Anchorage Assembly to meet on $250K settlement with former Municipal Manager Demboski

The Anchorage Assembly will meet Friday to consider a $250,000 legal settlement with former Municipal Manager Amy Demboski.

According to the proposed resolution, after a year of litigation, the municipality entered mediation with Demboski’s legal representative earlier this month, and on Sept. 18 “reached agreement to settle Ms. Demboski’s claims for $250,000, contingent on the Assembly’s appropriation of necessary funds.”

Demboski, a former member of the Assembly from Eagle River and 2015 mayoral candidate, served as Mayor Dave Bronson’s municipal manager until she was abruptly fired in December of 2022. Her civil lawsuit alleged that the mayor and other senior members of his administration engaged in “wanton disregard and disdain for following law and propriety.”

In a lengthy letter from Demboski weeks after her firing, she accused the former mayor and his allies in City Hall of gender-based discrimination, defamation, retaliatory behavior and violating protections for whistleblowers. Initially, her attorney, Scott Kendall, proposed a $550,000 deal to settle the wrongful termination claim. The Anchorage Assembly rejected that proposition, which led to the filing of the lawsuit.

While in office, neither Bronson nor members of his administration publicly weighed in on Demboski’s claims, generally citing the open lawsuit as binding them from speaking on the matter.

Under the municipal charter, monetary agreements from litigation fall outside the city’s “tax cap,” meaning that “this appropriation’s fund source is ultimately an additional burden on the taxpayers due to the liability created by the lawsuit,” according to the resolution.

The meeting is scheduled for 1 to 3 p.m. on Friday on the first floor of the City Hall building. It’s unclear how much of the discussion will be open to the public: An executive session is scheduled on the agenda to discuss a legal briefing from the municipality’s Department of Law.