On the night of Dec. 2, 2003, the biggest tax and fee increase in the history of the Municipality of Anchorage was initiated. It happened with no public input, no Assembly debate and no press scrutiny. It was an ordinance submitted by then-Mayor Mark Begich entitled "Municipal Utilities Service Assessments." It took less than three minutes to pass and has cost Anchorage taxpayers over $50 million in the past three years alone.
How could this happen? Here's how: We have a tax cap in the municipal charter that controls how much our municipality can tax you. By controlling taxes, it controls how much your city government can spend. It's a good and relatively generous tax cap that allows for increases as population grows, inflation increases and new construction takes place.
Every mayor since it was first passed has been able to operate our city successfully within the cap... until Mayor Begich. By this action, he was able to spend and tax much more while still appearing to operate under the tax cap. Currently taxpayers are paying about $17 million more per year ($50 million more over the past three years) than was allowed under the tax cap.
Here's what that ordinance did: It took fees paid by utilities out of the tax cap. (Sounds harmless enough, doesn't it?) But then the mayor filled that void with increased property taxes and concurrently tripled the utility fees paid to the city to support increased spending.
This all happened with no public information offered and no input solicited. I follow municipal actions pretty closely and I didn't know this happened and I'm betting you didn't either.
Whenever significant public actions like this take place quietly and quickly with no public awareness, you can bet that the public doesn't benefit -- only special interests do.
Now you have a chance to right this wrong.
A few months ago, three private citizens started investigating why their taxes could have gone up so much when we had a tax cap. When they found out what had happened, they formed a group called the Municipal Taxpayers League. With the volunteer help of a former municipal attorney, they prepared a charter amendment and got more than enough signatures to put it on the ballot April 7.
The net result is: Proposition 9 will lower the cap on property taxes that can be collected by about $5.7 million per year for three years, so that at the end of those three years, property taxes allowed under the cap will be about $17 million less per year than if this action were not taken.
It's not just about taxes; it's about our municipal government operating openly and honestly. Some say because the city has been left in bad financial shape this is the wrong time to correct this action. To them I would say that it's never the wrong time to do the right thing. A yes vote on Proposition 9 is the right thing.
Rick Mystrom served as mayor of Anchorage from 1994 to 2000.
By RICK MYSTROM