Bill addresses Lincoln Co. election blunder

Imagine finding out that your county’s elections have been conducted improperly for the past seven years.

That’s where Lincoln County found itself last year, after a review commission concluded that a 2009 ballot initiative governing its future elections had been brought in violation of state law. It was a technical mistake, but unlawfully changed the county’s commissioners to non-partisan elected officials.

As Rep. Mike Cuffe, R-Eureka, found when bringing House Bill 282 forward earlier this month, explaining the issue requires a quick civics lesson.

Montana’s 1972 Constitution set a default, limited form of government in its counties: the partisan, “elected official” form of government. Since that time, voters in many counties across the state have opted for a “county commissioner” form of government.

Among other authorities, the county-commissioner forms of government have the power to place voter initiatives on the ballot. Elected-official county governments do not, and those county-level ballot issues can only appear if they are brought via a voter petition.

In 1976, 1986 and 1996, voters in Lincoln County considered and thrice rejected petition-led ballot initiatives that would have both set up a county-commissioner form of government and established non-partisan commissioner elections.

Then in 2009, the Lincoln County Commissioners placed an initiative on the ballot to establish the non-partisan county commissioner elections, but without the option to change from an elected-official county government.

It passed, and effectively de-legitimized the county’s future local elections.

“The very basic thing is you cannot have an elected-official type of government and a non-partisan type of election,” Cuffe explained to the House State Administration Committee during a Feb. 14 hearing on his bill.

The county commissioners’ error went unnoticed until late 2015, when the Lincoln County Government Review Commission began probing the issue. Last summer it released its findings, determining that the county government was indeed out of compliance with Montana law.

Cuffe said the obvious solution was to simply hold an election to reverse the error.

But, he said, “the same statute that would not allow the county government to call for the election also denies the current county commissioners from undoing it.”

At the recommendation of the review commission, Cuffe is sponsoring House Bill 448, which would open a limited window of opportunity — closing at the end of the year — for the commissioners to adopt a resolution reversing the 2009 vote.

Cuffe noted that his measure would extend that opportunity for 12 other counties in Montana that have wandered into the same legal quandary, but it would not obligate them to do so.

His bill is co-sponsored by the rest of Lincoln County’s legislative delegation: Rep. Steve Gunderson and Sen. Chas Vincent, both Libby Republicans.

Former Rep. Jerry Bennett, R-Libby, who was last November elected as a Lincoln County commissioner, testified in support of Cuffe’s bill.

“As county commissioners, what we want to do is right a wrong,” Bennett told the committee. “We are living outside the MCA [Montana Code Annotated].”

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.