The actions of one commissioner were being used against the other four members of the board.
It was never right--but I understand the reasons why what happened came to pass. Nobody from the State Attorney's office looked into the withholding of the records---although they were notified of this issue by multiple persons. And the county's staff did not convince Commissioner Underhill to turn over documents that the county considers to be public records. Nobody had administrative rights over social media platforms that only Commissioner Underhill controlled----so nothing was happening.
But now, as of last night, those of us who did no wrong and had no culpability in the withholding of public records are OUT of the lawsuit. It's Done! And it was WAY past time for this to happen.
One of my top priorities as chairman was to get the settlement talks on the fast track; they had been occurring for about 8 months but it was a back and forth, excrutiating slow motion ping pong match that was unbearable to live through.
So we have now made the light-speed jump over the last 48 hours to finish this once and for all. We got a draft of a stipulation of facts and settlement sent to the County Attorney, completed a shade session on this topic particularly, and we culminated this "at-pace" exercise by approving a settlement agreement with David Bear and his attorney yesterday evening at our meeting. It was our last order of business and we got it done.
Now, the other 4 board members are out of a state case and a federal case leaving one commissioner, Doug Underhill, in both cases in his personal capacity (and in his official capacity in the Federal Case).
This is an appropriate outcome: After all, it was never about us, it was always about him, and now he can stand alone and answer the charges and accusations alone as he should.
Read the settlement HERE.
Read the stipulation of facts document approved by a 4-0 vote of the board (Doug Underhill abstained) last night HERE.
The media locally, as per usual, have no idea this happend. They were asleep at the switch talking about the "Insurrection" anniversary.......So what they'll do is poach my site later, copy the documents, and then run a story late this afternoon on this without any attribution or a link to this site where they got the story; sadly, that's what they do and how they operate around here. Easy, lazy, and borderline unethical....😀 Nevertheless this is a big story though, and they should cover it. And they will.
