Bad advice
Dear Editor:
Thank you for reporting on the most recent Rio Blanco County Commissioners’ meeting in last week’s issue of the Rio Blanco Herald Times and thank you for maintaining one of our county’s oldest businesses, a free press, recording our history, as well as a place to practice our First Amendment right of the U.S. Constitution.
In light of recent events, now more than ever we must not fear intimidation for speaking truth to power.
The issue of Pioneers Medical Center (PMC) board of directors moving from a current five member board back to a seven member board, as originally approved by the voters of eastern RBC — when the ERBM Health Services District was first formed in 2006 — was now before the commissioners for the first time, to ask if it was a “material modification” to the district’s service plan to move back to a seven members.
During public comment, I addressed the commissioners, stating “The (May 2021 PMC) resolution to change the will of the people, was done illegally because there is no Colorado Revised Statue allowing a publicly elected board, to go from seven members to five,” then stated; the commissioners had the authority to appoint, suggesting the next two highest vote-getters from the recent election.
“I don’t know if that was ever legally a five-man board but that’s not our issue,” RBC Commissioner Overton was quoted in the article as saying, during the meeting. “The statute that they used to do that does not give us authority to appoint people. It does not give the hospital district the authority to appoint people. It has to go to an election.”
I agree with Commissioner Overton, when he said he didn’t know if it was ever legally a five-member board — he’s right, it isn’t legal, never has been — five people can not change the will of the people and personally, I’m going to continue to state the facts until PMC gets back to a seven-person board, as well as continue stating facts until changes in the advice the PMC board is getting from the Grand Junction law firm of Bechtel & Santo, are made.
In an email addressed to me from PMC attorney Christina Harney, dated March 4, 2022, almost one year after five PMC board members illegally voted (please see PMC archived minutes, May 2021) to change the will of the people and move to a five-person board), she wrote;
“I do not create facts as that is not my job. I also did not encourage the Board one way or another regarding this decision. In fact, I did not even advise the Board to hold a vote on this issue. The Board decided to hold this vote and only asked me if the vote could be legally done. My role was solely to answer that legal question,” Harney wrote to me.
Well, I am not an attorney but a law degree is not needed to know the answer to the legal question is “No.” It is illegal for five special district board members to change the will of the voters. Full stop. Period.
Instead, Harney unsuccessfully argued CRS 32-1-902.5 (a statue to move a publicly elected five-person board to a seven person board) in front of the honorable Judge Anne Norrdin on April 19, 2022. Judge Norrdin denied the motion, yet PMC amended their bylaws April 26, 2022, two weeks before an election with seven people running for three positions — and the PMC board has been operating illegally, as a five-person board since May, 2021.
Now, PMC attorneys are again using CRS 32-1-902.5, to move back to a seven-person board, which legally, it has been since 2006.
Some may argue the cost of a special election (if one is actually needed) but what has been the cost of the bad legal advice we have been receiving from Bechtel & Santo, the past four years?
Sincerely,
Bobby Gutierrez
Meeker