OPINION: Bronson’s budget is indeed a fantasy

The Anchorage Daily News editorial board issued a hilariously distorted opinion regarding comments I made about Mayor Dave Bronson’s proposed budget for 2024. The board suggested that the budget process is a negotiation, the mayor’s proposal is fair, that my mission is to raise taxes, and that the members of the Assembly should be the “adults in the governance process.” The board took exception to my use of the word “fantasy,” labeling it hyperbole. Maybe they were right. As my college literature professors sometimes chided, I could have been more precise in my word choice. Here are a few alternatives. Farcical? Nonsensical? Irrational? How about dishonest? Yeah. Let’s go with dishonest.

Four days after Mayor Dave introduced a 1,400-page tome, the board was prepared to pass judgment. They described the mayor’s budget as “a mostly status quo affair” that very closely resembled the current budget, and they declared that I “prefer higher taxes …” First, I wonder how they drew their conclusions. Did the board have a chance to read the 1,400 pages in the four days between when his proposal was posted and when they published their column? Have they been following the budget discussions happening at the various work sessions, committee meetings, and other public processes that have been ongoing for months? Or did they simply take the mayor’s word, as expressed through his 120-day memo, press releases and all the media interviews he’s allowing lately? It’s hard to say, but I believe the board has attended as many of those work sessions and committee meetings as the mayor has: Zero. So how did they come to this conclusion?

Here’s the thing. What Mayor Bronson promised in his 120-day memo and the press release that accompanied the release of the budget is simply not possible to deliver. He promises he will reduce the budget and he promises he will deliver the services we as a city need. In a highly effective administration, it would be very difficult to both cut the budget and provide the services needed to operate our city. This administration cannot be honestly described as highly effective. And that does not even weigh the impact of 17.5% inflation over the past 36 months that the board identified. In the best of times, a mayor would find it very challenging. These are not the best of times.

If you don’t like the idea of reading 1,400 pages of budget documents and provided detail, you can watch the work sessions on YouTube. It’s pretty easy to hear confirmation the mayor didn’t increase the 2024 snowplow budget by $1.5 million. It was increased $500,000, on top of the $1 million the Assembly appropriated earlier this year after the proliferation of snow berms some residents dubbed “Bronsons” during the heavy December snowstorms and ensuing snow-clearing fiasco last year.

The board conceded the mayor made “tacit acknowledgements of past budgeting mistakes” by increasing snow-clearing funds this year. Did they ask themselves what “mistakes” he made in this budget? One man’s budget priority is another man’s mistake, I guess. The mayor’s decision to hold the line on spending last year is exactly why we had the snow debacle. The mayor’s decision to do the same across the whole municipality this year is exactly why I said what I said. The tactics used in his 2024 budget might look innocuous this year, but likely force more than $15 million of additional cuts to the seriously strained services budget next year.

The editorial board’s opinion suggested the mayor’s budget isn’t as draconian as Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s first one and that this proposal with a mere $2.5 million cut is simply an opening bid. Well, the state budget doesn’t operate under a tax cap. Let me share with you what happens if this fantasy budget were to stand. In order to manage the cuts that would be forced on the community next year, we would have to eliminate whole departments. We could eliminate all of the following departments to make up the difference: Building Services, Public Works, Equity & Justice, Chief Fiscal Officer, Internal Audit, Equal Rights Commission, Project Management & Engineering, Office of Management & Budget, Purchasing, Office of the Mayor, Community Development, and Planning.

Look more deliberately and you would see we are the adults in the room and focused on enacting a serious budget. One that contemplates the real needs of our community and the services our residents expect — not just trying to deliver paper-thin defenses for manufactured talking points. The ADN editorial board has given the mayor cover to claim his budget is reasonable. Maybe Mayor Bronson doesn’t care about the consequences of the choices he makes within the Municipality of Anchorage budget — and maybe the editorial board doesn’t, either — but I know I’ve worked to clean up a lot of messes this shockingly incompetent mayor has made over the past two and a half years, and I have no intention of stopping until the job is done and we have restored competency to the Office of the Mayor.

Christopher Constant is the chair of the Anchorage Assembly.

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