past six regular assembly meetings, Campbell phoned into four (May 10, April 26, April 12, Feb. 23), was absent from one (March 29), and physically attended one (March 8).
Campbell has phoned in to several committee-of-the-whole meetings regarding the budget and manager hire, but recently skipped a joint assembly meeting with the Haines Borough school board and a Board of Equalization meeting.
Borough code aligns closely with state statute, which says a position can be declared vacant if a member of the governing body misses three consecutive regular meetings without being excused.
Local code also doesn’t put a limit on teleconferencing, but it requires the cost of long-distance teleconferencing be borne by the assembly member “unless prior arrangements are made.”
Borough code does not clearly define what constitutes an “absence” or how one gets “excused” from meeting attendance.
“Basically, our code really doesn’t address that. (Campbell’s phone-ins) are not technically absences, because he is joining the meeting,” Cozzi said. ‘We don’t know how it is going to end up being dealt with. Right now, code doesn’t say anything, and I think it is going to come to the point where the community has to have a discussion about it and decide what do they want.”
Skagway Borough Clerk Emily Deach said her municipality’s code limits the number of times an assembly member can phone in to a meeting. “They have four call-ins basically, every calendar year. And they can only do two of those consecutively,” Deach said.
“There is a little bit of an out,” Deach added. “If they are out of teleconferencing options and the assembly really desires that that person is there and votes on something, the assembly can vote on whether or not that member has additional telephonic participation rights.”
Skagway considers a member “present” who phones into the meeting, though that presence can’t be used to establish a quorum except in the case of an emergency, she said.
Other communities around the state are struggling with the same issue, Deach said, referencing an email Ketchikan Gateway Borough Clerk Kacie Paxton recently sent out soliciting input on how other municipalities deal with teleconferencing and extended absences by elected officials.
Paxton wrote that Ketchikan allows assembly members to teleconference in to meetings, but that doesn’t preclude them from the requirement of being excused from physical attendance.
“The discussions at the time of the teleconferencing ordinance centered on the idea that an elected official was a representative of the community and physical presence is an essential part of that representation, unless there are extenuating circumstances where extended absences are excused,” Paxton wrote.
In an interview Wednesday, Campbell said he would like to be in town more, but his current job prevents it. “We keep talking about embracing people that don’t make a living in Haines. What’s the difference between going to work for a mine or going to work for an airline somewhere?” Campbell asked. “If we want to have those people (in town), we need to have representation of those people.”
Campbell said he makes himself available by phone and email and that his performance as an assembly member hasn’t suffered because he participates telephonically. “I’m phoning in to meetings. I’m reading my packets. I’m not rubberstamping everything. I don’t see what the problem is,” he said.
Campbell said he is “working on” his situation so he can be in town more often.
Clerk Cozzi said having assembly members repeatedly phone in can be confusing for other people at the meeting, and limits the amount of information available to members phoning in.
“Sometimes there are maps or different things that are shown or members of the public will distribute something for consideration. And the person calling in, they don’t see it,” she said.
During their meeting this week, Cozzi said she and Mayor Hill agreed the issue needs to be addressed. “It is going to come to a head really soon so the community needs to decide,” she said.