Lifelong Haines resident Bill Thomas was hired this week to work as a special assistant to Gov. Mike Dunleavy in Juneau. Beginning Jan. 15, Thomas will act as a community liaison in the region and engage with the public on administrative priorities, policies and legislation, according to director of communications Jeff Turner.
“I really don’t know what my job description is, but we’ll figure it out,” Thomas told the CVN Tuesday, the evening before his first day. Thomas isn’t new to government politics.
From 2005 to 2013, he served as a Republican member in the House of Representatives in Juneau.
“I’ve been involved in lobbying and political consulting since I was 28,” said Thomas, now 72. “I know the Southeast people and a lot of the issues.”
Thomas, a Vietnam War veteran, has worked as a commercial fisherman gillnetting in Southeast waters for 50 years.
He will join the ranks of three other special assistants, Jim Sackett in Fairbanks, Todd Smoldon in the Mat-Su Valley, and John Muller as statewide rural representative. Thomas is the first special assistant in the Dunleavy administration assigned to Southeast, Turner said.
In Haines, Thomas expects to first address what residents want to see for the Alaska Marine Highway System, and the state regulation that prohibits the discharge of a firearm within a half mile of a developed facility in the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve—an issue that came up in November when a hunter was ticketed for shooting a brown bear from the sidewalk at 20.5 Mile near the Jilkaat Kwaan Cultural Center.
Thomas said he will hear from community members and convey their concerns and ideas to the governor. “How are we going to pay for it?” Thomas said of the $43 million state funding cut to AMHS last year. “That’s going to be the question.”
Thomas will travel as needed, and be a point of contact for Southeast constituents, Turner said.