Judge orders hearing about irrigation election legality

By MEGAN STRICKLAND

Lake County Leader 

Lake County District Judge James A. Manley has ordered a Sept. 6 hearing allowing multiple parties to weigh in on whether or not the May elections for the Flathead Irrigation District and Mission Irrigation District were legally canceled by the Flathead Joint Board of Control.

“The Joint Board of Control have requested Lake County hold another election by the end of September 2016,” Lake County Attorney Steve Eschenbacher wrote in the lawsuit filed July 25. “Lake County is uncertain if the original election was legally canceled, and is not clear as to if the election that was canceled but run and counted anyway is valid or not valid.”

The judge’s determination will likely determine whether three candidates elected to the board get to take their seats.

“Lake County also believes if the election was properly canceled, the next election should be run, and winners seated,” Eschenbacher wrote. “Lake County also believes if the election was not properly canceled, the winner of the election shall be seated and the districts should move ahead without any additional election.”

The Flathead Joint Board of Control, which is comprised of the elected commissioners of the Mission, Jocko, and Flathead Irrigation districts, sent a letter to Lake County officials on April 22, ordering that the election be canceled. The board claimed that approximately 800 ballots were not sent to irrigators because Lake County election officials changed its election procedures to come into compliance with a law passed in 2013. The change required that corporations, trusts, and partnerships issue a notarized affidavits certifying the voting agent for the entity.

The irrigation districts have a system where one acre of irrigated land constitutes one vote. A person with one acre or less of irrigated land would have one vote. A person with 500 acres of irrigated land would have 500 votes.

In the Flathead Irrigation District Election David Lake beat incumbent Shane Orien by winning 40,304 votes to Orien’s 15,275. Janette Rosman received 30,038 votes to beat incumbent Wayne Blevins, who got 25,531 votes.

In the Mission District, incumbent Jerry Laskody was defeated by newcomer Ray Swenson 5,098 votes to 2,932.

The Flathead Joint Board refused to seat the election winners however.

Jannette Rosman said she believes the hearing in September will end in favor of those who were elected, but not seated.

“I am glad that Judge Manley is going to look at this,” Rosman said. “I am anticipating that he is going to rule in favor of the commissioners that are not seated. I think he will tell the board that they will need to seat us.”

Rosman said she believes that it is unfortunate that ballots did not get sent out, but that she places blame on the Flathead Joint Board of Control for the error.

“It’s not the county’s election, it was the Flathead Joint Board of Control’s election and they should have gotten those ballots sent out,” Rosman said. “It’s not the county’s fault.”

Rosman sees one major issue at the heart of the election kerfuffle: The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Water Compact. Currently, only two of the 11 seated commissioners are in favor of the compact, which would settle water rights claims with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and create a framework for water management on the Flathead Reservation. The compact was passed by the state legislature in 2015 and has been introduced in the United States Congress. If the bill is passed by Congress, it must eventually be approved by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

“There are nine commissioners that do not support the compact and they do not want people on the board that do support the compact,” Rosman said.

Rosman and Lake are pro-compact.

Flathead Joint Board of Control Exectuive Asssistant Johanna Clark said that the issue at hand is not about the outcome of the election.

“First and foremost, the board wants to have the election,” Clark said. “This isn’t about election results. This election was candled before the ballots were mailed out.”

Clark acknowledged that the board and county are in agreement on one issue: the election could have been run better.

She said the entities are now working together to make sure elections in the future run smoothly.

“There were a number of issues,” she said.

Clark said she never recieved communication from the county attorney’s office in 2015 that there were anticipated issues with the election. A person in the county attorney’s office was able to track down an email draft that acknowledged the issue, but Clark said it never made it to her inbox, and that it did not come via certified mail, which is how the the county cttorney’s office had communicated with the board about problems in the past.

“I never recieved that email,” Clark said.

In addition to hearing the lawsuit filed by Lake County, Manley has joined a lawsuit filed by the Flathead Joint Board to unseal the election ballots. Manley granted the board’s request to have the ballots unsealed earlier this year, but his order for the hearing indicates that the court record is unclear as to whether the ballots were ever unsealed.

Manely has also joined a lawsuit filed by a group called Mission Valley Irrigators United, Inc. and Jack Lake, Susan Lake, Jack Orner, Ralph Salomon and Janice Tusick. It lists the Flathead Join Board of Control commissioners as defendants. In addition to claiming that the most recent election was properly run and that the new board members should be seated, the lawsuit claims that the board was not properly re-formed in 2014 after it fell apart because of political infighting.

“Therefore, the FJBC is not a valid entity, does not legally exist as a joint board, and has no authority to continue operation,” the lawsuit claims.

It asks that a writ of prohibition be issued to prevent the board from operating further.

Clark said that she does not know if Manley will handle the question of the board’s reformation at the hearing in early September, but that the board believes it was reformed legally, under state law.