SANDPOINT — During Bonner County’s Feb. 3 business meeting, Commissioner Asia Williams announced Bonner County’s settlement with former legal counsel Dustin Scott Bauer for $1.5 million. 

Williams announced during her commissioner district discussion that she could only inform the community about the settlement and could not answer questions.  

“People wanted to know when claims were resolved and what the dollar amount of those claims were, and so I put it on my update to give you that information. I’m also going to give the disclaimer that Bonner County is self-insured — there are a lot of people that like to give comments on things — but we’re trying to protect the bottom line of Bonner County and taxpayer money,” Williams said.  

According to Williams, the original requested amount for the tort claim was $4.7 million, which was ultimately settled for $1.5 million. Williams further said that the payout is within the county’s insurance layer because it meets the $500,000 deductible.  

A tort is a filing alleging civil wrongdoing that caused loss or harm resulting from an action. Torts provide an opportunity for cases to be settled out of court before suit is filed. 

Court documents indicate the tort stems from Bauer’s position as the former Chief Civil Deputy Prosecutor of Bonner County between 2020 and 2022, where he alleges that former Chief Information Officer Brad Ptashkin and former Commissioner Dan McDonald “engaged in a course of conduct to further interfere with, and impair, Bauer’s employment with the Bonner County Prosecutor’s Office.”  

Bauer alleges that the behavior occurred when the BOCC pursued efforts to consolidate electronic data across all Bonner County offices and created a Chief Information Officer position to manage that information, a responsibility Bauer advised the BOCC on.  

The complaint alleges that Bauer was removed from his position with the county after providing legal advice that did not align with the opinions of McDonald and Ptashkin, further indicating that the defendants “resist and evaded” Bauer’s legal advice regarding the storage, privacy and control of the county’s proprietary records and data.  

Documents further contend that when McDonald and Ptashkin received pushback from Bauer, the defendants began to intimidate and harass him, impairing his integrity. Actions were listed as “false accusations and innuendos made by them to [Louis] Marshall and other county employees that Bauer had installed computer software to hack McDonald’s and [Jeff] Connolly’s county email accounts”, and allegedly rushing IT-related contracts so that Bauer would not have to provide proper legal review, among other allegations.  

The case was ultimately dismissed with prejudice following a resolution of the claims.