Confusion dominates review commission

Lincoln County’s local government review commission will hold a public meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 25, in the Ponderosa Room of Libby’s City Hall. The purpose of the meeting, said commission chair Steve Curtiss, is to update the public on the status of the commission’s ongoing review of Lincoln County’s government and operations.

Montana law allows the voters of all municipal entities the opportunity once every 10 years to empower a commission to study the current form of government and make recommendations to the citizenry about whether to keep or change the form of the municipal government. Lincoln County’s voters, in 2014, decided to create the study commission.

Curtiss said it is the intent of the commissioners to provide some information they’ve uncovered and to answer any questions the public may have about the work being done by the commission. One of the issues, he said, is that there is a great deal of conflicting documentation regarding Lincoln County’s form of government, but he said the commission is prepared to provide some answers.

“We’ve arrived at a point where we know a lot more than we’ve known before,” he said.

Commission Rita Windom, who formerly served on the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners, presented some of the information the commission has learned to the Rotary Club of the Kootenai Valley at a Monday luncheon.

The biggest issue, she said, is that Lincoln County is not officially the type of government people assume it is. Windom said the commission has discovered Lincoln County is, by law, an elected officials form of government, but has traditionally been considered to be, and operated as, a commission form of government. One of the major differences, Windom told the assembled group, is the elected county official form of government requires, by statute, partisan elections. In 2009, the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners put forth a ballot initiative which was passed by the citizens in the general election, which made all Lincoln County offices non-partisan. Windom said she believed the commissioners at the time were operating in good faith and had secured legal advice from the County Attorney to ensure the move was legal, but due to the error in the assumption as to Lincoln County’s true form of government, the decision was illegally made.

The confusion, she said, has created a situation in which the members of the government review commission don’t know what to recommend to the public with regard to maintaining or changing the county’s form of government.

“It’s just a muddled up mess,” she said. “None of us ever thought that we’d run into this kind of boondoggle.”

Windom said she hopes to see a strong turnout at Wednesday’s meeting. Dan Clark, who heads the Local Government Center at Montana State University in Bozeman, is scheduled to provide a presentation explaining the various forms of government and the issues being faced by the commission.

“Public input is vital,” she said.