Anchorage Municipal Clerk Barbara Jones has announced her retirement, effective June 30. She has served as the election chief for Anchorage for 24 years, reporting to the Assembly. Before becoming the city clerk, Jones was the city’s Ombudsman for one year and served 12 years as the executive director and staff attorney for the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission.
In her role as municipal clerk, Jones has worked alongside 11 Assembly chairs through four mayoral administrations. She was a leader in the state in pushing for all-mail-in and drop-box elections, which is how the Anchorage voters now cast their ballots.
She has also been blamed for not giving over what should be public documents to people who have made records requests, or being heavy-handed in redacting documents that should be public. She has lost in court three times to citizen Russell Biggs over her documented collusion with liberal members of the Assembly, which she refused to hand over public documents.
Jones has not been without other controversies. Many voters under the new mail-in system enacted by the Assembly — without a vote of the public — have had their ballots tossed because their signatures did not match that on file and they were not able to successfully “cure” their ballots.
Jones is considered by many in Anchorage to be a partisan actor who puts her thumb on the scale on behalf of Democrats who are on the Assembly.
“The Municipality is fortunate to have benefitted from Barbara’s service. She is a team player and has built incredibly successful teams that enabled Anchorage to reach its goal for easy, accessible and open Vote-At-Home elections. In the last regular election, 66,844 voters, or 96.4% of all voters, completed their ballots from home, demonstrating the impact and reach of her team’s work,” said Assembly Chair Suzanne LaFrance. “Additionally, she has helped the Assembly run meetings with accuracy and efficiency and oversaw several initiatives to improve access to the Assembly process, such as livestreaming meetings and making Assembly documents more readily available.”
