Anchorage Daily News

PALMER -- A new state law regulating financial disclosures by public officials has gone too far, according to some who say it requires them to provide too much detail about their sources of income.

The new law, initiated by Gov. Sarah Palin as part of a large ethics reform package, was enacted last year after the high-profile conviction of three former state lawmakers on charges of accepting bribes.

It requires officials to list sources of income over $1,000 and precisely how much they received from those sources. Under the previous financial disclosure law, officials had to disclose sources of income over $1,000, but not the exact amount paid.

The changes affect both statewide candidates and local office holders, but it is at the local level that the law is raising the most objections and prompting calls for it to be repealed.

Last month, four Mat-Su Assembly members passed a resolution asking the state Legislature to automatically exempt municipalities from the disclosure law. Instead, each municipality could draw up its own disclosure forms.

The Alaska Municipal League is also scheduled to take up the issue at a meeting this week at a conference in Ketchikan. The league is a nonprofit coalition of about 140 Alaska cities, boroughs and municipalities that, among other things, lobbies on matters of common interest.

Cindy Bettine, a Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assemblywoman, is among those asking for local officeholders to be exempted from the law. She and her husband, Mike Butcher, own an office building in Wasilla.

She now must disclose who the couple's tenants are and how much they charge each for rent at the building. She must also list the amount Butcher made from clients of his part-time construction business.

Assemblyman Mark Ewing also has to list the names of his tenants and how much each pays on a rental property he owns. He said he will also likely have to report how much his son, Cameron, makes at D&A Shoprite in Wasilla, where he gets paid between $8 and $9 an hour.

Municipalities can opt out of the state disclosure requirements on their own, with a vote of the residents. About 200 communities have already chosen to do so. But Bettine and the other Assembly members said they'd rather the state exempt them from the law.

'A REAL PAIN'

When the Mat-Su Assembly discussed being exempt from disclosure, Ewing cast the lone vote against the measure. He said he wanted a "Plan B" disclosure form in place before even considering opting out.

Ewing said it may seem onerous to have to report his son's earnings, but it would be different if his son worked for a state agency or an engineering firm that does a lot of business with the borough.

"I agree it's a real pain and I agree it should be changed," Ewing said by phone Friday. "(But) I don't ever want to vote to keep my financial dealings away from the public."

His wife, Leone Harris, said she understands why some are queasy about the stiffer laws.

Harris is a real estate agent who was elected to the Wasilla City Council in October. She has a contract with a broker and therefore doesn't have to disclose each client who buys or sells a home with her. If she did, however, she might have reconsidered running.

"It would make me pause, not because I don't want to go through the work of doing it, but the people I sell homes to or for, they should be allowed some kind of confidentiality," she said.

Some Alaska Municipal League leaders, like former legislator Hal Smalley, who serves on both the Kenai City Council and Kenai-Peninsula Borough Assembly, would like to return to the pre-2007 state disclosure forms.

AVAILABLE IN CYBERSPACE

Smalley said some municipal leaders object to another facet of the new disclosure law: posting the information online.

Currently, municipal officials' information is available for review at city offices and can usually be obtained within a few hours by fax machine, but it's not just hanging out there in cyberspace.

In Kenai, Smalley said, several municipal officials balked at online posting. It makes it too easy for people to use the information for other purposes, he said. For example, he said, if a contractor got elected, he would have to report how much he received for contracts. Competitors could then use that information to underbid the contractor in the future.

"That was the big bugaboo," Smalley said. "I don't want to give the impression that we have something to hide. The issue is the amount of information, and putting it online."

Smalley's community solved the issue on its own. Kenai city voters in October decided to exempt themselves from compliance with the state law and instead approved filing the pre-2007 forms.

Bettine said she might propose asking Mat-Su voters to follow Kenai's example. But first she hopes to deal with state lawmakers directly through the Alaska Municipal League.

Alaska legislators may be open to revisiting the bill, said Rep. Bob Lynn, an Anchorage Republican who chaired the State Affairs committee and oversaw a lot of work on the 2007 bill. But allowing municipalities to opt out might not be the answer, he said.

"We want people to be responsible at whatever level of government they're at," he said.

Still, Lynn said, he's up for changes if they're necessary. The new House leadership roster has him heading State Affairs again, he said, so he may get a second crack at it.

"People need to trust the folks who are elected to office," Lynn said. "We don't want to make it onerous; we just want it to be pragmatic."

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at adn.com/contact/rwhite or call 352-6709.

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