Court accepts lawsuit over texts and secret ballot
Judge Stuart S. Healy III, for the District Court in the Sixth Judicial District, has accepted the News Letter Journal’s lawsuit challenging the legality of a secret ballot, and also ruled that the hearing on the lawsuit will take place in Weston County in June. Healy ruled during a hearing on Feb. 21 in the case, which has also been brought by a trio of Weston County citizens who signed onto the lawsuit with the NLJ.
The group originally sued the commissioners over the secret-ballot vote used to appoint a person to fill the unexpired term of former Wyoming Rep. Hans Hunt in October 2021 after he resigned to take a job in Washington, D.C. Bruce Moats, the attorney representing the News Letter Journal, Kari Drost, Patricia Bauman and Raymond Norris, had filed a motion to amend the complaint against the Board of Weston County Commissioners to include text messages in which county business was conducted, a direct violation of Wyoming law.
The County Commission had originally rejected the amended lawsuit, leading to the need for the hearing. Tucker Ruby, the Johnson County Attorney who is representing the Weston County Commissioners in the case, argued in court that the amended lawsuit should not be accepted because there is no additional remedy that could be requested by the plaintiffs.
Following statements by both Ruby and Moats, however, Healy accepted the amended lawsuit. In ruling that the yet-to-be-scheduled June hearing would be heard in Weston County, he noted that Weston County residents had the right to hear the case in person during the anticipated half-day hearing.
“This was a significant victory for transparency and sure felt like it spoke well to our future prospects with this action,” said Bob Bonnar, the News Letter Journal publisher, in an email to the other plaintiffs.
Moats first learned of the illegal text messages after Commissioner Don Taylor revealed the messages to Drost, one of the plaintiffs, during an exchange on Sept. 11, 2022. Taylor told Drost at that time that the five commissioners — current commissioners Taylor, Ed Wagoner and Nathan Todd and former commissioners Marty Ertman and Tony Barton — and County Clerk Becky Hadlock had used text messages to communicate as a group since he first joined the commission after the 2020 election.
According to Moats, Wyoming Statute 16-4-403(d) addresses the use of text messaging as a form of communication for boards. It states that “no meeting shall be conducted by electronic means or any other form of communication that does not permit the public to hear, read or otherwise discern meeting discussions contemporaneously. Communications outside a meeting, including, but not limited to, sequential communications among members of an agency, shall not be used to circumvent the purposes of this act.”
“First, text messages are certainly sequential communications, so the commissioners were using the messages to conduct business hidden from the public, which circumvents the purpose of the Act,” Moats said.
After receiving knowledge of the messages, Moats asked the court for permission to depose Taylor in a letter dated Sept. 20, 2022, but Ruby responded that Taylor was not available. Ruby also asked at that time whether the defendants could develop a settlement proposal, but one was never presented to Moats, according to documents requesting the ability to file the amended complaint.
“When no settlement proposal was forthcoming, plaintiffs requested the text messages in an email to defendant’s counsel on Nov. 30, 2022,” the document states. “Counsel for defendant agreed to obtain the text messages. The group text messages held by Commissioner Taylor were provided via an electronic file on Jan. 13, 2023, but technological issues meant the Plaintiffs were not able to access the provided file until Jan. 17, 2023.”
Bonnar said it is frustrating that the only messages received were from Taylor’s phone.
“He is the one commissioner who has been transparent and forthcoming from the start, and he is the one who actually revealed the existence of these text messages in the first place,” he said.
When reviewing the messages, Moats said, it became evident that the commission was conducting county business via group messages, a direct violation of the Wyoming Public Meetings Act. The document notes that the group chats included discussion of public business and even voting on the expenditure of public funds.
Expenditures approved via text included permission to pay various bills, a variety of prepays and the rental of a storage unit. The group also authorized a Best Coyote Hunt calcutta, approval of minutes, an adjustment to a budget hearing and an email to the city. The group also discussed the scheduling of the meeting to replace Hunt and the chairman’s signature on various documents, including a letter to the Wyoming Legislature and a document for Ruby.
When discussing the letter to the Legislature on redistricting, the group not only approved Ertman’s signature on the letter but Barton also suggested that the Weston County commissioners include Crook County in their requests to legislators, and ask that both counties be allowed to “stay whole.”
Before this discussion, Barton had relocated to Crook County but refused to relinquish his seat on the Weston County Commission, even after current Commissioner Garrett Borton sought his removal from the board in a lawsuit.
“I think these text messages also demonstrate very clearly that Weston County residents were right to be upset about Commissioner Tony Barton’s insistence on staying on the Weston County Commission long after he moved to Crook County. His effort to convince other Weston County commissioners to lobby local legislators on behalf of Crook County’s interests is pretty convincing proof that he did, in fact, have a conflict of interest. In this instance, at least, he was certainly serving the interests of Crook County while being paid by the taxpayers of Weston County,” Bonnar said of the redistricting text messages.
The publisher said that the text messages are further indication of a pattern of willful violation of Wyoming’s open meetings and public records laws by the county commission and that he thinks they also raise additional questions about the motives of some commissioners in relation to the secret ballot itself.
“There is a clear violation of Wyoming law in the text messages that represented votes of the commission and approval of spending and signatures – all of which should have been done in public meetings,” Bonnar said after reviewing the messages. "I also think it is interesting that the commissioners discussed legislative redistricting through the texts, given the fact that the redistricting issue was given as the rationale by Commissioner Marty Ertman for choosing J.D. Williams for the House District 2 seat – when she did finally reveal her choice almost a full year after she used a secret ballot to do it.”
In addition to providing proof of actions taken and approved by commissioners, the texts provided by Taylor also included messages from Hadlock to inform the board of several emails she had sent to the commissioners, in which she also requested a response to those emails. The board also discussed the Wyoming County Commissioners Association and voting positions they would take on issues brought before that organization.
“Are any of you on the WCCA vill (bill) review zoom meeting? Asking in case we have a one vote per county situation. Texting would be the easiest way to communicate for one vote,” Ertman said in one of the text messages.
Moats also said that the group will make a discovery request for the county emails mentioned in the text messages, and any others about county business over the past two years. He noted that because Ertman and Barton are no longer on the board, a subpoena will be required to receive theirs.
Bonnar said that there is also reason to believe that there may be additional text-message conversations that did not include Taylor.
“The fact that none of the other commissioners involved were willing to share their text messages makes me believe there may be text messages between county officials that didn’t include Taylor that they are trying to keep from the public. We will be asking the court to provide access to those records as well,” he said, indicating that he hopes for a successful conclusion to the legal action soon and anticipates that it will ultimately result in more information being made available to the public.
“The finish line is near, and I expect a successful outcome even more than I did before,” Bonnar said. “I am also excited to find out what we can learn through additional discovery.”
