Mayor Sullivan works to move Assembly to the right

If those favored by Sullivan win, the chairmanship of the Assembly could go to someone more attuned to his views, making it easier to influence the agenda. And it would be harder for the Assembly to muster the eight votes necessary to overturn any of his vetoes.

Sullivan made a similar endorsement effort in last year's election and was largely unsuccessful in tilting the Assembly to the right.

Six of the 11 Assembly seats are up for election, and all the incumbents hope to return.

Three of them, Elvi Gray-Jackson in Midtown, Mike Gutierrez in East Anchorage, and Harriet Drummond in West Anchorage, are liberal-leaning Assembly members the mayor says he would like to see replaced. Sullivan has endorsed conservative challengers in their races -- campaigners whose views about taxes and spending are more aligned with his.

Sullivan said he is acting as a private citizen.

"The main reason is those three, as well as Mr. (Patrick) Flynn, I don't think exercised very good judgment in 2008 when they endorsed ... five-year, unprecedented contracts," said Sullivan. He believes city labor contracts approved that year were too generous and are at the root of what he sees as a continuing financial crisis for the city.

The mayor has spent much of the first half of his term cutting expenses, mostly by eliminating city jobs. His critics, Gray-Jackson, Gutierrez and Drummond among them, say Sullivan is adding to the budget crunch by taxing well below the ceiling, which means job and city service cuts.

Besides Gray-Jackson, Gutierrez and Drummond, the incumbents on the ballot are Flynn, of downtown; Bill Starr of Eagle River and Chris Birch of South Anchorage. Sullivan supports Starr and Birch. Flynn does not have competition for his seat so far, so Sullivan says he is "neutral" in that race.

The filing period to run for office closes at 5 p.m. today.

THE SULLIVAN SLATE

The conservative challengers with Sullivan's endorsement are:

• Dave Bronson for Gray-Jackson's Midtown seat. Bronson is an airline pilot running for the first time and says city property taxes are too high.

• Adam Trombley against Gutierrez in East Anchorage. Trombley is a corporate account manager. He ran for the Assembly last year for the other East Anchorage seat and lost to Paul Honeman. He says on his website that the city needs to reduce "the tax structure."

• Liz Vazquez for Drummond's West Anchorage seat. Vazquez is a Chugach Electric Association board member and former assistant state attorney general and state fraud prosecutor. Her election announcement said she's willing to "do the heavy lifting" with Sullivan to get better value for city tax dollars.

How much difference Sullivan's endorsement will make is a question.

In the 2010 city election, Sullivan also endorsed two conservative candidates and one moderate -- West Anchorage's Ernie Hall, a longtime businessman who was already well-known for civic activities. Hall won, defeating incumbent Matt Clamen.

But the other Sullivan endorsees lost to Dick Traini of Midtown, a former Assembly member, and Honeman, a former police lieutenant who lives in East Anchorage.

THE TAX-CAP 'ISSUE'

Before the April 2010 election, a six-member liberal-leaning majority on the Assembly was in charge.

This past year, the Assembly's leanings have been harder to classify.

Sullivan says the body is still led by liberals; he considers Assembly chairman Traini, who calls himself moderate, to be in the liberal ranks.

He notes Traini voted on the winning side Feb. 2, when the Assembly by a 6-5 vote rejected a ballot measure the mayor supported, to amend the city charter in an attempt to clarify the tax cap.

Flynn said the Assembly is "issue-driven. We take on a variety of issues, and you see people who are generally categorized as liberal or conservative working together."

An example, he said, was the way the Assembly handled the budget, which passed unanimously in December.

Flynn said the tax cap ballot measure was a joke, meant to give conservative candidates an issue to campaign on that would set them apart from opponents. "It was clear electioneering."

The tax cap measure, sponsored by Assemblyman Birch, was called the Taxpayer Protection Act. It would have stated in the city charter, which is like the city's constitution, that the base for calculating the annual tax cap would be the taxes collected the prior year.

Sullivan and Birch objected to the fact that former Mayor Mark Begich used state revenue sharing to offset property taxes but didn't lower the tax cap by a comparable amount. The Begich administration had a legal opinion saying that was OK.

Sullivan wanted to prevent future mayors and Assembly members from doing something like that.

Flynn said the tax cap charter amendment, if approved, would cause problems whenever the city used a one-time influx of cash, like federal stimulus funding, for tax relief. It would permanently lower the amount of future taxes that could be collected, and could hurt the city.

"They were just pushing this thing to try to give their candidates a wedge issue," Flynn said. "I couldn't look myself in the mirror if I did that."

Gray-Jackson, Drummond and Gutierrez have proposed a city law, rather than a charter amendment that must be approved by voters, to clarify the intent of the tax cap restrictions.

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Find Rosemary Shinohara online at adn.com/contact/rshinohara or call her at 257-4340.