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December 21, 2023

The former mayor of Conrad and the city’s government are locked in a legal battle after the city council voted last month to remove her from office.

Jamie Miller, who was elected mayor of the town of about 2,300 people by a wide margin in 2021, filed a lawsuit against the city in late November, 10 days after the council voted to remove her from office following an investigation into a grievance filed by a city employee. 

In her suit, filed in Pondera County District Court, Miller argues that the council broke the state’s open meeting law when it met to take the vote and asks the court to overturn the council’s decision and reinstate her as the “duly-elected mayor of the city of Conrad.” 

In its own filings, the city disputed Miller’s claims. 

The origins of the conflict are covered in a haze of privacy protections, but court documents show that a city employee filed a grievance against Miller earlier this year.  The city hired an external party to investigate the complaint. 

On Nov. 14, Miller’s suit says, the council president asked her to draft an agenda for a council meeting on Nov. 17 “for purposes of conducting an Executive Session regarding a personnel matter.” 

Public bodies can in certain circumstances — often regarding legal or personnel matters — conduct private deliberations, called an executive session. Miller claimed she was given no more detail about the meeting’s purpose. 

She posted the agenda the next day, and the meeting took place on Nov. 17. According to Miller’s suit, the council briefly met in public, then, following advice from city attorney Daniel Jones — the son of prominent GOP lawmaker and Conrad bigwig Llew Jones — closed the meeting, explaining that the demands of individual privacy outweighed the public’s right to know. 

Then, citing an obscure piece of statute that dates back to the territorial days, the council voted to declare Miller’s office vacant due to “the incumbent’s open neglect or refusal to discharge duties.” 

At a Nov. 21 meeting, residents peppered the council with questions and accusations, according to a report from the Conrad Independent Observer.

“Jamie had no support from the council,” one commenter said, according to the report. 

Miller herself offered comment, the report said, and announced her intent to file a lawsuit. 

“I do not believe the city council had the legal authority to remove me from office,” she said. “Most importantly, I never engaged in any activity or conduct that would ever support my removal from office.”

Miller’s lawsuit doesn’t directly question the validity of the statute used to remove her. Instead, it argues that the definition of the “personnel matter” noted in the agenda varied substantively from the actual purpose of the meeting — to oust a popularly elected mayor — and that the council had violated the right-to-know and public meeting provisions in state law and the Montana Constitution. The suit also says that the council improperly closed the meeting to the public.

“The mere recitation of the statutory language” justifying an executive session is not enough to actually close a meeting, the lawsuit says, as the council failed to make “any particularized, context-specific determination on the public record that a sufficient legal basis existed for closing the meeting to the public.” 

In a later court filing supporting a motion for summary judgment, Miller’s attorneys note that precedent has held a council can only take same-day action on an agenda item if it is not a “matter of significant public interest.” In Miller’s view, a vote to oust her constitutes a matter of significant public interest that was different from a non-specific “personnel matter,” and thus, the council did not properly notice the impending vote. 

And when the potential significance of any given matter is in question, the lawsuit maintains, the council should have erred on the side of public disclosure.

“It is beyond debate that a decision of a city council purporting to ‘remove’ an elected mayor is a decision that has meaning to or affects the citizens of the city of Conrad, and thus constitutes a ‘decision of significant interest to the public,’” the suit says. 

In its response to the lawsuit, attorneys for the city wrote that the council properly noticed the meeting. The council’s deliberations and vote that day arose directly from the employee grievance and the subsequent investigation — in other words, a personnel matter — the response says. 

Attorneys for the city also cited case law justifying an executive session for similar matters. More strikingly, the response also asserts that Miller presided over the meeting and declared it should be closed because of employee privacy rights. It’s not clear from the legal filings whether she knew she was about to be removed from office when she closed the meeting. 

“Plaintiff Miller participated in the meeting and, as the presiding officer, declared it closed due to the nature of employee privacy interests under discussion,” the city’s response states. “Consequently, she was not injured by the closure of the meeting and has no standing to assert the right to know, right to participate, and open meeting claims at issue here.” 

A judge has yet to rule in the case. 

Council President Nathan Hunsucker is now serving as interim mayor. Barring legal action to the contrary, the council will soon appoint a replacement to carry out the remainder of Miller’s term. 

—Arren Kimbel-Sannit

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Programming Note

The entire Montana Free Press office is off next week to celebrate the holidays. (My birthday is also next week if you want to give me a spicy news tip). That means no Capitolized on Dec. 28. We will return to our regular schedule in the new year on Jan. 4. 

—Arren Kimbel-Sannit

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Friends in High Places

The former policy director for Gov. Greg GIanforte is taking a job with a national public affairs firm, according to an announcement this week. 

Glenn Oppel, who worked as Gianforte’s policy advisor from the beginning of the Republican governor’s term until December 2023, will open up the Helena office of PLUS Communications, a national public affairs, communications and advertising company with recent clients including the American Health Care Association, Charter Communications and the Ukrainian army’s wartime public relations wing. 

“I am pleased to be joining a nationally recognized firm with some of the best and brightest minds in public affairs,” Oppel said in a press release. “My focus will be on expanding PLUS’ presence in Montana to win the tough fights in Big Sky Country.”

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Arntzen Admonished

“I consider it an affront to my bill drafter to have someone suggest that he didn’t coordinate this. I would ask for you to walk that back because [the Office of Public Instruction] was consulted in the drafting of this bill. If you had had concerns on this particular issue, they could have been raised. Maybe they weren’t because you overlooked it. I’m OK with that. I’m not OK with you suggesting that you were ignored in this process because that is not true.”

—Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton, scolding state Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen on Dec. 13 for claiming her office was not consulted by legislative staff during the 2023 legislative session regarding changes to Montana law governing the collection of student data.

Arntzen’s assertion — and Bedey’s admonishment — came during a broader dispute over a $14 million database modernization project at OPI. A key aspect of that undertaking is a new data system lawmakers hope will help teachers better meet the individual needs of students in day-to-day instruction. However, Arntzen’s handling of the project has drawn criticism from other state officials over the past year and prompted the Legislature to pass laws clarifying oversight and objectives associated with the project. Arntzen now argues those changes, along with state and federal privacy laws, prohibit her from gathering data deemed essential to make the new system function as desired. Her position contradicts legal interpretations reached by the Legislature’s own attorneys and by the head of the Montana School Boards Association, who argue there’s nothing in state or federal law preventing her from collecting student data that could improve the education and workforce training of Montana’s youth.

—Alex Sakariassen

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On Background

Trouble in the badlands: How Glendive’s government turned on itself: Conrad’s current strife is reminiscent of similar challenges faced by the city of Glendive earlier this year. As covered in MTFP’s lengthy dispatch from the eastern Montana town, a mix of personal and political dysfunction led to the firing of the town’s police chief, the surprise resignation of the town’s mayor and open conflict in city council meetings. 

State suspends OPI’s authority to award contracts: This isn’t the first time the Office of Public Instruction has had trouble with its database modernization funding. In the spring, the state suspended the department’s procurement authority after a Department of Administration review found OPI failed to retain adequate records about its solicitation and execution of contracts for third-party services.

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