Haines Borough Assembly member Sean Maidy resigned Tuesday, following the assembly’s 4-2 approval of a resolution interpreting charter to specifically allow for areawide emergency police service.
“I resigned because I cannot be a party to an assembly who willingly and knowingly violates their own charter,” Maidy told the CVN after the meeting. He emailed his resignation to Mayor Jan Hill at 8:22 p.m., immediately after the meeting.
Maidy sat on the Haines Borough Assembly for nearly three years. After resigning, he later wrote on social media that he no longer believes in local government and described himself as a whistleblower. “I will continue to blow my whistle until the sound has reverberated off of the farthest reaches of these assembly chambers,” Maidy wrote.
Maidy said he believed that the assembly should hold a special election to allow voters to accept a language change in charter, but most of the assembly thought that the resolution would allow current police practice and give the borough time to draft language for an October 2020 ballot proposition.
Currently, emergency medical services, emergency dispatch and emergency response are the only three entities defined in charter as areawide powers, but the resolution’s proponents say that emergency dispatch has always included Haines Police, though not explicitly. The resolution will add emergency police services as an areawide power.
Borough clerk Alekka Fullerton reported to the assembly a discussion she had with attorney Brooks Chandler earlier on Tuesday: “He said that he thought (the resolution) should probably satisfy everyone and that he thought it was a great idea to have it on the ballot in October,” Fullerton said. “This gives us enough time to work on the language that we want to put forward to the voters.”
But Maidy and assembly member Zephyr Sincerny cited correspondence with Chandler from August, in which he wrote that the Haines Borough’s interpretation of charter wouldn’t stand up in court, if challenged.
“The court won’t put any weight on the 2019 assembly’s interpretation of the charter provision, and frankly calling this ‘emergency dispatch’ does not pass the smell test, but it may be unlikely someone will bring a legal challenge,” Chandler wrote.
“That’s pretty challenging. If we have a lawyer saying ‘If you were in court on this, the court would not put any weight into your interpretation.’ That causes me to hesitate,” Sincerny said.
“I understand the opinion that this could work, that this could appease everybody. Which, it could,” Maidy said. “In the same train of thought, murder is legal if I don’t get caught. As long as nobody sues or complains, we’ll be fine. And I would like to get this done the right way the first time, and not have to put this Band-aid on it to try to get us to October.”
Assembly member Paul Rogers reminded Maidy that murder is illegal regardless of whether a person gets caught. “I think we need to move forward and I think this is the right way to do it,” Rogers said.
“I think if we were to conduct a special election right now… It would be voted down and then we’d be back to the drawing boards,” assembly member Gabe Thomas said. “I think at least with this we’re providing a stopgap and an opportunity for the people to have more weight into it.”
Assembly member Stephanie Scott, who previously voted the same resolution down in an earlier iteration, changed her position Tuesday. “I did that because it was a compromise,” Scott later told the CVN. “It set up a procedure for letting the people vote on it.”
Maidy’s resignation must be accepted by the assembly, which won’t meet again until Jan. 14. The assembly then has discretion on how to fill the vacant seat, though traditionally it has requested letters of interest from citizens, then selected an appointee, clerk Fullerton said.
The appointee would fill the seat until October 2020 general election, when voters would elect a new assembly member. Whoever voters elect would serve until Maidy’s term expires in October 2021.
Scott said she was surprised by Maidy’s resignation. “I’m sorry that he is giving up, but I do have to say that I admire his values,” Scott said. “I just think that it’s hard to take off in the middle of something like this. It’s happened many times in the life of the assembly. I think that some people think that they represent themselves and they don’t. They represent the community.”
Rogers desribed Maidy’s resignation as unfortunate. “He still had two years left to serve as an assembly member and its dissapointing to see somebody quit over a single issue because they don’t think they’re getting their way.”
Thomas said he wishes Maidy the best, and he’s sorry he felt he needed to resign.
Sally McGuire, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the assembly last October, told the CVN she would not seek an appointment. Former candidate Sean Gaffney, who also ran unsuccessfully last year, said he has interest in the open seat.