A Montana district court judge this week voided the Conrad City Council’s recent vote to oust the town’s mayor, Jamie Miller.

In a ruling filed Thursday, 9th Judicial District Judge Greg Bonilla determined that the city council violated the Montana Constitution’s right-to-know requirements when it entered into an executive session to take action against the mayor. Bonilla also wrote that the council failed to provide adequate notice to the public of its intended action.

“The Montana Supreme Court has determined in other contexts that public officials, whether elected or not, hold positions of trust and, therefore, have reduced expectations of privacy in matters pertaining to the conduct of their offices because society does not deem such expectations of privacy as reasonable,” Bonilla wrote, referencing one of the key balancing factors in determining whether a public body can conduct business in private. 

Miller began her term in 2022. Last November, the council voted to remove her from office, citing an obscure piece of statute dating from the territorial days that deems a municipal office vacant if the official openly neglects or refuses to discharge their duties. When Montana Free Press wrote about that vote and Miller’s subsequent lawsuit last month, city officials were only able to say the dispute arose from a grievance filed by a city employee against the mayor, as the employee in question invoked his right to privacy. 

Since then, that employee, now identifiable as Conrad Police Chief Ernest Padilla, has waived his privacy protections, allowing the city to release documents related to the grievance. According to those documents, since obtained by Montana Free Press, Padilla alleged that the mayor was retaliating against him due to a dispute about overtime compensation. 

In short, he sought to receive overtime pay or “comp hours” to which the mayor did not believe he was entitled. The city attorney ruled with Padilla, and the mayor disputed those findings. Along the way, conversations between the mayor, chief and council about the chief’s job description, budget and access to the city email raised hackles, leading to claims of retaliation. The city contracted with an outside investigator who determined that his claims were valid, and that Miller may be putting the city at legal risk due to potential violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. She disputed those findings. The council, guided by City Attorney Daniel Jones, determined that she was failing to follow the law, constituting a neglect to discharge her duties and grounds for vacating her seat under the law.

“[Jones] stated that the conclusion of the investigation established that the mayor retaliated based on the FLSA claim,” minutes from the meeting where Miller was ousted state. “Mayor Miller said she had the right to disagree with both Daniel Jones’ and [the outside investigator’s] opinions. Jones then asked the mayor how many legal opinions she was going to ignore. He also said that by continually ignoring legal counsel, she puts the city at risk of lawsuits.”

Although at least one council member described being generally supportive of the mayor, the vote to remove Miller was unanimous, according to the minutes.

But the outcome of the investigation has relatively little to do with Miller’s lawsuit, which does not specifically challenge the validity of the law under which she was removed or the council’s interpretation of it. Rather, Miller and her attorney, Jeff Hindoien, contended that the council failed to properly notice the meeting and erred in conducting its deliberations in executive session. 

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 the meeting minutes, the council briefly met in public, and then Miller closed the meeting on the advice of Jones. It’s not clear from the lawsuit or meeting minutes if she knew she was about to be removed from office. 

Her lawsuit asserts that the item listed on the agenda — to conduct “an Executive Session regarding a personnel matter” — varied substantially from the action the council was actually contemplating, denying the public’s right to participate. The lawsuit also argues that the council should not have gone into executive session at all, and at the least should not have taken a vote behind closed doors.

It’s not clear from his ruling — which doesn’t mention Padilla or the nature of the grievance at all — how much Bonilla knows about the underlying dispute. Bonilla’s ruling and the city’s documents also seem to differ over which party was invoking their right to privacy: Bonilla’s ruling presumes it was Miller, while the meeting minutes reflect that the council was considering the police chief’s privacy rights. 

“[W]hile the Nov. 17, 2023 meeting was closed because the demands of individual privacy clearly exceeded the merits of public disclosure, there is nothing in the record that indicates what the basis for that decision was,” Bonilla wrote. 

As such, he ruled with Miller. 

Neither Miller nor Hindoien responded to multiple requests for comment this week. Daniel Jones, the city attorney, also did not respond to a request for comment. Police Chief Ernest Padilla could not be reached for comment.

The city council is next scheduled to hold a special meeting on Jan. 16.

Bonilla, the judge in the case, is involved in a separate open-meetings lawsuit, though not as an adjudicator. Rather, the Choteau Acantha and Montana Free Press sued when an advisory council designed to recommend candidates for judicial vacancies to the governor conducted closed-door interviews and deliberations with Bonilla and one other would-be judge. Both Bonilla and the other candidate invoked their rights to privacy. The media outlets argued that the two candidates had a diminished expectation of privacy since they were seeking public office and that the meeting should be open to public observation. A Helena district court judge ruled with the media outlets in December, writing that the candidates do not have a presumptive right to privacy in these interviews. The office of Gov. Greg Gianforte has said it will appeal the decision. 

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