NEWS
Monday, Feb. 23 the Sheridan County Commissioners held a “special meeting.” Usually, special meetings are reserved for emergency situations that can’t wait for the regularly scheduled first and third Tuesday. Other than the timeframe and the reduced public notice requirement, typically, they are run just like any other meeting.
The agenda for the Feb. 23rd gathering had one item listed: “Three Elephant Public Relations Presentation.” Some of the more frequent attendees to Sheridan County government events mused that perhaps the county was working on their image after “the flowerpot” controversy.
What followed, when the meeting was called to order, was not a presentation by a PR firm but by Wyoming Business Council CEO Josh Dorrell. Dorrell has been making presentations across the state to various groups following what can only be described as a contentious appearance in front of the legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee.
In a couple of exchanges with different lawmakers, Dorrell repeatedly made comments criticizing the free market. In one back and forth he said, “The free market as an ideal, unfortunately, it doesn't exist except at, you know, maybe those ivory tower type institutions that we might call as an academia, and that's where it exists, because it's a model.”
When asked by legislators if he thought it was the government’s role to be involved in business, Dorrell replied,“It's not about having a super small government. It's having an appropriately sized government.That's important. And for the problem that we're looking to solve, we're not appropriately sized. We are, indeed.Too small.”
In an interview on Cowboy State Politics, Dorrell insinuated the free market is a hindrance:“The free market is actually not one, not free, but you have toremember, those markets are working. Okay, so... The market is working against us, so we have to use government intervention to actually reverse that.”
When The Open Range Record asked Sheridan County Commission Chair Christi Haswell why the agenda for their meeting did not list the Wyoming Business Council and instead listed Three Elephant Public Relations, Haswell replied in a text message,“Three Elephant was the name of the consultant reaching out to counties to ask to set up these presentations for the WBC. It was the name we used for the presentation we tried to schedule in January when we had phone issues and had to reschedule,so[we] just left it the same. I appreciate the WBC's openess[sic] to look at what's working and what's not.”
The meeting agenda available to the public has the correct day and time of the special meeting—February 23 at 10 am. Another peculiar quirk of “special meetings” is that the public is to be notified of the purpose ina public notice. It’s a way of justifying holding a meeting outside of established dates and times. Why didn’t the agenda list the Wyoming Business Council as the presenter?
The answer to that may lie in the agenda that was handed out to commissioners. The Open Range Record obtained a copy of the document that was distributed in the Commissioners packet for the meeting. The header for the agenda is exactly the same as the public version as is most of lines one and two. But this line is added: “Josh Dorrell, Chief Executive Officer – Wyoming Business Council.”
When asked about the discrepancy between agendas, Sheridan Commissioner Holly Jennings said, "The agenda in our packet listed the Wyoming Business Council. I had no idea the public agenda was any different." Commissioner Mike Arzy told The Open Range Record the same thing.
There is only one conclusion that can be drawn from this difference: the Sheridan County Commissioners or whomever prepared the public version of this document did not want the public knowing that the WBC was presenting. Though this may seem like a small matter, it raises serious public transparency concerns.One of those being, what other meetings have been hidden from the public?
When asked about the Wyoming Business Council more broadly, Sheridan County Commissioner Mike Arzy said,“Dorrell talked about efforts to‘regionalize’northeast Wyoming. We didn’t like that because our counties’ economies are so vastly different. He spoke about how to keep our youth from moving out of state for careers and how to entice companies to move here. . . .I did volunteer that in Sheridan we have a lot of ‘Help Wanted’ signs and the lowest unemployment rate in a long time so it’s not really an employment issue as much as getting our housing market to catch up with demand.”
Josh Dorrell has been meeting with commissioners around the state. It’s an open question why the Sheridan County Commissioners didn’t publicize his presentation in Sheridan County.