In a tumultuous meeting, two of Douglas County’s elected leaders voted to censure — or formally disapprove of — their colleague in response to what one of the leaders has called public shaming of county volunteers with inaccurate information.

James Smith, the chair of a volunteer board that advises the county on how arts and culture funding should be spent, spoke at an Aug. 22 meeting in favor of censuring Commissioner Lora Thomas.

“Numerous stakeholders, including six of our eight councilmembers, have reached out to me personally to convey their disappointment and express their fear of retaliation from our elected officials,” Smith, the chair of the Douglas County Cultural Council, said during the county commissioners meeting.

Thomas in her email newsletter had criticized the council’s actions, pushing the group to support spending a part of its funding in Douglas County.

Laydon said it’s not a problem for commissioners to ask questions about public funds but that it can be done respectfully, saying Thomas has spread misinformation.

Commissioner George Teal and Laydon’s move to censure Thomas comes as the latest in a long string of two-to-one conflicts among the three Douglas County leaders.

Laydon and Teal had voiced support for censuring Thomas in April 2021 but decided not to formally vote in favor of censure at the time.

“They have taken every possible opportunity to marginalize me, the senior commissioner, for two and a half years,” Thomas said, calling her colleagues “bullies.”

Rocky meeting

After listening through the criticism, Thomas said she had a presentation she wanted to play.

Teal and Laydon did not allow that, with Laydon telling the meeting room to remain in order after Thomas’ husband had apparently shouted out in objection to the discussion. Thomas played some type of audio, apparently from her phone, and Laydon asked her to turn it off.

Following the meeting, Thomas released the video on X, formerly known as Twitter, where clips of Laydon and Teal calling her names such as "cancer" and "tumor" were heard from prior meetings. Clips also showed the two majority commissioners questioning her ethics and integrity on multiple occasions, which Thomas said is disrespectful to her.

When she was not allowed to play the video, Thomas read a statement instead.

“I have always looked you in the eye and directly shared with you the unvarnished truth,” Thomas said. She added that the censure “does not affect my status, my salary, my ability to vote on matters of importance to (people in) Douglas County.”

Thomas’ husband still spoke further during later comments from Laydon. Laydon banged a gavel and threatened to have him ejected from the room.

Formal vote

Teal floated the censure of Thomas at an Aug. 15 meeting of county officials, and Laydon supported it.

Teal at the Aug. 22 meeting said the censure is already in place based on that earlier decision.

“The question is what will be preserved in the record,” Teal said.

Based on Thomas’ criticism of the cultural council in “a tone meant to negatively represent the cultural council’s work,” Laydon and Teal voted to censure Thomas for “behavior contrary to the Douglas County commissioner code of conduct” and “conduct detrimental to Douglas County,” according to Teal’s reading of the censure resolution.

Laydon said Thomas is “incredibly capable.”

“She’s punctual, she’s very smart, she’s committed to the community,” Laydon said. “But this behavior of shaming volunteers with misinformation cannot stand, and so I will be supporting this censure.”

Eye on cultural council

The dispute about the cultural council — a body that works with the Denver-area arts funding district — is among a few points of contention for the county commissioners in recent weeks.

The Scientific and Cultural Facilities District is a government body that includes seven counties in the Denver metro area. One penny on every $10 in sales and use tax collected goes to the district to fund organizations that provide arts or science programs, the district’s website says.

The metro area’s largest cultural organizations — such as the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the Denver Zoo — receive specific amounts of funding.

But counties also make decisions about how the tax revenue is spent. Each county receives a share of the tax collected, and county cultural councils review applications from organizations and make recommendations on their county’s funding priorities, the district’s website says.

Those recommendations are then reviewed and approved by the county commissioners or city council and the SCFD board of directors, the website says.

Thomas’ email newsletter took issue with the actions of the Douglas County Cultural Council.

“This year there was more funding available for distribution than there were requests, but (Douglas County) commissioners did not learn about this windfall until after the council had made recommendations,” Thomas wrote in an Aug. 6 newsletter.

Organizations outside of Douglas County that can prove that they provide services to county residents are eligible for funding, according to Thomas’ newsletter. 

But “I felt strongly that after all of the requests for funding had been fulfilled, that the Cultural Council should disperse the additional (money) only to organizations located in Douglas County,” Thomas wrote. 

Thomas’ newsletter initially stated there was an additional $500,000 in funding. Another newsletter later put the number at $85,000. The correct number is $88,000, according to county staff.

“Laydon agreed with me, and the commissioners sent an email to the cultural council requesting that it meet to reconsider its recommendations and only provide the windfall funds to Douglas County-based organizations,” Thomas continued.

The cultural council recently met, and the request to keep the dollars in Douglas County failed on a 5-2 vote, according to Thomas’ newsletter.

Thomas’ newsletter criticized the decision and said: “I would like to give credit and applaud the courage of Cultural Council members Ann Speer and Sid Simonson who voted in the minority to respect Douglas County taxpayers and organizations.”

The newsletter then included a link that read: “Click here for a roster of the cultural council members.” It led to a page on the county’s website that describes the cultural council and lists its members.

“I call it doxing,” Laydon said at the Aug. 8 meeting of commissioners and other county officials.

The Merriam-Webster website defines “doxing” as “to publicly identify or publish private information about (someone) especially as a form of punishment or revenge.”

But whatever a person calls it, “I don’t think that’s productive, and I don’t think that’s respectful,” Laydon said.

Thomas responded that she shared the names of two individuals who voted on the cultural council for the distributions to be “done the way you and I had requested.” She added that the link to all the board members’ names is public information on the county’s website.

Thomas at the Aug. 22 meeting said: “I did not post anybody’s picture or name in a public place.”

But one of Thomas’ newsletters included what appears to be a screenshot of a videoconferencing meeting that includes video-feed images of members of the cultural council and their names.

Thomas argued that when people get involved in government and have input on public spending, the public has the right to information.

‘Stand behind decision’

Smith, the recent Douglas County Cultural Council chair, wrote in a document sent to the county that the cultural council’s funding should focus on impact to residents.

“The Scientific and Cultural Facilities District's primary goal is to ‘bring arts, culture, and scientific experiences within reach for every resident,’” the document said. “The residents of Douglas County are our primary stakeholders, and decisions should reflect their interests, not the interests of a handful of organizations that have a home office in Douglas County.”

Actions including “public shaming” by Thomas have “diminished the council’s morale,” Smith wrote in a letter offering to step down after Thomas had criticized the group.

Ultimately, Laydon expressed satisfaction with the council’s process.

“My concern was ensuring that Douglas County citizens were served, and they made it clear that they included that in their rubric,” Laydon said during the Aug. 15 meeting. “It’s just like our rodeo; we have out-of-state performers that come to our rodeo, and they are athletes that are nationally ranked, (but) they are serving Douglas County citizens.”

In the end, the county commissioners voted 3-0 to certify the funding as recommended by the cultural council, according to county staff.

Other members of the cultural council defended their actions at the Aug. 22 meeting, with one saying: “We stand behind our decision as one that was thoughtfully considered and we believe that is the best interest for Douglas County.”

Talking funding

Laydon also took issue with what he described as Thomas “trying to shame” members of the Douglas County Community Foundation, a nonprofit that is building up a “relief fund” that can help take care of people during natural disasters or other emergencies.

“The Douglas County Community Foundation will be asking the commissioners for $200 Grand--that's right!!  $200,000...to be used as matching funds for its annual September fundraising gala.  Boy, $400 GRAND--that sounds like SOME KINDA ‘EVENT!’” a July newsletter from Thomas said.

Laydon said Thomas misrepresented the information.

“Zero of the funds that the county is providing to the community foundation is being used for the gala but, rather, they’re doubling the money that’s being invested by the county and using that for emergency relief,” Laydon has said.

Thomas wrote in an email newsletter sent on Aug. 15 that she had asked county staff to obtain from the foundation "the budget for how these dollars were to be spent, a list of the DCCF board members who voted to support this request from the county and what chances the county had of getting any of these funds back if unused?" 

“Staff told me that DCCF President Brock Smethills would provide me the information. Even though I made a second request for the DCCF info from staff, I never received any response to my questions,” she wrote in the newsletter.

Looking at investigation

In listing his complaints about Thomas, Laydon at the Aug. 22 meeting said she had attacked first responders by sharing an anonymous letter.

On the other hand, Thomas said an investigation was “exonerating” of her.

Teal and Laydon had initiated an investigation after accusing Thomas of circulating an anonymous letter that criticized specific employees in the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, allegedly creating a hostile work environment. They also accused her of emailing county legal representation with a request not authorized by the full board.

The investigation into Thomas by outside legal counsel found that while Thomas had distributed the letter, doing so did not create a hostile work environment. It also found she did direct legal representation to provide her with information the board had determined to keep secret. 

Thomas appeared in a CBS Colorado news story in July 2022 discussing the confidential report that showed the results of the investigation, prompting the Douglas County government’s attorney to find that Thomas could have broken the law by doing so.

Thomas had asserted multiple times in meetings and in her newsletter to constituents that she believes the privileged nature of the document had already been broken by Laydon discussing parts of it publicly.  

A second investigation — this time conducted by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office — did not find probable cause to believe that Thomas committed the crime of first-degree official misconduct. 

“The Colorado criminal code does not specifically prohibit a waiver of privileged and confidential information by a privilege holder. In this case, as a member of the Board of County Commissioners, Lora Thomas is a privilege holder,” Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Bruce Peterson wrote in a memorandum.

Laydon has argued Arapahoe County “got it wrong” in evaluating Thomas’ actions, saying “the privileged holder of a confidential document is the board” and not just one member of the board. He based his point on the understanding of the law of Chris Pratt, then interim Douglas County attorney.