Recall group clears hurdle for petition

The Lincoln County clerk and recorders office approved on Monday a petition drafted by a group of Eureka-area residents to remove Sheriff Daryl Anderson from office.

The Lincoln County Recall Committee, a group of about 25 members, accuses Anderson of incompetence based on a string of allegations, including his alleged failure to fully investigate six rape cases.

Anderson ardently denies the allegations, and county commissioners stand behind him.

A draft of the petition was initially denied last month due to formatting and content issues, but the committee returned a new draft just days later that was approved.

The group will have to muster up nearly 2,000 signatures – 15 percent of the county’s registered voters last year – in order to hold a special election to put Anderson’s recall on the ballot.

“Right now all we can do is approve the form,” said Tammy Lauer, county clerk and recorder. “If they really get their 1,946 signatures, then it comes back to us and it becomes an issue of if there’s merit to what they’re saying. Then Anderson will have an opportunity to answer to it.”

The petition’s accompanying affidavit, written by the committee’s chairperson, Virginia Emerson, claimed that based on interviews of alleged victims and the Eureka victim’s advocate, Anderson failed to fully investigate six alleged rapes.

Anderson counters that at least one of the alleged victims withdrew her complaint and that if other cases were not further investigated, it was because of a lack of evidence.

The affidavit also accuses Anderson of failing to give a written statement to explain his reasoning for denying a concealed weapons permit to a Eureka-area man.

Anderson admits denying a concealed weapons permit to Paul Stramer because of his alleged involvement in anti-government groups, but does not admit to any wrongdoing.

The final allegation in the affidavit claims that Anderson broke the law by not requiring former deputy Jay Sheffield, now Lincoln County’s justice of the peace, to attend the state’s law-enforcement academy.

Anderson responded that Sheffield was only a temporary deputy and was allowed under the law to not attend the academy.  

The recall committee’s first petition was denied by Lauer based on county attorney Bernard Cassidy’s recommendation. In a letter dated June 23, Lauer asked the group to turn in a reformatted hard copy of the petition as it would appear when circulated, file a new affidavit, and remove the words “We the people of Lincoln County” from the petition. The original affidavit did not, according to Cassidy, state where Emerson got the facts that claim to constitute incompetence.

The recall committee is represented by Thane Johnson of the Kalispell law firm Johnson, Berg, McEvoy and Bostock.