Citing a battle with aggressive pancreatic cancer, Montana Public Service Commission Chairman Bill Gallagher announced Tuesday he is not seeking re-election.

Gallagher, 54, the third-highest-ranking elected Republican in Montana, won his District 5 race in 2010 by a sweeping margin. The commission regulates private, investor-owned industries such as power, gas and telephones doing business in Montana.

He plans to serve out the remainder of his term that ends in January 2015.  

“It really was a tough call for me,” he said. “But I didn’t want to give the cancer any edge. I’m looking for a miracle and as a Christian man I appreciate the prayers sent my way.”

Gallagher was diagnosed with cancer on his pancreas in June and since then it has metastasized to his liver. On a regimen of chemotherapy, he said his doctors have given him around a 3 percent chance to live the next five years.

Despite the prognosis, Gallagher plans to fight no matter how treatment goes. One factor in turning down a re-election bid was the provision that if a commissioner dies in office, the governor chooses his or her replacement.

With the amount of work he and his fellow commissioners put into their jobs, Gallagher said he felt this would be unfair to the people of Montana.

Twice elected chairman of the commission, Gallagher was particularly proud of several accomplishments in the last three years, including the protection of Montana’s 406 area code.

“We were slated to lose that area code,” he said. “I spurred the commission to push that out. We made the phone companies begin consolidating numbers.”

Before the commission looked at the problem, Gallagher said small communities were taking hundreds and thousands of numbers they didn’t need by holding prefixes. The commission lighting a fire under phone companies kicked the problem down the road to around 2025 before Montana would need to split area codes.

Gallagher also is proud of getting rid of automatic rate increases for utility companies if consumption falls. Gallagher said it was a way to steer between automatic rate increases without taking away energy conservation efforts.

“If you would take steps at home to save energy, they could increase rate prices,” he said. “I think they should not get paid for energy they don’t sell.”

For Gallagher, whose first years on the commission were beset my partisan strife, the most important bit of work could come in the next year.

NorthWestern Energy submitted an application to purchase 11 hydroelectric dams from Pacific Power and Light, including Kerr Dam south of Polson and Thompson Falls Dam on the Clark Fork River. Montana Power Co. sold the dams nearly 15 years ago.

“When I ran for this position, I was asked again and again, ‘When are we going to get our dams back?’” Gallagher said. “Well, in nine months we will decide if NorthWestern will be able to buy them back or not.”

While he isn’t sure who will replace him, he said there were likely to be some front-runners, and from Flathead County.

“The Flathead Lake and Flathead County area really dominates this district,” Gallagher said. District 5 consists of Flathead, Lake, Glacier, Pondera, Teton and Lewis and Clark counties. “Someone running from up there might have a better chance. But we’ll probably see a primary.”

Gallagher, who grew up in Dillon and spent years living in Plains and Polson, is married to his high school sweetheart, Jennifer. The couple has two grown children.

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.