Commissioners duck responsibility

It remains curious why a District Court judge will be the one deciding who the interim Park County assessor will be.

Since former assessor Pat Meyer, who retired mid-term in December 2024, was a Republican, state law says the county GOP must provide the Park County commissioners with its top three choices to fill the vacancy. The board would then appoint an interim from those three.

But the commissioners failed to appoint an interim assessor at last week’s meeting after the county’s GOP chairman told the board there had been an error in the vote tabulation.

However, Martin Kimmet, chairman of the county GOP, also told the commissioners, “I’m 100% sure of these new vote tallies... .”

Despite the fact that the top three receiving votes remained the same following the corrected tabulation, the commissioners chose to push the issue to the court.

In our opinion, not being able to make a choice because the first tally was in error was a feeble excuse for not making a decision.

Don Shreve, the leading vote-getter, was followed by Allen Gilbert and Robert Ferguson. Terry Call, Meyer’s first deputy and the one Meyer recommended for the interim position, was in sixth place in the vote.

Following last week’s announcement that the commissioners were not making a decision, social media influencers posted and shared resumes of the candidates online showing Call was the only candidate with any assessor experience.

It will be interesting to see if the judge rules the GOP committee members chose their top three candidates and their intent by that vote was the interim assessor should be selected from those three.

Or will the judge decide to select none of those and choose the most qualified person or someone else?

By state statute, the judge is expected to appoint an interim assessor within 30 days.

Is there some underlying reason the commissioners did not want to make that call? Park County residents have a right to know.

In our opinion, the judge will now be required to make a decision because the commissioners did not have sufficient reason to justify abrogating their duty by not appointing an interim assessor.