Assembly Report for April 15, 2008

TESCHE MADE IT OUT OF ALASKA: “My work there is done” said former Assemblyman Allan Tesche who was recently spotted on a beach Outside. Neither Tesche nor his wife Pamela would say exactly where they were ended up after he left the Anchorage Assembly last week, except that the air is warm there and house plants are grown outdoors.

Tesche was elected three times to represent the downtown district on the Anchorage Assembly and served since April 1999. He was elected vice chair for two years and at various times headed the Assembly’s Finance, and Public Safety, and Elections Committees.

He wrote countless pieces of legislation addressing issues as varied as design standards for Big Box Stores, a ban on smoking in restaurants and public places, several Charter revisions dealing with elections and municipal budgets, dog parks, resolution of the Simonian Little League controversy, economic development and neighborhood planning, including a new Downtown Comprehensive plan.

Tesche introduced many new words and phrases into the Assembly’s lexicon, including the terms “bloviate”, “trifurcate” and most recently, “butt dialing”. He once used Assembly member Debbie Ossiander’s last name as a noun to describe a “sticky, gaseous swamp of questions asked only to confuse other assembly members and to stop good legislation.” He branded Assembly conservatives as “Troglidites” and dismissed their colleagues as “furry little friends.” In turn, he was vilified by the Wuerch Administration as a “Communist” and named by Assembly chair Dan Coffey as the “meanest, nastiest, most rotten Assembly member ever.” He was a gut fighter for the left.

Although he loved to talk to reporters, Tesche denied was a “media hog” or that on slow days he simply made up stuff for the evening news. He poked fun at former mayors by holding press conferences in a “media center” put together in the Assembly office festooned with its own blue curtain, an oval Assembly seal and flags. In 2005 he teamed up with Aaron Selbig for a weekly radio show on KUDO 1080 where he scorched Assembly conservatives and argued incessantly with callers. You can still call 569-1080 during Aarons’s show if you have something to say.

Tesche did not leave quietly as his term ended. In February, 2008 Assembly Chair Dan Coffey carelessly “butt dialed” a cell phone recording to the Tesche home of a saucy conversation between Coffey and Assemblyman Bill Starr. On tape, the pair bantered about Coffey’s role as a “bag man” for political contributions and Starr’s own attempt to shake down the Chief of Police for union endorsement in his re election. The recording became the focus of an APOC investigation after which Starr was fined for unlawful fundraising. The recording was also mentioned in a vigorous write-in campaign by Eagle River resident Janet Brand who came within a handful of votes of actually unhorsing Starr in the April 1, 2008 election. Also disclosed in the recording, Coffey’s questionable fundraising activities impacted election bids by long term Assemblyman Dick Traini in the midtown district and by Sherri Jackson in West Anchorage. Both lost their elections and were replaced by progressives who stripped Coffey of his chairmanship and restored a more progressive role for the Assembly in local politics.

The Tesche Report was posted promptly after Assembly meetings to 1,600 readers from May 31, 2005 to this final edition. Leaving the Assembly is probably the only thing Tesche did during the past three years which endeared him to the remaining conservatives on the Anchorage Assembly.