‘The ordeal is over’

County settles suit with former deputy prosecutor after 5 years

By Soncirey Mitchell
Reader Staff

After five years of legal battles leveled at the Bonner County Board of Commissioners, Clerk’s Office and other employees, the county recently reached a $1.5 million settlement with former-Deputy Prosecutor Dustin Scott Bauer. The resolution brings an end to multiple suits — beginning with a 2021 tort claim — that, if awarded, would have cost the county more than $4.7 million in damages.

According to previous reporting and the details in the full memorandum, decision and order issued in August 2025, in 2022, Bauer filed a civil suit against the county, former-Commissioners Jeff Connolly, Steve Bradshaw and Dan McDonald, as well as former-Chief Information Officer Brad Ptashkin, alleging “malicious defamation” and libel. In it, he claimed that McDonald and Ptashkin “discredited his professional competence” and “spread lies,” such as alleging that Bauer “attempted to or did install hacking software on county employees’ computers.”

The issue arose shortly after the creation of the chief information officer position, intended to centralize management of the county’s electronic data. In the complaint, Bauer alleged that after hiring Ptashkin, the county “began disregarding Bauer’s legal advice and took actions to control and manage the records and data of other county officials,” leading to “adverse employment actions” against Bauer.

“I felt like it was mostly a whistleblower retaliation case,” Bauer told the Reader in a Feb. 11 interview. “We had a First Amendment retaliation claim, which was, I felt like, our biggest claim. The nature of the retaliation I felt was defamation.”

That’s not how McDonald saw it.

“I believe this was a frivolous lawsuit not based in any facts and it cost the taxpayers a large sum of money,” he told the Reader in a Feb. 11 email. “Its unfortunate that he received a payout of any kind. I’m not sure what the total cost to the county ended up being, as my second term ended in January of 2023, but the cost in the disruption and emotional turmoil to the county employees who lived through that is incalculable.”

The complaint also accused Ptashkin and the commissioners of “falsely accusing Bauer of committing errors and mistakes in his work for the county, of bullying another county employee until she died by suicide and of misspending county funds.” 

Those claims stemmed from the controversy surrounding the alleged misappropriation of between $40,000 and $247,000 in Bonner County Fairgrounds funds, the investigation of which was complicated by the death of then-Fairgrounds Director Darcey Smith in late 2022, which the county coroner confirmed as a suicide following consultation with a forensic pathologist.

Bauer filed a tort against County Clerk Mike Rosedale for $500,000 in 2023, again alleging defamation, and accusing the Clerk’s Office of failing to audit or disclose potential fraud at the fairgrounds. 

Because the Fair Board is a quasi-autonomous organization under state statute, the Clerk’s Office could only access and audit funds run through the county, such as the tax levies and employee salaries. Expenses and revenue from fair activities are the responsibility of the Fair Board to oversee, though the BOCC voted in 2024 to hire an external auditor to assess the financials, and has since worked with the Fair Board to establish new bookkeeping practices and increased oversight.

When asked his opinions on the Bauer settlement, Rosedale responded, “No comment.”

Bauer filed an additional suit in 2024 against Bonner County Deputy Clerk Veronica Dixon, claiming she gave him a counterfeit copy of her job description, falsified to require that Dixon report directly to the BOCC rather than the Prosecutor’s Office.

The commissioners removed Bauer as the board’s adviser in 2022. He remained a deputy prosecutor, eventually going on indefinite administrative leave. Commissioner Asia Williams confirmed at the Feb. 10 BOCC meeting that Bauer no longer works for the county.

The 2026 settlement addresses Bauer’s claims of “reputational injury” and “emotional distress,” but both sides ultimately agreed to drop his claim of “future lost wages,” according to Bauer. The final iteration of the complaint listed the county, McDonald, Ptashkin, Rosedale and former-Commissioner Luke Omodt as the only defendants, alleging that the latter “maligned” him and “retaliated against him by requesting an audit of his work expenses.” 

According to Williams, the self-insured county paid $500,000 in deductible, leaving the lion’s share of the $1.5 million to the insurance company. As part of the settlement, District of Idaho Judge Amanda Brailsford dismissed the case with prejudice.

“Bonner County spent $500,000 defending itself from Mr. Bauer’s claims before the insurance company took over the case,” Omodt told the Reader in a Feb. 11 email. “The insurance company made the decision to settle with Mr. Bauer, and as such, I have no comment. As a taxpayer, I am absolutely disgusted by this whole affair. If anybody wonders why the public distrusts politicians, lawyers and the judicial system, look no further. Good grief.”

When asked if the matter was truly finished, Bauer told the Reader, “It was a global settlement — the ordeal is over.”