January 26, 2022 |
Governor Mark Gordon conducted in-person interviews on Tuesday with the three candidates looking to fill the vacant position of State School Superintendent. The public will not know what was asked or what the individual responses were to the governor’s questions.
“This is a deliberative process, and transcripts of the interviews were not taken,” Michael Pearlman, Governor Gordon’s communication officer told Bigfoot 99 in an email. Deliberative process privilege is the common-law principle that provides immunity from normal disclosure or discovery to the internal processes of the executive branch of a government in civil litigations or from Freedom of Information Act requests.
The three candidates who met with the governor were Thomas Kelly, Marti Halverson and Brian Schroeder. They were leading vote-getters from a field of 11 candidates in an election held Saturday by the Wyoming Republican Party’s Central Committee.
By law, the governor will select one of the three to replace Jillian Balow, who resigned as state school superintendent two weeks ago. Gordon is expected to make the decision by tomorrow.
A lawsuit filed yesterday in federal seeks to stop the process before it goes any further. Former Wyoming Speaker of the House Tom Lubnau and 15 others are suing Gov. Mark Gordon, the Wyoming Republican Party, the party’s chairman and the Wyoming Republican State Central Committee.
The state school superintendent is one of the state’s top five elected officials. The lawsuit contends that the process of allowing a political party’s Central Committee and the governor to fill the position violates the fundamental constitutional principal of one-man, one vote. The process used last weekend to select the three finalists gave each Wyoming County three votes. The plaintiffs claim in their lawsuit that this discriminates against counties with populations.
Joey Correnti of Saratoga is a member of the state Republican Party’s Central Committee by virtue of being the chairman of the Carbon County contingent. Correnti told Bigfoot 99 that he is surprised that the party is named as a defendant in the lawsuit because it was merely following state law regarding a selection, not an election.
Pictured: File photo of Saratoga Elementary School. Photo by Bigfoot 99.
Lubnau had his chances to change the law if he believes it is unconstitutional. He served as speaker of the House from 2013-to-2015, speaker pro-tempore in 2007 and 2008 and House Majority Leader in 2011 and 2012. Lubnau was also President of the State Bar in 2002 and 2003. Lubnau and the other plaintiffs are being represented in their lawsuit by former Wyoming Attorney General Pat Crank. Correnti suspects that politics, not the law, is behind the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, which exposes the fissure between the old guard of the Wyoming Republican and the new breed of younger conservatives, requests that the court prohibit the governor from choosing one of the candidates to replace Balow. If it goes to trial, yesterday’s interviews will be off-limits from discovery.
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