McGourty To Garza

Recent reporting on 1st District Supervisor Glenn McGourty's residence prompts a multiple pronged response.

The “concerned citizen” letter filed regarding McGourty's residence, while giving some precise details, demonstrates a lack of understanding about the Mendocino Coast Health Care District (MCHCD). The “concerned citizen” repeatedly refers to it as the Mendocino Coast Hospital District (MCHD). In mid-2024 that is an archaic term, not used since the coast healthcare district affiliated with Adventist Health (AH). The operations of the hospital in Fort Bragg are run by Adventist Health.

Since July 1, 2020, AH receives patient payments, thus the healthcare district board, on which Jan McGourty now sits, will not receive Medi-Cal or Medicare payments. “Concerned citizen's” contention that this created a conflict of interest for Supervisor Glenn McGourty is therefore lacking in sufficient research and credibility.

If “concerned citizen” had truly followed recent goings on at the Mendocino Coast Health Care District, they might have come up with far more political backroom dealings. On May 21, 2024 Jan McGourty gained appointment to the Mendocino Coast Health Care District (MCHCD) Board of Directors by a 3-1 vote of the county supervisors.

It may be of interest to readers to note that on Monday May 20, a day before the Board of Supervisors met and appointed Jan McGourty, the MCHCD website published a “Chair's Report” authored by Paul Garza. One of the first lines in Garza's report read, “I am pleased to welcome Ms. Jan McGourty to [the] District’s Board of Directors.”

Garza, the chair of the healthcare district declared Ms. McGourty already a member of the MCHCD Board at least a day before the BoS acted on her appointment. If Garza's chair's report was published on Monday, May 20, it is likely he actually drafted it on the 18 or 19. Given indications elsewhere that Jan McGourty registered to vote in Fort Bragg on May 18, one gets the idea of the rushed nature of things.

Garza had to propose the name to a County Supervisor (Fourth District Supervisor Dan Gjerde) in order to get it on the supervisors' agenda. That would have to happen on or before May 16, the day that the next week's BoS agenda became public.

The agenda as published contained a brief “To Whom it May Concern” letter of interest from Ms. McGourty, opening with, “I am moving to Fort Bragg, having purchased a home there.” Side note, Ms. McGourty misidentified the entity to which she sought appointment as the “Mendocino County [sic] Health Care District.”

Let's return to Garza's “Chair's Report,” published a day before Ms. McGourty was up for consideration with the board of supes. After stating he was pleased to welcome Ms. McGourty to the MCHCD Board, Garza continued, “Ms. McGourty has been a long-term community leader on and advocate for mental health.” Obviously, Garza did not proofread the sentence, so there are missing words in the latter half. However, the “Ms. McGourty has been a long-term community leader…” is of interest. It allows the general public to infer that Ms. McGourty may be a community leader on the Mendocino Coast. The line fails to clarify that she has not been a resident of the coast or that when Garza encouraged her to seek the office she was not even registered to vote on the coast.

At the Board of Supervisors meeting on May 21, Garza hemmed and hawed, essentially interrupting himself multiple times, through a presentation to the supes. The thrust of his stop and go verbalization amounted to something akin to dire consequences occurring if the MCHCD did not have a full five member board to vote on putting forward a $20 million bond measure at the November election. McGourty's presence, Garza appeared to imply, would insure at least a 3-2 vote in favor.

The irony here is that the desperately needed vote of McGourty became moot when Garza dropped the idea of a bond measure by late June, McGourty's first official day at a MCHCD Board meeting.

In his somewhat confusing appearance before the Supervisors on May 21, Garza made a garbled statement that he and the MCHCD Board had been searching for someone to fill that fifth seat, but he left out any reference to the late April MCHCD Board meeting at which three candidates were interviewed for the vacancy. One of those was obviously not qualified. Another, Gabriel Maroney, answered all the questions forthrightly, including one directed only at Maroney, not the other two, which appeared to be Garza's attempt to rationalize not picking Maroney. It was clear to this observer that Garza would not vote to pick Maroney for the vacant seat because he (Garza) felt he couldn't count on Maroney's absolute yes vote on the $20 million bond issue. Keep in mind that Maroney had been regularly attending MCHCD board and committee meetings for over two years.

Garza, on the other hand, had never been to a MCHCD meeting when he threw his hat in the ring for an appointment to a board seat made vacant by a resignation in the summer of 2023.

That's right, Garza was an appointee who rose from never attending a healthcare district meeting until late September 2023 to become chair in January 2024. Perhaps the first line of Garza's letter of intent from last September gives a clue, “I received notice from the Coast Democrats that you are seeking to fill an opening…”

At the time two other members on the MCHCD board, Lee Finney and Susan Savage, had close ties to the Coast Democratic Club. Though the elected positions on the Mendocino Coast Health Care District board are non-partisan posts, Garza signaled his allegiance. When it came time for the board to vote to fill that vacancy last September, Finney and Savage voted for Garza. MCHCD board members Paul Katzeff and Sara Spring voted for Gabriel Maroney (an individual with a public health and global health background – imagine that on a healthcare board!).

Amid the confusing board discussion that ensued after the deadlocked 2-2 vote (At one point Katzeff offered to resign to create two vacancies, but only one had been officially listed on the agenda), Maroney took to the peak of the high road and withdrew his name from consideration, thus securing the position for Garza. Maroney may have done so under the presumption that Katzeff would make good on an exit in the near future. Garza made no attempt to climb onto that high road to make any sort of similar gesture to that of Maroney.

That is a big part of the back story of the April 24, 2024 MCHCD meeting, which included another interview and vote for a new board member (Finney had resigned in early March). Garza displayed zero inclination to return the favor Maroney had shown him little more than six months prior, quite the opposite.

But that was not the only machination Garza had in store that April evening. The other potentially viable candidate that day was Chris Hart. Yes, one of the Hart brothers who control the parent company that acquired much of the mill site property on Fort Bragg's headlands. During the interview process for the vacant MCHCD board seat, Hart gave reasonable answers, and in response to a query about his connections to the Skunk Train, Mendocino Railway, and the mill site, Hart stated that he was seeking the MCHCD position due to his interest in healthcare on the coast, not to enhance his business interests.

There is a back story here as well. Someone on the MCHCD board had encouraged Chris Hart to seek the vacant seat (either Garza or Savage – betting odds point at Garza… the two other board members have adamantly denied contacting Chris Hart).

Whether Garza knew who Chris Hart was at first is an unsure proposition. About a week before the interviews for the MCHCD board vacancy Garza got cold feet to the extent that he confided to a coast resident, “Uhh, we have one candidate… um… that's… um… has some real strengths, but, also, potentially is very controversial.”

He was referring to Hart and that as a somewhat controversial figure he might sink the chances of a bond issue passing this November (requiring a 2/3 voter approval). According to reliable sourcing, Chris Hart received a phone call (presumably from Garza) hours before the board interviews telling him “that he [Hart] would not get a unanimous vote and if he wanted to step down and not be told no they would understand.”

Who “they” is/was has not been clearly defined. Also, keep in mind that Garza abandoned the bond issue less than two months later.

As reported above, Chris Hart did show up for the interviews as did Gabriel Maroney. When it came time to vote for a single applicant to fill the board vacancy, and with only three board members present, MCHCD Vice Chair Paul Katzeff voted for Maroney. Garza and fellow Coast Democratic Club ally Susan Savage abstained. No candidate had achieved a majority vote.

The vote was conducted by paper ballot, with the individual board members writing their name on a slip of paper along with the candidate they preferred then each ballot was read aloud. What are the odds that two board members, out of three, after hearing in person interviews would independently write down “abstain” on a piece of paper? Garza and Savage were spotted huddled together in an adjacent hallway just a few minutes before the commencement of the interviews to fill the board vacancy.

The lack of a majority vote at MCHCD took the process to the Board of Supervisors, all of whom were apprised of the basics of the machinations, by text or email, early in the morning of the BoS vote (a day after Garza published his “Chair's Report” welcoming Jan McGourty to the MCHCD Board). Of course, Glenn McGourty recused. Supervisor Mulheren voted against Jan McGourty's appointment. Supervisors Gjerde, Williams, and Haschak voted in favor.

One more Garza-ism: At the MCHCD Board meeting in April, when Maroney and Hart were interviewed for the vacant seat, Chair Garza refused to allow comments or questions from the public on the matter of who would be the newest board member to represent the community. Thus, he violated California Government Code 54954.3(a): “Every agenda for regular meetings shall provide an opportunity for members of the public to directly address the legislative body on any item of interest to the public.”

In Paul Garza's world of governance the Brown Act apparently only exists when it serves his purposes. He has failed to allow public input on agenda items directly related to the finances of the District and how the taxpayers’ money is invested. As board chair, he refused to allow public comment on the consent calendar. He and new board member Jan McGourty have told me in one-on-one conversations that specific criticism of board members' actions is rude. Apparently, before taking their appointed seats both failed to bother reading down a couple of paragraphs in California Government Code 54954.3 to paragraph (c), which states, “The legislative body of a local agency shall not prohibit public criticism of the policies, procedures, programs, or services of the agency, or of the acts or omissions of the legislative body.”