Anchorage Assembly chair calls for embattled city IT director to answer questions at public meeting

The Anchorage Assembly chair is calling on a top city director to appear at a public meeting for questioning after the ombudsman called for the director’s firing over his involvement in a challenge to the April 4 city election.

The Assembly has set a meeting for Sept. 8 to discuss the findings of a final investigation report from the ombudsman released last week. Anchorage Assembly Chair Christopher Constant called for Marc Dahl of the Office of Information Technology to attend in a letter sent to Dahl on Thursday.

Ombudsman Darrel Hess referred the investigation results to the state Office of Special Prosecutions. Hess said he “reasonably believes that there may have been a violation of state election statutes.” Hess also gave the city several recommendations, including that Mayor Dave Bronson should fire Dahl.

[Ombudsman refers investigation of Anchorage election challenge to state Office of Special Prosecutions, recommends firing IT director]

The Assembly, per Anchorage’s city charter, has “a duty to understand the circumstances of the Municipal Ombudsman’s investigation to amend the code and protect future municipal elections from further tampering,” Constant said in the letter.

On April 11, Dahl instructed IT staff to publish an improperly created security policy to an internal webpage only accessible by city staff. Dahl then emailed that policy to an election observer, Sami Graham, a former chief of staff to Bronson who was then no longer employed by the city.

A few hours later, Graham and two other observers quoted that policy verbatim in a challenge to the city election. A report from the Daily News in May made the incident public.

“The September 8 worksession is an opportunity for you to speak on the public record about the circumstances surrounding the April 11 election complaint, the findings of the final investigative report and the recommendations included therein,” Constant said in the letter to Dahl.

Bronson officials did not address the recommendation to end Dahl’s employment in their response to Hess’ preliminary report.

At the request of the ombudsman, the administration in July sent Dahl a copy of the preliminary report in order to give him a chance to respond, but Dahl did not submit comments, according to the report.

The mayor’s office on Thursday said Dahl is still employed by the city. In statements last week, the mayor’s office said Dahl has been on administrative leave for several months, and that the “Mayor’s office is reviewing the investigative report thoroughly and will take all recommendations into consideration.”

The mayor’s office did not answer a question about when the mayor expects to reach a decision about the ombudsman’s recommendation to fire Dahl.

Last month, the administration released a batch of public records related to the incident to the Assembly , which included Dahl’s April 11 email to Graham of the illegitimate policy. However, many emails and attachments were were almost entirely redacted, and city attorneys cited a “deliberative process privilege” for communications between upper-level staff developing policy.

Assembly leaders in a letter to Bronson last week challenged the decision to keep those documents from public view and called for the administration to release unredacted documents by Aug. 22 at noon.

“... The evidence we have seen indicates authors of these emails worked expediently and not deliberatively; they engaged in an improvisation, not a process; and they produced an illegitimate and invalid policy statement that served only to assist a private citizen’s attempt to call a valid municipal election into question, and not to assist you in protecting the Municipality’s technical infrastructure,” Assembly leaders said in the letter.

Constant said on Thursday that the administration has not provided the Assembly the documents.