One of Douglas County’s elected leaders proposed a censure — or formal disapproval — of one of his colleagues after she criticized a funding advisory board and after a member of that board sent the county a letter of resignation.

Commissioner George Teal floated the censure of Commissioner Lora Thomas at an Aug. 15 meeting of county officials, and Commissioner Abe Laydon, who also serves as board chair, supported it.

“I think it was highly inappropriate to try to publicly shame that cultural council,” Laydon said during the meeting.

That’s a reference to the Douglas County Cultural Council, a group that helps decide how arts and culture money should be spent.

“For the past four years, the commissioners have approved our decisions without hesitation,” wrote James Smith, chair of the Douglas County Cultural Council, in a letter offering to step down after Thomas had criticized the group.

Actions including “public shaming” by Thomas have “diminished the council’s morale,” Smith wrote in the Aug. 10 letter emailed to county officials.

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

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.

“Coming full circle in a repeat of April 2021, George Teal and Abe Laydon today directed staff to draft a resolution censuring me for Teal's oft- and overly used charge of ‘conduct unbecoming (of) a commissioner,’” Thomas wrote in an email newsletter.

Debating funding

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 in 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.

Change of mind

But 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.”

The document also mentioned the “economic impact” of funding outside organizations that may travel to Douglas County.

“When organizations requesting project support travel to Douglas County, they often bring a large following. Performers, executive staff, instructors, support staff, as well as families and patrons of the organization will follow,” the document said. “When these groups come to Douglas County, some individuals will buy a tank of gas. Others may go out to dinner, or shop in our stores.”

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.

Skeptical of donation

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 said.

Thomas has highlighted that Laydon is a member of the foundation’s board. The board also includes several other local government officials, including Sheriff Darren Weekly and mayors of municipalities in Douglas County, according to its website.

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 foundation's 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.

‘Lying through your teeth’

Laydon also described Thomas’ actions as uncivil, and Thomas pointed to the Aug. 8 meeting of county officials in saying “there seems to be a decided double standard.”

As Douglas County recently began forming a new body called the water commission — intended to help plan for the future of water supply in the county — officials put out a call for Douglas County residents to apply to serve on the new entity.

Teal and Thomas argued over who released a name on the list of applicants to the news media.

“Commissioner Thomas has been leaking the name of Sean Tonner to several reporters,” Teal claimed at the Aug. 8 meeting.

Thomas said county officials were given an email with the names of those who applied. She said because it was an email, she thought it was public record.

“I did talk with a reporter (and did say) Sean Tonner’s name was on that list. Later that afternoon, when we came back in here, (county officials) decided we were going to treat those names as job applicants, and they’d be protected,” Thomas said.

She added that once officials were told it was to be treated as private, “I have told no reporters the information that was on that list.”

Teal gave Colorado Community Media the name Sean Tonner regarding applications to serve on the water commission. Thomas told Colorado Community Media her understanding is that county staff are treating information about who has applied as a non-public matter and will not release information until finalists are chosen.

“Last Tuesday Laydon permitted without comment, interruption or reproach Teal's snide remarks and calling me a LIAR … including saying ‘you're lying through your teeth’ when, in fact, it was facially proven in news reports that Teal was responsible for releasing the identity of a Water Commission applicant to the media,” Thomas wrote in a newsletter.

Thomas got up and left the room during that exchange.

“Yeah, you should probably just get out and not come back as a matter of fact,” Teal said at that meeting.

Formal action

Teal’s proposal to censure Thomas involved directing county staff to bring forth a resolution for the commissioners to vote on at their next regular meeting.

The commissioners were to hold a regular meeting at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 22.

The resolution should include “the cause for censure being directly related to the events that we’ve seen transpire over the last couple weeks with the Douglas County Cultural Council,” Teal said at the Aug. 15 meeting.