The dust hasn’t settled on a contentious Aug. 4 Anchorage Assembly Meeting in which the leftist majority flatly refused to authorize an independent investigation into whether Member George Martinez misused taxpayer funds for personal benefit.
Martinez has been under intense scrutiny for months now. At its July 21 meeting, the Assembly voted to censure Martinez following findings by the Alaska Public Offices Commission that he violated state law with his campaign funds and then gave dishonest testimony under oath.
Additionally, Assembly Members Jared Goecker and Donald Handeland have been pushing for an outside, independent investigation into Martinez’s separate use of city funds for travel to New York and Costa Rica to examine if these trips coincided with or subsidized private business activities rather than being legitimate uses of taxpayer dollars.
Despite the serious charges, the leftist majority voted 6-5 against opening an investigation, with some members even attacking Handeland for the way in which he dared to raise questions about Martinez’s use of city funds.
“Is it any wonder public trust in government is struggling,” Goecker concluded. “Anchorage deserves better than this.”
In the wake of the contentious meeting, both Goecker and Handeland have levied sharp criticism against the six Assembly members who voted against opening an investigation.
“The Assembly majority failed one of its most basic responsibilities in oversite,” Goecker said in a social media post. “Let’s be clear, this was not a vote on whether Martinez should be removed. It was a vote on whether the facts were worth independently investigating.”
Goecker noted that the municipal attorney told the Assembly that there were questions that needed answers.
“And yet, the majority still voted, no,” he said.
Goecker blasted the arguments made against investigating Martinez, which amounted to asserting that his questionable travel expenses were officially “approved” by the former Assembly Chair Christopher Constant.
“But whether that approval was appropriate or even had all of the information needed to be appropriate was literally one of the underlying questions,” Goecker observed.
“Last night, accountability became optional,” he continued, adding that some Assembly members were more interested in investigating fellow conservative member Donald Handeland for “how he raised concerns, while voting not to investigate the underlying concerns he raised.”
“Is it any wonder public trust in government is struggling,” Goecker concluded. “Anchorage deserves better than this.”
Handeland said attacks on his decision to bring facts before his fellow assembly members were a way to deflect attention from the real issue at hand.
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“They were an attempt to discredit the person presenting them instead of addressing the actual evidence,” he noted on social media. “At the end of the day, an investigation would have established the truth, and we could not even get that. We were not asking anyone to prejudge the outcome. We were simply asking for an investigation with the authority to follow the evidence and determine all the facts. Anchorage deserves that basic level of accountability.
Despite the vote, Handeland’s not finished.
“It is a disappointing result,” he noted. “But I will not stop asking questions when public funds and public trust are involved.”
Those voting against opening an investigation included Assemblymembers Yarrow Silvers, Daniel Volland, Kameron Perez-Verdia, Erin Baldwin Day, Sydney Scout and Janice Park. The five members voting in favor of authorizing an investigation included Handeland, Goecker, Zac Johnson, Anna Brawley and Keith McCormick.
George Martinez was excused from the vote, due to his obvious conflict of interest.
