Big Horn County Commissioner: Jolley unopposed in Tuesday’s primary

It must be a weird feeling for a county commission candidate in Big Horn County – having no opposition on a primary election ballot.
For commissioner Bruce Jolley of Lovell, that unopposed status in Tuesday’s Wyoming Primary Election doesn’t change his focus going forward as a commissioner as he seeks the Republican nomination. As he finishes his first four-year term in office, Jolley said he is fully engaged in county governance and the issues facing the commission on a weekly basis.
A veteran of the Lovell School Board and the Fire Protection District No. 1 Board, Jolley said he was ready to roll as a board member when elected in 2020, though the issues are different.
“I understood the board process and how a board works, and how it’s very advantageous to have different personalities and different thought processes (on a board), because that’s how you make good decisions,” he said. “I mean, everybody can’t agree all the time on the same thing, or you wouldn’t have good conversations to pick the best solution. So I understood the board process. I understood how a meeting was run, so I didn’t have that barrier.
“But I think working for the county, it was a different set of issues and a different set of problems. So I would say it took me right around a year to really grasp the impact of what I was responsible for and what the expectations were.”
As with any board, expectations change with issues that arise, Jolley said, and his goal is to communicate with citizens who approach him with issues.
“Expectations change, sometimes quite often, depending on the complaints that I might get from constituents,” he said. “Those complaints included road complaints, road sign complaints, with speed limit signs and those kinds of things, and it kind of has evolved into issues with pivots and pivots watering the roads and pivots watering the neighbor’s garages and gardens and things like that. So different sets of complaints.
“I made a commitment when I took the commissioner position that, no matter what happened, I would always get people an answer. Because I get emails, I get phone calls, and I write those down. I keep them, and I try to get a good answer back. I would say that sometimes the answer isn’t always accepted very well, but I give them an answer. … That goes with any board. You’ve got to just do that. So I’ve made that a priority.”
Being a county commissioner takes a great deal of time beyond the commission meetings, and Jolley said he has made it a practice to be active in multiple areas. He knew that going in and actually wanted to run for the commission a couple of years earlier but had to wrap up his work with Midway Auto Sales, where he was the manager for several years following his 28-year tenure with the Wyoming National Guard.
He said he also has enjoyed running for office in the “off year” from the years when two commissioners and the rest of the county officials are up for election.
Being a commissioner certainly keeps him busy, Jolley said.
“It does take time,” he said. “It actually takes more time than I anticipated, with all the assignments besides being on the commission and going to our regular public meetings that are scheduled and then our work meetings.”
Jolley’s assignments, he said, include the two county airports, the Medicine Wheel Coalition, North Big Horn Road and Bridge and the Basin Authority Fifth Judicial District Child Support Program.
He also represents Big Horn County on some steering committees such as the Big Horn Mountain Coalition, working with the Forest Service on issues like dispersed camping.
As a member of the Wyoming County Commissioners Association, Jolley is tasked with overseeing military issues, given his long career with the National Guard.
Current issues
Jolley said one of his main focuses has been working to come up with a better method of budgeting, especially at a time when there is a statewide effort to lower property taxes.
“A couple years ago, we started working really hard to have a budget that we could at least be able to predict a little bit,” he said. “What’s really changing that is property taxes. We kind of get a forecast. We kind of know how much money we’re going to have to operate on. But with legislation, which I agree with, we need to get property taxes, in my opinion, down to that 2018/2019 level, and I think that the county can work off of those budget numbers.
“So having said that, we’re kind of worried about it. We don’t know what more legislation is going to come as far as property tax cuts. And while I think we’re all in favor of lower taxes, we still have to run a county. And I think we could still run this county on those 2018/2019 property tax levels.”
Budgeting is always difficult, Jolley said, as the commissioners work with department heads to set funding levels. He said the commission has been working to tighten belts financially to build for “rough years.”
“Municipalities aren’t any different, and school boards aren’t any different,” Jolley said. “Lori Smallwood (county clerk) is extremely good at her job, but ultimately, the commissioners make those decisions for budget dollars and where it’s going to go. So yeah, we want to fine tune the budget. And I think we’re two years away from having the best process that we can have, and most of it isn’t so much dialing in the process but getting all the departments and elected officials to see it from our foxhole, get them thinking forward like that instead of the way it used to be. Sometimes those aren’t very good conversations.”
One of the issues affecting county government and related to the budget, Jolley said, is losing sheriff’s deputies to other agencies like the highway patrol and losing other employees to the private sector.
Jolley said the county is also continuing to work on road improvement, noting that the county is working with the state on a couple of bridge replacement projects.
He said gradually updating buildings is another priority, noting that the detention center and county annex in Lovell are each more than 20 years old, not to mention the venerable county courthouse.
“We’ve tried to get a facilities plan, and that’s actually one of my assignments – facilities -- to try to start doing a little upkeep, because to do some upkeep here and there versus emergency fixes is a big difference in money spent,” he said. “So that’s on our priority list, to try to put a little TLC into our buildings, and it will save us money in the long run.”
Jolley said he appreciates the support he has received as a commissioner.
“I honestly appreciate Big Horn County and their vote of confidence in me,” he said. “I feel like I’m very well supported. I get positive phone calls, and I get negative phone calls, and probably the thing I like most about the commissioner position is it’s not political. You don’t run into some of the things that you would if you were, you know, a legislator.
“To me, it’s simple. You just do what’s best for the county and be transparent about it.”