Opinions

Paul Jenkins: Begich's defense of Anchorage legacy falls short

Attack ads bolstering Mark Begich's quest to retain his Senate seat are enough to make any self-respecting snake blush. To endure them day-in and day-out without developing spiritual callouses, a person needs, as Hunter S. Thompson once put it, the soul of a lizard.

At least one of the ads -- vicious enough to make even the left gasp -- drew national ridicule and scorn. If you give them much credence you would have to believe Begich's opponent, former Alaska Attorney General Dan Sullivan, is the devil incarnate, that Alaska women are not very bright, and that they care only about abortion and free birth control. Heaven forbid they would worry about the economy, or jobs or national security issues. Begich apparently would leave all that heavy lifting to the menfolk.

Fortunately for Begich et al., we long, long ago embraced the First Amendment and abandoned the quaint notion of truthfulness in political ads -- no matter how outlandish the lie. Had we not, the lengthy indictment against him for blatant campaign fibbery would have to include his self-serving defense of the fairy tale that, as mayor, he left the city in fine fiscal fettle.

The truth is, when Begich in January 2009 set sail for the Senate after crooked Justice Department prosecutors handed him Sen. Ted Stevens' seat, Anchorage was $17 million in the red. That deficit would reverberate through government for years.

Stung by a campaign ad pointing out that messiness, Begich is touting his fiscal prowess as Anchorage's top executive. He avows he did swimmingly after inheriting a $33 million pool of red ink from former Mayor George Wuerch.

Wuerch unsurprisingly has a very different recollection. He told the Republican Party:

Mark Begich's new ad claiming that he 'inherited' a $33 million deficit from my administration is a complete fabrication. At the end of June when I left office and Mayor Begich assumed the Mayorship, only 50 percent of the budget had been spent. All departments were adequately funded for the final six months of the year. Begich is claiming a deficit based on his 'desired' spending – not what was actually necessary. Begich's fuzzy accounting is fundamentally dishonest and a disservice to the people of Anchorage.

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None of this should be surprising. What Begich did is on Page 1 of the Democrats' playbook. First, blame somebody else -- forever. ("Bush did it.") Second, pretend reductions in proposed spending are "cuts" or "deficits" that will kill old people and starve babies. It is what Democrats do when they attack Republican plans to "cut" Social Security and other programs.

Former Assembly member Chris Birch told Republicans that Begich deliberately hid from the Assembly the city's financial problems. Assembly member Jennifer Johnston said Begich's new ad, "is flat out dishonest." Former Assembly member Debbie Ossiander told Alaska Dispatch News she "relied on 'financial acumen and advice of the Begich administration' only to discover afterward that 'if there were not lies, there were certainly overt omissions that would have helped me. It shook my trust pretty profoundly.' "

Begich's chief fiscal officer in 2008 warned that investment returns for November 2008 were "horrible," projecting a potential budget shortfall, but those figures were not handed the Assembly at the time, the ADN reports.

The truth is, Begich's eyes were bigger than taxpayers' wallets from Day One. With a lap-dog Assembly majority, he increased spending each and every year as mayor. By a lot. The approved city budget was $289.2 million when he squeaked into office by 11 votes in 2003. The next year, $309.3 million; the next, $332.8 million. In 2006, it jumped to $367.2 million; in 2007, $399.4 million; and, in 2008, the revised budget topped $431 million.

Begich drained city accounts to underwrite spending, jacked up fees and fines and made Swiss cheese of the voter-approved tax cap by doing things such as yanking city-owned utilities, and their fat payments in lieu of taxes, from beneath the tax cap, creating a gaping hole in the taxing formula -- and allowing stiff property tax increases.

To top it off, before he bolted, Begich hammered out generous -- and unprecedented almost anywhere -- five-year labor union contracts that haunted the city for years.

You would think trying to put a self-serving shine on all that would make anybody blush, even Begich.

Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet, a division of Porcaro Communications.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.

Paul Jenkins

Paul Jenkins is a former Associated Press reporter, managing editor of the Anchorage Times, an editor of the Voice of the Times and former editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.

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