The ouster of the Anchorage Assembly's chairwoman this week had been a topic of conversation among some members for more than a month, the panel's new head said Wednesday.
But the six-member majority that engineered the removal of Debbie Ossiander as chair wanted to get through difficult weeks of political haggling with Mayor Dan Sullivan about the size and shape of the city budget before acting, said Patrick Flynn, who replaced Ossiander on a 6-4 vote at the end of Tuesday's meeting.
"Just that (the budget) was challenging enough," Flynn said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "To add the disruption of a leadership change would have been unnecessarily complicated."
Both Flynn and Sullivan said they expect to be able to work together effectively. Flynn was one of two members who forged a few budget compromises with the mayor, and Sullivan noted at his weekly press conference that the balance of power remains the same. Whoever holds the chair makes no difference when the votes are counted.
Six of the 11 Assembly members can pass almost anything. But with the support of four members, the mayor can veto almost anything, and make it stick.
One of the first things likely to change is a scheduled Assembly work session next month on a controversial investigation by the city attorney of whether the body got enough good information about city finances and revenues from former Mayor Mark Begich last year as it considered four labor contracts and this year's budget.
Ossiander had set that session for Jan. 8. Flynn said he is thinking about canceling it.
"I haven't made a decision," he said. "My inclination is, we asked for and got a report from Mr. (Dennis) Wheeler. He has indicated there is additional information. I don't necessarily feel we need a work session to receive that information."
The furor over whether the Assembly was adequately informed about city finances has divided the body since the beginning of this year, when acting Mayor Matt Claman succeeded Begich on Jan. 3 and days later announced a $17 million deficit existed in the 2009 budget passed less than two months before. Wheeler's report was delivered last month; he concluded that Begich knew the city wouldn't have enough money to cover expenses this year and failed to tell the Assembly that.
Begich, who is now a U.S. senator, has heatedly denied that allegation, saying the Assembly was fully informed about the city's finances in a long series of work sessions, meetings and memoranda. He says the controversy is politically motivated.
Flynn said further Assembly attention to the dispute won't resolve anything for the community.
People who think Begich did nothing wrong won't change their minds, he said. Nor will people who think Begich deceived the Assembly and put the city in jeopardy.
"If the municipal attorney feels there's a prosecutable offense here, I think it's better to pursue it along those lines and not inject politics into that legal process," Flynn said.
Flynn represents downtown and surrounding neighborhoods including Fairview, South Addition, Government Hill and parts of Mountain View. He tends to the center of the Assembly's political spectrum, and said he has worked since his election in 2008 "to take some relatively contentious issues and try to find some common ground on the Assembly."
Flynn said he has tried to find some middle ground with Sullivan as well and hopes to reduce some of the tensions between the mayor and the Assembly's majority.
"The budget cycle offered an opportunity to do that, and we were able to sort of improve relations between the mayor and the Assembly ... although it was a rocky road," he said.
Ossiander retains her Assembly seat representing Eagle River, Chugiak, the military bases and a sliver of Muldoon. The Assembly voted her into the chair in April, and she steered the body through a series of high-profile controversies that divided the community and brought hundreds of people to meetings, including an effort to change the city's equal rights laws to prohibit discrimination against gays. After months of public hearings, the Assembly passed the law 7-4, but Sullivan vetoed it.
At Tuesday's meeting, members from both the Assembly's wings praised Ossiander's efforts.
Assemblywoman Sheila Selkregg, who supported the leadership change, said Ossiander "has been fair, and hardworking, and the thing that you can rely on is this commitment that Debbie brings to the table to do the right thing for the public."
She described the leadership change as a necessary step to level the political playing field with Sullivan.
"What the six votes are saying is, we have a strong, capable mayor ... who is engaging in change, and we have six votes on the Assembly that don't always agree with him," Selkregg said. "To balance out that power structure, we needed to reorganize."
By DON HUNTER
dhunter@adn.com