Opinions

History has proven Begich was right

If I asked you if you had stopped beating your wife, is there any good answer to that? That's what Bill Starr, Dan Coffey and the political enemies of Mark Begich on the Assembly want to know.

The Sullivan administration released its so-called Wheeler report Wednesday. It assumes that the former Mayor committed an act of battery (withholding financial projections) on his wife (the assembly). The bulk of the report focuses on when and how the abuse was committed. Did Mayor Begich do anything wrong? The answer is "no".

In the course of poking the record for 'ouch' points, the Administration inadvertently points out that Mayor Begich and CFO Sharon Weddleton were doing their jobs. For example, on page nine the report delves into speculation as to when Mayor Begich should have, could have, or would have known that there were volatile changes in the ROI of the city's investment portfolio.

Weddleton cautioned that they should alert program managers of real-time difference between earnings and the automated Peoplesoft 'soft' ledger, which lags. The mayor agreed. While the report uses this as a gotcha moment to establish the Mayor's understanding of the volatility of the markets, it also points out that the Begich administration was doing its job! The Begich administration was doing exactly what it was supposed to do -- managing programs and expenditures in real time.

Back to the basic premise of the report -- simply put, Mark Begich did his job and implemented his policies. Despite all the hand-wringing from the cons on the Assembly, the former mayor did exactly the right thing. Mayor Begich understood that speculation on revenue losses would become the crash-test dummy of Coffey, Starr and his other political opponents on the assembly. And Mayor Begich exercised his judgment based on the reasonable certainty of two things -- revenue sharing would come from the State and that the stock market would recover within the next fiscal year.

History has proven Mayor Begich was right. Revenue sharing came through and the stock portfolio owned by the City has turned around. Just last month Sullivan announced that a projected $5 million deficit was "closed" because of improved performance of the stock market. After all, since president Obama's inauguration, the stock market has climbed almost 2,000 points!

So here's the bottom line: the Begich-haters are still whining about last October and everyone else in the world has moved on. Meanwhile, time has vindicated Mayor Begich's approach, which is dissected and displayed by the Wheeler Report for the world to see. Ho-hum. I guess all these Anchorage Aces fans on the right wing of the assembly have forgotten Wayne Gretzky's dictum: the game isn't played where the puck is; it's played where the puck is going to be.

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But Dan Sullivan, Bill Starr and Dan Coffey are playing the game where the puck was . . . that makes for some pretty stupid hockey!

Elstun Lauesen is a lifelong Alaskan and observer from behind the irony curtain. In real life he is a community development specialist and consultant who lives in the Independent Republic of Spenard with his wife, Harriet.

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