Former Gov. Bill Sheffield talks about time zones and oil taxes during a surprise visit to the Sitka Historical Society annual meeting. (Rich McClear, KCAW News)

Former Gov. Bill Sheffield talks about time zones and oil taxes during a surprise visit to the Sitka Historical Society annual meeting. (Rich McClear, KCAW News)

Former Gov. Bill Sheffield made a surprise visit to the Sitka Historical Society annual meeting at Centennial Hall on Sunday night.

Sheffield served one term as governor from 1982 to 1986.

He reminisced about some of his activities.

Historical Society president John Stein set the tone of the speech in his introduction:

“I went to Wikipedia to find out about Bill Sheffield. And I think the wonderful thing about Bill is that there were calls to impeach Bill Sheffield because he wanted to unify the time zones in the State of Alaska. I thought to myself ‘my God, can we only have those kinds of problems now.’ ”

When Sheffield took office Alaska was divided into four time zones. Sheffield ran a hotel and tourism business four zones made business difficult.

The Juneau mayor called for all of Alaska to be on one time zone. Sheffield agreed and sponsored hearings all over Alaska. After the new single time zone went into effect Sheffield said:

“Ketchikan woke up and said ‘Hey, what happened here.’ And they were going to secede from the Union and I think I said something like ‘go ahead.’ But I didn’t mean it. But anyway it was probably one of the better things I did.”

After reminiscences, Sheffield discussed current issues in Alaska. One was the referendum to reinstate higher taxes on oil producers that were lowered in the 2013 legislative session. The referendum will be on the ballot in August, 2014 Sheffield says that lower taxes will be an incentive for oil companies to work to get heavier oil out of the ground and into the pipeline.

“We have a pipeline and so we need to use it. There’s going to be a referendum coming up. I’m going to vote against that referendum,” he said.

Sheffield said he doesn’t think the new tax structure is perfect but believes the state needs to give it a few years to see if they promote more oil industry growth. If lower taxes don’t encourage growth Sheffield told the Historical Society, the state can then change it.

Also at the meeting, the Historical Society honored Jerry Dzugan with its Isabel Miller Award. The award is named after a long time curator of the Sitka Historical Museum.

Dzugan is an outgoing member of the Society Board. He served as president and treasurer and was cited for his efforts in developing sustainable funding for the Historical Society.