County Commissioners voted 2-1 to change their process for selecting their chair, effective in 30 days.

Commissioner Rae Grulkowski currently serves as the chair and opposed the change.

The chair runs the meetings and serves on the policy coordinating committee of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is a regional transportation planning group.

The chair does not have any authority or powers beyond that of the other commissioners.

During public comment, there were a number of comments made on both sides, some suggesting that Grulkowski was being bullied by the other two commissioners and that the people had elected her so she should retain the chairmanship, while others argued that Grulkowski had displayed a lack of leadership and management skills needed to serve as chair.

“It’s not important to me to chair, this was obligation presented to me,” Grulkowski said during the Nov. 28 meeting.

During the first reading of the ordinance to change the chair selection process, Grulkowski said she had the needed leadership experience and was offended by suggestions to the contrary.

County Commissioners at odds over chair selection process

After more than an hour of public comment on leadership skills, election management, partisanship and more during which at least several inferred that the chairmanship carried more authority or was what the people elected, Grulkowski explained what the county attorney’s office had told her the chair’s responsibilities were.

The chair runs meetings and signs documents, Grulkowski said, “other than that, no specific duties.”

The chair doesn’t set agendas or schedule appointments for commissioners, Grulkowski said.

In the role, she said she’s learned that the chair also writes the letter for the county fair.

During the Nov. 14 meeting, Commissioner Joe Briggs said that Grulkowski was serving as chair was by nature of the current ordinance and “she does not have the experience of running the meetings and the leadership experience.”

Briggs said that “has shown in her ability to manage the commission. We are not getting things done in a timely fashion. We have a problem right now.”

County continuing election canvass

Over the last two weeks, there’s been contention over the scheduling and conducting of the canvass for the Nov. 8 election. Some of that has been blamed on Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant and some on the commission office.

Grulkowski told some media outlets that it was due to a miscommunication with staff in their office.

The recent discussion over the chair selection and how to hire an administrative assistant over the summer has highlighted the disfunction in the commission office and during the Nov. 28 meeting, Cheyenne Phillips, an administrative assistant in the commission office who was hired earlier this fall, further noted when she offered public comment.

County officials disagree on hiring process

She said that over the last few weeks of listening in meetings and reading comments in media coverage and online, “it’s really sad coming in to this office when I was really excited about this job.”

Phillips said she didn’t know anything bout the job before but has learned from everyone in the office.

She said that she’s seen a lack of communication and raised issues that she was told the bring to human resources, but didn’t want to because she wanted them to resolve it within the office.

She didn’t specify what those issues were, but said the issue was new people in the office view things one way and those who have been around view things differently.

“Everybody in our office seems to feel that there is a need to take sides, like it’s a war and it’s not,” Philips said.

She said it’s “a very busy office” so there isn’t always time to walk her through how things work, but she said she feels that there’s some within county government who “have chosen to work against” some of us. She didn’t specify who constituted “us.”

As far as scheduling the canvass, she said she didn’t know what that was before, but “Bonnie is not to blame for the election canvass and the scheduling.”

Bonnie Fogerty is the senior administrative assistant in the commission office who has worked for the county for years.

She was out of the office when elections staff tried to schedule the canvass on the Friday before the the statutory deadline.

County Commissioners divided over chairmanship cycle [2021]

Commissioner Jim Larson brought the proposal to change the process so that they can elect the chair amongst themselves. Under the new process, commissioners will elect the chair during the first meeting following the effective date of the ordinance and thereafter, during the first commissioner meeting of each new calendar year for a one-year term.

During the Nov. 28 meeting, Larson said of the previous method that “I don’t feel that it’s working the way I thought it would,” so he wanted to bring an ordinance to commissioners to have them choose their own chair.

Grulkowski again tried to amend the ordinance but Larson didn’t accept the change and was out voted.

The new ordinance will replace the existing ordinance, under which a commissioner serves as chair during the fifth and sixth year of their six-year commission term.

County compensation board recommends salary increases; budget hearing opens Aug. 29

State law allows the chair to be selected by election among themselves, by a process set by ordinance or by election by the voters for a term set by ordinance.

The current ordinance was adopted in 2021, when Jane Weber was resigning her term. That change was approved 2-1 with Weber dissenting.

At the time, commissioners were operating under an ordinance that had been adopted in 2012 and established a pattern of the chair’s term being one year and that the position of chair was rotated every January with the commissioner serving in the third and sixth year of their term be the chair.

That ordinance replaced a 2009 ordinance that had commissioners electing a presiding officer at its first meeting in odd numbered years and the chair’s term was two years.

County Commission adopts budget

Under the rotation established with the 2012 ordinance, Weber’s appointed replacement would have served as chair after being appointed, according to Commissioner Joe Briggs’ staff report at the time.

In 2021, Briggs wrote in his staff report that, “this annual turnover creates confusion with our granting and other governmental partners as documents created by these partners often cite the wrong presiding officer. Additionally, since the presiding officer is also deemed to be the certifying environmental officer, the annual turnover causes many projects to require a change of environmental certifying officer to occur in mid project when the presiding officer is changed in January. This is of particular importance given the resignation of Commissioner Weber. Her replacement would, under a strict interpretation of the existing ordinance immediately become presiding officer following their appointment to the commission. The change in ordinance would even under this midterm resignation scenario allow the new commissioner two years of experience prior to becoming the presiding officer.”

Larson wrote in his staff report for the Nov. 14 meeting that the current rotation “unnecessarily limits the flexibility and authority of the commission in their ability to make annual decisions regarding the determination of which commissioner may serve as presiding officer.”

Don Ryan was appointed to fill Weber’s vacancy in 2021 but had to run again in 2022. He lost to Commissioner Rae Grulkowki, who is serving as the chair under the current rotation as she’s filling the end of Weber’s original term from when she was elected in 2018. Grulkowski has to run again next year to reset the district three seat cycle.

Grulkowski said she wasn’t part of the discussion in bringing the proposed ordinance forward.

County budget development continues, looking at public safety, library funding

Several members of the public said during the Nov. 14 meeting that they would have preferred commissioners to have discussed the matter before bringing it before the public.

Since there’s three commissioners, any two together constitutes a quorum and if they’re discussing public business, it’s typically considered a public meeting under Montana open meeting laws and would need to be noticed and open to the public.

Grulkowski asked during the Nov. 14 meeting why the change was being proposed.

“Now we are again in disagreement that this is the way to go for some reason,” she said. “When there is contention among commissioners like there is now, representation will be suppressed.”

Grulkowski said that they are elected from one of three districts and selecting a chair amongst themselves will “unduly suppress representation” of the districts.

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Carey Ann Haight, deputy county attorney, said that all commissioners are equal in representation. They have to live in one of the three districts to run for a commission seat for that district, but once elected, they represented the entirety of cascade county, not just the district they live in.

County officials said the districts were in place to ensure commissioners didn’t all come from the same part of the county, but otherwise did not impact representation.

Haight said that serving as the chair has no legal impact whatsoever on representation nor does it carry any additional authority or voting power.

Merchant gives presentation, public still has questions

Briggs said during the Nov. 14 meeting that in the past he’d wanted the chairmanship in the last two years of a commission term since the chair also serves on the policy coordinating committee of the Metropolitan Planning Organization and he preferred that to be a commissioner with more time in office and thereby with more local government experience.

County commission candidate: Rae Grulkowski [2022]

During the Nov. 28 meeting, there was continued discussion of Briggs trying to change the rotation to get more time as chair.

“That’s a little irritating that there’s not factual information out there,” he said.

He’s been in office for 19 years and chaired seven times, he said. The person in Grulkowski’s and Larson’s seats chaired six times, he said.

As for political affiliation, Briggs said that they are all Republicans and that he and Larson have both served as president of the local Pachyderm Club. Briggs said he also served as state and national president of the Republican group.

“There are differences in Republicans,” he said, and as commissioners, “this is not an ideological position.”