NOAH ZAHN
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
CHEYENNE — Candidates for the Laramie County Board of County Commissioners met Wednesday evening to share their campaign platforms and field questions on some of the hot political and social topics that have surfaced in Laramie County over the past few years, including budgeting, mask mandates and book bans.
Four of the seven candidates who filed, Don Hollingshead, Jess Ketcham, Kathy Scigliano and Ty Zwonitzer, attended the event, while candidate Austin Rodemaker sent a representative from his campaign to make a few comments on his behalf.
The event was hosted by the Laramie County Republican Party as part of its 2024 Politics in the Park event series on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. at the Lions Park amphitheater throughout the summer. The series will spotlight other contests in subsequent weeks.
MANAGING THE BUDGET
After short introductions from each of the candidates, moderator Stacy Leach opened the questioning portion by asking how each candidate would manage the county’s budget.
All candidates said it is important to first address the needs of the county departments when distributing funding, then consider their wants.
Ketcham, who has experience in the banking industry working for both Wells Fargo and the state of Wyoming, said that it is important to consider federal funds available, as well. “We have quite a bit of money from the bipartisan infrastructure law, about $2.8 to $3 billion, that we can leverage before we even need to use those operational funds,” he said. “So, I think that’s where we need to start first before we spend our operating funds.”
Scigliano said she would consider ways to reduce expenses, such as letting county departments share certain vehicles, so the county won’t have to spend as much on purchasing new vehicles.
Hollingshead cited his background working with the Laramie County Sheriff ’s Department for 27 years, 15 of which working with the budget for the jail. He said the role of the commissioners when it comes to the budget is fiscal oversight.
Zwonitzer said it is also important to look at expenses individually and determine whether each expense is necessary.
MASK MANDATES
The county commission is, in part, responsible for appointing the members of the Board of Health, which is then responsible for selecting a county health officer. Leach brought up the Laramie County health officer’s 2020 decision to impose a mask mandate in most public spaces in the county to control the spread of disease during the COVID-19 pandemic. She asked if this decision was an inappropriate exercise of power.
Zwonitzer said that, personally, he was not in favor of the decision, but it is important to put trust in those appointed to such positions. “On one hand, it’s up to the county commissioners to put the right people in the right spots and to trust their judgment. But on the other hand, you also have to listen to the words of the community and, in my opinion, the community was not in favor of that mask mandate, and it was not appropriate,” he said.
Hollingshead echoed some of these sentiments, stating that he believed it to be an overreach of government power, particularly in some public areas and private businesses. “As the captain of the jail (in 2020), I was in charge of security. The commissioners asked me to enforce the mask mandate in the county building. I had to deny that because it would have violated my oath to follow the Constitution. It was a mandate, it wasn’t state statute. It wasn’t law, so I had to decline,” Hollingshead said.
“It absolutely was not something that they should have been doing,” Scigliano said.
She said that it was scary at first when there was less information about the virus, but she accused the health officers of ignoring the community as more information became available, calling that decision completely inappropriate.
“If that ever happens again, you can guarantee that I will not ever be in favor of that, and I will have a heavy discussion with anyone that’s in charge of that,” she said.
Ketcham said that, while it is a very difficult decision, it is important to appoint people to boards that have the same attitudes and would make the same decisions that the commissioners would to establish trust.
BOOK BANS
County commissioners are also responsible for appointing members to the Laramie County Library Board. Leach asked for the candidates’ position on sexually explicit children’s books and what they would look for in members of the library board.
Earlier this year, the Campbell County Library Board made national headlines when it cut ties with the American Library Association over what Leach described as its promotion of sexually explicit and partisan books.
Scigliano said she agrees with the decision from Campbell County and said there should be no sexually explicit books in the children’s or teen sections of public libraries.
“That needs to be, like, seriously considered, to be looked at heavily because we don’t need to have children reading books that are telling them how to have sex, who to have sex with, where to have sex,” she said. “That’s up to the parents to be deciding. ... Making sure that those books are in the appropriate section of the library needs to be something that the county commissioners and, I think, the director need to be having discussions about.”
Hollingshead said he is not for banning books, but rather in favor of empowering parents to make decisions on behalf of their children to ensure their values, personal beliefs and religious beliefs are maintained when it comes to books in public schools.
In public libraries, Hollingshead said parents should be taking personal responsibility for what their children are reading and checking out from the library to ensure it is age appropriate.
Zwonitzer said that he feels books are a freedom of speech that he has no right to take from someone else, but there should be more efforts in alerting parents of what sexually explicit content is available at libraries.
“I am not about taking away people’s freedoms and liberties to check out the book that they want at the public library,” Zwonitzer said. “I’m more worried about the transients at the entrance of that library, making sure it’s a safe place for people to enter.”
Ketcham said there is value in picking the best people for the library board that align with the beliefs of the commissioners and the constituents to make those decisions. He said he would not want any sexually explicit books to be accessed by children in a public library.
When asked if they would remove someone appointed to a board that they later determined was not doing a good job, all candidates said they would make efforts to remove them from the board.
Noah Zahn is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle’s local government/business reporter. He can be reached at 307633-3128 or nzahn@wyomingnews. com. Follow him on X @NoahZahnn.
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