Before controversial contract, Sen. Ellsworth pushed state job for business associate

Before Sen. Jason Ellsworth quietly tried shepherding a $170,000 state-funded contract for his longtime business associate, he sought to clear the way for Stevensville’s Bryce Eggleston to land a job in state government.

The Montana State News Bureau on Monday obtained Eggleston’s resume for a communications job at the office of the Clerk of the Montana Supreme Court. That position was ultimately scuttled before Eggleston’s prospect moved beyond a cursory interview.

But according to Clerk Bowen Greenwood, who was reelected to the clerk’s office in November, the job was never his idea.

“Senator Ellsworth wanted to see the office focus more on the communication side,” Greenwood said Monday. “And, you know, after the primary I was in a peacemaking mood and he wanted to talk about getting a communications director here.”

Ellsworth ran for Clerk of the Montana Supreme Court against Greenwood in the Republican primary, although the exchanges for Eggleston’s would-be job happened months after Greenwood won the June primary election. Part of the reason Ellsworth ran for the role, he said, was because of a “lack of communication” from the clerk’s office.

The job was never posted, but Eggleston did have two conversations with Greenwood about the position — one over the phone and another in-person meeting that Greenwood described as a “get-to-know-you” conversation at the clerk’s office in Helena.

Eggleston did not return a call seeking comment for this story on Monday.

Ellsworth said he “didn't urge” Greenwood to hire Eggleston, but instead “gave him a person that was qualified for it.”

Ellsworth maintained, as he has previously, that Eggleston was “very well qualified” for the position due to his previous work with Ellsworth on legislative business dealing with the judicial branch. Ellsworth said Monday that he spoke with Eggleston about the judicial oversight committee’s work after every meeting, if not more often.

Eggleston did not list a single previous employer in his four-page resume.

Greenwood said he felt Ellsworth was pushing for Eggleston’s hire.

“Senator Ellsworth definitely suggested Bryce as a candidate he would like to see considered,” Greenwood said. “You know, I thought it was not the kind of resume I would usually expect to see from a communications job. But honestly, my bigger concern was with the fact that the plan was for Eggleston to work entirely remotely, and that isn’t how we’re doing things in this office.”

In his resume, Eggleston said he believed his pay should exceed the median for similar positions in state government, approximately $87,863 annually.

The job opportunity would not be the last time Eggleston was set to receive state money facilitated by Ellsworth.

In December, Ellsworth tried twice to funnel money to Eggleston through a state contract that circumvented the public bidding process required by state rules. That contract would have allocated Eggleston $170,100 over two years in leftover funds from the judicial oversight committee that Ellsworth assembled and led.

In the first attempt, Ellsworth tried bifurcating the contract into two invoices for roughly $80,000 each, a move that would have kept the matter entirely out of the state procurement process. After legislative staff rejected that proposal, Ellsworth returned with a single contract for $170,100, which state procurement staff reluctantly signed off on.

That contract was ultimately foiled only days after it was finalized and before legislative staff paid the first invoice. Three days after the Montana State News Bureau first reported on the contract, Eggleston and Ellsworth agreed to terminate the agreement. The Legislative Audit Division later determined that Ellsworth’s attempt to bifurcate the contract into two invoices was an abuse of his government position and that Ellsworth wasted state resources in seeking the deal.

The Supreme Court clerk’s office said on Monday Eggleston was the only applicant for the position, and the role was never publicly listed.

“This gets stranger and stranger and stranger,” Sen. Daniel Emrich, R-Great Falls, said when interviewed for this story.

Days after Eggleston submitted his resume and had a conversation with Greenwood on Sept. 18, Ellsworth authored a letter, dated Sept. 30, supporting the creation of the role, and 11 other GOP legislators signed off in support.

“It’s strange they’d seek someone for the position before they even had the position,” said Emrich, who also signed onto the letter. “Timelines matter.”

Ellsworth maintains that he was not solely responsible for pitching this government position, pointing out that other legislators endorsed the idea. Multiple lawmakers who signed the letter, however, said they did not know a loose hiring process was already in motion nor that Ellsworth’s associate was the lone candidate.

“It’s strange the same name keeps coming up,” Sen. Carl Glimm, R-Kila, said of Eggleston.

Ellsworth claimed it was not irregular for Eggleston to have been repeatedly involved.

“If you look at people that are in government and participate, they can participate on many different levels," Ellsworth said.

The letter was addressed to Ryan Osmundson, the director of the Governor’s Office of Budget and Program Planning, the office that originally allocated the judicial oversight committee $500,000 for committee expenditures.

The letter voiced support for “a communication/information officer position who will assist in keeping the public and legislature informed about judicial issues.”

Ellsworth said Monday that the initial idea behind the job was to assist the clerk’s office with expanded duties lawmakers were only considering at the time. Ultimately, legislators decided to put those additional jobs under different state government agencies. Therefore, Ellsworth said, there was no longer a need to provide the Clerk of the Supreme Court with a communications position.

Eggleston’s resume was tailored to the clerk’s office job and included some of his “expectations” for the position, including that it was “a fully remote position,” and a request for “access to information regarding the Montana Supreme Court cases and filings.”

In a “qualifications” section of the resume, he wrote that he is an “accomplished leader with a 25-year history of building and scaling high-performing businesses,” as well as “a track record of exceeding $100M in revenue and $35M in profit under my leadership.”

“I bring a unique perspective to communications, enabling effective messaging, stakeholder engagement, and crisis management with a proven track record of building strong relationships, influencing key stakeholders, and achieving organizational goals,” he added.

Greenwood said he never spoke with any other lawmakers except Ellsworth.

“The idea was always Senator Ellsworth’s to send the communications director over here,” Greenwood said. “I never particularly wanted that, and I was more interested in hearing him out and giving him a chance to make his proposal. But I was happy to let it die.”

Roughly three months after the request for a communications position in the clerk’s office, legislative staff were sent the contract to employ Eggleston, through his newly-formed company Agile Analytics, with committee funds. The contract stipulated that Eggleston would conduct analysis on how certain judicial reform bills — a top priority for the GOP this session — were having an impact once lawmakers had passed them.

After news of the controversial contract was first reported and the Legislative Audit Division concluded that part of what took place with the contracts was “illegal” and a “waste of state resources,” the Montana Senate voted to convene an ethics committee to investigate the matter. That committee was temporarily disbanded after the Democrats and some Republicans voted to refer the inquiry to the attorney general.

But it’s unclear if the attorney general has jurisdiction over the matter or if he’ll take it up. Democrats did not contact Attorney General Austin Knudsen about the process before voting with a group of nine Republican senators to send it his way.

“The situation is strange and raises a lot of questions,” Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, said of the clerk’s office position. “I wish the Ethics Committee was looking for answers.”