If Anchorage residents ever wonder why so many problems in this city feel unresolved, they need only watch the Anchorage Assembly in action. Or is it “inaction”?
As they have so often, some Assembly members turn their attention outward, weighing in on an issue far beyond their actual authority or sphere of influence, while the very real problems on Anchorage streets deteriorate.
The latest example is a resolution opposing federal immigration enforcement. It was presented as a moral stand against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But like many Assembly actions before it, this anti-ICE resolution they passed on Tuesday amounts to symbolism without substance, and it follows a pattern that has become all too familiar.
Is this another chapter in a habit of substituting political signaling for municipal governance? It appears so.
The fact is, Anchorage has no authority over federal immigration policy. The Assembly cannot direct ICE, cannot change federal law, and cannot alter enforcement priorities set in Washington, D.C. The resolution does none of those things.
It also does not improve public safety or create housing. It does not reduce crime, addiction, or homelessness. It does not fix a single pothole or keep a single business from closing downtown.
What it does accomplish is signaling. It’s noise that sends a message to a national political audience that the Assembly is aligned with. That may play well on social media or in activist circles, but it does nothing for the people who live in Alaska’s largest city. You know, the folks who fund our city budget.
We’ve seen how far this kind of municipal overreach can go elsewhere. A few short years ago in Seattle, Mayor Jenny Durkin authorized the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ/CHOP) and anarchy in the streets soon followed. This year, Mayor Katie Wilson has pushed her city into direct confrontation with federal authorities, far overstepping her responsibility and accountability. She has authorized direct resistance to ICE enforcement. The result is a city government consumed by fights it can’t win, including fights between the mayor and uniformed officers who work for her but don’t want to arrest ICE officers, per her order.
Anchorage residents should take note.
If this all sounds familiar, you’re not wrong. In 2024, the Assembly passed a resolution weighing in on the Israel- Hamas conflict and calling for a ceasefire.
At the time, some in Anchorage made a straightforward point: the Anchorage Assembly was not elected to adjudicate complex international conflicts that have gone on since before the 1967 Six-Day War. Foreign policy is federal terrain.
Today’s anti-ICE resolution follows the same impulse. Different issue, but the same instinct: insert the Assembly into national or international debates while local responsibilities go unaddressed.
The Assembly also has inserted itself into symbolic nonsense with the recent decision on the city seal, erasing the history of Captain James Cook and disappearing the city’s aviation history. It was a gesture perceived by many residents as an erasure of Anchorage’s Western heritage and history — national leftist cancel culture here at home.
Regardless of one’s view, that debate consumed time, energy, and political capital, while public disorder, urban decay and basic maintenance problems continued to mount. And it still irritates normal Anchorage voters.
Even worse is when adhering to a failed national progressive woke agenda, the Assembly does turn its attention to local policy that involves public safety. The results are not merely a waste of taxpayer resources, they can be deadly. The jaywalking ordinance is a case in point. The intent may have been “pedestrian liberty,” but the outcome has raised serious concerns. Pedestrian deaths have increased, and enforcement changes appear disconnected from how people actually move through the city. This is what happens when policy is driven more by woke theory than by careful consideration of real-world consequences.
So Anchorage residents are left with a troubling pattern: symbolic resolutions on matters the city cannot control, cultural skirmishes that divide rather than fix, and local policies enacted without sufficient seriousness about their effects.
Meanwhile, the problems people actually live with are impossible to ignore. Public inebriation and drug abuse is widespread. Shoplifting, theft, and vandalism have overtaken commercial areas. Street disorder has driven people to avoid the downtown business district as public safety concerns shape daily routines, grocers in Anchorage set up a wall of shopping carts and chains that harken to a Mogadishu-like gauntlet that we all have to pass through to get a loaf of bread or gallon on milk after 10 pm, and storefronts empty out while sidewalks fill with human excrement.
The way that people experience Anchorage on buses, in parking lots, and on sidewalks, is the exact business of the Assembly. And it’s the business that they struggle to stay focused on.
At some point, the line between governance and activism has to be drawn. City assemblies exist to manage the responsibilities entrusted to them, not to pretend to be an advisory board to Congress or an activist council chasing national applause for promoting their woke agenda in Anchorage – our home. Anchorage residents did not elect an Occupy Wall Street organizing committee, even if Assemblyman George Martinez is more or less that group’s seat on the dais. They elected a municipal body to run a city.
The Assembly has eroded its own credibility, then comes to the taxpayers asking for a $12 million special levy. Expect the full court press on this using all the national progressive strategies of pushing emotion and not discussing the policy and of identity politics where anyone that disagrees anti-education and kid haters. But, we see the dysfunction and the lack of logic and we will not allow it to go unchecked.
Anchorage does not need more meaningless resolutions. We could, however, use a few more serious-minded members on the Anchorage Assembly.
Brett Huber is Alaska state director for Americans for Prosperity.
Yeah, just passing 7 years of a state administration which spent pretty much most of it “signaling” and little else. And my recollection is that the above author was/is has been a major player in that administration, seems a little bit of the ol kettle and pot thing here.
Another set of problems within the Municipality of Anchorage that are in urgent need of being addressed are the Loussac, Muldoon, and Mountain View Libraries. It is not uncommon to see people in these public facilities carrying liquor bottles, behaving and smelling as though they are drunk, sleeping and snoring in the easy chairs or with their heads slumped over the desks for this purpose, smoking weed, dancing enthusiastically to music, arguing with people who are not physically there, staking out and occupying the larger restroom stalls, holding mini-reunions of family and friends whom they knew before moving to Anchorage,… Read more »
I visit Loussac at least once a week, I am 82 and have never felt threatened.
If you spend any time on the third floor you will see all kinds of bad behaviors displayed by an assortment of people and that I describe above. The library employees seem unwilling to address these problem behaviors. And they, when I have asked them to call security, often decline to do so. Last year I spent a lot of time at the Loussac Library but, unfortunately, it is no longer a place where I can feel safe.
Granted, I’ve been gone a few years. When I was there, I used Loussac regularly. I still attempted to carry out my ongoing Alaska history research project in spite of the ongoing destruction of the Alaska Collection under Mary Jo Torgeson’s leadership. Anyway, there was a security supervisor, I believe his name is Bruce, who was very cordial and professional within the library itself. It was a different story when he shifted to Assembly meetings. I showed up early one day to see him wearing a flak jacket and bragging about his combat experience, this while directing his subordinates to… Read more »
Once in the Loussac bathroom, I saw a guy pulling his teeth out and dropping them into the sink.
Horror of horrors !
-No One, Ever
Muahahahahahaha !!
“…sidewalks fill with human excrement” is absurd hyperbole. What the sidewalks, along state “maintained” streets, fill with are snow and ice, because Huber’s former boss can’t or won’t attend to basic services.
The most disaster thing that they’ve done in the downtown area is when they replace the sidewalks. Some of it has failed and it’s in front of my store and it caused damage to my building. They’ve seen it. They’re aware of it, but they refuse to fix it this has been going on for five years, disastrous deceitfulness, and the lies.
We agree…but, organizations like AFP have some of the blame. Anchorage has issues, but to solve those issues it takes…money. AFP’s answer to literally everything is, cut taxes, smaller government, less regulation. You can’t hire more police, or clinicians to deal with the issues we are experiencing without money. Stupid resolutions like these on a local level don’t help and turn voters off, but the pie in the sky lies of “free market solutions” and we can do more with less, you can have government and pay nothing is a lie. It should completely be debunked by now.
……….to say nothing of the smug virtue signaling “land acknowledgement” that precedes every meeting of these morons,
It says a lot about an person to be intimidated by an acknowledgement of undeniable historical truth.
The word is “triggered.”
Triggered by the lies you mean?
Unassailable truth, Dainty Randy.
Unassailable truth, Dainty Randy.
To quote the estimable Bill Mahr – “Give it back or shut the fuck up”. Why on earth do we need to address the “legitimacy” of past inhabitants as a precursor to transacting the city’s business? I’m reasonably certain it’s also historical truth” that the Dena’ina displaced some previous group…..do we need to ascertain their identity and add another verse to the homage?
“………Why on earth do we need to address the “legitimacy” of past inhabitants as a precursor to transacting the city’s business?……….”
I would suppose it’s to calm them down and hope that they’re satisfied, but like all other appeasements, it’s just another step toward surrender. Later generations have to pay the price of current games.
Do the assembly meetings still start with the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag, too?
Yes, Assembly meetings still start with the Pledge of Allegiance
Then I have no problem recognizing the local indigenous people and their continuing stewardship of their lands.
What I hate is when white guys drift up to Alaska from some loser state and immediately start bitching their ass off about the people who have been living here for the last 15 thousand years.
What if a Mexican mestizo does it? Does that make it acceptable?
…taken from the inhabitants of the people that were here before them. Those Paleoarctic peoples migrated here first. Our modern “first Alaskans” displaced these primary dwellers some 3,00 years later by conquering.
So the Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut were not the first Alaskans. The STOLE the land from the PaleoArctic people.
Youre welcome for that education.
I am interested so I went ahead and googled around a bit and can’t find anything that resembles your post. “Paleoarctic” seems to be a generic term for “people living in the arctic a long time ago” without particularly splitting hairs about Na-Dene and Inuit/Inupiaq/Aleut. I guess I’m going to file your post under “nonsense.”
“……..I am interested so I went ahead and googled around a bit and can’t find anything that resembles your post……….”
Try the following keywords in your queries:
Pre-Dorset
Thule
Unangax
Koryak
Yukaghir
Hmm. pre-Dorset catchall for anyone in the eastern Canadian Arctic ~3200-850 BCE impossible to say what happened to them Dorset Canadian Arctic ~500 BCE – 1000CE unknown whether they encountered pre-Dorset peoples Thule Canadian Arctic 1000 CE – present distinct from Dorset because they had kayaks and umiaks which allowed them to follow bowheads as far as Greenland during the same warm period that allowed the Vikings to settle in Greenland Unangax another word for Aleuts, who live in the subArctic Koryak Siberians Yukaghir also Siberians None of that says anything about conquering, I notice. I also note that the… Read more »
“……… I also note that the Dene showed up ~15,000 years ago and are still here………So far as anyone can see from the archeological record, the Dene moved into an unoccupied continent………”
LOL! Reference, please. Like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerutti_Mastodon_site
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sands_footprints
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiquihuite_cave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimrock_Draw_Rockshelter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper%27s_Ferry_site
“……..Dorset Canadian Arctic ~500 BCE – 1000CE unknown whether they encountered pre-Dorset peoples…….” If the eastern North American continent was peopled, and they originally came from Siberia, and Alaska was also so peopled, the first occupiers of the eastern North American continent met the first Alaskans………or were the first Alaskans. Since they kept going, they either did so by being driven there by those already here, or they passed through an unoccupied land. So which is it? Either way, and as any troop of chimpanzees still prove, primates fight over territory like all other creatures on this planet. The winners… Read more »
What in the hell does this have to do with the Dene?
They either arrived after others, or they’re descended from others…….just like all of us.
Jezus, Reg, are you really saying that someone was in Alaska before the Athabascans arrived 15,000 years ago. That the coastal Arctic had people before any other part of the state? You are obviously drunk posting.
“………Reg, are you really saying that someone was in Alaska before the Athabascans arrived 15,000 years ago………You are obviously drunk posting……….” I am posting references, which I asked you to do to support your obviously incorrect claim, and which you have failed to do. If that makes me “drunk”, that makes your failed position even more precarious, since you have failed to successfully debate your position with a drunken man. If you subscribe to either the land bridge theory or the coastal marine theory of North American immigration of Homo sapiens (regardless of timeline), the Siberian and Alaskan sub-arctic were… Read more »
“………Jezus, Reg, are you really saying that someone was in Alaska before the Athabascans arrived 15,000 years ago……….” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_the_Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas “……….Indigenous American populations descend from and share ancestry with an Ancient East Asian lineage which diverged from other East Asian peoples prior to the Last Glacial Maximum (26–18 kya). They also received geneflow from Ancient North Eurasians, a distinct Paleolithic Siberian population with deep affinities to both “European hunter-gatherers” (e.g. Kostenki-14) and “Basal East Asians” (e.g. Tianyuan man). They later dispersed throughout the Americas after about 16,000 years ago (exceptions being the Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut speaking groups, which are derived partially from Siberian populations which entered… Read more »
you sensitive little bitch
Here we go again with “City assemblies”. If you look at Article X of the state constitution, § 4 states “The governing body of the organized borough shall be the assembly, and its composition shall be established by law or charter” and § 8 states “The governing body of a city shall be the council”. There’s specific intent here. Unified municipalities are boroughs. Just because journalists refer to them as cities as a matter of journalistic style, that does not mean they’re cities.
-Sean P. Ryan
The Alaska Landmine is unconcerned with journalism.
Not a thing here.
Evidently, the Landmine is very concerned with providing you a venue to suck all the oxygen out of the room. Give it a rest, energy vampire.
A Bouough and a Municipality in Alaska are not the same, it is nuanced.
That is why the charter calls the city the MUNICIPALITY of andchorage, and no longer the borough of Anchorage.
In Anchorage, the former borough government and city government are combined. In our other boroughs, cities have their own functioning governments, and the area outside the cities is governed by a borough government. This is how the smaller communities of Eagle River, Chugiak, and Girdwood got fully and completely screwed over, like Crimea did when Vlad annexed them.
Cities and Boroughs are both municipalities, just different kinds of.
Anchorage does not need more meaningless resolutions. We could, however, use a few more serious-minded members on the Anchorage Assembly.
We all learned last week this “woke” term spread the result of Epstein and his cabal to deflect accountability. Interesting Huber would use this term, particularly considering his role in the Dunleavy administration accomplishing absolutely nothing.
What is it with these sad, failed leaders who go out of their way to whine about everyone but their own failures to try and keep these worthless “conservative” leaders and their corporate master in power in Alaska? Brett Huber comes off like an entitled baby, sadly begging the city to present itself to ICE so he can keep milking the state for a free paycheck without any bumps in the road for his privileged golden-spoon life.
The Alaska director of Americans for Prosperity arguing that elected officials shouldn’t pursue social issues. What a joke. This is the same organization that claimed that Biden was going to tax back-yard barbecues. They spend their free time coming up with ways to keep trans people in the news cycle so they can turn around the write about wokeness.
Cities do have something to do with immigration enforcement, because federal agencies try to co-opt local police to assist them.
Brett Huber is one of the most corrupt people in Alaska. Nobody values your thoughts.