Effort to recall Libby mayor quashed

The effort to recall Libby Mayor Doug Roll is dead after a judge last week granted the preliminary injunction to halt petitioners from collecting signatures.

Lincoln County District Judge James Wheelis on Thursday filed his findings for an Aug. 23 hearing in which he heard arguments on whether the recall should or shouldn’t continue. In his findings, Wheelis wrote that the recall petitioner, Tammy Brown, didn’t have personal knowledge in her affidavit to initiate a recall; that the Libby City Council did accept Roll’s hiring of a temporary city attorney and that former council member Dejon Raines’s request to add items to the agenda didn’t meet the procedural rules.

A week earlier, Wheelis filed an order to delay the injunction until Roll posted a $25,000 bond. Wheelis’ Thursday filing waived the bond requirement, effectively installing the injunction and ending the effort.

Brown did not return calls made by The Western News for comment.

“As far as I’m concerned it’s great news. As I stated from the beginning of this, there was no grounds for the recall,” Roll said. “According to the judge’s ruling, there was absolutely nothing that met the criteria.”

Roll named several council members, including Brent Teske, Allen Olsen, Brian Zimmerman and former council member Dejon Raines, that he believed were directly involved in the effort to dethrone him from office.

“Obviously they were involved in this from the beginning,” he said.

Roll also said that he was concerned that conflict on the council, fueled by the recall dispute, would cause a rift in the forward motion of city affairs.

“Yea, I don’t think there’s going to be any chance of us working together,” he said. “It may be a little bit of a rough time for the city as far as government goes.”

Roll said he believed city council members should have spent more time in local government training workshops held around the state to better understand council procedure and the role of the council versus the role of the mayor.

“Their lack of understanding their role as a council person and my role as mayor is pretty evident,” Roll said.

Before Wheelis filed his decision on Thursday, Lincoln County Elections Administrator Leigh Riggleman said she had validated 273 signatures submitted by the recall effort, while rejecting 51 with issues such as signatures belonging to out-of-city residents.

Olsen, who was an active proponent in the recall effort in collecting a majority of the signatures for the petition, said Tuesday that he did appreciate the effort put forth by city residents in the campaign to remove Roll.

“I definitely want to thank the people for standing up for Libby and those that signed the petition,” Olsen said.

Olsen also said there is a possibility of a second recall effort in the works, although there were no concrete plans in place.

“Well we’ve got plenty of charges that we’re talking about,” Olsen said. “But we’re not going to guarantee another recall. We’re not sure we would do it right away. Some people don’t think they would sign again.”

The deadline to obtain the 329 signatures required to bring the recall to ballot was Sept. 17, just over two weeks away from Wheelis’s final filing.