As Anchorage faces 3% sales tax push, Mayor LaFrance expands City Hall executive payroll

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance announced two new executive hires at City Hall this week, expanding the municipal payroll, even as her administration presses Anchorage voters to approve a new 3% sales tax.

LaFrance said the appointments strengthen the Municipality of Anchorage’s leadership in public communications and early childhood initiatives, but the timing is such that questions may be raised. After all, City Hall is adding executives while asking residents to pay higher taxes during a period of economic strain and rising skepticism about government spending.

Under the announcement, Nora Morse will join the administration as Communications Director beginning Jan. 20. Morse comes from the teachers union and Democrat field, with more than 11 years of experience in public communications, campaign management, and government affairs in Alaska. Most recently, she served as communications director for NEA-Alaska.

Morse is not new to municipal government. She previously worked as a press assistant to former disgraced Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz and later as deputy communications director for the Anchorage Police Department, marking a return to City Hall under a different administration but within the same Democratic political machine.

At the same time, LaFrance announced the appointment of Christina Hulquist as executive director of the Anchorage Child Care and Early Education Fund. Hulquist began in the role on Dec. 29. She has more than two decades of experience in early childhood systems, including government administration, program development, and direct child care operations.

Hulquist will work alongside Interim Executive Director Austin Quinn-Davidson, who will remain in place through April to ensure what the administration calls a seamless leadership transition. Quinn-Davidson played a central role in launching the fund and overseeing its early implementation with a sweetheart contract awarded by the city to her after she left the Assembly.

“I am proud to welcome Nora and Christina to the team. Their combined decades of experience and dedication to Anchorage will help us move our community forward,” LaFrance said in a written statement. “I also want to thank Austin Quinn-Davidson for her instrumental efforts in getting the ACCEE Fund off the ground.”

The Anchorage Child Care and Early Education Fund, approved by voters in 2023, directs municipal cannabis tax revenues toward child care programs and early education initiatives. The fund distributes roughly $5 million annually and is overseen by a nine-member board that advises the mayor and Assembly and submits an annual proposed budget. Under the fund’s charter, the executive director is appointed by the board in consultation with the mayor.

The political connections surrounding the fund are in plain sight: Quinn-Davidson previously served alongside LaFrance on the Anchorage Assembly and was elevated to interim mayor after Berkowitz resigned in 2020 amid a scandal involving inappropriate communications with a reporter. She later received the contract to help stand up and manage the new child care fund, a sequence that is emblematic of the “friends with benefits” politics of City Hall.

Those concerns are colliding with the mayor’s push for a new 3% sales tax, a proposal that would represent the largest tax increase in Anchorage history.

Under the plan promoted by LaFrance and Assembly allies, roughly one-third of the new tax revenue would be dedicated to child care-related spending, further expanding the scope of the ACCEE Fund.

LaFrance did not announce how much each of these positions will cost taxpayers, but the salary alone, without benefits, will be over six figures.

Across the country, government-funded child care programs have come under investigation for widespread fraud, mismanagement, and abuse of public dollars, raising questions about whether Anchorage should be expanding a new bureaucracy tied to early childhood services at all.

The latest hires reinforce a broader pattern: a Democratic-led city government growing its administrative footprint while asking taxpayers for more money, even as confidence in government-run social programs continues to erode.