Commissioners keep votes secret

Alexis Barker
NLJ News Editor
 
Weston County Republican Party Chairman Kari Drost raised a question during the Oct. 19 meeting, held in Lusk, regarding the vote made by the Weston, Goshen and Niobrara county commissioners after they kept their votes for the new House District 2 representative secret. 
The conclusion of the meeting was the appointment of Lusk’s J.D. Williams. The official vote, according to Goshen County Clerk Cindy Kenyon, was eight votes for Williams, two for Newcastle’s Allen Slagle and one for Lusk’s Greg Matney. A breakdown of the votes in the minutes, per the weighted votes by county, shows that Williams eight votes represented 72.34%, Slagle’s two votes represented 19.24%, and Matney’s one vote represented 8.42% of the votes. 
“Weston County Commissioner Marty Ertman moved to accept
the weighted vote percentages as presented: Niobrara County commissioners each receive 8.42%; Goshen County commissioners each receive 8.88%, and Weston County commissioners each receive 9.62 %; seconded, motion passed. The clerks have previously agreed the weighted vote is correctly calculated,” the minutes from the meeting state. 
According to Drost, she rose despite the lack of a public comment portion and asked why the commissioners were not making their votes known to the public. 
“I was disturbed. I said, ‘Why are you voting in secret? You are all public officials; this is a public meeting,’” Drost told the News Letter Journal. 
Drost said that when she asked why the votes were being kept secret, she was told that they had determined the rules before the meeting and decided to keep them private to avoid damaging future relationships with potential representatives. 
Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock confirmed in an email that the voting process was decided by “all of the commissioners.” 
According to the minutes from the meeting, provided in an email by  Niobrara County Commission Chairman Pat Wade, the rules of the meeting were outlined and voted on through several different motions, each of which passed without a dissenting vote. 
The email was sent by Wade, but signed by all three of the commission chairs, including Weston County’s Marty Ertman and Goshen County’s John Ellis. 
The email say the private ballots were used because there was nothing specifically outlined in statute that dictates how votes should be taken. It states that both Niobrara County Attorney Anne Wasserburger and Weston County Attorney Michael Stulken were in attendance to provide legal counsel. 
“It’s not a secret ballot, it’s just like voting at the polls, your vote is not made public,” Hadlock said in an email. “There is no difference.” 
But Drost argued that it is nothing like voting at the polls. She said that when voting at the polls, you are voting on behalf of yourself. As a commissioner, you are voting on behalf of the people that elected you, she said. 
“I am lucky they let me talk; they didn’t have to,” she said. “I am still disturbed by it. I don’t know if it is illegal or not, but it smells bad.” 
“I wouldn’t run my own meeting like that. It felt wrong,” Drost continued. “I try not to do things that feel wrong, and I would have never done that. That’s why I felt I needed to speak up.” 
While Wade reported that the commissioners followed a similar format to the meeting held by the Republican Parties to select the three candidates, Drost said that the two situations are very different. 
“There are different rules for each entity, the Republican Party is a private organization,” she said. “We are part of the process but it is not the same.” 
Longtime Wyoming journalist and former executive director of the Wyoming Press Association Jim Angell doesn’t believe the commissioners should have voted in secret, noting that potential repercussions from the vote is not a legitimate reason to take a secret vote. 
“They can talk about this guy all they like in executive session, but when it comes time to take a vote, they have to do it in public,” Angell said. “It’d be a shame if somebody challenged the appointment, and they had to go back and do it all over again.” 
The News Letter Journal requested a recording of last week’s Weston County commissioners meeting, but Hadlock informed the newspaper that she did not record the portion of the meeting held in Lusk to select a House District 2 representative. She stated that she also did not record the portion of the Oct. 19 meeting held after the commissioners returned from Lusk. According to the agenda posted before the meeting, the commissioners were to reconvene to discuss an ongoing dispatch dispute with the city of Newcastle.