New evidence surfaces Mark Begich cooked the books even worse than originally thought

By Dan Fagan
Publisher
The Alaska Standard

On Friday during an Assembly budget work session, we learned former Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich deceived the public and Assembly yet another time in trying to ram through union contracts that the city clearly could not afford.

Begich has already been caught red-handed intentionally hiding a memo provided to him from his Chief Financial Officer predicting a deficit as high as $100,000,000. Begich dishonestly painted a rosy picture of the city’s finances just before he asked the Anchorage Assembly to lock in four, five year lucrative union contracts.

Now a new revelation on Friday shows the Begich administration also deceived the public and the Assembly about the money remaining in the city’s fund balance account. Begich inflated the amount of money in the fund balance by close to $30,000,000. The rosier the picture Begich painted, the better the chance the Assembly would go along with his expensive labor contracts to make good on promises made to his Big Labor supporters.

We first broke the story of the second Begich deception on Friday on the radio. Channel Two and Channel Eleven news have since reported on the new development in the scandal. The Anchorage Daily News has refused to report on the latest case of Begich cooking the books. 

Click on the link below to hear Assemblyman Dan Coffey’s reaction to the latest Begich deception. Read more

Another Begich deception.mp3