County commissioners face recall election in Teton Valley

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-The full extent of a backlash after the call for a highly controversial emergency moratorium in Teton Valley, Idaho – where county commissioners in March voted 2-1 to put a hold on new development applications – is in voter hands.

The fate of Chairman Larry Young and Commissioner Alice Stevenson, accused by at least one group of collusion outside of the public forum, will be the only items on a special Nov. 6 countywide ballot, when Teton Valley voters will decide whether each should be ousted.

Claiming illegal email exchanges, among other grievances, Nolan Boyle has been most visibly proactive in the move to boot Young and Stevenson. Boyle heads up the Teton Valley Alliance (TVA), a conservative group that champions land rights over much else, and which has the sympathy of many of the valley’s old-line families.

Boyle and others were successful in getting a district court judge to overturn the moratorium a mere few weeks after the measure went into effect. He then got the Idaho Attorney General’s Office to investigate allegations of illegal emails between Young and Stevenson.

More recently, Boyle and what he called “about 100 helpers” turned in over 1,000 individual absentee voter applications, which were then sent out by the county. As of close of business Monday, 980 of about 1,600 absentee ballots had been returned.
“One thing that’s really significant is all of the early voting,” Young said in an interview last week. He speculated that might be a precaution because, “a lot of people are going to feel uncomfortable at the polls.”

Last week, the Attorney General’s Office last week cleared Young and Stevenson of any wrongdoing regarding illegal or imprudent email exchanges. Nonetheless, at the top of TVA website (www.Teton-ValleyAlliance.com), pro-recall campaign literature reads, “Do you trust politicians who: pledge to have open government and then in private emails say:  ‘Sorry to leave Mark out of the loop but I don’t think he agrees …’”

“It’s really pretty simple,” Boyle said in a recent phone interview. “It comes down to trust and honesty.”

Sandy Mason works with Valley Advocates for Responsible Development (VARD), which has cautioned against rampant development riding slipshod across much of the Teton Valley, where 93 subdivisions await action in the planning pipeline and no Projected Land Use Map exists.

While, as a nonprofit, VARD cannot campaign one way or another in the recall election, Mason offered his own thoughts on the move for the two commissioners’ ouster before the Attorney General’s findings were made public.

“Theoretically you have people out there who made their decision on open government,” he said. “Maybe all of the [early] votes being made were not being made based on what the Attorney General found. It seems to me that there is potential for an unfortunate circumstance here … especially with those not having the full facts ahead of them.”
Young and Stevenson have taken out a full page ad in the Teton Valley News urging residents to vote against recall. An informational website (www.Recall-Truth.org) has also launched in support of the pair.

For a successful ouster, at least  1,684 citizens would need to vote to recall Stevenson, and 1,682 votes to remove Young. Both of those figures would have to equal a simple majority. There are about 4,500 registered voters in Teton County, Idaho.

“I’m estimating the recall election will cost about $10,000,” said County Clerk Mary Lou Hansen, who defeated the incumbent, Boyle, in the November 2006 elections.

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County commissioners face recall election in Teton Valley | Planet JH News Article: County News

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