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Anchorage voters saw through campaign monkey business, saved tax cap

Voters handed Mayor Ethan Berkowitz and his union pals an embarrassing whuppin' the other day when they marched to the polls and overwhelmingly restored the city's voter-approved tax cap, even enshrining it in the city charter -- and they did it despite a misleading campaign.

Despite the left's fondest wishes, voters embraced Proposition 8 with a vengeance, approving it 69 percent to 38 percent and returning the tax cap to what it was before the Assembly's liberal majority changed its calculation late last year to collect added property taxes. This year alone, that change would have cost taxpayers $1 million more; $142 million in added taxes had it been in effect since 2008.

The idea was to root around deeper in your pockets to replace fading state funding and the Legislature's unseemly dalliance with the notion of cutting money to localities and passing on costs such as pension obligations. Reducing spending to match income never occurred to the Assembly's liberals. In fact, they voted down 40 or so money-saving amendments late last year as they changed the cap's language.

These guys were not trying to rip you off. Honest. They were seeking "flexibility" -- you simply must laugh -- and trying to help Berkowitz, whose budget includes state funds that may never materialize.

Apparently to retain the cap's new language and protect the Assembly's ability to raise your taxes willy-nilly, Berkowitz joined with Democrat money man Barney Gottstein and the AFL-CIO in putting up cash to underwrite the wildly misnamed "Protect the Tax Cap" group. They were joined by Mark Kroloff and Alaska Communications' Leonard Steinberg. Altogether, they kicked in $12,500, with $6,000 coming from the AFL-CIO, Alaska Public Offices Commission records show. At least $9,400 of the loot went to Ivan Moore Research for radio production and placement.

What this bunch did was particularly dispiriting to anybody who watches government, sees it as a necessary evil and, because of the fearsome powers it wields, expects it to play straight. That did not happen here.

These guys decided the end justifies the means and set out to confuse and mislead the voting public. They did a credible, if unsuccessful, job of discombobulating everyone, from voters to television news anchors, about the proposition's whosits and whatsits.

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What did them in? Their untruthful, obnoxious radio ad that ticked off legions and set talk radio ablaze. The ad went for the throat, even dragging in the left's ultimate, dark-of-night boogeymen, the evil Koch brothers. Why? is unexplainable. It is a knee-jerk thing with the left.

A woman announcer with a fingernails-on-a-blackboard voice dubbed the brothers "monkey overlords" and likened Proposition 8 to a "steaming pile of monkey business."

I admit the "monkey overlord" thing made me chuckle. (My elderly parents, inexplicably and completely out of character, once cruised around in a neon yellow Dodge van with palm trees, monkeys and coconuts painted on the side. Why? I asked. It was cheap, my dad said. But it is hideous, I said. It was cheap, he said. No wonder, I said.) But keep in mind virtually every ridiculous claim in the disingenuous ad, including a moronic assertion that Prop. 8 would cause government waste, was specious. Keep in mind, also, that the ad was slapped together and aired by a group that included Berkowitz, the guy elected to lead this city.

Lucky for us, their effort was so clumsy it backfired. But as a student of government and routinely mortified by its practitioners, I have no doubt in my mind Proposition 8's success with voters is just a speed bump on the Berkowitz spending freeway. You can bet the Assembly's expanding liberal majority and the mayor -- even before the last vote was cast -- were searching for ways to skirt the tax cap.

They really have no choice. Berkowitz and the Assembly's liberals need to spend. Unions want them to spend -- and they are beholden to union money and help. It is not likely to get better. Newly elected Assembly member Eric Croft put together a $100,000 war chest in his successful election bid and "a large chunk of the money came from labor unions," reported Alaska Dispatch News. Forrest Dunbar and John Weddleton had union backing. Dick Traini's APOC campaign donation list reads like an inventory of the city's unions.

Property taxpayers? Take a back seat. The Assembly's liberal majority is controlled and supported by unions -- the very unions whose contracts it decides. The mayor is supported by those same unions -- and he already has shown how far he will go.

It turns out we, indeed, get the government we deserve.

Shame on us.

Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com, a division of Porcaro Communications, headed by Mike Porcaro, one of 10 individuals who led the effort to place Proposition 8 on the ballot.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@alaskadispatch.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@alaskadispatch.com or click here to submit via any web browser.

Paul Jenkins

Paul Jenkins is a former Associated Press reporter, managing editor of the Anchorage Times, an editor of the Voice of the Times and former editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.

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