More Corruption at Valley Water
On Thursday, March 14, my colleagues are going to vote to strip me of all of my powers to represent the people who elected me. Despite my consistent integrity in responding to their 14-month campaign of attacks that began 4 weeks after I was sworn in, they are not playing fair.
They bullied me into deleting two paragraphs from the prior post, so I did. Many people have asked why these two paragraphs made the District and my colleagues so angry. You can read them for yourself to decide.
7. Also demonstrating bias, Ms. Zutler (the adverse attorney who fixed the investigative reports) attended special Board Meetings, some of which from which I was inappropriately excluded, to ask the Board for approval in matters that directly harm me. In one such meeting, Ms. Zutler presented an argument for why, unlike in past practice, I should be denied attorney’s fees for my costs in defending the CEO’s investigation against me. Even though there are compelling reasons for the Board to reimburse my fees, including not just past practice but also the US Tax Code, Ms. Zutler excluded me from the meeting, and I was not given an opportunity to speak on my own behalf. At that meeting, the Board voted to deny me my attorney’s fees for my defense. As of today, those fees amount to considerably more than I have been paid by the District since the time I was sworn in to this position.
8. At another Board session, Ms. Zutler argued for and was given approval to remove both the closed session privilege and the attorney-client privilege in numerous communications involving litigation against the District so that the District Counsel could make his complaint that I discriminated against him. Lifting the attorney-client privilege so that an organization’s lawyer can make a complaint is almost never done given the importance of the attorney-client privilege. Nonetheless, Ms. Zutler encouraged the Board to lift the privilege so that the District Counsel could effectively make his complaint. This lifting of both privileges also opened the door for the District Counsel and the CEO to use privileged materials to sue the District, suggesting that Ms. Zutler was representing the interests of the CEO and District Counsel rather than the interests of the District. Notably, in the communications released from privilege, I had urged the District Counsel, who reports to me and my colleagues, not to pursue his course of action because if he did, he would lose, and the District would be hit with penalties. District Counsel, instead of listening to my advice based on far greater experience in these matters, complained that I was oppressing him by attempting to steer his actions in a more productive direction (even though I am one of his 7 managers, and the only practicing attorney on the Board).
While complaining that I was applying undue influence, the District Counsel successfully ignored my advice and made his poor choices. As a result — as I had warned him — the District lost all the court filings he made against my advice, and, as I predicted, the District was assessed substantial monetary penalties in mid six figures. Had the District Counsel heeded my advice, he would have saved ratepayers the costs of filing and losing his motions — a total of approximately $2 million.
Judge for yourself, I guess.
