Letters (May 18, 2023)

• Hospice Of Ukiah Services Are Coming To Anderson Valley!
• The Book On VA Healthcare
• Look Both Ways, Run
• Memo Of The Decade
• Indigenous Identity
• Reparations
• High Speed Roulette
• Notice Of Brown Act Violation
• Supes Lawyer Up; Send Their Attorney To Deny Board’s Brown Act Violation

HOSPICE OF UKIAH SERVICES ARE COMING TO ANDERSON VALLEY!

Editor,

For over 41 years Hospice of Ukiah has been caring for our community in Mendocino County. They believe in life with comfort and death with dignity. They are funded entirely by donations and bequests, along with support of many volunteers in raising funds and providing care. Hospice of Ukiah accepts no government or private insurance and their services are without charge to anyone who needs them. Services beyond Ukiah are difficult to provide without donations to cover the medical staff, as well as the recruitment and training of volunteers.

Mark Apfel, MD and Judy Nelson, RN, have been providing services for Hospice of Ukiah in the Anderson Valley for many years. We want to expand services to the Anderson Valley to include a part-time nurse, a personal care assistant and more volunteers. The Anderson Valley Hospice Committee is under the auspices of Hospice of Ukiah. The committee currently is comprised of Judy Nelson, Lauren Keating, Donna Pierson-Pugh, Susan Bridge-Mount, Linda Murphy and Elizabeth Summers.

We are inviting community members who are interested to hear more about this program and possibly volunteer to join us, on Tuesday, May 23^rd at the Boonville Fire House from 2:00 to 3:00 pm.

We ask that the community support our efforts with a donation to help Hospice of Ukiah provide services in Anderson Valley. Checks can be written to Hospice of Ukiah with a note “for Anderson Valley.” The address for mailings:

Hospice of Ukiah, 620 Dora St., Ukiah, CA 95482.

Susan Bridge-Mount

Boonville

THE BOOK ON VA HEALTHCARE

Letter to the Editor 

Re: VA item in May 3, 2023 edition

I’m a longtime fan of your wonderful paper and just happened to be visiting friends in Mendo when I picked up a copy of its May 3 edition with an “Off The Record” item praising the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for unusual outreach to patients, like your colleague, “The Major.”

I’ve written three books about our veterans healthcare system and co-founded a Bay Area group which is fighting privatization of the VA, a bi-partisan campaign fueled by corporate media attacks on our best working model of socialized medicine.

I can assure you that it is very rare for any media outlet to appreciate one the major differences between VA hospitals and clinics and the private healthcare industry. Care givers at the VA call their patients to check up on them and take better care of them because they are not part of a profit-driven system and about one third of them (100,000 VA employees) are veterans themselves.This creates a unique institutional culture of empathy and solidarity that veterans and their families do not find anywhere else in U.S. healthcare.

Unfortunately, corporate Democrats and conservative Republicans are colluding to out-source billions of dollars worth of VA care. More than a third of the agency’s direct care budget is now diverted—in costly, wasteful, and unnecessary fashion—to reimbursement of private hospitals and for-profit medical practices. This privatization push is an ever increasing threat to nine million veterans and their dedicated health care professionals and support staff, in California and throughout the country.

AVA readers can find out more about how to fight this Obama-Trump-Biden Administration policy disaster by checking out our website at the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute or consulting a new book called Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs (Duke University Press), which reports on the anti-privatization campaigning of Veterans for Peace, Common Defense, and other veterans' advocacy groups.

Best wishes and many thanks for indeed being the last and best community newspaper in America!

Suzanne Gordon, Author, Our Veterans, Wounds of War, and other books 

Senior Policy Fellow, Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute

747 Lobos Ave, Richmond, CA 94801

PS. You should definitely find your DD214 and get enrolled ASAP, before the VA is further de-funded and dismantled!

LOOK BOTH WAYS, RUN

Editor: 

I am 74 years old and have a crosswalk rule that I follow. Stop, look both ways. If a car is coming assume it won’t stop, and wait. Cars always win. They have great mass and are made out of metal. Humans are made of much more fragile materials and have a lot less mass. While the law of man says you have the right of way, the law of God says you are dead.

Jack Burger

Cazadero

MEMO OF THE DECADE

Now Hiring - General Manager

The Great Redwood Trail Agency (GRTA) is recruiting for a General Manager to oversee and manage day-to-day operations of the GRTA and assist with implementing the vision of the Great Redwood Trail.

The Great Redwood Trail will be a 320-mile, world-class, multi-use rail-to-trail project connecting California's San Francisco and Humboldt Bays. The trail will be constructed along the former rail corridor of the North Coast Railroad Authority. The General Manager will lead the newly created agency and help establish this world class rail trail.

Salary: $120,000 to $140,000. 

Great Redwood Trail Agency

419 Talmage Road, Suite M, Ukiah, CA

(formerly the North Coast Railroad Authority office)

thegreatredwoodtrail.org

INDIGENOUS IDENTITY

Editor: 

I dislike the term Latinx. I appreciate the intention of making gendered labels less sexist, but the term has deeper problems. Those of us to whom the term is applied are racially mixed and share an Indigenous genetic and cultural heritage paired with the culture and genetics of Spain. In my childhood we were called Mexican or one of several slurs, then Hispanic, then Latino. Latino recognizes the Latin roots of both the Spanish and Portuguese languages.

The characteristic that distinguishes us from our European relatives is our Indigenous heritage. The term Latino acknowledges only a dead European language as our personal identifier. But it isn’t our Old World heritage that marks our faces and sets us apart.

The Spanish were brutal enslavers. They reportedly worked 8 million people to death in the mines of Potosi, killed another 3 million on Hispaniola and virtually emptied northern Mexico to mine the rich mineral deposits, killing millions more. Native women were requisitioned as breeding partners. The Portuguese acted no better.

I think we need a different term that embraces our New World roots, not defining ourselves by Old World enslavers. Native American is already taken, maybe Indigenous American. Latinx isn’t it.

Elden McFarland

Healdsburg

REPARATIONS

Editor: 

If California approves an apology and pays reparations to Black people for generations of discrimination, will the state approve the same for mistreatment and discrimination against Native Americans? This was their land, entered illegally. Their land was taken, they were forced onto reservations and into a lifestyle that was not theirs. They were discriminated against.

And the descendants of the Chinese who helped build the railroad over the Sierra? They were forced to labor under slavelike and extremely dangerous conditions. They too were discriminated against.

And women. They were denied the vote for 144 years after independence, they were denied entrance to most universities, were not allowed in some professions and sports and were paid less than males.

The evil of slavery was recognized. Union troops fought to end slavery, and many lost their lives for that cause. No one fought and lost life to free Native Americans and the Chinese from their unjust treatment.

The past is gone, we cannot change it, but we can improve the future. Money would be better spent fighting discrimination and injustice by recognizing it, admitting its existence and dealing with it appropriately.

Veronica Johnson

Windsor

HIGH SPEED ROULETTE

Editor: 

Over and over, local police are jeopardizing our safety by initiating high-speed auto chases through our streets. Driving drunk is not a capital offense and inciting a drunken driver to speed is foolhardy. Suspected thievery, drugs or handguns do not justify risking the lives of innocent bystanders during a high-speed chase. The police could record the license plate number and apprehend the suspect later. How proud we could be in Sonoma County if our police departments led the way nationally in giving up the use of high-speed chases.

Elizabeth Boardman

Santa Rosa

NOTICE OF BROWN ACT VIOLATION

May 10, 2023

TO: Mendocino County Board of Supervisors Chair Glenn McGourty:

(bos@mendocinocounty.org)

Dear Chair McGourty,

This letter is to call your attention to what I believe was a substantial violation of a provision of the Ralph M. Brown Act, one which may jeopardize the finality of the action taken by the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors.

On May 5, 2023, four Supervisors issued similarly worded endorsements of one specific candidate, Trevor Mockel. Mr. Mockel noted that the fifth Supervisor (Mr. Gjerde) would be issuing a similar endorsement soon. These endorsements were an unprecedented, clear and improper attempt to influence the upcoming election in the County over which these Supervisors have authority for a position that is officially non-partisan.

This action violated the California Open Meetings Law, aka, the Brown Act. 

According to the League of California Cities, “A majority [of a public body] is prohibited from using ‘a series of communications of any kind, directly or through intermediaries, to discuss, deliberate, or take action’ on business within its subject matter jurisdiction outside of a meeting. … A series of private meetings (known as serial meetings) by which a majority of the members of a legislative body commit to a decision or engage in collective deliberation concerning public business violates the Brown Act’s open meeting requirement.” 

Therefore, the simultaneous issuance of similar endorsements by all five Supervisors of one political candidate, Trevor Mockel, on a single day, May 5, 2023, constitutes a prima facie illegal serial meeting in violation of the California Brown Act. 

As you are aware, the Brown Act creates a legal remedy for illegally taken actions — namely, the judicial invalidation of them upon proper findings of fact and conclusions of law.

Accordingly, we request that the issuance of these endorsements be formally corrected and cured by being retracted and withdrawn at the next available, properly noticed and agendized board meeting and that the Supervisors acknowledge their violation and issue a formal statement for the record that such violations will not be repeated in the future. 

As provided by Government Code Section 54960.1, you have 30 days from the receipt of this demand to either cure or correct the challenged action or inform me of your decision not to do so. If you fail to cure or correct as demanded, such inaction may leave me with no recourse but to seek a judicial invalidation of the challenged action pursuant to Section 54960.1, in which case I would also ask the court to order you to pay my court costs and reasonable attorney fees in this matter, pursuant to Section 54960.5.

Respectfully yours,

Sincerely,

Mark Scaramella

Anderson Valley Advertiser, Box 459, Boonville, CA 95415

CC: County Counsel Christian Curtis <curtisc@mendocinocounty.org> & District Attorney David Eyster <eysterd@mendocinocounty.org>

SUPES LAWYER UP; SEND THEIR ATTORNEY TO DENY BOARD’S BROWN ACT VIOLATION

Mr. Scaramella,

We have reviewed your "cure and correct" request and determined that the facts asserted would not constitute any violation of the Brown Act. As such, I am advising the Board of Supervisors to take no action and will not be placing any "cure and correct" item on any future Board agenda. Your email states that you believe that the Brown Act was violated because various members of the Board of Supervisors issued similarly worded political endorsements of a candidate for elected office. Because the Board did not discuss this political endorsement during a noticed meeting, you infer that the members discussed this matter through other channels. If true, however, these facts would not constitute a violation of the Brown Act. Indeed, to the extent that Board members wish to discuss among themselves possible political endorsements or campaign activity, they are not only permitted, but actually required, to hold such conversations outside of noticed meetings of the Board of Supervisors.

Under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I section 2 of the California Constitution, individuals elected to political office retain their free speech rights to comment on matters before the voters, including the endorsement of specific candidates for office. In doing so, however, officials must act only on behalf of themselves or their campaigns, not the County. State law prohibits the use of County resources for political activities, including the endorsement of a specific candidate. See, e.g., Gov. Code §§ 8314, 54964. Certain de minimis activity, such as the incidental use of a county's email system, may be tolerated. DiQuisto v. Cty. of Santa Clara, 181 Cal. App. 4th 236 (2010); Gov. Code § 8314(b)(1). Formal endorsement by the Board, or the use of staff time to discuss and debate endorsements during a public meeting, however, would be improper. In this context, discussion of political endorsements are not subject to the Brown Act. The Brown Act only applies to meetings "within the subject matter jurisdiction of the [Board of Supervisors]." Gov. Code § 54952.2. That definition necessarily excludes the political endorsements of individual supervisors. Any attempt to control the endorsements of individual board members would violate their rights of free speech under the state and federal constitution, and any formal endorsement by the Board itself is impermissible. If, as you allege, the Board members discussed their personal political endorsements, those conversations fell outside of the Scope of the Brown Act.

Normally, when concluding that a "cure and correct" demand is unfounded, I advise clients to still consider revisiting the item to avoid further dispute. The statute is clear that any action to cure or correct an alleged violation shall not be construed as an admission that any violation occurred. Gov. Code § 54960.1(f). In this case, however, any attempt to "cure" the alleged violation by discussing the endorsements in open session would be unlawful. As such, I will not be placing an item on any future agenda, and will continue to note that discussion of political endorsements can only be legally conducted in the manner you allege occurred here. I have spoken with the Board Chair, and this email will serve as a formal denial of your request pursuant to Government Code section 54960.1(c)(2).

Lastly, I note that you have concurrently made a Public Records Act seeking correspondence between individual supervisors and Senator Mike McGuire. From the language of the request, it was not clear whether your interest lay in communication related to these political endorsements or something else. Please note that, although the County requests officials search their personal devices for disclosable public records under City of San Jose v. Superior Court, purely private political correspondence would not qualify as a public record under Government Code section 7920.530(a). In the interests of efficiency, I want to highlight this distinction before the search is performed, in case in may affect your decision to pursue or modify this request.

Christian M. Curtis

County Counsel, County of Mendocino

501 Low Gap Road, Room 1030, Ukiah, CA 95482

Phone: (707) 234-6885 · Fax: (707) 463-4592

Email: curtisc@mendocinocounty.org

* * *

MARK SCARAMELLA NOTES:

Our original violation notice was meant for Board Chair Glenn McGourty and his colleagues and was only copied to Mr. Curtis, Esq. It was intended to be an opportunity for McGourty et al to defend their improper endorsement. Instead, we get this response from their tax-paid attorney claiming there was no violation. This is no surprise, of course. We had harbored a faint hope that the Board would actually try to defend their improper de facto violation as somehow good for Mendocino County, even if their attorney says it’s not a technical violation. But they’re not even willing to defend this unprecedented and improper attempt to unanimously influence an upcoming non-partisan race in favor of an inexperienced and novice candidate with no political credentials or local substance who has taken no position on any issues facing the County and has to this point been silent on District 1 or Mendocino County matters. But hiding behind a legalistic defense instead of taking responsibility their for indefensible actions is typical of this wishy-washy board, apart from whether their own attorney says their actions are technically “legal.” As we said in our original complaint, the board obviously “met” to endorse a political ally in violation of public meetings rules based on their simultaneous endorsement of one preferred candidate in the same manner on the same day.