County acted improperly, review board says

Lincoln County’s Board of Commissioners acted improperly in 2009 when they placed a ballot question before the voters to make Lincoln County’s elections non-partisan, according to the Lincoln County Government Review Commission. The commission, created by Lincoln County’s voters in 2014, presented their findings to a crowd of about 30 people in Libby last week. 

The discussion was led by Dan Clark of the Local Government Center at Montana State University in Bozeman. Clark explained the history of government review commissions in Lincoln County and the limitations and authorities delineated under each of the various types of county government.

The problem, he said, stems from the original form of government implemented after Montana adopted its new constitution in the 1970s. Counties were given a mandate to form review commissions in the first year, 1976, and those commissions were ordered to present at least one option for change to county electors. Lincoln County’s voters, however, decided not to change the form of government during that election. In two other elections since, voters have also chosen to maintain the default form of government.

The default form of government created in the Montana Constitution is known as the county elected officials form of government. Clark said Lincoln County, along with several other counties, operates like a commission form of government, even though they never officially adopted that slightly different form. In fact, the Local Government Center’s materials even erroneously list Lincoln County as a commission form of government.

The impropriety, Clark said, occurred in 2009, when the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners placed a question on the ballot to make county elections non-partisan. According to the limitations on the county elected official form of government, which the voters of Lincoln County chose to retain in three separate elections, the county commissioners are precluded from placing items on the ballot. The rules, Clark said, require ballot questions to originate from a public petition process.

During the discussion one member of the audience labeled the erroneous action by the previous commissioners as “corruption,” which prompted an immediate rebuttal from former county commissioner and study commission member Rita Windom. 

Windom explained to the assembled group that the previous commissioners were operating under the assumption, as were most people, that Lincoln County was a county commission form of government. Under those rules, the board of commissioners can advance ballot questions to the voters. The commissioners, she said, sought legal advice from the county attorney and from other advisors and were informed their course of action was both legal and proper. They were in error, she said, but without ill intent and were “certainly not corrupt.”

The question now facing Lincoln County is how to correct the problem with regard to partisan elections. Clark said the situation in which Lincoln County finds itself is one that was never considered by the legislature and one for which no procedural solution exists. The rules for the county elected officials form of government preclude any changes to the functions of that form of government without first adopting an alternative form. In order for the voters of Lincoln County to turn back the clock and return to partisan-based county elections, voters would have to approve a change in the form of county government. That change, noted several of the meeting attendees, would result in an increase in the amount of legal authority vested in the county commission.