Former Hardin City Attorney Becky Convery said a decision by the Two Rivers Authority board to bill her for cleaning animal-fouled carpets in the city's vacant jail is a deliberate attempt "to embarrass me and tarnish my reputation."

The board voted Monday to have the carpets cleaned to remove urine odors in an office used by Convery and to send her the bill.

Convery doesn't dispute that animals - including a goat, hamsters, gerbils, cats and field mouse nicknamed "Mr. Jingles" - spent some time in the Hardin jail. But she vacated the office last January and heard nothing about the supposedly soiled carpets until after the board's meeting Monday.

In addition, she said, Two Rivers knew that she shared her office with the city's animal control officer and that no animals were brought in without the knowledge of the jail warden, the mayor, the public-works director and the former executive director of Two Rivers.

In a three-page letter e-mailed Tuesday evening to Two Rivers board President Gary Arneson, Convery said she found it "truly unfortunate that the Board has chosen to spend its time and energy on addressing such petty issues."

Convery was the city attorney when she moved into an office in the newly built 464-bed Two Rivers Regional Detention Facility late in the summer of 2007. Built on speculation for $27 million by Two Rivers Authority, the city's economic development agency, the jail has never housed an inmate, at least not of the human variety.

"Those of us who spent months of our time trying to secure inmates for the facility often joked that those furry critters were the only inmates the facility was ever going to house," Convery wrote in the letter. "In reality, this has remained true to this day!"

When Convery had an office in the jail, other occupants included a warden and assistant warden, a security chief, a personnel director, at least three guards and the animal control officer, Debbie Winburn, who is now the Hardin city judge. Neither Winburn nor members of Two Rivers board could be reached for comment Wednesday.

After the jail was built, it was operated by a private company that hired the warden and other employees. That company pulled out of the jail in January 2009, when Convery gave up her office there.

Convery resigned as city attorney in February, and in September she agreed to do contract work for Two Rivers. She helped negotiate a contract with Michael Hilton, the frontman for what was apparently a shell corporation that proposed leasing the Hardin jail.

Convery resigned from the Two Rivers position on Oct. 1, shortly after it was reported that Hilton was an ex-convict with a long criminal history. Convery thinks she rubbed some board members the wrong way about that time.

"I spoke my mind pretty freely to board members and they weren't happy with me," she said in an interview with The Gazette. "Through this whole deal with Hilton, I didn't make any friends on the board or with the former director," Greg Smith. Smith was placed on paid leave on Sept. 11 for reasons that were never disclosed, and he resigned on Oct. 5.

Convery said that if the board had talked to her about the condition of the carpets when she moved out of the jail 10 months ago, "I gladly would have hired a professional to clean the carpets in my office space."

Waiting until this week and then bringing the issue up in a public meeting without first attempting to speak with her looked like blatant retaliation, she said.

As for the jail's menagerie, Convery said in the letter that it was common knowledge that people would occasionally drop stray animals off at her office. The animal control officer also brought animals in for temporary shelter, she said.

Other employees also contributed animals, she said, noting that the former warden brought in his mother-in-law's cat and that Smith, the former Two Rivers director, owned one of the hamsters that lived in an aquarium at the jail. The field mouse that was captured in the office was named "Mr. Jingles" by the chief of security and became the jail's mascot, she said.

As for the goat, Convery said it was a baby pygmy goat that she rescued from a cliff face while walking her dog near Billings last year. The goat, which Convery still has, spent several months at the jail, where it would graze inside the perimeter fence. It even made the front page of the Big Horn County News last winter.

"It was no secret that he was temporarily residing inside the gates of the Detention Center, and frequently came inside the office," she wrote.

What was particularly galling, Convery said, is that when she was still the city attorney she put in an estimated 400 to 500 hours of uncompensated time on behalf of Two Rivers. She said the costs of cleaning the carpets "will be more than offset" by the thousands of dollars in unpaid time she devoted to Two Rivers.

Convery criticized the board for trying to make her look bad at the same time it refuses to own up to its own mistakes.

"There's been no acknowledgement on the board's behalf that this whole thing has been a fiasco," she said.

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