County, City at odds over police chief's book

What’s typically a cordial monthly meeting between city and county government officials collapsed last Tuesday afternoon, after Lake County Commissioner Gale Decker opened the session – which he introduced as “a hearing” – by lambasting a book recently published by Polson Police Chief George Simpson.

Simpson, who wrote and published the book titled “An Odyssey of the Flathead Indian Reservation and Public Law 280” as a private citizen, was not on hand for Decker’s litany of perceived falsehoods.

City manager Ed Meece was there however, with five staff members. After listening to Decker for several minutes, Meece said, “Commissioner Decker, can I interrupt?”

“You can’t interrupt,” replied Decker. “I’m giving you my opinion on this matter.”

“Okay, then we're not going to have a meeting, sir, right?” Meece said. “It's not appropriate. You are trying to censor a private individual and my team is not going to stay here for that. So good afternoon, Commissioner.”

After city staff left, Decker went on to criticize both Simpson’s book, and Meece for defending the police chief.

“City manager Mr. Meece is standing by this man,” he said, quoting an email that Meece had sent Feb. 3 in response to Decker’s request that they schedule a meeting on the matter.

In his reply on Feb. 3, Meece wrote that while he hadn’t read much of Simpson’s book, “I am certain this personal project reflects the same level of integrity and diligence that he brings to his role as Police Chief.”

“A man of integrity does not write and publish lies about another government,” Decker said, following the departure of the city staff. He then offered to share his 12-page, 20-point “factcheck” of Simpson’s book with the sizeable audience attending the meeting.

In his February email correspondence with Meece, which the city manager shared with the Leader, Decker wrote, “There is significant false information in the book that George asserts is factual, and puts relations between the county and city in jeopardy.”

Meece pushed back on that idea. “I don’t believe this matter is an appropriate topic for official discussion between two local governments,” he wrote. “With all the work that needs to be done by our respective organizations, conducting a joint public meeting for the purpose of critiquing/defending a book seems at best unproductive and at worst censorship.”

He went on to encourage Decker to voice his concerns directly to Simpson “in a non-official capacity,” emphasizing that Simpson wrote the book as “a personal project,” separate from his official duties and that the book is “not intended to speak on behalf of the City of Polson.”

He also told Decker, “If our existing relationship is put ‘in jeopardy’ as a result, it will be because the County Commission made a conscious decision to do so; to be clear, any expression of such ill-will starts and ends with Lake County government on this matter.”

Decker clearly sees the matter differently. In his 12-page response to Simpson’s book, he asks whether the author was speaking for Polson City government. Simpson makes it clear in a disclaimer at the front of the book that he’s not, writing that “the views, opinions and interpretations expressed within these pages are solely those of the author and contributors.” Nor does it appear that any members of city government, including staff and commissioners, were involved in the book.

“This was a personal project on my own time and outside my scope of employment,” Simpson wrote in an email Monday. He also said he has not heard directly from Decker about his concerns with the book, although the commissioner aired some of his grievances in a Letter to the Editor that appeared in last week's Leader.

As to the factual discrepancies that Decker enumerates, Simpson says all of the quotes and figures in the book include references, more than 200 in all.

According to his 12-page rebuttal, Decker believes many of Simpson’s interpretations and statements are “serious and border on being slanderous,” and have caused “considerable damage to relations between City and County governments.”

“Uninformed readers of this book are led to believe that County government is devoid of transparency, hides information from the public, and can’t be trusted,” he wrote.

“When our children tell lies, they are held accountable for them and when public officials tell lies they should be held accountable for them,” Decker said during last week’s meeting.

Meece countered Monday that addressing the book at a public meeting, “was an attempt to get me as an employer to drag an employee to a public meeting to discuss and defend a book they had written in their private life. There's no way that's appropriate.”

In addition, he said Decker alluded to the regular meeting as a “hearing,” and noted that the room was full of people, which is usually not the case. “And then he began to read this very long statement, basically doing exactly what I had told him I was not going to participate in. And so, I got up and left.”

“I do think that kind of behavior damages the trust between the organizations,” he added. “These have been very productive conversations. If they're going to become about making political points, I'm not interested in doing that once a month.”

“I think we're going to have to have some conversation about what that looks like going forward,” he said. “I don't want to think that every time I go to the courthouse, this is just a free-for-all.”