Proposed legislation to cut back on conflicts of interest on the Haines Borough’s heliski review committee was sent to the Tourism Advisory Board.

The borough assembly voted 6-0 Tuesday to do that because the tourism board is already reviewing the part of the borough’s code that addresses commercial tour permits.

Borough manager Bill Seward recommended a change to the borough code to trim back the number of heliskiing industry and environmentalist representatives on the heliskiing permit review committee.

Seward’s recommendation came after two heliski company operators were appointed to the five-person committee that will review the two firms’ requests to expand the areas where heliskiing is allowed.

Under how the current borough code is written, that is allowed.

The committee’s purpose is to review the requests by Alaska Heliskiing and Southeast Alaska Backcountry Adventures to expand their allowed heliskiing zones. The committee will make its recommendations to Seward by Nov. 30. Seward will make his recommendations to the assembly by Dec. 13.

Mayor Jan Hill, the heliskiing industry and a random-choice computer program selected the five. Here are the selections and how they were made:

The borough’s heliskiing industry selected Sean Brownell, part owner of Alaska Heliskiing, as its representative.

Hill selected Meredith Pochardt, executive director of the Takshanuk Watershed Council, to represent conservation interests.

Hill also selected Ron Jackson to represent the borough assembly.

On Oct. 4 at the borough’s administrative building, a random-choice computer program selected Scott Sundberg, co-owner of SEABA, and Lori Smith from seven Haines residents who applied to be the two at-large representatives on the committee. The other five residents were Bruce Bauer, Carolyn Weishahn, Ted Cheney, Mark Smith and Joe Ordonez.

Seward noted that the seven at-large applicants included some heliskiing and environmental group representatives. Consequently, he proposed the change in the borough code to keep those two interest groups out of the at-large selections for future heliskiing committees.

The heliskiing committee begins its review Thursday at 5 p.m. in the borough assembly chambers. The borough is not accepting any more requests to change heliskiing zones until 2019.

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