City manager contacted Anchorage police over concerns with election challenge brought by mayor’s former top aide

Anchorage’s city manager said he contacted law enforcement after learning a former chief of staff to Mayor Dave Bronson challenged the city’s April 4 election quoting an improperly created internal policy, which had been quietly added by a top city director on the same day she filed the election appeal.

At a Friday meeting of the Assembly, Municipal Manager Kent Kohlhase told Assembly members when he learned of the situation, he went to Anchorage Police Department leaders with his concerns. The police department, in turn, consulted with federal law enforcement, Kohlhase said.

Kohlhase said he learned this week from APD that federal law enforcement determined that no federal crimes had been committed.

“I share many of the concerns I think that the body shares,” Kohlhase told Assembly members.

The director at center of the incident, Information Technology Department director Marc Dahl, is on administrative leave, Kohlhase said. Bronson officials would not say whether Dahl’s leave is connected to the incident, citing confidential personnel matters.

A batch of internal emails released earlier this week showed that on April 11, Dahl sent former chief of staff Sami Graham the policy. The emails also show that IT staff published the policy to the city’s internal network on April 11 at Dahl’s direction.

“I think the documents speak for themselves,” Mario Bird, Bronson’s chief of staff, said during Friday’s meeting. Bird acknowledged that the IT department’s publication of the policy was “improper.”

In the appeal filed April 11 by Graham and two other election observers, Graham claimed election staff violated the policy — a policy the city’s election clerk, department directors and officials in the mayor’s office had never heard of. Graham and the other observers claimed that the violation could be sufficient to nullify the results of the election.

Graham had resigned as Bronson’s chief of staff in 2021. On Friday, Graham attended the meeting but did not speak. When approached by a Daily News reporter, Graham said, “no comment.”

The city ombudsman, Darrel Hess, has been investigating the matter since his office received a complaint from a member of the public, after the person heard Graham speak during the Public Session of Canvass in May.

In a July 5 letter to Bronson, Anchorage Assembly leaders pressed the mayor for answers about the incident, and held Friday’s meeting to discuss the circumstances of the election complaint with Bronson officials. The administration on Monday sent the batch of emails to Assembly Chair Christopher Constant showing Dahl had contacted Graham.

The Assembly is looking into “what reasonably might appear to be a coordinated effort to affect the outcome of an election,” Constant said Friday. “Nationwide, there has been interference, misinformation and disinformation surrounding elections that threaten the integrity of our election systems nationwide state and local. The circumstances surrounding this complaint have raised concerns of partisan election interference by current and former mayoral appointees.”

The mayor’s office has not answered questions from the Daily News about Bronson’s opinion on the situation.

Bird on Friday told Assembly members that the mayor’s office did not know about the IT department policy statement or its development until the situation was reported in the local news. The Daily News reported in May that Dahl had quietly added the policy on the same day that Graham and the two other observers used it to question the election, and that the policy did not go through the proper development process before it was published.

The policy, added at Dahl’s direction just days after the election workers began tallying results, would require the IT department to authorize use of USB drives on city equipment. Graham and the observers asserted that would include the election center’s equipment.

The IT department’s policy was “improperly communicated,” Bird said Friday. There is a formal, published process that new, citywide policies are supposed to undergo — overseen by the Office of Management and Budget — which was not followed, he said.

“When this was brought to our attention, the first thing our OMB director said was, ‘If this is accurate, what’s being reported in the paper, this is not a policy that went through our policy for policies,’” Bird said. “So that’s when we began looking at this, as well.”

However, the administration is not conducting its own investigation. It is waiting for the results of the ombudsman’s investigation, Bird said.

When asked by Assembly member Anna Brawley whether the administration would continue to take action in response to the ombudsman’s final report, Bird replied, “Yes. I mean, we’ll see what the ombudsman has to say. We’ll do the job, we’ll see the report. My guess is that, that would be fairly easy to say, ‘yes.’”

Hess said he expects to have a preliminary report to the administration on Monday, and that he hopes to have a final report within two weeks.

Security camera footage of the election center obtained by the Daily News also showed that Dahl met with one of the observers, John Henry, at the election center the day after the observers filed the appeal. The footage showed Dahl and Henry leaving the building together.

At the time of the Daily News’ initial report, Dahl said he decided to add the policy because the city had a “longstanding practice of prohibiting the use of thumb drives without being scanned by IT first.” He did not answer several questions, including about how the observers obtained the policy language. He did not answer questions about his relationship with the observers or why he met Henry at the election center.

[Anchorage IT director emailed Mayor Bronson’s former top aide a newly crafted internal policy she then used to challenge election]

It’s not clear what action the administration or Assembly will take next. The ombudsman’s report will be a “roadmap for action,” Constant said. The Assembly may then choose to hold a closed executive session to discuss personnel matters or confidential documents with the administration, he said.

Some of the emails released this week and several document attachments were almost entirely redacted — making it difficult to tell why, when and how the IT department began drafting the policy used to challenge the election. City attorneys cited a “deliberative process privilege” for communications between upper-level staff developing policy.

Assembly Vice Chair Meg Zaletel pushed back on the administration’s decision to redact the documents, questioning whether the exemption should apply when the IT department director did not follow the required process — and because an internal document became a significant matter of public interest.

“Frankly, I’m unwilling to go into executive session and be shown documents that could possibly have been made public all the time. So, I think I would like to get the answers from the municipal attorney’s office and kind of circle back to that question at a later date,” Zaletel said.

Redactions include January emails between Dahl and an IT department staff member who sent Dahl copies of several formal policy and procedure documents and drafts, including what appears to be draft policies on protection of personal or confidential information and security requirements for internet connectivity. Because the language of the drafts is fully blacked-out, it’s not possible to tell whether language on USBs is included in those.

Constant pressed Bronson officials to reevaluate the redactions.

“It’s been stated that the administration agrees that this policy wasn’t implemented in a way that was proper. The mayor is in a position to waive that privilege — its deliberative process privilege,” Constant said. “So, a direct question to the mayor is, would he review these documents and then make a determination whether that privilege is waivable?”