New court filings in Port suit allege more wrongdoing by county

The most recent court filing in the case of a Libby businessman against Lincoln County has revealed more alleged information that appears very damning against local government figures.

And some of it could potentially lead to criminal charges against two county officials.

Daniel Torgison and his attorney Amy Guth filed a suit earlier this year accusing the county commission and county Port Authority of secret business dealings with local developer Chris Noble.

Torgison is alleging Port Authority members, past and present, failed to follow state law on public notices and meetings. He is also seeking a restraining order to prevent further actions by the entity in an alleged attempt to sell more public land to private individuals without public scrutiny.

Torgison is seeking an injunction in an attempt to prevent development of Port Authority land. He argues the process that allowed Noble to buy 108 acres of land was done behind closed doors without proper public participation.

The parties and their attorneys argued their cases June 20 in front of Fifth Judicial District Luke Berger. 

Then, on June 25, Guth filed two motions - one to have the affidavit of Vivian Grosch admitted to the case file and another to amend the complaint and add three other parties to it. For the plaintiffs, Darrel D.C. Orr was added. For the defendants, Jerry Bennett and Brent Teske were added.

Port Authority officials and their attorneys argued Torgison was on a “fishing” expedition and hadn’t identified the actions taken by the county and the Port Authority when they allegedly operated in violation of open meeting law.

In an attempt to find information that supported his argument, Torgison filed discovery requests, which were very extensive. Guth then hired Grosch, an intern, to review the Port Authority minutes and outline the the actions taken by the Port Authority between May 2022 to April 2025.

Guth sought admittance of the affidavit into evidence that Berger will also examine to determine if county officials and Port Authority members violated open meeting laws.

Berger had set a June 27 deadline for the parties to amend their respective complaints. Despite opposition from the county, he granted Torgison’s request to amend the complaint and add the aforementioned parties.

In the first amended complaint, Torgison alleges that Bennett, a member of the Port Authority, and Teske, also a Port Authority member and current county commissioner, failed to comply with open meeting mandates and committed acts that would be considered obstructing justice. State code addresses public servants knowingly conducting a meeting of a public agency without public participation.

A public servant convicted of the offense of official misconduct shall be fined not to exceed $500 or be imprisoned in the county jail for a term not to exceed six months or both.

Torgison asserts that Bennett and Teske do not qualify for immunity and may not be defended by the county or the Port Authority for their alleged wrongful conduct.

The amended complaint also included information about the history of the Port Authority, the 200-plus acres of land that was donated to the county by Stimson Lumber when it closed its mill in 2002 as well as the authority’s ongoing struggles to manage the property that led to multiple lawsuits and large economic losses.

According to an April 2010 story in The Western News, the county commissioners, John Konzen, Marianne Roose and Tony Berget, voted to finance a $3.37 million building at the Kootenai Business Park to house Stinger’s bridge building operation. Stinger was to obtain a loan but it did not go through. The $3.37 million in financing included a $1.5 million lump sum paid directly to Stinger.

But the partnership between the county and Stinger quickly soured with news of the company halting employee benefits, the company being hit with a $341,000 federal tax lien and the Port Authority filing suit against Stinger in 2012 for failing to live up to its agreement to finance construction of its facility. The county ended up paying back more than $500,000 for unpaid property taxes and grants in 2018.

In current matters, Torgison alleged that beginning in May 2022 until April 2025, the Port Authority ceased posting agendas or minutes on any website, social media site and failed to post any agendas or minutes in one of the three local papers.

The complaint also alleged Teske testified the Port Authority lacked the personnel to complete the task of complying with open meeting laws. But during the June 20 hearing, Teske said between May 2022 and April 2025, the Port hired Kenny Rayome Jr. as its executive director and Mark Peck to work at the Port.

Teske said in the June 20 hearing he didn’t know open meeting laws were violated and it wasn’t his job to know.

As for Peck, he left his job as county commissioner to take a grant funded job with the Port Authority. It is alleged that Peck negotiated the position while serving as a county commissioner. 

But, according to state code, a public officer employee may not, within 12 months, following voluntary termination from office get a job that the officer was directly involved while serving in office.

A story in the May 14, 2021, edition of The Western News detailed Peck’s plans to leave his county commissioner role June 4 to assume his new duties as a shared stewardship coordinator with the port authority.

According to the account, Peck’s new role was to have him operate as go-between among public agencies and private companies in reducing fuels and improving forest resiliency in the area.

But the hopes of establishing wood products manufacturing on Port property never materialized.

Today, a Comfort Inn is planned on some of the land following a deal announced earlier this year between Noble Investments and the hotel chain.

Other alleged improprieties in the amended complaint include:

- Bennett and Teske testified June 20 that the property sold to Noble Investment Properties was infirmed. In 2019, the Port Authority passed a land disposition policy that required property for sale be advertised on the Port public website and must be sold at a public auction;

- When the Port Authority was allegedly violating the open meeting law, it lent $40,000 to Authority employee Mark Peck to buy an excavator. Peck created a private business, Schitt Creek Forestry, LLC;

- In addition to his compensation, the Port Authority paid Peck, its employee, to clean up Port property without competitive bidding. State code says a public employee may not acquire an interest in any business that the employee has a reason to believe may be directly affected to its economic benefit to the employee’s agency;

- Lincoln County paid Port Authority Director Kenny Rayome’s children to do cleanup work on the land without a hiring contract or in compliance with the county’s personnel policy. It is alleged that the county allowed Rayome’s 17-year-old son to take “dump runs” without a commercial driver’s license;

The complaint also alleges possible violations of the state code’s nepotism law. It cited current Port Authority members Chris Bache, Chris Noble’s son-in-law and employee; Kevin Peck and Tony Petrusha, each cousins to Mark Peck, and Bennett, related to Noble by marriage.

Public officers or employees found guilty of violating the nepotism law, a misdemeanor, may face a $1,000 fine and a jail term of six months.

It is also alleged that the Port Authority sold property to Glen Doubek, Noble’s cousin.

The suit also alleges that the Port Authority changed course from using the donated land to promote economic development and a transportation port to forestry and wildfire mitigation. It then hired four people, none taken in compliance with the open meeting law. They included executive director Kate Stephens, forester Devon Yarid, wildfire mitigation specialist Giovanni Cano and grant writer Jennifer Brown.

It is also alleged that Teske, during a closed meeting, told the Port Authority Board the forester and wildfire mitigation specialist would be funded with Secure Rural School money.

Torgison also argued that Montana State University offered to the county and its various boards in 2023 training on the open meeting law and thus, members of the Port Authority knew or should have known Montana’s open meeting law, including changes to it.

Also, a number of actions allegedly taken in violation of the open meeting law according to Port minutes include the following:

- Sale of property to Levi Thompson; 

- Supplemental pavement contract on Snowshoe Granite Road;

- Chip seal project on Quartz Creek Road;

- Trojan defense project;

- Pending sale of property to Byron O’Bleness;

- Payments to Noble Green Landscaping, which is taking care of Port area’s groundskeeping.

On June 26, Reid Perkins, an attorney with Missoula-based firm Worden Thane, P.C., submitted a supplemental authority related to the preliminary injunction.

Perkins wrote that it came to the Port Authority’s attention that the 2025 state legislature passed House Bill 409 which amended MCA 27-19-201.

The amendments in the bill say the express intent of the legislature that applications for preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders must be based on U.S. Supreme Court precedent on not on 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decisions.

“It appears to counsel that the four criteria are now elements and have to be looked at independently without any sliding scale test,” Perkins wrote.

The criteria include that the applicant is likely to succeed on the merits; applicant is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief; the balance of equities tips in the applicant’s favor and the order is in the public interest.