CUSTER COUNTY, Colo. — When Jordan Hedberg put in a bid for the Wet Mountain Tribune to become the paper of record in Custer County for 2022, it came in lower than the Sangre De Cristo Sentinel's bid, the only other paper in town.
The Tribune has about double the circulation, and their bid was about half the price, meaning taxpayers would have paid less for the county to print their legal notices in the paper.
Instead of going with the lower bid, two of the three Republican Custer County Commissioners voted on January 19 to pay more and go with the Sentinel as their paper of record.
“The point is I don’t know why I would support a paper that doesn’t support the county," Commissioner Bill Canda said.
In a public meeting on January 19, Commissioner Kevin Day agreed and said he finds "it very, very hard to let the bid out to some amenity that is, lack of a better term, combative."
Canda cited the Wet Mountain Tribune's reporting on the public health director, Clifford Brown, who was hired during the pandemic.
Hedberg's paper found that Brown's master's degree listed on his resume wasn't from an actual university, but a diploma mill.
While continuing to explain why he wouldn't vote for the Tribune as the paper of record, Canda called the reporting "a witch hunt."
Commissioners Canda and Day voted against the Tribune's bid with Commissioner Tom Flower dissenting.
“You’re going to take something that has a higher circulation and a lower cost and deny it. How is that not punitive?” Hedberg asked commissioners at the meeting.
“They can call me up and say, 'hey, we don’t like what you’ve done, we’re very upset with it,' and that’s absolutely within their right," Hedberg said. "But when they start using their power to attempt to punish and harm us, financially particularly in this case, then that crosses the line."
On August 18, the Tribune filed a first amendment federal lawsuit against the Board of Commissioners, specifically Day and Canda.
The lawsuit seeks a reversal of county's decision and money that the paper will lose from advertising revenue related to being the paper of record.
"They were saying 'we're going to punish you,'" Hedberg said. "As a government we will use our power and the public's money for what you wrote."
At the advice of the county attorney, the commissioners declined to comment.