Former Development Director Pamela Flowers, who recently resigned from her position at Archuleta County Development Services, certainly understood that she would be criticized as a result of comments she included in her resignation letter, pointing out her difficult relationship with the Archuleta County commissioners — in particular, with Commissioner John Ranson.
And she certainly understood that she would be additionally criticized if she shared the details of her experience with the local Pagosa media.
So I felt very appreciative when the two of us sat down together, to clarify some comments she had included in her resignation letter to the BOCC.
Such as:
The role of those rules, and the difficult and thankless work undertaken every day by Development Services, is to ensure that every single citizen of Archuleta County is treated fairly and consistently. You have been reminded many times that if you don’t like the rules, you have the power to change them. The fact that you have made no effort to make rule changes and instead choose to actively work against and pressure my staff to behave unethically in favor of your pals, shows the depth of your ignorance, laziness, and corruption…
…Instead of acting with courage to protect the County, you have chosen to belittle, attack, and demonize your employees for doing the difficult work…
I also understood that I might myself be criticized for sharing a public document here in the Daily Post — that document being Ms. Flowers’ resignation letter — and for expressing my concerns, and opinions, about how our County government is currently operating.
In particular, that I might be criticized, publicly, by Commissioner John Ranson. More about that later.
I had invited Ms. Flowers for coffee at my house, but she explained that she doesn’t drink coffee, and would bring her own tea.
During our interview, she shared many of the details of her experience “off the record”, and nearly everything she told me aligned with my own experiences, as an outside observer of our County government.
Then I asked her if she would share some of those details “on the record”, so our community can more fully understand her use of words like “ignorance”, “laziness”, and “corruption”.
Starting off with, for example, “ignorance”.
Ms. Flowers referred to her experience working with former Archuleta County Commissioners Ronnie Maez and Alvin Schaaf:
“Those gentlemen understood what they didn’t know. They understood that they didn’t know… I mean, I have 11 books of regulations and ordinances and codes, and all of those have to be considered, in every question a person asks me. ‘What do I have to do to develop this parcel?’
“And I would reply, ‘Let me tell you what all of these 11 books say, and then we’ll figure out how to move you forward.’
“It’s complicated. And those two gentlemen [Commissioners Maez and Schaaf] understood what they didn’t know. They would hear from a citizen who was unhappy with a decision I’d made — which is expected; it’s part of the job; every decision you make, someone is likely to be disappointed. So they would ask me to tell them what was happening and what I could tell them, and I would educate them about the parts of the codes and regulations that were relevant to this particular person’s situation, and how I had interpreted them.
“I always reminded them to be careful about ex parte communications, in case this person appealed my decision, which they have the right to do.
“They totally understood that, right? They knew what they didn’t know. And they respected the people who know, and they relied on the staff to educate them, case by case, to learn how they could help the citizen accept or understand their options and the way forward.
“That’s what I would expect of anybody.
“That is not what these three commissioner do. They… and in particular, Commissioner Ranson… He thinks he’s doing the right thing, because he yells at the County Manager and tells him what he expects to have done. He doesn’t yell directly at [the Development Services staff]. And that’s what he thinks his role is, is to not interfere directly with the staff.
“Well, telling us what to do, and telling us to ignore the rules — when you don’t understand the implications of ignoring those rules — is ignorant.”
This comment struck me as somewhat enlightening, because I had not fully considered the role of “ignoring important information” in establishing a person’s “ignorance”.
Obviously, the two words are closely related… “to ignore”… and “to be ignorant”.
But I’d like to pause here and briefly talk about ex parte communication. Speaking as a person who has served on several government and nonprofit boards, I’ve come to understand that an elected or appointed board typically has two important functions.
1. As the governing body, to set policy and regulations that apply to the entire district.
2. As unbiased adjudicators, to hear individual appeals, when a party is not satisfied with previous staff decisions.
In the case of development applications, the Board of County Commissioners is typically the final appeals board available to citizens.
When a commissioner allows himself to become personally involved with a particular citizen’s application, this is called ex parte communication. In partiucular, when a commissioner has directed staff to take certain actions on behalf of an applicant, he can obviously no longer serve on the board of appeals as an unbiased adjudicator, should an appeal be filed.
Of course, the next level of appeal is District Court, and a lawsuit against the County.
Some of our current commissioners might not understand the negative implications of ex parte behavior?