Bad behavior flavors hearing between bison advocates, DOL.

HELENA: After a court hearing that left the judge visibly exasperated, Judge Thomas Honzel ruled Tuesday the state Department of Livestock didn’t break an agreement to give department documents to a trio of environmental groups although the groups argued they still haven't seen some of them. Honzel further ordered the department to give the groups all the documents they want in the next 10 days.

The case dates back to March 2001, when the Buffalo Field Campaign, Cold Mountain Cold Rivers and the Ecology Center, Inc., all environmental groups, sent a letter requesting Livestock Department records on a portion of it’s bison management plan. According to the groups, the Livestock Department blew them off entirely. Bernie Jacobs, a department lawyer, said they didn't turn over the documents because they weren't exactly sure what the groups wanted.

The groups sued, arguing the Livestock Department violated the Montana Constitution and open-records laws. That suit resulted in settlement in May, in which the department paid the groups $9,300 in attorney's fees and agreed to make all documents pertaining to bison management available to the groups over four days this May, only between the hours of 9 a.m. and noon and from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The agreement almost derailed before it got started when the Livestock Department tried to charge the groups $10 per page for every document they wanted to copy: a request it later dropped.

On May 16, Darrell Geist, of Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers and Florence Gardipee, of the Buffalo Field Campaign, drove from Missoula and arrived at the Livestock Department just after 1 p.m. Geist and Gardipee testified they found about six boxes of old, “archival” documents and a hired security guard with handcuffs and pepper spray waiting for them. Gardipee testified that when she asked Jacobs if she could look through other documents, he told her she could only see the next box of documents after she had examined the first.

Ultimately, the two determined that, while the documents did relate to bison, they were not the papers the groups set out to get. Later on, accompanied by their lawyer, the two asked Jacobs where other documents might be. Garidpee said Jacobs told her other documents were in other employees’ offices and that those employees were out of the office and Jacobs did not know when they would return.

Although the Department was required under the agreement to make documents available the next day, Geist and Gardipee left for Missoula that night and didn’t come back. Jacobs argued that the documents were available, but that Geist and Gardipee came for only two hours on one of the days to examine them. Had they come back the next day, Jacobs said, they would have found more documents. At times, testimony broke down into squabbling. At one point when Gardipee was testifying, Jacobs said she was trying to get signals from her lawyer. "Your honor,", said Brenda Lindlief Hall, the group's lawyer, "the defendant looked at me."

Honzel also took note of what he called "mistrust" both parties seemed to have of each other. Although lively, the hearing came after the Livestock Department has already turned over some of the documents the groups want. Honzel told the department to turn over any more by Aug. 2. "This has been going on now for a long time and I don't see how in 10 days it couldn't all be wrapped up," Honzel said.

Gardipee said afterward that "as a citizen" she and Geist were fighting for their fundamental right to access of public documents. "I am still mystified that the Department of Livestock continues to play games with my clients' fundamental right to know," Lindlief Hall said. "We are hopeful that now the Department of Livestock will now be more forthcoming in providing documents and that we can finally lay this to rest."

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