The gamers are totally different, the county is totally different, however the query is identical: Ought to a neighborhood elected official be pressured to pay her personal authorized prices to defend in opposition to actions taken by different elected officeholders in the identical jurisdiction — even the identical constructing?
Douglas County Commissioner Lora Thomas sued her commissioner colleagues Aug. 29, the most recent flip in additional than two years of public bickering with George Teal and Abe Laydon over her conduct. It follows a latest vote by Teal and Laydon to censure her.
Thomas needs to get well $5,715.50 in authorized charges she racked up defending herself in opposition to county-launched investigations that in the end discovered no wrongdoing on her half. Douglas County has refused to chop her a verify.
“I used to be elected by 129,000 individuals,” Thomas advised JHB in an interview Friday. “And the tyranny of the bulk continues to marginalize my capability to control. They should pay my authorized payments and we will all transfer on.”
The scenario within the conservative county south of Denver echoes a dispute that performed out final yr practically 50 miles to the north, ending up in entrance of the state’s excessive courtroom. In October 2022, the Colorado Supreme Court docket ordered Adams County to pay the authorized charges incurred by then-Treasurer Lisa Culpepper after she was sued by that county’s commissioners for alleged incompetence on the job.
Key to the justices’ ruling was the concept that the county legal professional couldn’t characterize each the commissioners and the treasurer in adversarial litigation. So Adams County had an obligation to cowl the authorized expenses billed to Culpepper, “who, however for the battle of curiosity, can be represented by the county legal professional’s workplace.”
J. Kirk McGill, the Denver legal professional representing Thomas, stated the identical precept is at play in Douglas County — besides that it’s commissioner versus commissioner, quite than separate county elected places of work being pitted in opposition to each other.
McGill, who additionally represented Culpepper within the Adams County case, stated the problem goes additional again than Adams County final yr. Thomas’ go well with cites a 50-year-old case, Wadlow v. Kanaly, during which the excessive courtroom decided that the Mesa County treasurer’s workplace might get well legal professional’s charges from a authorized combat it had with the commissioners over the setting of workers salaries.
“In the event you’re going to make use of the authorized system to focus on different officeholders, then both it’s important to pay these authorized payments out of your individual pocket, or it’s important to pay everybody’s authorized payments out of the general public’s pocket,” McGill stated. “After which it’s important to clarify to the general public why you’re doing that.”
Infighting on the Douglas County Board of Commissioners is longstanding and bitter. Again within the spring of 2021, Laydon and Teal have been on the cusp of censuring Thomas for “conduct unbecoming” earlier than deciding on the final minute to not.
However a yr later, they demoted her from her place as board chair. They paid regulation agency Sherman & Howard practically $24,000 in county funds to look into whether or not Thomas helped contribute to a hostile work surroundings on the Douglas County Sheriff’s Workplace whereas she was operating for sheriff.
A deputy who resigned cited the dissemination of a letter containing “false data” about her. Thomas acknowledged circulating the nameless worker letter, which outlined a big selection of management deficiencies and conflicted relationships on the company, on the 2022 Douglas County Republican Meeting.
She denied any wrongdoing. Sherman & Howard cleared Thomas in July 2022 in a 12-page report obtained by The Put up.
In response to Thomas’ go well with in opposition to her colleagues, Laydon and Teal didn’t cease there. The 2 commissioners directed then-County Legal professional Lance Ingalls to launch a second probe of Thomas for “alleged felony and civil misconduct,” the grievance states.
That investigation was handed over to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Workplace, the lawsuit states, and it discovered no possible trigger to consider misconduct was dedicated by Thomas.
“Not one of the investigations into Commissioner Thomas launched by Commissioners Laydon and Teal have recognized any unlawful conduct on her half — regardless of vital expenditure of public funds and, at finest, questionable authorized authority for launching the investigations within the first place,” the lawsuit says.
Lower than two weeks in the past, on Aug. 22, Laydon and Teal voted to censure Thomas.
In a press release to The Put up, Laydon stated: “Lora Thomas anticipating the individuals of this county to pay her for her personal malfeasance, which has already value this group an excessive amount of, is a continued reflection of her ordinary poor judgment.”
“I sincerely hope that our colleague will return her focus from herself again to serving the individuals in her ultimate months on the board of county commissioners,” he stated.
Teal stated Thomas is “spinning the lawsuit as an act of free speech and that she is a few type of whistleblower.”
“It must be made very clear that Commissioner Thomas is, in truth, suing the individuals of Douglas County,” he wrote in an electronic mail to The Put up. “Irrespective of how this lawsuit goes, it’s the individuals of Douglas County who will probably be paying for Commissioner Thomas’s infantile and petulant lawsuit.”
Thomas’ authorized charges, Teal stated, are associated to an accusation of wrongdoing whereas she was operating for sheriff final yr.
“Merely put: Her failed run for sheriff doesn’t fall inside the duties and scope of Lora’s employment as a county commissioner,” he stated.
The county legal professional declined to remark by means of a spokesperson, citing the truth that Douglas County is hiring outdoors counsel to cope with the litigation.
Adams County has paid 90% of the $750,000 it owes Culpepper in authorized charges underneath the Supreme Court docket’s order final October, McGill stated. Whether or not the faceoff in Douglas County will go to the Colorado Supreme Court docket shouldn’t be but identified, he stated, however the argument is evident.
“Does a person commissioner have rights or is it simply majoritarian rule and the minority has no rights?” McGill stated. “The tyranny of the bulk is a foul factor in our system.”
As for Thomas, she stated she isn’t going wherever till her time period expires in January 2025.
“These bullies won’t eliminate me,” she stated.
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