Clare Ross, who is a senior administrator for the Anchorage library system, is the Assembly’s newly minted legislative liaison. The Assembly authorized hiring its own legislative liaison, a new position, last month.
“The Assembly Leadership is pleased to have selected a candidate with extensive Municipal, managerial, and public policy experience. Clare has an outstanding educational background for this position, recently receiving a Master’s in Organizational Development and Leadership,” said Assembly Chair Suzanne LaFrance, who will supervise Ross.
Ross ran for Alaska Senate against Sen. Mia Costello in 2014. A Democrat, she lost in that Republican-leaning district.
Ross had been working for Grant Aviation when she was hired into senior management at the municipal library, where she’s served as the Assistant Director for Strategy and Development since 2016. She also worked for the Alaska Center for the Environment in recent years.
In 2019, she signed the recall petition for the Recall Dunleavy Committee.
In other words, she is a perfect fit for the Assembly, which is run by a leftist group.
“As you all know, in the last few years the workload on the Assembly has increased, and last year the Assembly received repeated requests from members of the public for more accessible information about ordinances and policies. Some ordinances, like the one addressing cell phones in school zones, need quite a bit of outreach and communication with the public to successfully implement. The Assembly created this position to better server the public and we are excited that Clare will be helping the Assembly meet the goal of improved constituent service,” LaFrance wrote in a memo to the Assembly.
At the same time the Assembly had hired Ross, after just hiring an equity officer for the city, Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar took to social media and criticized Mayor Bronson for adding a new position of “policy director” to his office:
