The Del Puerto Health Care District board met once secretly in 2008 but claims the meeting violated no California open govenment laws. -db
February 25, 2010
By Kendall Wright
A majority of the Del Puerto Health Care District met once secretly in 2008, but the head of the district claims the meeting violated no laws, an assertion a First Amendment lawyer vehemently disagrees with.
Two unannounced meetings were conducted in 2008, one on June 20 when only two of five board members were present and another on June 24 when a majority of the board attended. They were captured on surveillance footage shot by a private investigator hired to follow district CEO Margo Arnold, who an attorney thought was for months ducking attempts to be deposed in a civil lawsuit.
The meetings were at the Keystone Pacific Business Park, where the district hopes to move its clinic.
On June 20, district board member Jeanette Kessler, as well as Arnold, went to the business park, noted private investigator Johnny Smith. The investigator also saw the car of board member Evan Schut parked there, as well as the SUV of ambulance driver Barry Hurd, who regularly attends board meetings. Smith said Harold Hill was also there, though at that time he was not on the district’s board, so there was no quorum of the board on June 20.
But on June 24 — according to a report by Smith and surveillance footage — board members Kessler, Schut and Betty Carlson went to the business park to meet Arnold; Hill; Dennis Litos, president of Doctors Hospital in Modesto; and Kevin Dal Porto, a vice president at the real estate firm CB Richard Ellis.
Arnold said the only thing that took place at those meetings was board members “hearing a presentation by a company” that was going to “head up” the clinic’s move to Keystone.
“It was an informational,” Arnold said. “It wasn’t interactive, and there was no discussion and no decisions were made. If that was the case, we certainly would have announced it right.”
Ed Maring said he was president of the board during June 2008 when the meetings took place, and though he was absent, he said they shouldn’t count as real board meetings.
“As far as I recall, I don’t remember being at those meetings,” he said. “To my knowledge, the board has never had an official meeting at Keystone. To me, it looks like someone’s just trying to dig up dirt.”
Arnold said she’s under the impression that because the meetings were merely “informational,” no public meeting laws were violated, chief among them being the Ralph M. Brown Act, which governs public meetings in the state.
But Terry Francke, lead lawyer for Californians Aware, a nonprofit that deals with public forum rights, says Arnold’s claim is absurd.
“The attitude these boards have, that they can hold these little ‘workshops’ and don’t have to let the public in on it, is the reason for the original passage of the Brown Act to begin with,” Francke said.
The Brown Act defines a public meeting as “… any congregation of a majority of the members of a legislative body at the same time and place to hear, discuss or deliberate upon any item that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the legislative body or the local agency to which it pertains.”
Francke said secret meetings could be considered a criminal act, though it’s difficult to prove. He said it’s possible a civil penalty could be imposed if wrongdoing was proven.
Schut declined to comment for this story, and other board members could not be reached for comment.
In 2006, the grand jury received and investigated four complaints of alleged Brown Act violations by the district board. The grand jury reached the conclusion that because the board did not intend to violate the Brown Act, the only recourse was to recommend the board attend an aggressive training session about open meeting laws.
The private investigator was hired by Norman Ronneberg, the attorney of former district medical director Dr. Paul Berry, who filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Arnold and the health district in November 2006.
Ronneberg said he had tried for months to schedule a deposition with Arnold in which she would provide sworn testimony about the case, but he says she claimed she was physically unable to make any appointment.
He said he heard from people in Patterson who saw Arnold working as she normally would, so he paid Smith to shoot videotape of her between June 19 and June 24 of 2008.
The case has picked up steam. The two sides are supposed to discuss a possible settlement next month and schedule a trial for May or June if no out-of-court conclusion is reached.
Copyright 2010 Patterson Irrigator