Fifteen Anchorage Assembly members will have their spending accounts examined in a 9-2 vote

Fifteen current and recent Anchorage Assembly members will have their spending accounts examined by the municipal internal auditor. The resolution as introduced would have covered 27 people who have sat on the dais since Jan. 1, 2023. Members narrowed it twice on Tuesday, then adopted the amended version 9-2.

Each member gets an individual spending account of $24,000 a year, used for travel, contract aides and communications. The auditor will look at the 15 members' spending back to Jan. 1, 2023, review the policies governing the accounts, and recommend changes. A floor amendment settled who the 15 are: anyone who served between January and September 2026.

Assembly Members Yarrow Silvers, Erin Baldwin Day and Jared Goecker sponsored the original resolution. It followed an internal audit of Assembly travel covering January 2025 through April 2026, which found that eight members took 38 trips at a total cost of $93,232, averaging about $2,450 a trip.

Vice Chair Daniel Volland opened debate by moving to postpone the resolution indefinitely, calling it duplicative of a travel-policy rewrite already underway and citing an administration estimate of roughly 250 hours of staff work. He withdrew the motion after debate. Chair Anna Brawley opposed the study outright, pointing to housing, budget and public safety work stacking up ahead of budget season and asking "what is the best use of our public resources now?"

Silvers said the review does not start from an assumption of misconduct. She said she believes in the integrity of the Assembly staff who manage the accounts and does not think substantial misuse has occurred, but that she does not "believe that the public should have to take my word for it."

Baldwin Day, who chairs the Municipal Audit Committee, drafted the amendment cutting the pool to 15 and said she expects the study to turn up no pattern of wrongdoing. The public, she said, "does not trust us when we say we have our house in order."

A special study comes with a particular limitation. Internal Audit Director Alden Thern said it carries no requirement that anyone respond in writing to what the auditor finds. "It will just be written up in a report," he said. His office has 90 days to deliver it or ask for an extension.