HELENA – The Montana political practices office has postponed a hearing on ethics charges against Brad Molnar, a member of the state board that regulates utilities.
Postponement came after Molnar revealed that witnesses he wishes to call include the lawyer representing Mary Jo Fox, the Billings woman who filed the ethics complaints last year.
Fox’s lawyer decided on Tuesday to withdraw from the case, saying that rules of professional conduct prevent him from being both a witness and representing Fox. With the withdrawal, political practices officials postponed the hearing that was scheduled for June 25-26 in Helena.
Fox said she will find another lawyer to represent her at the hearing, whenever that may be.
She accuses Molnar, a Republican representing southeastern Montana on the Public Service Commission, of accepting illegal donations in 2007 that funded campaign brochures. Fox also contends he used state office equipment for personal and campaign purposes last year.
Fox filed the complaints when she managed the campaign of Molnar’s Democratic opponent, Billings Mayor Ron Tussing, in the 2008 election. Molnar easily defeated Tussing in November and is serving a second four-year term on the PSC.
Molnar has called the complaints a political attack intended to distract him from his 2008 re-election campaign and generate negative publicity.
He said he wants to call Fox’s original attorney, Joel Guthals, as a witness to show that Guthals was part of a political plot. Guthals was treasurer for Tussing’s campaign and serves on the Billings School Board with Fox.
Fox said nothing Guthals knows or did has any bearing on whether Molnar violated state ethics laws.
Molnar also wants to call as witnesses Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Dennis Unsworth. Unsworth is the state political practices commissioner and will decide whether Molnar violated ethics laws.
Unsworth said he will consult with the hearings officer overseeing the case and decide whether it is appropriate that he be allowed as a witness.
“I can’t imagine what I would be a witness to,” Unsworth said. “We’re working to get this hearing scheduled and hold this hearing as soon as possible.”
Molnar said he wants to question Schweitzer about donations the governor raised from energy firms in 2005 to help sponsor a two-day public energy forum in Bozeman.
The governor’s action are no different than what Molnar did in 2007, when he solicited funds from NorthWestern Energy and PPL Montana to help finance a conservation event in Billings, Molnar said.
Fox says Molnar’s solicitation and use of money from energy companies NorthWestern and PPL violated state ethics laws. She says he used the money to print brochures later used as campaign material.
Eric Stern, senior counsel to the governor, said Schweitzer “has no relevance to this case at all,” and has no intention of testifying.
Fox said that she will press forward with her case, and that it is not political.