Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Assembly Governance Committee, formerly the Rules Committee, met on Thursday, October 8, 2026. The meeting focused on legislative employee recognition, reports from various branches of municipal government, and a comprehensive review of proposed updates to Title 28 (Elections) of the Anchorage Municipal Code, including a candidate petition requirement and several administrative clarifications. Chair Anna presided.
Okay, everyone, let's get this meeting started. Uh today is Thursday, October eighth. We are convened here for the Assembly Governance Committee. I will note this is the first time we're calling it that. This is the former rules committee, same general idea, new name. And on the phone, I see Member McCormick. And Member Scout. Yeah, sorry. And I'm just realizing I need to switch gears because this is the first names committee. So thank you. Uh sorry, we've been a long week. Um so uh we're also joined in the room by uh Assembly Council, members of the public, clerk's office, mayor's office, um, uh, and legislative services. So um, and I'll just note uh a couple changes to the agenda um in terms of order. So we're we're gonna uh first go through our legislative employee, we'll go through our reports. Um, I'm going to move the discussion about our election ordinances to after these other new business items. Uh, but my intention is if for some reason we're going through and you and it gets to two PM or full hour in, I am going to switch switch gears for us, uh, if not sooner. or full hour in. I am going to switch switch gears for us, uh, if not sooner. So uh the goal is just to make sure we have plenty of time for that. So we'll do our other uh items of business first. So with that, um, let's do our legislative employee of the quarter. So um, and this is I think the first one that I have done. So uh so I'm just reminding you, so I think I need to talk about it. Um, so uh we do our legislative employee of the quarter recognizing folks in the legislative branch. So that's uh clerk's office, ledge services ombudsman and assembly council. And um uh we uh like to recognize folks who are doing a good job. And so uh today we have uh actually uh two people that we'd like to recognize. So I'll we have our awards here. Um so uh they have been uh recommended for awards. So that is uh Mandy Honest and Liza Spano, if you want to come up and then and then we'll do the pictures in a second, but uh just as a as a why, you know, for why we're recognizing these folks. Um, first because they are great employees, but more specifically, um, they are our business licensing team. So they deal with alcohol licenses, marijuana licenses, um, a number of other things. So uh specifically since February of this year, they've worked really hard with IT to develop our online registration for short-term rentals uh application, and they have worked with over a thousand hosts to register over 2,500 short-term rentals uh per AO 2025 115 S2. They fielded many, many phone calls during this time with technical issues, walked hosts through the process and are working and worked with IT. Um, just noting that uh we wanted to recognize the uh extra hard work that they did on top of the regular duties of dealing with our uh uh other license types. And so congratulations to Mandy and Liza. And I'll just check Jamie as Liza out of office today or okay. Well you need your trophy, build your own trophy. Yeah, go ahead, Mandy. Oh, yeah, and I should have said so. Uh I'll just note that they get um the uh okay. So they get um a mug, some pins, uh these certificates, and then uh the joke is that in our branch you uh we're DIY, so you got to build your reward yourself. So we'll do some photos really quick. Oh, thank you.