OPINION: It’s time for Bronson to go

Mayor Dave Bronson’s recent commentary was remarkable.

If actually written by Bronson, it demonstrated a striking lack of self-awareness and a revealing detachment from reality. Possibly it was the work of a staffer seeking desperately to divert public attention from the firehose of evidence demonstrating the mayor’s incompetence and malfeasance during his time in office. In either case, it was virtually dripping with unintended irony.

The piece styled Bronson as a pragmatist who understands that “we” must work collaboratively, and do so quickly and effectively to address not only the needs of unhoused citizens, but also the wide-ranging negative effects homelessness has on the economy and quality of life in our community.

But his rhetoric while campaigning for mayor and his actions while in office have shown he is a dogmatic ideologue — the polar opposite of a pragmatist. He is interested only in imposing his extremist views on the community, not working to solve the real problems facing it.

Similarly, Bronson has demonstrated he has no interest in collaboration to achieve public purposes. Not only is he openly hostile to those who disagree with his extreme views, the revolving door of personnel in his administration shows he cannot even work effectively with those who share them. In fact, Bronson has demonstrated definitively that he is incapable of collaborating with others, except perhaps his cronies who wish to exploit government power and resources for private purposes.

Bronson professes to understand at a “fundamental level” that each of our homeless citizens “needs a place” that is not a street corner or a camp in our public spaces.

But somehow, this fundamental understanding did not deter him from unnecessarily, precipitously and unilaterally shuttering the Sullivan Arena as a shelter last summer. In doing so, he callously left those sheltering there without “a place,” except to camp in our public spaces or Centennial Campground. In order to impose harsh conditions on the homeless, he also knowingly increased the array of impacts from homelessness suffered by the entire community.

In an apparently new realization, Bronson now says that, as mayor, he is responsible to ensure places are made available for the homeless and that those places are “good for them and the city.” He wants citizens to believe he is interested in working pragmatically, collaboratively and quickly to improve our community.

But Bronson’s callous, inept and illegal actions have shown us who he is. He cannot help the community advance as mayor because he abhors government and sees its value only as a resource to be exploited for private gain. He aggressively acts to ensure local government is ineffective because, in his view, government must fail and he seeks to prove it cannot benefit citizens. He has certainly succeeded in demonstrating that government under his leadership will fail miserably.

Anyone with experience in making organizations work well knows that it takes time, care and skill to build an effective, efficient organization. But a carefully developed and well-functioning organization can be quickly and easily dismantled or strong-armed into failure by an inept or unscrupulous leader. Since taking office, Bronson has been busy demonstrating the ease with which malign intent and incompetence can kneecap local government and how easily it can be exploited for private gain. His is the only mayoral administration in memory to make it a policy to ignore, circumvent and actually break the laws established to protect our community.

If Bronson cared about the citizens of Anchorage or the future of the community, he would resign immediately to allow someone competent to work with the Assembly to improve Anchorage both now and in the future. If he were capable of shame, he would resign to avoid further dishonoring himself.

He won’t, because he cares nothing about Anchorage and his ego and arrogance will not allow him to admit the truth: that he is a dismal failure as a mayor and the antithesis of a public servant. He doesn’t even care enough — or is too incompetent — to get the most basic services, such as plowing our city streets, to function. But he can make sure his campaign donors refuel their equipment at city expense.

No, Bronson will cling to office, seeking to use its power to protect himself and his cronies from accountability. He will obfuscate, stonewall, manipulate, bully, lie and skirt or break even more laws, leaving the Assembly and taxpayers to foot the bill for his failures and bad acts. He will cling to power, hoping desperately that citizens can be bamboozled into electing a compliant Assembly.

The current Assembly should, when it has accumulated sufficient evidence, act to remove him from office to put an end to his dumpster fire of an administration and prevent further damage to our community.

Russ Webb is a former deputy commissioner of Health and Social Services and a resident of Anchorage.

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