by George Gramlich, Some News, Mostly Commentary

Sept 1, 2023

Apparently, right after last Wednesday’s Custer County Board of County Commissioners Special Meeting, where com-missioners Bill Canda and Lucas Epp voted to rescind the Resolution that created the despised County Manager (CM) position, which in turn, immediately terminated the CM, Braden Wilson, anointed by commissioner Kevin Day and ex-commissioner Tommy “Bye Bye” Flower just the week before, something strange happened.
From what we have been told, right after the meeting ended, the
county’s new Finance Manager handed Wilson, who was just terminated, a Custer County check for $54,000! Yes, Fifty Four Thousand U.S. Dollars! Not a bad pay check for a guy WHO ONLY WORKED FIVE DAYS AS THE COUNTY MANAGER! Yup, FIVE Days. Smell bad, fellow taxpayers?  It stinks.
One must ask, considering that there are serious issues with the six month severance pay clause put in the CM’s employment contract by commissioner Kevin Day (and voted for by Flower) the week before, why was the check immediately given to Wilson right after the meeting? The week before when the CM contract was being “reviewed” by the BOCC, Canda vigorously objected to the outrageously large severance pay package as being contrary to standard Custer County employment practices, against public policy and excessive by any measure. Note that no other county employee has a contract (except possibly the prior OEM Director) and no other county employee has any kind of severance pay provisions. None. Plus, this severance pay clause has never been done in Custer. And note that this is a totally brand new job. Plus, there was no time limit, meaning that Wilson could possibly get it just for “working” one minute!
Not only that, putting in a clause in a BOCC resolution that financially penalizes the county if the BOCC changes its mind down the road on the resolution is against public policy and is completely and utterly unethical. In fact, it is immoral. This is a classic “poison pill” measure, or in layman’s terms, flat out extortion. It handcuffs any future review of the resolution by the BOCC. It is beyond dirty politics. Day put a severance pay clause in a contract that penalizes Custer County! Does that make any fiduciary sense at all? Yeah, Day is a great guy to negotiate a contract with. You don’t even have to ask for favorable clauses, he will just give them to you.
So who put this tree with the poison fruit in the garden? Kevin Day with the gleeful assistance of Tom Flower. And who picked the poison fruit and ate it? Braden Wilson. Surprisingly, it looks like the check for Wilson was waiting for him after the meeting. How can that be? Wilson took the poison fruit and now he has a $54,000 check. For four or five days work. Does this look a little suspicious?
Note that check was a big one and it was an out-of-cycle check. So who authorized it and who signed it? And where in the contract does it state severence must be paid immediately after termination? Considering that there are serious legal issues with the severance pay clause which might, in the end, wind up making it void (and Day knew this), how did this check get made and delivered? Normally, an out-of-cycle check of that size would require BOCC approval and that did not happen. So, once again, who approved it and who signed it?
And what about Wilson, the epitome of virtue and honesty? Remember back when he gave his CM sales pitch to the peasants at that big BOCC meeting? He said, defending his honor, “Anybody who knows me, knows that …” finishing with something like “I would never do that.”
Well, Kevin Day’s $54,000 poison fruit was hanging from the tree last Wednesday and Wilson picked it and ate it. We know you now, Wilson. You started this thing with a secret BOCC Executive Session that you disguised as a “personnel matter” where you pitched the CM position and told the commissioners that you were the only one who could do the job. In secret. No nobody else would have time to  apply for the job. And you were the Human Resources head at the time whose job it is to protect our county employee’s. (Apparently this didn’t bother Day and Flower with this illegal ES. Wonder why.) Then Day essentially made sure Wilson got the job by posting the job for a ridiculous five days so the odds of an actually qualified candidate to apply were slim to none. Real transparent, Day.
Wilson worked four days at the CM job. Out of the $54k let’s say $50k of that was for the CM job (salary plus benefits, the other $4k was for his Finance Director “job”.) Wilson spent five days as CM. But wait, he took off Monday as a vacation day (must have been tired from working the Thursday before as a CM) so he actually only worked for THREE or FOUR DAYS.
If it was three days of CM work, Wilson got $16,666 per day! Nice. At supposedly 10 hours a day, that comes to $1,666 per hour. Anybody else getting that in the county? Road & Bridge starts their folks at $17.50 per hour.
Any honorable man would have declined the money. You, Wilson, “worked” THREE DAYS AS CM. In your greed tainted mind, ripping off the tax payers in this county for $54k for three days sitting at a desk is just fine and dandy. Wilson, you started this scam and ripped the tax payers off big time.

Yeah, “Anybody who knows me…” Well, we do now. We now see your morality, ethics and character and thank God you are not the CM running this county.

Day is totally responsible for this ripoff. His lack of any real management ability somehow made him the ONLY person in the county qualified to force the CM position down our throats. Without having any research or study done to actually see if there were issues and maybe the issues were the commissioners and not the system. We have outstanding elected officials and department heads and a super competent workforce. We have gotten by for decades with no CM and all of sudden these three very well paid elected officials can’t handle a small workforce with good department leadership? You DIRECTLY caused the county $54k to pay for your ego and incompetence. That money should come out of your pay, sir.  Day: If you can’t do this simple management job step down and let someone competent do it.
This was a disgraceful case of incompetence and malfeasance and it shouldn’t be happening here.
Thank goodness Flower got tossed and Epp got in. Lord knows what further damage would have been done.