In the 2006 horror movie classic, “When A Stranger Calls,” a babysitter is spooked by increasingly ominous prank phone calls. When she calls the phone company to trace the calls, she gets the most chilling message — that the calls are coming from inside the house.
As a Haines Borough Assembly member, I can relate.
Our manager, Debra Schnabel, pursues her own personal, political agenda, and that’s becoming a nightmare, costing our assembly time, grief and effectiveness.
This is a personnel problem between the assembly and manager and one I’ve brought to Schnabel several times, without success.
So I regret to make the issue public here, but residents needs to know to watch out for it. As most people know, I consider myself a friend of the manager, so it’s with difficulty that I write this.
What makes it easier is that I am not alone on the assembly in this opinion.
First, it’s helpful to understand how our borough government is supposed to work. Political decisions – including identifying what’s a problem, and how to fix it – are policy decisions which are the responsibility of the borough assembly, not of the manager, who works for the assembly.
Under our “manager” form of government, the term “manager” refers to managing staff, not managing the borough. (Under a “strong mayor” form of government, like the former City of Haines, an elected mayor manages the staff.)
As explained to the assembly in early 2017 by Dave Palmer, former manager of Juneau and the expert on managing municipalities in Southeast Alaska, the manager’s job is to make recommendations to the assembly, not to engage in politics or debate assembly members.
It’s the assembly’s job to set the agenda for the government, to decide what gets done and what doesn’t, and how much it all will cost taxpayers. The manager works at the direction of the assembly to follow assembly priorities and carry out assembly decisions.
But it hasn’t worked that way in Haines for several years.
Instead, the manager – sometimes working with the police chief, sometimes with other staffers or other community members – brings forward issues that she prioritizes, putting the assembly on the defensive and making them appear disorganized at meetings.
(The most recent example of this quandary was the manager’s decision to fill two administrative positions – without consulting the assembly – immediately following an assembly meeting where half the assembly spoke for cutting or restructuring administrative staff. That left the assembly in the awkward position of trying to walk back one those hires Tuesday.)
Always responding to initiatives by staff also means that assembly members rarely get the chance or time to pursue their own goals. Politics is much like football. You’re either playing offense or defense, and if you’re on defense, it’s almost impossible to score.
Much of the borough’s hottest issues in the past two years falls into this category – generated by Schnabel or staff – including debates about policing, management of garbage and the 1 percent tourism tax.
Assembly consideration of these issues started without a single resident coming to the assembly chambers, complaining that more police were needed out the road, or that our garbage system had to be revamped or that the 1 percent tax had to go.
The calls came from inside the house — from the administration and the staff. The debate over police service was largely manufactured by the police chief – who can see danger (and the need to combat it with a bigger police budget) — further away than a TV evangelist can spot sin – but the garbage and tour tax issues are a rehash of old issues that could have just as well been left alone.
If they had been, the assembly may have had time to help secure cell phone service here on cruise ship days, or to work launch a recreation program for all residents, or effectively lobby the Alaska Legislature and Gov. Dunleavy on a range of topics.
Instead we were kept busy on issues either fabricated or promulgated by our own manager or staff. We’ve sorted them out – for now – but those three issues will likely be back because while assembly members retire, the paid staff, and its agenda, don’t go away.
As an example, consider the effort to reduce the 1 percent tour tax. For years, no one on the assembly had talked seriously about reducing or eliminating the tax. (Haines fishermen brought it up briefly in 2016 to leverage tour industry support for expanding the harbor, but the attack was dropped as soon as the harbor was expanded.)
Schnabel raised the idea of cutting the tour tax in a private conversation I had with her one year ago, when I told her I was opposed. She managed to get the question on a finance committee agenda in early 2019, where it also died without interest. Finally, in an email query to assembly members about a month ago, she asked whether an assembly member might want to put it on the fall ballot.
Assembly member Sean Maidy, whose wife works in borough administration and who serves on the assembly as a kind of proxy for the staff’s agenda, picked up the ball. As a result, this idea – which had been discussed and rejected by half the assembly during the aforementioned finance committee meeting – consumed a large part of several recent meetings. Finally, local businesses jumped in and the assembly backed off.
That’s how much power the manager has to steer the government, although the manager, by job description, is not the person at the helm.
By now you may be asking, “Why doesn’t the assembly just take charge?” That’s easier than it sounds because for the assembly to do anything requires agreement by four members and Alaska’s Open Meetings Act prohibits any member from speaking to more than two other members about a topic outside of official meetings.
To my knowledge, the current assembly has neared “taking charge” only once.
During an assembly “retreat” in December 2016, consultant Barb Sheinberg polled assembly members and mayor Hill about services funded by the budget, an exercise in identifying and ranking priorities of our elected leaders.
Maintaining local buildings was the highest priority, and in a four-way tie for second were maintaining swimming pool hours, supporting the school district, and increasing funding of the Community Youth Development program.
Ranking as the lowest priority was travel for staff and elected officials. Following that among lowest priorities was a four-way tie that included police department coverage, capital improvement projects, keeping Mosquito Lake School and funding administrative support committees.
Before the month was out, police chief Heath Scott had produced a secret dossier showing an alleged spike in local crime requiring more police officers (later largely debunked by the news media). In a committee meeting about reducing travel, the acting manager quickly changed the topic to raising new revenues. And of course, swimming pool hours were cut.
The staff saw the assembly’s priorities from a mile away, lassoed them, and buried them in a cave.
The assembly held another retreat with Sheinberg in 2018, but a survey ranking assembly priorities – a document that had the potential to set an assembly agenda and direct its actions – this time wasn’t conducted.
What does the assembly want? Who knows? No one on the staff appears to care. And why should they? And as long as the assembly is divided or uncertain of what it wants, the manager and administration – who know very well what they want – will continue to roll right over it.
For October’s municipal election, vote for the candidates you think would most likely stand their ground, to challenge the manager and staff, and to lead instead of follow.
Otherwise, if recent history is any indication, the Haines Borough Assembly – which is charged with leading our government – will become a sewing circle, borough government will grow and your taxes will go up because that’s generally the agenda the staff supports.