The mayor of Evanston and his city attorney are angry with their local newspaper’s coverage of a hot mic incident involving a city employee who left a scathing voicemail for a local resident after thinking he had already hung up the phone.
Along with acknowledging how wrong it was for a city official to go off on a tirade on a local resident, the mayor and city attorney also were livid with their local newspaper, the Uinta County Herald, for reporting about the voicemail.
What’s unfolded since has divided the Evanston City Council with a letter of “no confidence” in the mayor issued by some members for his reaction to the voicemail controversy.
Evanston City Council member Jen Hegeman believes Mayor Kent Williams’ actions “absolutely” tried to intimidate and suppress freedom of the press, which is protected outside acts of libel and defamation.
“Journalism is what holds governments accountable,” Hegeman said. “When all else fails, it’s up to you.”
One of Williams’ chief gripes with the newspaper’s coverage of the employee who thought he had hung up before leaving a message for Evanston resident Gina Sundquist.
He told her that “a f***-up on your end does not constitute an emergency on mine,” which was followed by boisterous laughing, according to the voicemail provided to the Herald. The employee also said, “Write a letter to the editor” and that, “no one’s going to read your dumbass complaint.”
The newspaper ran a story about the voicemail above the fold on the front page of its July 31 edition, an act which Williams didn’t like.
Another major issue brought up as a result of the voicemail left by Evanston Community Development Director Rocco O’Neill was his expressed effort to keep Sundquist from speaking publicly during a subsequent City Council meeting. Sundquist had been frustrated about a lack of air conditioning in a city-owned space she rented for a wedding.
Hegeman said Williams’ public response to the controversy isn’t acceptable.
“We are entitled and allowed to communicate with our elected officials,” Hegeman said. “It was terribly egregious, and it needs to be let known that this behavior is not tolerated, and not complaining about the newspaper.”
Then At The Meeting
At the council’s Aug. 6 meeting, Williams said he was frustrated that he wasn’t interviewed for the story and claimed that a deceased former publisher of the paper who was his former neighbor is now “spinning in his grave.”
“It sickens me, and this meeting is adjourned,” he said, slamming his gavel and ending the meeting.
At a press conference Monday, Evanston City Attorney Mark Harris doubled down, criticizing the Herald's coverage of the response to the voicemail.
That response included four council members, including Hegeman, blasting the mayor for how he reacted to the whole situation.
At the city council’s meeting last week, the four made a statement of “no confidence” against Williams for the way he adjourned the Aug. 6 meeting and has handled the employee voicemail situation. They argued that the mayor violated freedom of speech and the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
“We simply were saying this is unacceptable and we do not participate in this type of behavior,” Hegeman said.
Williams told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday afternoon that relations have since improved significantly between he and the newspaper, although he said it’s been “an ugly month” between the city and the Herald.
Mending Fences?
He said Bryon Glathar, an editor with the newspaper, sent him an email Wednesday morning apologizing for some of his coverage of the situation. In an Aug. 14 op-ed, Glathar had described Williams’ actions as throwing “a temper tantrum” and as being disrespectful to Sundquist.
“I emailed him back and said that I appreciated his apology and said that I would accept it and that I would offer one of my own for responding to certain events out of anger myself,” Williams said. “I could’ve found a more productive way to express my displeasure and concerns.”
Williams and Harris sent private communications to the newspaper and the reporter who wrote the stories, Kayne Pyatt, messages that Hegeman believes were threatening in nature. Glathar confirmed to Cowboy State Daily the communications were sent but said the newspaper is now moving on.
“I feel like we need to work together as a community,” Glathar said. “Everyone is prepared to do that without breaking the law. We just want to keep working together.”
Glathar said he stands behind Pyatt’s reporting “100%.”
When asked if Williams and Harris’ efforts amounted to attempting to suppress the local free press, Glathar responded, “I don’t feel comfortable answering.”
Glathar said he has some regrets about how he responded to the mayor’s criticism, but not the newspaper’s coverage of the nasty voicemail. He also said if they had to do it over again, they’d cover it the same.
“It’s easy to get caught up in the chatter,” he said. “We all live in the community and we’re all working together and working for the better of the community.”
Pyatt declined to comment to Cowboy State Daily.
Fallout
When Williams addressed the voicemail at the council’s Aug. 6 meeting, he said the matter was regrettable but appropriately addressed and that he talked to O’Neill about it, who apologized to Sundquist and reimbursed her for the cost of renting the space.
“I don’t know that any of us in this room have not said something at some point that we were in regret, something on the phone, something to someone else. I do that all the time and it’s an unfortunate thing,” Williams said during last week’s council meeting.
During the meeting, Williams also said he was disappointed that the Uinta County Herald covered the story to the extent it did and found it “sickening that this article takes up the bulk of that newspaper.”
The page-and-a-half-long story, which Williams described to Cowboy State Daily as “minor in the grand scheme of things” and “blown out of proportion,” ran alongside stories about child pornography, someone dying in a local jail and a domestic dispute.
As of Wednesday, Williams stood by his complaints.
In the Monday letter, Harris accuses the four other council members of breaking the Wyoming Open Meetings Act to write their letter of no confidence against the mayor that was read aloud at last week’s meeting. Harris told Cowboy State Daily that a violation of the Open Meetings Act can occur even if elected officials do not meet in the same room or at the same time.
“I think that’s the greater story in all of this,” Williams said. “At the very least it’s inappropriate for four members of the city council to collude to discredit me or anybody else for that matter.”
Hegeman said she and the other three councilors never met together to write the letter, and that they received legal advice from the attorney for the Wyoming Association of Municipalities (WAM) on how to handle the situation.
“We consulted with the WAM attorney because we didn’t have our own attorney to work with,” she said.
Hegeman said they didn’t consult Harris about the letter because they suspect City Clerk Diane Harris was one of the people O’Neill was making his disparaging remarks about Sundquist to on the hot mic. Harris is married to the city attorney.
What Does It Mean?
Hegeman believes the situation sets a dangerous precedent for local newspapers.
“If they’re successful in silencing one paper, they will come after another,” she said.
Williams disagrees and said he wasn’t trying to infringe on freedom of the press. He said he simply wants to have a working relationship with the Herald. He said there has been an ongoing tenuous relationship between the parties during his 10 years as mayor.
“It seems to me that it’s counterproductive for the city, any city and a local newspaper, to be at odds with each other on a constant basis,” he said. “If we were working together to promote the community in a more beneficial way it would be mutually productive.”
The mayor said he won’t resign and plans to serve out the remainder of his third term in office, which expires at the end of 2026. Whether he’ll run again, Williams is undecided, and said he’ll likely decide based on who runs at that time.
“It’s possible that my time has come to move on and ride into the sunset,” he said.
Contact Leo Wolfson at leo@cowboystatedaily.com
Editor's note: This story has been changed to clarify that Glather had some regrets about how he reacted to the situation, but has no regrets with how the newspaper covered and reported the story.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
