Anchorage Assembly members say they’re concerned about a challenge lodged by one of the mayor’s former chiefs of staff over this spring’s municipal election.
Sami Graham cited an internal IT policy in her April 11 complaint. That policy was finalized the day of her complaint — a week after election day. The mayor’s office said it didn’t know the policy existed.
Assembly member Chris Constant questioned at a work session Friday how and why Graham got the policy.
“We are looking into what reasonably might appear to be a coordinated effort to affect the outcome of an election,” Constant said.
Graham filed her complaint as votes were still being tallied. She alleges the city was violating the new IT policy — which would require an IT staff member be present or give approval for all insertions of USB devices into “critical” municipal computers.
Constant criticized the policy, calling it “absurd.”
“There are any number of departments, like the Department of Law, which is dealing with privileged information all the time, who are not going to have an unsworn IT staff member overseeing the transfer of records between their computers, having access to their flash drives and their documents that are privileged,” Constant said.
Emails received in a records request filed by the Assembly show that the policy cited by Graham was not public at the time of her complaint, and had been sent to her directly by the city’s IT director Marc Dahl.
Bronson chief of staff Mario Bird said the mayor’s office did not find out about this policy or Graham’s election challenge until it was reported on by the Anchorage Daily News. He said the policy did not go through the traditional channels for approval of new policies.
“What appears to have happened here was an internal policy that was improperly communicated,” Bird said. “That is what we have reviewed, as soon as it was brought to our attention by the media. Yes, based on what I see here and the internal discussions that we’ve had, it was improper.”
It’s unclear what led Dahl to email the internal policy to Graham, who at the time was a private citizen and serving as an election observer for a conservative Assembly candidate, who ended up losing. Bronson officials say that Dahl remains a municipal employee and he is currently on administrative leave.
Municipal ombudsman Darrell Hess said he’s investigating the incident, and hopes to have a final report within the next two weeks.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
