The Valley Signal

Government & Accountability

Victor Watch Dogs and the Disclosures That Aren't on File

Victor Watch Dogs faces a Sunshine Law complaint alleging the group operates as an unregistered political committee. No disclosure is on file.

By Wade Williams · ·

The Victor Watch Dogs mailer arrived in Victor mailboxes between late March and early April. The semi-glossy, one-sided card carried a dog-logo masthead, the words "Victor Watch Dogs," and a four-point case against the city's wastewater decisions. In a box at the bottom of the page, under the small-type attribution "Paid for by Greg Davis," the third of three action items instructed readers to "sign the petition for a recall election" by emailing a recall-campaign address.

That address belongs to Carol Nowakowski, who filed her petition to recall Mayor Will Frohlich with the Teton County Clerk on March 10. By the time the mailer reached households, residents had been organizing against Victor's wastewater plans for five months. On April 29, Troy Butzlaff, a paid contractor to the City of Victor, filed a campaign-finance complaint with the Idaho Attorney General and Secretary of State, alleging that it all constituted an unregistered political committee.

Idaho's Sunshine Law exists to give the public a way to trace the money behind organized political activity in their community. When that activity is funded through unregistered groups, anonymous donors, and unattributed events, the source of the funding can't be traced. That is the "dark money" problem campaign-finance regulators routinely flag at the federal level. Without disclosure, the residents of Victor have no way to identify who is paying to recall their mayor, who is paying to challenge their city's bond petition, or whose money is moving through which channel.

The thresholds for triggering that disclosure are low. Independent expenditures supporting or opposing a measure trigger disclosure at $100; local-government measure committees trigger registration at $500. The Victor Watch Dogs mailer alone exceeds the $100 independent expenditure threshold, and as of the day this story was published, no Sunshine Law disclosure related to the Frohlich recall is on file.

This story is about disclosure. The merits of the recall, the underlying litigation, or whether Victor's wastewater plan is good public policy are separate questions. Carol Nowakowski has the right to seek a mayor's recall, and her co-petitioners have the right to support her effort. Greg Davis has the right to spend his own money on speech criticizing public officials and advocating a recall measure. Ashley Coletti has the right to fundraise for litigation she believes in.

How it unfolded

In October 2025, Ashley Coletti, a county resident and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Victor's wastewater plant annexation, launched a GoFundMe titled "Defend Our Community: Say No to Rezoning." The stated purpose was legal defense fundraising to oppose the city's decisions regarding the wastewater treatment facility. By mid-November, three weeks after its launch, the fund had surpassed $10,000.

In February, canvassers began distributing a one-page printed flyer door-to-door in Victor neighborhoods. Signed only by "a group of concerned local citizens," the flyer carried no individual name, no organizational masthead, and no "paid for by" attribution. It urged Victor city taxpayers to sign on to oppose the city's $35 million wastewater bond through legal representation, with a QR code linking to Coletti's GoFundMe to cover legal costs. It asked others to share their email so that, when court dates were set, they could "submit testimony or speak in opposition before the judge, or directly to your elected local officials." The flyer made no mention of any recall. Multiple people with the Valley Signal observed Carol Nowakowski door-knocking and delivering flyers.

A month later, on March 10, Nowakowski's petition to recall Mayor Frohlich was approved by Teton County Clerk Kim Keeley. Under Idaho Code § 67-6602(11), a recall petition becomes a "measure" the moment it is approved as to form. From that point, any organized spending for or against the measure triggers the Sunshine Law's disclosure requirements.

Weeks later, the Victor Watch Dogs mailer began arriving in households via the U.S. Postal Service's Every Door Direct Mail Saturation service, which delivers to every address on a carrier route. Its headline read "Victor leaders are dividing our valley." The industry-standard all-in cost for a saturation drop across Victor, including printing, design, and postage, ranges from $300 to $1,000.

On April 4, "Victor Watch Dogs" held an open-house event at the Wildwood Room in Victor. Butzlaff's later complaint to the state estimates the hall rental at $1,000 to $1,500 and the food costs at more than $500. Who paid those costs is not on the public record.

By the time Butzlaff filed his complaint on April 29, the GoFundMe had reached $19,200 from 95 donations. Its 14 published updates make no mention of the recall, the Watch Dogs mailer, Greg Davis, or Butzlaff. Six anonymous donations total $2,165, or 11.3% of the fund, including two same-day $600 donations during the campaign's first week.

The complaint Butzlaff filed

Butzlaff's three-page complaint, addressed to Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador and Secretary of State Phil McGrane, asks the state to investigate whether "Victor Watch Dogs" and Ashley Coletti have been operating as an unregistered political committee under the Idaho Sunshine Law, Idaho Code § 67-6601 et seq. He cites the law's $500 threshold for political-committee registration. He asks the state to audit the GoFundMe proceeds to identify anonymous donors and to determine how the funds have been spent in connection with the litigation and the late-March mailing. The complaint attaches scans of the Victor Watch Dogs mailer and a separate flyer that pairs the GoFundMe QR code and a Venmo QR code.

Who Butzlaff is

Troy Butzlaff is a retired city manager with about three decades of experience managing cities in California and Idaho. His consulting firm, Athenian Partners, holds paid contracts with the City of Victor and the Victor Urban Renewal Agency.

He was also the target of an ethics complaint filed in triplicate on March 24, 2026, by three individuals: Greg Davis, Annamarie Davis, and Howard Bybee. Greg Davis is named as the funder of the Victor Watch Dogs mailer, the same mailer that Butzlaff's April 29 Sunshine Law complaint targets. The Valley Signal reported the ethics-complaint disposition on April 16.

In a written reply to The Valley Signal on May 16, Butzlaff said his April 29 complaint reflected "a deep respect for the rule of law and a professional obligation," not personal grievance. "There is a distinct, undeniable difference," he wrote, "between passionate public protest and a well-funded, highly coordinated campaign designed to oust elected officials and use litigation to overturn a public policy decision." He asked the state to "audit its GoFundMe proceeds" and "identify every donor, especially those currently listed as anonymous." He rejected the framing of his complaint as that of an interested party, calling the dismissed ethics complaints against him "completely without merit."

What we don't know

  • Whether Davis funded the mailer personally, or whether others contributed under the Watch Dogs banner, and whether it was paid for after the recall became a measure on March 10.
  • Whether the mailer's inclusion of Nowakowski's recall email was coordinated with her.
  • Whether any GoFundMe proceeds, or any pooled off-platform donations to the same organizer, have paid for the Victor Watch Dogs mailer, the April 4 event, or any other recall-related expenditure.

Nothing on file

At the time of publication, The Valley Signal conducted an extensive search of Idaho's Sunshine Law database and found no disclosure tied to the recall effort. Greg Davis has not filed an independent expenditure statement under § 67-6611 for the mailer. No public filing identifies who paid for the April 4 event. The Frohlich recall effort has not registered as a political committee or appointed a treasurer under § 67-6603. The Idaho Secretary of State's business entity registry contains no entry under "Victor Watch Dogs" or "Defend Our Community."

The coordination question

The mailer's third action item is the analytical center of the Sunshine Law question. Its instruction to "sign the petition for a recall election" is express advocacy of a measure under § 67-6602's "expressly advocating" definition. The address it routes readers to is Carol Nowakowski's published recall contact, the operational channel by which she gathers signatures.

Under Idaho Code § 67-6602(9), an expenditure is "independent" only if it is not made in concert or cooperation with, at the request or suggestion of, or with the prior consent of the candidate, political committee, or measure proponent.

Two facts sharpen the question. Nowakowski distributed the February flyers herself, about four weeks before she filed the recall petition. That makes her an active participant in the canvassing before the recall, not a passive recipient of the recall channel the mailer later routed signers to. Among Davis, Coletti, and Nowakowski, only Nowakowski is a Victor city resident, and under Idaho Code § 34-1702, only a City of Victor resident has standing to file a municipal recall against the city's mayor.

Either side of the coordination question carries a disclosure consequence. If the mailer was independent of the recall and paid for after March 10, Greg Davis owed an independent expenditure filing under § 67-6611 once his spending exceeded $100. If the mailer was coordinated with Nowakowski after the recall became a measure, its cost would count as an in-kind contribution to her recall effort. A local government measure committee owes registration, a treasurer, and periodic reports once its receipts or expenditures cross $500; the Frohlich recall has filed none of them. Davis did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Nowakowski.

Where this leaves Coletti's GoFundMe

Coletti's GoFundMe is a legal-defense fund. Its documented use of funds is the lawsuit against the city's annexation and rezoning. On its own, a legal-defense fund does not trigger Sunshine Law disclosure obligations. The Valley Signal has not documented any movement of GoFundMe proceeds, or of off-platform Venmo donations, to the Victor Watch Dogs mailer, to the April 4 event, or to any recall-related expenditure.

Whether any portion of those funds, or any pooled off-platform donations, has underwritten measure-advocacy spending is the empirical question, but Butzlaff's complaint asks the state to investigate. Coletti did not respond to a written request for comment.

What's at stake

The Secretary of State and Attorney General do not typically investigate Sunshine Law violations at the local government level. Idaho Code § 67-6623 makes it the county clerk's job: the clerk investigates complaints of alleged violations involving local offices and measures and reports any suspected violation to the county prosecutor. The Secretary of State referred Butzlaff's complaint to Teton County Clerk Kim Keeley. The Sunshine Law also requires a clerk who receives such a complaint to notify the named parties immediately. Butzlaff filed his complaint on April 29, so Coletti should already have been contacted, likely weeks ago. Keeley's office referred the complaint to the Teton County Sheriff's Office, and from there it would move to the county prosecutor.

If the open questions above are resolved against the named parties, the consequences provided by the Idaho Code range from routine to severe. At the routine end, a committee that registers and files reports behind schedule owes a $50-per-day fee under § 67-6625A for each overdue report, accruing until the report is filed. Beyond that, § 67-6625 allows civil penalties of up to $250 per violation against an individual and up to $2,500 per violation against a committee to be assessed by a preponderance of the evidence. The statute of limitations is two years.

Whether GoFundMe proceeds or the off-platform Venmo donations commingled with measure-advocacy spending remains unknown. If they did, the fund owed registration as a political committee and an unknown number of C-1 and C-2 reports. Those reports are public and itemize every contributor over $50 by name, including donors now listed as anonymous.

Under § 67-6626, any Idaho citizen, the Secretary of State, or the county clerk may apply for injunctive relief in district court, with the prevailing party entitled to recover attorney fees.

What to watch

The Frohlich recall petition is due to be delivered to Teton County Clerk Kim Keeley by May 26. Only about 230 signatures are needed for the measure to succeed. Whether campaign funding violations occurred does not affect its validity.

Davis, Nowakowski, Frohlich, Coletti, and Butzlaff were all contacted for comment; only Butzlaff replied.

Sources