The Haines Borough Assembly received an update from lobbyist Bill Thomas last week, and interim manager Brad Ryan has included funding for the position in the upcoming year’s budget.

But whether Thomas’s $45,000 presence in Juneau saw any real return for the municipality is still a matter for debate.

The main gist of Thomas’s nearly half-hour update was, “There’s no money.” No money for the Small Boat Harbor expansion project, no money for the Haines High School locker room repairs, no money for most of the items on the borough’s legislative priority list.

The slightly more than $1 million penciled in to Gov. Bill Walker’s proposed budget in December for the wastewater treatment plant remains in the budget. The borough qualified for that money through a graded application process with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation municipal matching grant program. The DEC program was funded this year through a roughly $4.1 million reappropriation from the remaining balances of other completed projects around the state.

At Tuesday’s assembly meeting, Thomas said he “had to do some pretty heavy lifting” to keep that money in the budget, and said he wanted an executive session so Mayor Jan Hill could “tell what we had to do to keep that money in there.”

Assembly member Margaret Friedenauer objected to the idea of getting an explanation behind closed doors, and Thomas asked “permission from the mayor” to speak publicly.

Thomas said he and Hill met with Sen. Dennis Egan, D-Juneau, and Rep. Sam Kito, D-Juneau, while Hill was in town for Southeast Conference. Thomas said the two legislators told him, “There’s a good chance you’re going to lose the money and you’re going to have to go work it.”

Thomas said Egan and Kito couldn’t do it because they are in the minority. “You’re in the minority, you can’t protect it. So I had to go talk to my friends and keep it in there,” Thomas said.

Kito said in an interview this week there was “at least discussion” at the legislative level that some communities objected to having money from their completed projects reappropriated to other communities. They wanted to see the money reappropriated to their own communities for other projects, Kito said.

“It seems like we were able to keep that from happening,” Kito said.

When asked if Thomas played an integral role in protecting the DEC funding, Kito said it was a joint effort. “We were all talking to the people we could talk to about it,” he said.

Thomas said the issue of municipal revenue sharing – where the state divvies up funds to communities to supplement local operating budgets – “is still not resolved.” Right now, the figure sits at $30 million, cut from the governor’s proposed $58 million, Thomas said.

Thomas referred to funding for public radio as “low-hanging fruit,” in that it received an outpouring of support requiring a proportionally small amount of money to satisfy the public. “Public radio was saved,” he said.

The same couldn’t be said for the Online With Libraries program, which provides funding for library internet service, videoconferencing services and digital literacy training for library staff. Haines Borough Public Library director Patty Brown, who has testified and written letters to legislators, said the funding cut will drastically change internet access at the local library.

Thomas said there was nothing he could do about OWL funding.

“By the time I heard about OWL… pretty much both houses had zero on OWL so there was nothing we could do about it,” he said.

Thomas was also unable to stave off cuts to the local public health nurse office, largely because he was unaware they were happening. “I didn’t know about this until it was done; the public nurse vacancy here, they closed that. Had we known, maybe we’d been able to work on that, but it was something nobody brought to our attention, at least mine,” Thomas said.

Assembly member Friedenauer asked Thomas about the $45,000 annual contract he signed with the borough, and if he would continue working through summer and fall in some capacity.

“No,” Thomas replied, stating he had offered to go to Washington, D.C., if the borough wanted him to and that he would show U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski around when she comes to Haines for the 24th Annual Great Alaska Craft Beer and Home Brew Festival.

The borough’s request for proposals for the lobbyist job stated the contract is for a one-year period, and Thomas’s proposal stated “the agreement will terminate on December 31, 2016.”

Contracts are typically for the session only, Thomas said. “I’m a Haines boy. I’ll do what I need to do from Haines,” he said.

Mayor Jan Hill said in a recent interview that after spending time with Thomas in Juneau sitting in on hearings and meeting legislators, she would advocate for hiring him again as lobbyist.

“I understand why people weren’t sure that this was money well spent, but I still believe it was and I would do it again in a minute, because the value of having someone down there is great. The value of having someone like Bill Thomas there is huge,” Hill said.

“We had as many or more meetings in the hallways than we did in peoples’ offices, just because it was Bill. Everybody knows him. They would see us in the hall waiting for our next meeting or we were talking with somebody else, and pretty soon we’d have five or six people standing there and we’re all talking about things. Those people have votes, too,” Hill added.

Some assembly members have been less enthused about Thomas’ performance, including Ron Jackson, who recently said he’s seen “no evidence” Thomas’s presence in Juneau has benefited Haines at all.

Assembly member Tresham Gregg is also less than impressed. When asked after Thomas’s legislative update whether he thought the lobbyist was a good investment, Gregg responded with a direct “No.”

“I don’t think that really the monitoring of the situation did anything other than just monitor the situation. There was no outcome that was necessarily beneficial to Haines in particular, other than maybe the wastewater treatment plant money, which I guess is still in the budget,” he said.

Gregg said he isn’t opposed to keeping some money for lobbying in the current budget the assembly is working on, but he would like to see it used more creatively. “It doesn’t necessarily mean we have to hire a particular lobbyist. It could be for some kind of citizen effort to get something off the ground,” he said.

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