EDITORIAL
For an entire summer, Sheridan County voters were lectured about the possible impact Proposition 1 could have on the size of government. Tongue River Fire District Chief Jeff Barron and others relentlessly and dubiously insisted that Prop 1 would break volunteer departments. Though we already knew the math didn’t add up, The Open Range Record set out to see if there was validity to any of their claims.
During our investigation, we discovered that there is virtually no public accounting of tax dollars spent by Sheridan County for fires fought in Montana. Government at every level is required by law to account for every nickel of tax money spent—fire districts included.
This past September, the Sheridan County Commissioners signed a “mutual aid agreement” with Big Horn County, Montana to fight any fires that might spark up. Essentially, for any fire lasting less than 12 hours, no invoicing would occur. Importantly, that agreement does not include independent fire districts.
We could find no real accounting of any funds expended for fires fought over the state line. Chris Thomas, Sheridan County Fire Warden told The Open Range Record that unless a fire lasts more than 12 hours they “don’t really worry about it.” He went on to say, as of our publication date, that Tongue River Fire, perplexingly, hadn’t decided if they were going to invoice BNSF for a fire they caused. BNSF would undoubtedly cut a check immediately for it. Every governmental entity must account for taxpayer resources spent; yes, even fire districts.
Before publishing our report, The Open Range Record reached out to Tongue River Fire Chief Jeff Barron. After repeated attempts, apart from a sarcastic email Barron sent to our journalist, Barron did not substantively respond to our request for comment. We gave him 5 full days to contribute to the piece—a timeframe that no other publication, including The Sheridan Press, would allow. Instead, Barron wrote his own op-ed explaining why we have a moral obligation to help those in need.
Of course we do, and we should. No one is disputing that. However, that strawman doesn’t have anything to do with whether fire districts are or aren’t keeping track of our tax money.
Because Mr. Barron was unresponsive to our inquiries, we then sent a FOIA request asking for two years of income and expenditures. That might seem like a lot, but Tongue River Fire already went through an audit in 2025. Those records should be readily available. The other year we asked for was 2024. Those books have already been closed and shouldn’t require too much more than a few mouse clicks and an hour or two to review them.
Barron then penned another letter to the editor, published by The Sheridan Press, asking us to “consider the human cost” of complying with our FOIA request. He titled it, “How do you kill a volunteer fire department?” How ridiculously melodramatic. Proving that Barron has complied with Wyoming law to track taxpayer funds will not end his department. If it does, Barron has far more immediate and serious issues than complying with a simple FOIA request.
It was Jeff Barron who put his fire district in the public eye. It was Barron who wrote numerous op-eds and did interviews with the media. It was Jeff Barron who used his volunteer fire department for politics. And it was Jeff Barron who loudly claimed his department was hanging by a financial thread.
It was only a matter of time until a curious news outlet decided to try to verify his claims. Taxpayers deserve that. Jeff Barron owes them that. The question we should all be asking is, why is Jeff Barron resisting so much? We want to know why.