At least part of the Dec.1 complaint in which Platte County residents asked Gov. Mark Gordon to remove their commissioners from office is false, documents show.
Other parts are hotly disputed, multiple public officials told Cowboy State Daily in interviews this week.
Nearly two dozen people signed the 64-page complaint, addressed Dec. 1 to Gov. Mark Gordon, asking the governor to investigate and remove every member of the three-man Platte County Commission.
The controversy driving the complaint’s claims is a wind and renewable-energy project by NextEra Energy Resources, slated to continue its pitch to the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality’s Industrial Siting Council on Dec. 29.
After that, the company may approach the commission next, for authorization to develop near Chugwater. It hasn’t yet submitted a formal application to the county, County Clerk Malcolm Ervin confirmed to Cowboy State Daily.
The complaint’s allegations cast the three county commissioners, Steve Shockley, Ian Jolovich, and Jeb Baker, as committing a number of wrongs to favor NextEra and disadvantage the project’s opponents.
“The conduct described herein constitutes, at minimum, malfeasance in office, neglect of duty, and violation of official oath,” says the document, “bringing the actions of Commissioners Shockley, Jolovich and Baker squarely within the reach of 18-3-523.”
Those numbers reference a state law commanding the governor to remove county commissioners from office if a judge finds they’ve committed misconduct.
Cowboy State Daily obtained the complaint from the governor’s office last week.
The document is not just addressed to Gordon, whom Wyoming law tasks with investigating county officials when their constituents accuse them of misconduct.
It’s also addressed to Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder and Interim U.S. Attorney for Wyoming Darin Smith.
Smith’s office is a federal one, not a state office. It’s also not referenced in the laws that pertain to the governor’s misconduct investigations.
The complaint’s signers did not respond to requests for comment emailed Tuesday on why the document was sent to Smith, among other inquiries about its structure and veracity; except for one of the signers, Letitia Lane, who cited the ongoing investigation and declined to comment.
No Kautz, Possible AI
The complaint is not addressed to the person who would receive it if Gordon found it to be actionable: Wyoming Attorney General Keith Kautz.
It accuses different commissioners of different wrongs, including holding illegal private meetings, releasing confidential documents, “never” filing their campaign finance reports, retaliating against NextEra critics, showing bias toward NextEra, and showing behavior that “raises substantial concerns” of conflicts of interest.
When Cowboy State Daily uploaded the complaint into three different, free, artificial-intelligence-detection applications, all three showed a likelihood of AI content. The document ranges from 73% to 99% AI-generated, according to estimations from the sites Textguard, Sidekicker and GPTZero.
At Least One Claim Is Wrong
The complaint alleges that Shockley and Jolovich “never filed required campaign-finance reports” as state law requires.
Platte County Clerk Malcolm Ervin told Cowboy State Daily on Monday that that allegation surprised him.
“They (the signers) never asked the filing office, which is our office” for the reports, said Ervin.
He provided to Cowboy State Daily PDF copies (see below) of Shockley and Jolovich’s campaign finance reports from the 2022 primary and general elections – all bearing file stamps from that election season.
“My guess is they (the signers) went to WYCFIS (the Wyoming Campaign Finance Information System) looking for Steve and Ian’s records, and obviously they’re not there,” said Ervin, noting that county clerks weren’t granted access to that system until 2024, and he didn’t upload the documents once granted access: “nor were we required to.”
“But,” continued Ervin, “the fact that the complainants did not even ask with the filing office before making that allegation is remarkable.”
Fire Suppression Meeting
NextEra hosted a July 15 meeting in Platte County on firefighter safety and training; and the press and public were excluded from the meeting.
Controversy followed.
Senior Project Manager Anthony Bianchini’s June 24 email invitation to Jeb Baker called the gathering the “Chugwater Energy Project Battery Energy Storage Safety Lunch and Learn event" with "lunch at the event for all!”
It was an effort to coordinate with “local public safety professionals,” wrote Bianchini, adding that people from the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality and at least two Goshen County commissioners were planning to attend — the latter “due to their affiliation with Fire.”
Battery Energy Storage Systems’ (BESS) capacity to ignite toxic, hard-to-fight fires are a recurring theme in the applications renewable energy companies submit to Wyoming authorities.
For the proposed Chugwater project, damage to the battery cells could lead to a “hazardous situation,” the company’s application to the Industrial Siting Council concedes.
Flammable electrolytes within lithium-ion batteries could create hazards in instances of thermal runaway, the application says, like the generation of “flammable and potentially toxic battery gas”– and an explosive atmosphere in the battery storage container.
The press and the public tried to watch the July 15 meeting but were excluded from it, the complaint says.
Ervin and other attendees have confirmed that claim as correct.
Shockley and Baker stayed inside to attend.
The complaint asserts that the commissioners were invited in their capacity as commissioners, or decision-makers for the county, not as fire suppression officials.
“Records reflect Shockley does not routinely respond to county fire events and is listed only nominally as a potential volunteer firefighter,” the complaint claims.
The claim matters because, under Wyoming law, the existence of a quorum of county commissioners at a meeting can subject that meeting to open meeting laws – making it open to the press except in specific circumstances.
Bianchini did not respond by publication to an email request for comment.
First, Fire Chiefs Bristle
For the complainants to call Shockley a “nominal” firefighter is a “huge insult,” Palmer Canyon Fire Department Chief Will de Ryk told Cowboy State Daily in a Tuesday phone interview.
“Nobody ever called me to find out how active he is,” said de Ryk. “He’s probably one of our most active members — Mr. Shockley — and I have conversations almost on every fire (about) where he’s at, where it is; do I need him and his truck, just him or not him at all.”
Because of the county’s sparse and rural nature, multiple firefighters keep their trucks on their own property for ease of placement, and because they’re in charge of maintaining their trucks for the volunteer department, noted de Ryk.
Shockley has fought fires at least for de Ryk’s 13-year service to the department, he said.
Former Platte County Fire Warden Aaron Clark echoed that.
“Steve Shockley has been a firefighter for at least 25 years that I know of,” said Clark. “This (claim) is totally ridiculous. I don’t know where this is coming from.”
Secondly, The Definition Of Meeting
When a quorum of county commissioners meet, they still fall subject to open-meeting laws – but with some qualifiers.
Any actions taken at meetings that should have been public, but are held in secret, are void.
Wyoming Statute 16-4-402 defines “meeting” as an assembly of at least a quorum, “which has been called by proper authority of the agency for the expressed purpose of discussion, deliberation, presentation of information or taking action regarding public business.”
Ervin in his interview disputed whether the fire safety lunch falls under that definition and the open-meeting laws that hinge upon it, saying it was NextEra, not the government, that called the meeting.
Still, added Ervin, “I wish NextEra would have allowed press into the meeting. But the county can’t force somebody to let press into their meeting.”
Two Wyoming attorneys with experience on local governance disagree about whether the luncheon falls subject to Wyoming open meeting laws.
Former state House Speaker Tom Lubnau, who now runs legal trainings for local government officials, said he doubts the laws apply to that luncheon.
“That’s not a ‘meeting,’” for the law’s purposes, said Lubnau. “If you broadened the definition to cover that, hearing somebody talk about firefighting at a cocktail party would be covered. Going to a company Christmas party would be covered… That’s just – that’s somebody really going for a stretch.”
Another authority on Wyoming local governance laws, Gillette-based attorney Charlie Anderson, disagreed. Especially since the county can participate in the proceedings before the Industrial Siting Council.
“I think there’s an issue there,” said Anderson, on the press and public being excluded. It would have been more proper for the commissioners to open the event publicly, but then descend into executive session if they felt they had grounds to do so, Anderson added.
“At first blush, as they say, it sure sounds like the commissioners were there in their capacity as county commissioners,” he said. As for the new public safety factors, he said, “I don’t know how that isn’t public business.”
Platte County Sheriff Tony Krotz attended the meeting in his former role as county emergency management coordinator. He confirmed to Cowboy State Daily that the gathering was a fire safety talk with no county business votes or initiatives involved.
As for the complaint, said Krotz, “I’m keeping a neutral stance on all of it.”
de Ryk voiced a theory about why the public was excluded.
“It was a time for us to ask questions, and them to let us know what we might be expecting in their areas,” said de Ryk. “Not for somebody that doesn’t fight fire to ask questions and interrupt.”
Tense In October
Tense exchanges between commissioners and the project’s critics unfolded at the commission’s Oct. 21 meeting.
Jeb Baker referenced a stack of papers on his desk.
These, according to statements at the meeting, showed wind leases ascribed to the same parcel whose owner voiced outright opposition to the project that day.
“I’m against every part of this,” Terry Baker told the commission. “I’m totally, totally, totally against this Chugwater energy project.”
“So,” began Shockley, “have you always been against wind energy?”
Terry Baker said the technology is not yet sound.
“So have you ever signed a wind energy lease?” asked Shockley.
“Our family has, mm-hm,” answered Terry Baker. “And the eagles kept that project from coming in.”
“But you have signed a wind lease?” asked Shockley again.
“Yes, years ago,” said Terry Baker. But she’s since learned more about wind and understands it better now, she said. “Our ranch did sign. And it was with NextEra.”
The complaint casts this exchange differently, saying the commissioners “misappropriated and misrepresented the identity of the Baker family” and confused it with distant relatives referenced in the documents.
A 2007 “short form wind energy lease agreement,” which Cowboy State Daily obtained from the county Wednesday via public records request, authorized Oregon-based company Pacific Wind Development to access the Voight Ranch “exclusively for wind energy purposes.”
Lucinda Houtchens, one of the complainants, and Teresa Baker, another, both signed that lease, the document shows.
Other documents show agreements between Voight Ranch and other wind companies, like NextEra and Little Rose Wind Farm.
‘Illicit’
The complaint called commissioners’ decision to announce these past agreements in the open meeting “retaliation” and “abuse of authority on behalf of the commissioners.”
The announcement amounted to “introducing illicitly obtained documents into the public record,” the complaint alleges.
This and other actions “constitute a pattern of malfeasance, retaliation, abuse of office, manipulation of governmental processes and misconduct,” the complaint asserts. “The actions also reflect a willingness to use public power, confidential information, and official proceedings to punish private citizens, mislead the public, and distort the integrity of county records.”
Ervin confirmed to Cowboy State Daily that he sent the leases to commissioners, with the parties’ names highlighted.
But the “illicit documents” charge startled him, he said.
“All land records are public,” Ervin countered. “We were doing our research, and found that an individual who’d signed a number of land leases (is) now very vocally against wind and solar projects.”
Terry Baker did not respond to email requests for comment.
Yeah It’s Affecting The Governor
This complaint marks the fourth instance in the past year in which a county’s electors have tried to get Gordon to remove county officers from their posts.
First came Weston County residents’ Dec. 19, 2024, complaint against their county Clerk, Becky Hadlock.
Then came seven Hot Springs County residents’ October complaint against two of their three commissioners and that same month, a new Weston County complaint against Hadlock.
The Platte County complaint marks the fourth concentrated attempt to remove county officials from office via a governor’s investigation in the past year.
The series of investigations are affecting the workload in Gordon’s office, but the office still considers it important to weigh them carefully and give them the “necessary attention,” Gordon’s spokeswoman Amy Edmonds told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday email.
“It’s beginning to appear (to be a fad),” wrote Edmonds, adding that the process “should be used sparingly” because if the allegations reach the level of misconduct or malfeasance, Gordon would have to override the will of the locals who elected the county officers at issue.
“It is becoming apparent to this office that some in the state see this as a way to attempt to remove county officials when public policy differences arise,” Edmonds added. “Removal is not a solution for complainants that (sic) simply do not like a county decision or county official.”
Gordon doesn’t support circumventing election results or undermining the clear will of the people “except in the most egregious cases,” the statement says.
Though investigative complaints are impacting Gordon’s office, wrote Edmonds, the governor “devotes the time and resources necessary” to make an informed and well-considered decision.
She added: “our work has not been diminished and continues to be effective and of the highest quality.”
Getting Curious In Park County
Other counties are chattering about governor’s complaints as well.
Park County GOP Chair Vince Vanata dispatched an email to party leaders Dec. 12, saying a number of Park County citizens have been asking about the process of removing county commissioners.
“I realize this is becoming a mechanism in a variety of counties within Wyoming to challenge county commissioners’ actions or inactions in the absence of a recall mechanism within Wyoming,” wrote Vanata.
The mechanism isn’t a responsibility of the party, he noted, directing people to reference state law and “potentially seek legal counsel” if they’re curious about the process.
Vanata in a Wednesday phone interview said the sequence of complaints could be a sign that “people in our state have been frustrated by the lack of any recourse when it comes to actions, or inactions, of their elected officials.”
Wyoming doesn’t have recall elections, for example.
“And that’s why this may be becoming a topic of discussion, or an issue,” added Vanata.
Doing The Stuff
Shockley told Cowboy State Daily the complaint is based on false accusations, and he believes the governor will see that.
“The truth will come out,” he said. “We’ll just move forward from there.”
Jeb Baker did not respond to a voicemail request for comment.
Jolovich last week said people had texted him about it but he hadn’t seen the complaint himself.
He said he was “not that worried,” and is “more focused on stuff I can do something about.”
That includes keeping the sheriff’s office, roads maintenance and other local services running well despite shortages of funds, he said.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
