BILLINGS — The Montana Public Service Commission has a new leader after Commissioner Jeff Wellborn, R-Dillon, was elected board president in a 3-2 vote on Tuesday.
The vote followed the removal last week of Commissioner Brad Molnar, R-Laurel, over harassment allegations.
Molnar denies the claims, even taking the rare step of a lie detector test to prove his innocence.
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Molnar and Commissioner Randy Pinocci, R-Great Falls, recently held an online news conference about the results of a lie detector test that they both took.
“A polygraph shows that these are the real facts,” said Pinocci. “This is historic. When the heck has that ever happened in the history of Montana politics? This is the first time.”
Molnar offered to pay for all the commissioners to answer questions from the polygraph examiner to show he is not guilty of the accusations he is facing.
”I want to know what I'm accused of,” Molnar said. “I want it to be recorded.”
He says he hired Wes Beaty, a polygraph examiner with Kalipoly Testing Services in Kalispell, to administer a lie detector test to him and all the commissioners and to answer questions related to accusations, including allegations of sexual or workplace harassment.
“So I tested him over the entire definition of sexual harassment,” Beaty said. “Not just, did you touch her? Did you say this? Did you do that? Have you engaged in sexual harassment?”
Beaty is a retired polygraph examiner for the FBI and the U.S. Postal Service.
Pinocci says he was the only one to take up the offer.
Molnar paid for the test because he wanted to prove he had acted properly, leading up to the commission voting on whether to remove him as president of the PSC board.
According to the examiner, Molnar even alerted the media that the results would be available before he took the polygraph.
Beaty said the results are reliable, even though Molnar paid for them.
“Yes, they are reliable results,” Beaty said.
Beaty says nothing is 100 percent, and as a polygrapher, he phrases the results as being 90 percent certain that Molnar is not being deceptive.
“He passed with the exception of one incident where he was confronted about something he said that someone didn't like,” Beaty said. “And they had to explain it to him 2 or 3 times before he understood how what he said could be offensive.”
Despite the polygraph test, the commission voted a few days later, 3 to 2, to remove Molnar as president.
At the time, Commissioner Jennifer Fielder, R-Thompson Falls, thanked Molnar for his work.
But we wanted to hear more from Fielder about the vote and the offer to take a lie detector test.
Despite our calls and emails over a two-day period, the PSC executive director said that Fielder declined our interview, and the next day, she said the commissioner would be involved in meetings all day.
