BOCC meeting ends in hour-long recess

SANDPOINT — The Bonner County commissioners’ meeting ended in a nearly one-and-a-half-hour recess yesterday after Commissioner Asia Williams pulled out her own microphone in an attempt to continue the discussion after the chairman had already called for a vote on an agenda item.

Williams added eight items to Tuesday’s agenda, and the first five died on the table without a second. The sixth item regarded conducting a forensic audit on the Bonner County Fairgrounds, with an undecided start date as to how far back the audit should go.

“The start date of said audit is to be determined by the experts in the field,” she said.

However, Commissioner Luke Omodt asked Williams where the funds for a multi-year forensic audit were budgeted, as a regular audit costs the county roughly $20,000 each year.

“A forensic audit is primarily utilized with the intent of a pursuit of a crime,” he said.

Additionally, Omodt said that the deadline for requests for audit proposals closed yesterday, so a request could no longer be submitted to firms this audit season.

“The board of county commissioners has already expressly stated there will be an independent audit of the fairgrounds for fiscal year 2023,” he added.

Omodt then stepped down from the chair and made a motion to amend Williams’s motion, tabling it indefinitely since the chance for an RFP had passed. However, Williams said that her motion was not for a regular audit, as Omodt had stated in his comment; her motion was for a multi-year forensic audit, which is different from an audit for one fiscal year.

Williams also said she wanted to ask Omodt a question on the record regarding county audits.

“You wrote a letter on Dec. 4 before a decision was made by this board and you have been asked multiple times — you wrote a letter to an external auditor,” Williams said to Omodt. “Did you receive legal input, and if so, by whom? Because it wasn’t approved by our legal team and it has to do with auditing Bonner County.”

However, Omodt chose not to answer Williams’s question outright, but said the state statute is clear — the audit is under the control of the board of county commissioners. When Williams again asked him to answer the question, saying she felt she had not received a clear answer, Omodt announced it was the second time Williams had spoken, and the board would be moving on to a roll call vote.

That answer — or lack thereof — did not suit Williams, who said Omodt’s response would not work for her.

“When you want to use Robert’s Rules of Order, it allows for deliberation,” she said. “You just saying, ‘Asia spoke twice,’ is not deliberation. I just told you the rule; it’s meaningful discussion. Your use of Robert’s Rules of Order requires it to actually be exhaustive. You intentionally are ignoring the question that is very objective and actually very important for the county.”

The other two commissioners simply do not want to discuss the idea of a forensic audit, Williams said, which is unfair to the county residents who deserved to know what really happened at the fairgrounds.

“We need to send a report to county residents that says, ‘Bonner County has funds that have gone missing,’” she said. “‘What has Bonner County done to protect the Bonner County residents from losing money?’ You don’t do that by glossing it over and you don’t do it by ignoring my question about who wrote this letter.”

Williams again pressed Omodt for an answer, and he again called for a roll call vote. The two proceeded to speak over one another and argue until Williams decided to attempt to gain the upper hand.

“I came prepared knowing the proclivity of your board to silence my voice in this meeting, and we’re not doing that today,” she said.

At this point, Williams pulled her own microphone out of her bag and once again began speaking over Omodt, saying that she would not be silenced, but she also was not going to yell.

Despite Williams’s attempt to continue the discussion, the chairman once again called for a roll call vote. Omodt and Commissioner Steve Bradshaw voted to table the motion for a forensic audit indefinitely as Williams continued to talk. The District 2 commissioner did not vote as she was still demanding discussion.

When she continued to discuss the topic after the vote had been taken, Omodt called the rest of the meeting to recess until the board’s 11 a.m. executive session. The meeting was adjourned as Williams was telling the audience, “This board will not actually look at where the money went.”