City of G.J. Municipal Judge and School District 51’s in-house legal counsel and Tammy Eret
On September 23, 2024 the Colorado ACLU sent a 5 page letter (pdf) to Grand Junction officials notifying them that Grand Junction Municipal Judge Tammy Eret has been engaging in “blatantly unconstitutional” and “harmful” practices in City court sessions. The letter accuses Eret of “persistently and illegally” denying incarcerated people access to court-appointed counsel, coercing uncounseled guilty pleas, and imposing “lengthy, uncounseled, illegal jail sentences.” The letter gives detailed examples of such instances, even including some of the the in-court dialogue between Eret and the people who were before her in court.
The ACLU directed the letter to Grand Junction Mayor Abe Herman, Interim City Manager Andrea Phillips and City Attorney John Shaver, with copies to City Council members, Mesa County Sheriff Todd Rowell and G.J. Police Chief Matt Smith.
The Denver Post reported on the ACLU’s letter in an article on October 17.
In addition to being the City’s Municipal Court Judge, Eret also simultaneously works as in-house legal counsel to School District 51, potentially violating School District Policy GBR, which prohibits employees from taking on outside jobs that could infringe on their effectiveness as a District employee or take up time they should be working for the District. District 51 reportedly pays Eret a salary of $200,000/year. The District hired Eret in 2022 as a replacement former in-house counsel John Williams.
Conclusions based on recordings of court sessions
The ACLU came to its conclusions about Eret’s behavior after reviewing recordings of a week’s worth of her municipal court sessions from August, 2024. They gave detailed accounts of Eret’s practices, saying “Judge Eret openly runs her in-custody docket without lawyers” and “regularly sets bond, accepts guilty pleas and sentences people to jail without defendants having any access to an attorney, in direct violation of the law.” Eret doesn’t inform the accused of their right to have an appointed attorney present, doesn’t take people’s mental competency into consideration and sentences people to “illegal,” “cruel and disproportionate jail sentences,” the ACLU says.
Grand Junction City Attorney John Shaver
City Attorney John Shaver wrote an 8-page letter back to the ACLU defending Eret and denying she has engaged in any wrongdoing at all.
After hearing about the ACLU’s accusations and Eret’s simultaneous employment with the City, the Mesa Valley Education Association (MVEA, the teachers’ union) contacted the D-51 School Board demanding an investigation into the matter on behalf of the District’s staff, students and the community.
On Friday, Oct. 25, MVEA wrote the Board, saying:
“This morning Mesa Valley Education Association was made aware of troubling accusations made against D51 General Council, Tammy Eret Lynch. The accusations, which can be read about in full in the Denver Post as well as a letter written by the ACLU, center around alleged constitutional violations by Tammy Eret Lynch in her role as municipal judge. MVEA has reached out to all five Board of Education members to share our concerns, which are threefold: Tammy Eret is performing her duty as Municipal Court Judge for the city of Grand Junction during D51 work hours. According to current municipal court docket records, Tammy Eret is scheduled to work several days a week while also collecting a six figure salary from District 51. This appears to be a violation of board policy GBR. The current accusations, if proven true, represent a blatant disregard for the constitutional rights of all those who reside in Grand Junction. Anyone proven to habitually violate the rights of the citizenry should not be representing D51 in legal proceedings or contract negotiations.
This is not the first time that Tammy Eret has been accused of violating civil rights. As recently as June 2024, D51 & the city of Grand Junction paid out a combined $52,500 dollars after Eret attempted to pursue charges against a parent for language contained within an email. D51 attempted to argue that the parent’s words were not protected free speech. Neither party admitted to wrongdoing in the settlement.
We are calling for a full ethics investigation into the terms of her employment, the potential misuse of district funds, and into any and all Board of Education members or district leadership who knew or should have known about her competing employment. The staff, students, and community deserve clarity on this issue.”
District 51 School Board President Andrea Haitz
After getting no response from the school board, MVEA sent the following update to the School Board on October 26:
“Last Friday, MVEA Executive Council sent out a communication to membership, the School Board and the Superintendent, expressing troubling concerns about D51’s General Counsel, Tammy Eret Lynch, following issues brought to light in an article published by the Denver Post. In our communication, we called for, “a full ethics investigation into the terms of her employment, the misuse of district funds, and into any and all district leadership who knew or should have known about her competing employment.”
To date, MVEA has not received any communication or update from D51 about the progress or status of this ethics investigation. The Executive Council will once again be contacting the board and district leadership to request that D51 initiate and conduct an independent ethics investigation as detailed in our prior communication. To ensure transparency and accountability in this process, we also request the name(s) of the direct supervisor(s) of the General Counsel for D51. Out of respect for the students, staff, and community members who deserve clarity and integrity on this issue, we will be requesting the district to respond by Wednesday, October 30th, at noon.
Read the full letter the ACLU sent to City Council here. (pdf)
I have been following this situation since the beginning. I have unwanted ties to Mrs.Eret/Lynch and have been waiting years for her immoral, unethical, and illegal actions to be recognized. Why has nothing been done to move this forward? As far as I know, she is still serving in both positions, neither of which she should be allowed to work in any capacity until these allegations have been fully investigated. Does anyone else have any information??
It would be so nice if people and organizations were punished for malfeasance.
Maybe you could follow up with Sam Tabachnik of the Denver Post…or Tim Macdonald of Colorado ACLU.
Good luck
I will definitely try to contact those individuals. I’ve had SO many issues because of this woman for way too long and enough is enough. I’ve made calls in the past and all of them went unheard. I thought that finally karma was paying a visit. Thank you for your response.
You probably noticed that the ACLU has filed a complaint…that’s why I suggested them. They “should” be able to give a status report.
Also…the city attorney, Shaver, sent an 8 page letter of response to the ACLU.
See if you can get a look at that. It might take a FOIA request.
Maybe the useless GJ Sentinel would be interested…they certainly should be.
In my experience …it always takes a squeaky wheel to get things done…otherwise they get away with everything.
As I see it, Taxpayer $ pays both salaries.
A double-dipping Tammy Baker ?
Looks like another ethics investigation might sweep out more trash from local gov. Moreover, Consigliere/City Attorney John Shaver might have just also kicked himself to the curb by clearly running afoul of the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct to his associated law license by trying to run inference for such activity blatantly illegal under Colorado law. As just like Judges, lawyers representing a city can’t claim ignorance of statues and regulations either.
Maybe there should also be a complaint filed to the Colorado Supreme Court for his little 8-page manifesto as well. Because the public have every right to call for an investigation whether their legal representatives are acting in good-faith and under full compliance to state law. https://coloradosupremecourt.com/Complaints/File_ComplaintAgainstAtty.asp
HB 1309 was passed in 2016 and specifically states that indigent defendents must have an attorney available at the first appearance before a judge in a municipal court.
Unless Grand Junction got some kind of waiver, I don’t see that what Eret is doing is lawful. Did no one notice this? I’m sure lawsuits will abound and guess who pays.
I’d still love to get a look at Saver’s letter and how he justifies this. Doesn’t he know, not to f**k with the ACLU?
It would have been nice to get a transcript of the letter Saver wrote to the ACLU in defense of Eret.
I read a Harvard Law Review article about municipal courts and it said, in essence, that they are notoriously sketchy…to the point that judges don’t even need to be lawyers. Defense attorneys are often not “on call”.
I’d imagine that Saver points out that defendents are always offered an attorney but that if they want one, it may take a few days and that may mean more jail time.
If Eret can prove she offered counsel, then she’s probably off the hook.
I had no idea these courts were run this way and that they get so little scrutiny.
Is Eret an employee of either or both the city and school district? I suspect that both gigs are contracting positions. Ask if either the city or the district pays for her payroll taxes and health insurance.
Eret long ago worked in the DAs office so it wouldn’t be surprising if that early career employment formed what passes for her legal thinking.
She shouldn’t be on the public dime at all. I hope the MVEA has made public records requests for her employment/contract documents at the city and school board. They’re public record. I hope they’ve asked the state attorney general and attorney regulations council to investigate.
This smells to high heaven.
She’s an employee of both as of 10/26/2024 listed on the city webpage here: https://www.gjcity.org/318/Municipal-Court
And on the school district page here:
https://www.d51schools.org/superintendent-s-office/senior-leadership-team
Neither of these cites proves she’s an employee. Who pays her payroll taxes? Who pays her health insurance? What does her contract say?
Being listed on a website doesn’t prove anything.
SMH. You really believe that each of these entities would have anything to do with this person? LOL
This, if true, is atrocious. Ehret and Shaver probably should be fired, but will anyone investigate? I expect the ACLU will take some appeals from the convictions, get them overturned and collect some money from the city. The bond issue to fix schools maybe defeated by this and it should not be, but maybe it is time to send a message to the school board—next year they may get better interest rates.
I wonder what Judge Eret looks like when it’s NOT Halloween.
Bill, leave the ad hominem nonsense to the Badhats of the world. Her sins transcend her atrocious makeup and Clifton clothing choices.
That said, I wonder if district personnel has been railroaded the way the people in her courtroom have been railroaded. And: what was Jen Marsh’s role in that? And: does this mean that mystery letter written by a D51 employee was actually true?
District personnel and students have most definitely been railroaded and it continues to happen.
Very interesting…you don’t endorse ad hominums, but you don’t mind making fun of a person’s atrocious make-up and the town of Clifton.
In my defense, I never cast the first ad hominum.
And they say conservatives don’t understand humor….
The City Attorney is the prosecutor in the municipal court. Why is the prosecutor responding so forcefully to the ACLU’s allegations? Could the judge possibly be considered biased towards the prosecution in any future matters to come before her?
That’s an interesting point.
Of course, the same could be said of the district attorney and the judges who work in that court, but at least there, there is an arm’s length relationship because those judges are appointed. I wonder if there is ever a case where a district attorney has defended a judge’s actions.
It’s hard to believe that they don’t all know each other and have a fairly good idea
of what the outcome will be.
I know this is a thorny subject, but having watched the Peters’ trial, I believe the judge was incredibly biased towards the prosecution. And if I had any doubts…his speechifying during the penalty phase, did away with them.
But this is the system we have and in some sense have agreed to.
He wasn’t biased towards the prosecution. The defense simply refused to stay within the constraints they agreed to at the start. They weren’t trying to raise doubt that she was guilty, they were trying to justify what she did. The case wasn’t about the “conspiracy between Dominion and the Colorado Secretary of State”. It was about the actions Peters took. The defense just couldn’t stay within those boundaries.
He gave Peters every consideration possible, and in the end, she was defiant and hilariously self-pitying.
She needed someone to give her a good talking to, and he did it.
Sorry it hurt your feelings; I think you can send her some money for Commissary.
LOL. You may have watched that trial, but through the fog of dementia apparently couldn’t follow along…let alone keep track of the laundry list of crimes she dead-to-rights was proven to have committed and even admitted complete awareness of via text message. So if that’s the “bias”, you seem to be clueless asserting, then so much for facts ever swaying such a snowflakes’ recalcitrant feelings! Then after all that, lest we not also forget your laughable Legal Eagle prognostication of a mistrial. Ohh and those laughable mental gymnastics after conviction that Tina Peters was somehow a whistleblower as well; which would be like an arsonist crying about wrongful prosecution for burning down their own house.
I think we can all agree, this really is how “the system” works…
Not how told by an Idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing (that’s Shakespeare, stupid).
They’ve known about this the whole time – her LinkedIn has had both jobs active this whole time. https://www.linkedin.com/in/tammy-eret-0b081462 The district is complicit – and the case of the father listed here isn’t the only one. You can Google and see more. Probably more to come since it’s obvious there is no regard for running over marginalized people. I don’t believe for one second this is news to D51 administration. It fits the M.O.
This goes to my comment on extending the D 51
bond. Who is actually watching the money and how it’s spent? $200,000 for a part-time lawyer?
D51 is probably a pretty small district as school districts go, but it took the Colorado ACLU to uncover this misuse of public funds.
No one is paying attention, largely because it’s ‘other people’s money’. They assure us that there will be a strenuous audit of the new bond $$$, and we should believe them.
So now they will go through the usual investigations and foot dragging. Who knows? this gal might end up with a hefty pay-out just to go away.
And everything will return to normal with no one taking responsibility. Meanwhile,
D 51 will take out another loan, on the taxpayers’ dime, so they can get the roofs fixed.
And good on the teachers’ union for stepping up and calling out the malfeasance.
It looks like they intend to stay on this until it’s settled.
Is there anything more stupid and pointless than posting a follow-up comment your own incoherent rambling of rhetorical questions? Talk about a weird troll desperate to have the last word with…
uhhh…
…themself?