Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan allows his grudge against Mark Begich to distract him from the job for which he was elected.

Count Mayor Dan Sullivan among those who think there's more investigating to be done into the process used last year to approve four big labor contracts and this year's city budget.

Questions about whether former Mayor Mark Begich provided enough information to the Anchorage Assembly about city revenues and investment shortfalls started surfacing soon after Begich left office to become a U.S. senator. Acting Mayor Matt Claman announced the city faced a $17 million budget deficit only a few days later.

Claman and other Assembly members Tuesday voted to simply accept Municipal Attorney Dennis Wheeler's review of the situation. Claman and an Assembly majority said they think it's time to move on with other city business.

On Wednesday, Sullivan said it may be a good idea to revisit Wheeler's findings. An Assembly work session on Wheeler's report is scheduled for Jan. 8.

"There still seems to be some questions about things that he stated in his report versus things that former administration officials said, and I don't see that there is a problem in ... reconciling those things," Sullivan said at a weekly news conference. "Leaving things inconclusive, I'm not sure serves the public interest."

What is it with Alaskan Republicans? First we had Don Young blaming the Obama administration for the dismal economy (Apparently in Don's eyes everything was fine with George Bush in the White House), then we had Sarah Palin write an ENTIRE BOOK blaming everybody from Alaska bloggers, to Katie Couric for her political downfall, and now we have Dan "I don't need a chin to be mayor" Sullivan desperately trying to smear the name of Senator Mark Begich instead of dealing with the problems facing our city.

Okay we get it, you don't like Mark Begich. Maybe you can tap that out in Morse code on the ass of the next young blond you fondle.
(Yeah you know that picture is NEVER going to get old for me.)

Look according to the Wheeler report, even finding that Begich had dropped the ball when it came to informing the Assembly of a potential shortfall, will not make a bit of difference in solving the problems facing the city right now.

This from the Wheeler Report. "There is no basis under principles of contract law that would justify the rescission of the 2008 IBEW or the APDEA CBAs approved by the Assembly. Rescission is not available on the basis of unilateral mistake or error on the Assembly’s part."

In other words the union contracts in question are a done deal, and successfully sticking Begich with some of the blame will not make one bit of difference going forward, except that Danny-boy can then say "Ha, ha, I told you so!"

And now while the city's problems continue to fester, Sullivan insists upon wasting the Assembly's time and resources to pursue this witch hunt, rather than to utilize their abilities to help solve the issues at hand.

What Sullivan so conveniently fails to mention is that, then mayor, Mark Begich inherited a 33 million dollar shortfall in 2003 from the Weurch administration, but instead of throwing himself on the floor, and kicking and screaming about it, he fixed it.

Isn't THAT what Sullivan was elected to do? Fix the problems of the city? I mean if we just wanted somebody to go around pointing fingers, and shirking their responsibility, we may as well have just kept Sarah back here in Alaska. After all that is her specialty.

Update: There is a post over at Mudflats that helps to explain exactly how superfluous and politically motivated this entire thing has become.