Rebecca Logan's silence on garnished wages sounds like an excuse

Rebecca Logan became president and chief executive officer of the Alaska chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors in 2004.

Three years later, a court ordered that the Associated Builders and Contractors regularly garnish a portion of Logan's wages until her $13,209 debt to KeyBank was paid. As president and CEO, Logan was in a position to make that happen. Or not.

It did not happen.

This comes up because Logan, with the backing of the Republican Party, is running for mayor in Anchorage against incumbent Ethan Berkowitz. 

With the recent press coverage of Logan's past troubles with the legal system, including a conviction for drunk driving in 2010, it is this incident that really requires something more from Logan than silence.

Her handling of the matter reflects on her professional behavior as the president and CEO of the Associated Builders and Contractors.

KeyBank got a court order in July 2007 to have her employer direct a portion of Logan's wages to the bank to satisfy the debt.

The writ was served on CEO Logan and office manager Anne Northcutt on July 24, but the organization did not comply, KeyBank said.

"Logan's wages began being garnished in April 2008. Sporadic but incomplete garnishment payments were made between April 2008 and October 2008. Payments ceased entirely on Oct. 15, 2008, despite repeated requests for payment," KeyBank said in a court filing in May 2009, as first reported by KTVA in Anchorage.

On April 30, 2009, Logan still owed $9,244, KeyBank said. The bank asked that Associated Builders and Contractors be prevented from paying its CEO the money that should have gone to the bank.

KTVA reported that an Anchorage judge ruled that “someone besides Ms. Logan is to appear for Associated Builders and Contractors of Alaska.” Logan said that she directed that Northcutt not attend a court proceeding, KTVA said.

In a weekend story on Logan in the Anchorage Daily News, the newspaper did not raise the question of whether Logan, as president and CEO of Associated Builders, took personal action to prevent paying the bank from 2007 until the case was settled three years later.

"In 2007, KeyBank obtained a court order to take a portion of her wages. Payments to the bank happened sporadically between April 2008 and October 2008 before stopping, according to a KeyBank court filing. It isn't clear why from the court record, and Logan declined to elaborate, reiterating that she did not want to make excuses," the Daily News said.

What's clear is that refusing to elaborate is an excuse to try to avoid responsibility. In 2007, she wrote about the need for Alaskans to defend the free enterprise system and warned, "We are teetering on a slippery slope, one that Marxist theory identifies as the stage between capitalism and communism."

Logan was the president and CEO of a small organization that did not comply with a court order to direct a portion of her paycheck to pay a debt. That could not have happened without the knowledge of the president and CEO.