In a two-month investigation, we examined a government some say is being run behind closed doors."These three men have systematically mishandled, mismanaged our county; uh, two of them, for over ten years now," concerned citizen Sharon Meyer said.

"There is no regard for morality. Morality's been thrown out the window so long ago," Matt Penning said, another concerned citizen.

We have a dysfunctional government. Democracy is failing in Gasconade County," Glenn Warnebold said.

Sharon Meyer leads a group of citizens who say their commissioners cannot be trusted.

"We cannot take for granted anymore that they are going to do their job as they swore when they took the oath of office," Meyer said.

Meyer says the problems began when two commissioners, Jerry Lairmore and Max Aubuchon, took mid-term pay increases in 1999 and 2000.

"Our salary commissioners, our salary commission, never authorized our two commissioners to take that money," she said.

At the time, commissioners Aubuchon and Lairmore took approximately $20,500 a piece. The citizens group says the commissioners swept it under the rug until 2004.

"And if you go back through the minutes you will find that they intentionally kept it away from the people of gasconade county until 2004 hoping that the statute of limitations had run out," Penning said.

But presiding Commissioner Jost, who was not on the commission during the time of the raises, has his own opinions.

"The statute of limitations on that had run out a long time ago as far as I'm concerned. It was a dead issue," Jost said.

But research done in the KOMU 8 newsroom showed that in both 2002 and 2006, the state auditor told the commissioners the money needed to be paid back.

They would never address the issue. They just glossed over it, and i'm sure that it was in the hopes that it would be a forgotten subject," said Sandra Lackman, who lives in the county.

But Jost has his own opinions about the state auditors requests.

"The audit is um, is actually, uh, it's not, uh, you're not actually required to follow the audit," Commissioner Jost said.

Because of the disagreement, Sandra lackman, Sharon Meyer's sister, and Matt Penning filed suit against the commissioners in early 2007 on behalf of the citizens to get the money back.

"They were taking money from the county?" KOMU 8's Nick Berardini asked.

"Correct, they took it out of our general revenue," Meyer said.

"This is something....you're talking about $42,000 in salary alone that Gasconade County could definitely use," Lackman said.

"You go by things of hearsay. I go by facts and logic," said Commissioner Lairmore said.

But a Franklin County court disagreed with Commissioner Lairmore's version of the facts. Judge Cynthia Eckelkamp ruled on May 19 both Lairmore and Aubuchon needed to pay back to the general revenue fund of Gasconade County $20,506 each plus nine percent interest since December 2002, the time of the first audit.

Then on July 31, Judge Eckelkamp ruled defendants Aubuchon and Lairmore needed to pay the attorney fees of the citizens.

"The defendants had an ethical duty as elected officials to behave in a manner that was in the best interests of the taxpayers," Judge Eckelkamp stated in her final judgment. "They selfishly refused to return funds they knew they had no legal right to keep."

"They delayed, raised strange defenses, and ultimately abandoned certain arguments that were very unusual at best," she went on to say.

One of the strange defenses the commisssioners used was trying to claim that paying the money back caused them financial hardship. But when the commissioners financial documents were subpoeaned, they suddenly dropped the financial hardship defense.

Opponents say it's because they were not reporting all their sources of income. They say that Lairmore does not report to the ethics commission that he is a conservation contractor. They also say Aubuchon does not report his wife's income as an employee at Frene Valley Nursing Home. The citizens also say Lairmore does not declare some of his farm equipment, including two tractors, on his county assessment forms. Documents subpoened during the lawsuit showed the citizens were telling the truth.

But most importantly, the citizens want the money back in the general revenue fund.

"They need to man up. They need to pay the money back. This is taxpayer money, it's not our personal money. It needs to go back to the taxpayers and every dime of this will go back to the taxpayers," Penning said