Kenai Peninsula Borough code now mirrors state law regarding the use of public resources to promote ballot initiatives. That’s after borough assembly members OK’d the change last week.
Soldotna representative Tyson Cox sponsored the ordinance. He says it has roots in the borough’s last election cycle.
“After our meeting in Homer last year, there was a lot of questions of what we were doing and how we were doing it with the bond issue for South Peninsula,” Cox said during an April 15 work session.
Before the ordinance was approved, state law and borough code diverged.
State law says a municipality can spend public money to influence the outcome of a ballot proposition, as long as that municipality passes an ordinance appropriating money for that purpose. But before last week, borough code prohibited all uses of public resources to promote ballot initiatives.
But that doesn’t mean the borough hasn’t used its own money to promote ballot propositions. It just means assembly members have had to approve exceptions to the borough’s own code each time.
That was the case a few years ago, for example, when Central Emergency Services wanted to use $3,500 to promote a bond initiative to build a new fire station.
The issue came up again last year, when South Peninsula Hospital wanted to use operating money to promote a bond initiative to upgrade the hospital campus.
The assembly passed an ordinance that let the hospital, which is owned by the borough, use some of its own money for promotional purposes. In all, the hospital used $100,000 to promote the bond. Half of that came from the hospital’s operating funds. [WEB: The other half came from non-operating funds, like interest income and individual contributions.]
About a week before the election, the borough walked back part of the original ordinance, which said half of the $100,000 was coming from the South Peninsula Hospital Foundation, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the hospital. A legal memo later clarified no money from the foundation was used to promote the bond initiative.
Some voters, like Homer’s Guy Rosi, were concerned about the way assembly members approved the money.
“This ordinance attempted to skirt both state statutes and Kenai Peninsula Borough rules by adjusting how to allow the – for the funding, the promotion of this proposition in the tune of $100,000 that's a real war chest there to influence the outcome of the election,” he said.
In response, Borough Attorney Sean Kelley said the ordinance actually did the opposite.
“It's not skirting the law,” he said. “It's specifically within the law that an ordinance to influence the outcome of a ballot proposition has to have a appropriate ordinance attached to it specifically for that purpose.”
Now that borough code matches state law, the assembly will still need to pass an ordinance if it wants to spend public money promoting a ballot proposition. But, they won’t need to go around their own rules first.
The next borough election is Oct. 7.
