The Anchorage Assembly turned down Mayor Dave Bronson’s proposal to change the city’s library from its own department to a division of Parks and Recreation, and made several other changes to the mayor’s proposal to reorganize how Anchorage’s government is structured.
New mayors often propose changes to the arrangement of the executive branch. Those structure changes are usually approved alongside the city’s operating budget.
While the Assembly made some adjustments to Bronson’s proposal to restructure city government at its Tuesday meeting, many of Bronson’s changes remained intact.
As the Assembly made its changes, Bronson immediately countered with vetoing those changes. Each time, the Assembly voted to override those vetoes, keeping its changes in place. Assembly members eventually passed the ordinance implementing the city’s new structure for the coming year in a 10-1 vote, with member Jamie Allard of Eagle River being the sole vote against.
The Assembly’s changes drew forceful opposition from Bronson and members of his administration.
“I’d like to know in the historical context, when the Assembly has made changes to this degree, or to any degree in an administration’s organizational chart,” Bronson said. “We’re trying to comply, but we don’t know what you want. And I just want to know historically, when was the last time you did this? When was the last time any Assembly did this?”
[Mayor Bronson temporarily shut off fluoridation of Anchorage’s water supply, against city code]
Bronson had proposed changing multiple departments into divisions under the restructuring, and the Assembly made most of the changes in order to keep them departments, though it left all but one of the city’s agencies in the same reporting structure that the mayor had proposed. Those changes were made to ensure that the Assembly would still have oversight of the mayor’s executive appointees who head the departments.
“If the departments are converted to divisions, that means that the Assembly would no longer have the right of confirmation for the heads of those divisions. So this returns it back to how the code exists now and was intended,” said Assembly member Austin Quinn-Davidson.
The Assembly and Bronson have clashed over a few of his executive appointees, and the Assembly rejected his choices for library director and director of real estate.
Bronson also attempted to change the reporting structure for the chief equity officer and the Office of Equity and Justice so the position would answer to the mayor only and not to the Assembly.
The Assembly created the chief equity officer position in 2020, a role that reports to both the mayor and Assembly in city code. Usually the mayor has the power to fire executives at will, but the Assembly created the position with a clause stating that the chief equity officer could be “dismissed by the mayor only for cause shown, and only with the concurrence of a majority of the Assembly.”
It’s an issue that Bronson is currently suing the Assembly over. Bronson fired Clifford Armstrong III from the chief equity officer role in October, without the Assembly’s approval.
Under the city reorganization, Bronson had also proposed that the library become a division of the Parks and Recreation Department — a move opposed by the Library Advisory Board, according to a resolution it sent to Assembly members, citing concerns that a non-librarian would then oversee the library among other issues.
The Assembly did not confirm Bronson’s first appointee for library director, Sami Graham. Members said she did not meet the minimum qualifications for the position because she does not hold a degree in library science; Graham is now Bronson’s chief of staff. Bronson’s second pick, Judy Norton Eledge, stepped down earlier this month to the position of deputy director, saying she wanted to avoid facing similar scrutiny from the Assembly.
The library currently lacks a director, which has prompted concerns over its stability from donors. Still, Eledge continues to run the library in the absence of an appointed and confirmed director.
