The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner has been in favor of abolishing the historical City of Fairbanks (second-largest city in Alaska) and replacing it with a Municipality of Fairbanks that would encompass all of what is now the Fairbanks North Star Borough -- an area the size of New Jersey. This is mainly because of jealousy toward the #1 and #3 cities in Alaska, Anchorage and Juneau, both of which have "unified" with their surrounding boroughs. One supporter of Fairbanks unification/consolidation even went so far as to argue that undergoing this bizarre transformation would eliminate confusion over Fairbanks having two "mayors" -- in Alaska, both cities and boroughs have mayors -- by unifying the job in a single office.
The last attempt to abolish the historical city, founded about 100 years ago in the wake of a gold rush, was defeated overwhelmingly by voters after even the News-Miner expressed skepticism about the idea. One problem with the plan was that the city could be abolished even if city residents had voted unanimously against it -- a majority of all votes cast boroughwide would have been enough to make it happen -- and non-city borough residents outnumber Fairbanks city residents 5 to 3. So a Fairbanks legislator wrote a bill that would fix this by requiring a majority of city residents to approve a consolidation effort.
Governor Tony Knowles, a Democrat and former mayor of the Unified Imperial Municipality of Anchorage, vetoed the bill. And the News-Miner's editorial today approves of the veto.
What is most important for a local issue put to vote is that the outcome recognizes the desires of the local majority. Requiring a majority vote in both the city and borough on the issue of consolidation would be like requiring statewide measures to win a majority of votes in both Anchorage and Fairbanks. Such a system would make it nearly impossible to accomplish anything--or at least, many things.
Apparently the editors forget that we live under a Constitution and a Rule of Law, wherein the tyranny of the majority is recognized to be as great a danger as the tyranny of the minority. We don't have a pure democracy -- which has been well described as two wolves and one lamb voting on the dinner menu -- rather, we protect the rights of minorities by tempering majority rule.
Furthermore, the example the editors cite as an argument for their view, is ridiculous. If the statewide measure in question were the abolition of Anchorage and Fairbanks, you damn well better bet your sweet bippy the voters in those two cities should have something to say about it.
Allowing 50,000 people who live outside the City of Fairbanks to abolish the city despite their having no constitutional stake in the existence of that city, would be a tyranny of the majority. Rep. Jim Whitaker's bill should have become law, and I can only hope that next year then-Gov. Frank Murkowski will have the opportunity to sign it.
UPDATE: I overlooked another way this could be put to rights: the Alaska Legislature, which I believe still harbors a veto-proof Republican majority, could do what it has done so often throughout Knowles' tenure -- and simply override him. But the opportunity for that may be limited.
