Leaflets protesting tax payments distributed

Some people in downtown Havre found copies of letters about the Hill County treasurer not depositing a tax check sent by a local law firm on their vehicle windshields Wednesday afternoon.

The subjects in the letters say they didn’t distribute them.

The letters were written by attorney Jamie L. Young on behalf of her client, Scott Dion, and each delivered to three different Hill County employees.  

Dion said Wednesday he had just gotten back in town. Young said, in a public service announcement through Facebook, that neither she nor anyone associated with her office, “was responsible for the distribution of the bright green letters left on people’s windshields downtown … .”

She added in an interview that Dion was not responsible for putting out the leaflets either.

The gist of the letters is regarding a check Dion wrote in November for property taxes which still hasn’t been processed “due to a notation he made on the memo line of the check,” one of the letters says. The second letter asks Hill County Attorney Jessica Cole-Hodgkinson to prosecute Hill County Treasurer Sandy Brown for official misconduct for her failure to follow Montana Code annotated Section 45-7-401.

“What she is doing is criminal,” Young said Wednesday.

The notation, Dion has said, was “sexual favors.”

There is nothing illegal about the notation, Young said.

“As distasteful or offensive someone may find the term, that term or phrase has been used in the past by other people as an informal method of protest against the amount of payment,” Young said. “It was not directed personally at Ms. Brown.”

Young said she hopes the county will set its personal agenda against Dion aside and follow the law. Young said Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson said, after the first letter was sent out, that Young’s office was participating in defamation of character and that he had also personally expressed his dislike for Dion.

Peterson declined to comment on the matter.

Aside from Peterson, Young said, she has not received any response from anyone, including the county attorney.

Hill County Attorney Cole-Hodgkinson said March 2 that she could not comment on ongoing investigations. She declined Wednesday to comment on the flyers.

The next step for Dion, Young said, is asking Montana Attorney General Tim Fox to look into Brown’s conduct “because the county attorney is refusing or ignoring the matter.”

“The matter would be resolved if they’d do their duty and deposit the check,” she said.

Brown has deferred comment on the matter to the commissioners. Commissioner Peterson said everything will work through the county attorney.