Sweetwater County Commissioners send, "lack of confidence" letter to County Attorney's Office

Green River, WY — The Sweetwater County Commission met in special session Monday for the sole purpose of issuing a “Lack of Confidence” letter to Sweetwater County Attorney Brett Johnson and Deputy County Attorney Clifford Boevers.
The commissioners voted 2-1 in favor of sending the letter with Chairman Debby Dellai-Boese and Paula Wonnacott voting for the measure and Randy Walker opposed. Wonnacott made the motion to deliver the letter “with regret.” Walker seconded the motion “out of respect for the body,” but disagreed with the letter.
“At this point … a lot of water under the bridge. I don’t see the advantage of the endgame,” Walker said. “With a year to go, this puts our county commission at odds with our attorney.”
“We’ve tried to sit down and talk about the differences,” Walker said. He said the letter was “not a positive way to solve the problems.” He asked, “What is the gain here?” Wonnacott said they have put things in the past, but the letter reminded her of the many things that she has tried to forget. “This commission has fallen under a tremendous amount of fire and scrutiny,” Wonnacott said. “Much of it undeserved.” “I can no longer function as a county commissioner,” Wonnacott said. “We’ve got to move on.” “If we’re going to act as a commission and function, we have to move forward,” she said.
Walker said he has lost sleep over recent issues and said the disagreement should not impact the commission’s future work. Walker declined to further discuss his concerns about the letter. “(The commissioners) agreed at the end of the meeting that we weren’t going to discuss this further at this time because it involves legal matters,” he said.
Johnson issued a release Monday night saying, “Today’s symbolic gesture by two Commissioners will in no way alter my commitment to serve the citizens of Sweetwater County.” He declined to comment on the individual accusations saying, “A County Attorney’s ethical duties prevent me from publicly refuting these accusations. I will continue to do my best to provide the commission with the highest quality, objective legal advice possible.”
Prior to the special meeting vote to send the letter, Dellai- Boese complained about the manner in which a memo regarding the alleged hiring of new county Chief Executive Officer Derek Brown was mishandled and allegedly released without proper authorization. The memo was released prematurely, Dellai- Boese said, without her signature and authorization. In introducing the letter, Dellai- Boese said commissioners had
discussed the issues at previous executive sessions, but she had been the sole author of the letter and Walker and Wonnacott had not seen the letter prior to the meeting.
Neither Johnson nor Boevers were present at the special commission meeting. The chair where Boevers normally sits at commission meetings was occupied by Chief Deputy County Attorney John R. Prokos.
The advertised topic for the Monday’s special meeting was “personnel” with no specific topic listed. The position of Sweetwater county attorney is as an elected official.

COMMISSION LETTER
November 16 , 2009
Re: Lack of Confidence
Dear Mr. Johnson and Mr. Boevers,
This letter is to inform you that we, the Board of County Commissioners, no longer have confidence in your willingness or ability to represent the Commission competently in any civil actions.
Before proceeding, we categorically, and in the strongest
possible terms, state that this action is not based on any personal, political or other factors. This letter is a result of continued and progressive negative impacts on the County, the Board of County Commissioners, individually and as a Board, mandated County responsibilities and effective management of County functions.
As you are aware, we have had, both collectively and individually, lengthy discussions over the last 10 months regarding these issues. These same issues, however, remain and the impacts on the County, the Commissioners and the constituents of Sweetwater
County are worsening. The four major categories of issues resulting in this letter are:
A. lack of timely response by your office
B. lack of due diligence
C. obstructive behavior
D. conflicting opinions.
A. Lack of timely response
1. You have been developing a Personnel Policy Manual for over 30 months
2. You have not acted to have personnel issues resolved in a timely manner, resulting in unnecessary and expensive legal actions
3. Some legal cases have not been acted upon for up to 2 years 4. A final opinion regarding the unconstitutionality of a potential security policy by Mr. Boevers was not communicated to the Commission and Sheriff until it was about to be implemented.
This led to 6 months or more of wasted work hours and unnecessary capital expenditures for security equipment.
B. Lack of Due Diligence
1. Allowed Sweetwater County to enter a Series C Bond commitment for the Hospital building program for an additional $7.75 Mill., in spite of being advised of the potential dangers and consequences.
You ignored the request for an additional review by
an external law firm and the consequences of the formation of an illegal private for profit real estate company formed by the Hospital and its Board.
2. You did not attend, or provide representation, at required document sessions for the Bond issue. Your participation could have prevented the interference clause which has obstructed oversight by the County.
3. You did not provide adequate review of the legal issues regarding Mr. Brown’s contract. Mr. Boevers approved the release of the memo stating Mr. Brown’s contract had been signed. This memo was in error and no action had been taken by the Commission.
4. Two days later Mr. Boevers requested the Commissioners individually to sign documents for the termination of the Align contract, outside of a public meeting. This would have violated the open meetings law had they been signed.
5. There have been recurring instances of Departments writing contracts that should have been written by Mr. Boevers.
C. OBSTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR
1. You have continually delayed or obstructed the forensic audit of Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater
County.
2. You called a “special meeting” regarding the forensic audit, and had it advertised, without notifying the BOCC Chairman. You refused to divulge the reason for the meeting, stating that it was a “secret”.
3. You did not support a request to place a conditional clause in the Bond Indenture which would have provided for this forensic audit
and payment for such out of the bond funds instead of County funds.
4. You have retained an attorney on behalf of the Planning and Zoning Department, but have prevented him acting effectively on matters of land use enforcement. Specifically, in the matter of the
stop-work orders issued in Farson and the reports of fraudulent land sales in the Red Desert. Historically, this enforcement was actually budgeted within the Planning Department budget for the current fiscal year.
D. CONFLICTING OPINIONS
1. You have, on a number of occasions, and very publicly, had Mr. Boevers, change an opinion he had just given to the BOCC. This resulted in confusion, concern over the reason for the change and a decrease in confidence generally regarding opinions from your office.
2. We have received from each of you different interpretations of the open meetings law. Mr. Johnson has even given different opinions
a (sic) various times that differed from the written opinion given to us in March of 2009. At various times, you have left this Commission vulnerable when consistent and dependable advice is
essential to the administrative functions required of this Commission to carry out its fiduciary duties for which we were elected.
The combined results of your actions have resulted in:
1. unnecessary legal actions
2. significant and expensive distraction of resources from core County business
3. unnecessarily long and resource-consuming times to resolve issues
4. our continually decreasing credibility of your office
5. increasingly negative impact on the BOCC and morale of some Departments
6. our time-consuming efforts to deal with inaccurate information appearing in local news media The statutes clearly state that the Board is not compelled to accept your advice, but you continually act disrespectfully, dismissively
and with hostility when we choose not to accept that advice requested or not.
Consequently, this Board has been put in the unwanted position of declaring that we have no confidence that you have the willingness or ability to act on our behalf, based on your continued inaction and interference.