County Attorney clarifies county’s position on recall petition

In a letter to the Stevensville resident who is circulating a petition to have the Mayor of Stevensville recalled for violating his oath of office, County Clerk and Recorder Regina Plettenberg noted that the petition had been found to meet the “grounds and form” required for a recall petition under state law and thus was approved for circulation.

Several readers took this to mean that this meant that the county attorney in his review of the document found that the allegations had merit and that indeed the law had been violated. But that is not the case, according to Deputy County Attorney Royce McCarty, who reviewed the document for the clerk.

McCarty said, according to statute, if you want to circulate a petition to recall a public official, you have to submit it to the Clerk and Recorder before you circulate it so that she can determine whether it meets the proper form.

“One thing we did not do is make any determination that he had violated anything. We simply examined the form itself,” said McCarty.

One formal requirement, he said, is that it has to contain “specificity” of what they are claiming. McCarty said that if the petition had simply stated that it was for violating his oath of office, for instance, that would not be specific enough. The petition must be specific as to the facts that support the claim so that the official can offer a defense against the allegations.

“They are simply allegations,” said McCarty. “The County doesn’t make a determination in that regard. We are not a judge. A court would ultimately have to determine whether that allegation was true or not.”

He said the county doesn’t look into the facts, it simply asks, “if true” would it be a violation of the statutes in question.

Asked how this jives with the Clerk’s statement in her letter to the petitioner that the petition was found to meet the “grounds and form” of the legal requirements, McCarty said, “I guess what I’m saying is that according to statute it has to have grounds to it. You have to allege facts that, ‘if they are correct’ would be a violation of the oath of office. But we didn’t make any determination as to whether they were correct or not. We just made the determination that the alleged facts met the proper form.”