Lisa Rickerd Mills (Photo: Facebook)
Lisa Mills is a behavioral health strategies manager for Mesa County’s Department of Health and Human Services and by all indications seems to be a key figure in the County’s recent ongoing, unhinged efforts to take down Dr. Jeff Kuhr as longtime Director of the Mesa County Public Health Department (MCPHD).
Jeff Kuhr won plaudits for helping Mesa County get through the Covid-19 pandemic.
If Mesa County Commissioner Janet Rowland gets her way, the new, temporary members recently intstalled on the Mesa County Board of Public Health (BOPH) will do the Commissioners’ bidding and fire longtime Mesa County Health Department Director Dr. Jeff Kuhr, even though there is insufficient evidence of any financial wrongdoing by Kuhr and even though a large majority of the local public thinks the county commissioners are engaging in a blatant overreach of their authority.
Results of Daily Sentinel survey about the County Commissioners’ multi-pronged attacks on the Board of Public Health and Jeff Kuhr, as of 6/3/2023
The BOPH is scheduled to meet this Monday, June 5, at 1:00 p.m. at the Workforce Center in Business Center D. Item #9 on their agenda is to “Consider appointment of interim director” of the Health Department.
This portends the firing Jeff Kuhr after 12 years of public service as an effective Director of the Mesa County Public Health Department and a person who won Citizen of the Year in 2021 for helping get our community through the pandemic, and all for no substantiated reason.
Firing Kuhr will likely cost taxpayers even more — in the hundreds of thousands of dollars more than this fight has already cost — in severance money that will be paid to Kuhr as well as for the County to fight threatened lawsuit. Kuhr has retained Tim Foster as his attorney and has said if he is fired he will likely sue the county for defamation of character, harassment and hostile workplace, at a minimum.
The Monday, June 5 meeting is open to the public. It will be at the Workforce Center at located at 519 29 1/2 Road, on the north side of the Health and Human Services building, which is on the corner of North and 29 1/2. To get to Business Center D, it would be best to enter on the north side of the Workforce Center. However, there are people who will guide folks to the room from the south entrance as well.
The County Commissioners spent $49,000 of taxpayer money on a financial audit of Kuhr that showed the Health Department has failed to follow the County’s procurement procedures to the letter. They also found Kuhr spent $219 in government funds on alcohol at a team-building dinner held for his employees as the pandemic was resolving. Buying alcohol with government funds is not allowed. Kuhr admitted the error and has long since paid back the $219. After these items were discovered, on May 12 the Commissioners and BOPH agreed in writing to a set of measures that would assure procurements by the Health Department would follow County policy more closely in the future, but the commissioners have refused to give that agreement a chance and resumed working to push Kuhr out.
Janet Rowland probably did the most damage to efforts to control Covid-19 through her campaign in 2020, where she denigrated masking and embraced Q-Anon conspiracy theories about Covid-19.
Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, who investigated the Commissioners’ claims of financial wrongdoing by Kuhr, announced on May 27th that he found insufficient evidence of any financial wrongdoing by Kuhr, and had officially closed the case against him.
Rowland got herself appointed as the 5th member of the BOPH, as a way to put even more pressure on the BOPH to fire Kuhr.
Four former members of the BOPH — Will Hays, Errol Snider, Gretchen Gore and Deborah Monaghan — all resigned on May 24, 2023 en masse to protest the Commissioners’ threat to fire them if they refused to fire Kuhr — a move that would likely have been illegal under Colorado law. They all believed there was insufficient evidence to fire Kuhr.
We can only speculate, but after taking office in 2021, Rowland announced in an article in the Daily Sentinel that she was going to populate her “cabinet” with people who agree with her personal ideology. Rowland campaigned for office in 2020 in large part by showcasing her antipathy towards public health. During her campaign, and before Covid vaccines were available, Rowland railed against Covid-19 precautions like masking and social distancing, and spread disinformation about Covid-19 on her social media accounts that was linked to QAnon.
Janet Rowland played down the death rate from Covid-19 during her 2020 campaign for Commissioner, without considering the crushing effects of the virus on overrun medical systems, the suffering and expense to society of long-haul Covid survivors, or the suffering and devastating losses to family members left behind after their loved ones died from Covid. As of April 26, 2023, Covid has killed more than 1.1 million Americans.
Rowland’s Facebook posts claimed Covid-19 was no more deadly than the flu. She agitated against the temporary shutdown of non-essential businesses, one of the only tools available at the time to limit the spread of what then was a highly communicable and deadly virus. Rowland also promoted Alex Jones’ “InfoWars” conspiracy theory that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control was intentionally inflating the number of Covid deaths, claiming hospitals got more funding if people died of Covid.
Now Rowland is dead-set on taking over the Mesa County Public Health Department in order to install someone as Director who thinks like she does. Her previous terms as county commissioner were also marked by a high churn in department heads. During Janet Rowland’s previous time as county commissioner (2005-2015), the county had three different administrators and four different DHS directors.
The Monday, June 5 BOPH meeting is open to the public. The Workforce Center is at 519 29 1/2 Road, on the north side of the Health and Human Services building, which is on the corner of North and 29 1/2. To get to that conference room it would be best to enter on the north side of the Workforce Center. However, people will guide folks to the room from the south entrance as well. Here’s the agenda:
Item #9 on the agenda represents the firing of Jeff Kuhr. To protest it, show up at the meeting and tell the new BOPH members you oppose it.
For all her railing against the debt ceiling bill, Colorado’s 3rd District House Representative Lauren Boebert missed voting on the bill entirely on Wednesday night. The vote passed by an overwhelmingly bipartisan margin of 314-117. The Senate passed the bill this morning by a vote of 63-36. The bill had to pass before Monday to avoid a potentially catastrophic, historic federal government default on paying debts the nation has already incurred.
Boebert had vowed to vote “no” on the bill, saying “Our base didn’t volunteer, door knock and fight so hard to get us the majority for this kind of compromise deal with Joe Biden. Our voters deserve better than this. We work for them. You can count me as a NO on this deal. We can do better.”
The Board of Mesa County Commissioners (BOCC) have been in full attack mode against Mesa County Public Health Department Director Dr. Jeff Kuhr for months. All their efforts to remove him have been shown to be without foundation. (L-R: Bobbie Daniel, Cody Davis and Janet Rowland). Photo: Mesa County
This editorial explains what’s been going on with the Commissioners’ months-long, defamatory attack on Mesa County Public Health Director Jeff Kuhr.
“Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”
— Joseph Welch, special counsel for the U.S. Army, to Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy during hearings in 1954 on whether communism infiltrated the U.S. armed forces.
Mesa County commissioners are in the midst of a relentless campaign to remove Dr. Jeff Kuhr from his position as executive director of Mesa County Public Health.
They’ve tried every trick in the book, some a little more unseemly than others, but none as low as the character assassination they’ve planted in the public record that unfairly swipes at Kuhr’s reputation without giving him an opportunity to defend himself.
Commissioners are acting much like the disgraced Sen. McCarthy, whose role in the Army-McCarthy hearings was described as “judge, jury, prosecutor, castigator, and press agent, all in one,” by Harvard law dean Ervin Griswold.
Colorado House Rep. Lauren Boebert’s teenage son called 911 on Sunday, December 11, 2022 to report that his father, Jayson Boebert, was “throwing me across the house.” The son sounded hysterical, and was sobbing and breathless at the beginning of the call.
“He just started yelling at me and he started throwing me,” the teen said. He then added that his dad had told him to leave the property and yelled at him to get away.
The teen added, “He just does this to me so much.”
Shortly after that, the teen made a second 911 call in which he essentially recanted his story of abuse. Lauren Boebert can be heard talking in the background of the second call, in which the boy explains that he and his dad were starting to yell and and “he didn’t really get physical with me. It was just like, I was just overwhelmed.”
Lauren Boebert, embarrassing Mesa County by shouting rudely at President Biden during the State of the Union address, while Biden was discussing his deceased son, who contracted brain cancer after being exposed to toxic burn pits in the military
Updated 5/17/23 to add affidavit of process server.
Colorado House Rep Lauren Boebert filed to divorce her husband of almost two decades, Jayson, on May 11, 2023.
Boebert had long championed conservative family values and claims to be a Christian. She has claimed we are living in the “end times” and hinted that Jesus could have prevented his crucifixion if only he had owned an AR-15 rifle.
While citing no specific cause beyond irreconcilable differences, in a statement emailed to the Denver Gazette, Beobert said “I’ve always been faithful in my marriage.”
The Daily Beast describes Jayson as being “furious” upon getting served with the divorce papers. According to The Daily Beast, which obtained the affidavit of service of the papers, Jayson was cleaning a gun and drinking a beer at the time he was served, and was caught off guard by the development. According to the Daily Beast, the affidavit of service says, “He chased away a process server with an expletive-laden tirade and let his dogs loose when he was served with the divorce papers.”
The Colorado Sun reports that Boebert’s divorce petition is 46 pages long and was filed in Mesa County Court on May 11. The Court filing says the couple’s separation started on April 25, 2023.
Affidavit of service of divorce papers against Jayson, by the process server.
Janet Rowland probably did the most damage to current vaccination efforts through her campaign last year where she denigrated masking and embraced Q-Anon conspiracy theories about Covid-19.
Updated 5/6/23 to reflect support for the REOPEN movement by the violent, seditious hate group The Proud Boys, anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists, and the homophobic comments Rowland made on a statewide political TV show in 2006.
In a move akin to appointing an arsonist as fire chief, Mesa County Commissioners Cody Davis and Bobbie Daniel appointed Commissioner Janet Rowland to the Mesa County Board of Public Health yesterday, Tuesday, April 25.
Rowland has been an outspoken enemy of public health for years.
She fought Covid-19 precautions before vaccines were available and disseminated disinformation about the virus that was linked to QAnon. Her social media posts promoted the notion that Covid-19 was no more deadly than the flu. She said things on social media about the virus that contradicted public health messages instructing people in how to stay safe and reduce spread of what was then a largely deadly virus.
Lauren Boebert grinning in her vile T-shirt making fun of an accidental shooting death on a movie set
In the days after the tragic October, 2021 accidental shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins by Alec Baldwin while he was rehearsing a scene with a prop gun on the set of his movie, Rust, Colorado House Rep. Lauren Boebert relentlessly spewed vile, unconscionable jokes about the incident at Baldwin’s expense.
Boebert grinned as she wore a creepy T-shirt joking about the tragedy while out shopping.
Rep. Lauren Boebert’s eldest son, Tyler, who impregnated his girlfriend at age 17. His mother praised the situation. The baby is due this month. Tyler caused a rollover car crash in his father’s 2021 Ford Expedition on 9/17/22 that left his passenger with serious injuries. (Photo: Instagram)
Westword, Newsweek, the U.K. Independent, Daily Mail and other news outlets are reporting that Colorado House Rep. Lauren Boebert’s eldest son, Tyler, caused a serious car crash on September 17, 2022 that gave his passenger life-changing injuries, and the injured passenger is saying since then Rep. Boebert has been covering up the incident and minimizing the severity of his injuries.
Tyler Boebert, 18, was driving his father’s black Ford Expedition SUV at 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday night on Garfield County Road 100, going to a party with a friend, Noble D’Amato, 19, when he failed to negotiate a curve and flipped the vehicle 180 degrees. It landed on its roof in Cattle Creek, leaving the driver and passenger upside down. D’Amato was taken to the hospital with concussions and a severely lacerated hand, an injury D’Amato says has kept him from being able to hold a torch for welding, and forced him to change vocations. He is now a personal caregiver. D’Amato says the injury will probably affect him for the rest of his life.
Cory Anderson (center) helped Tina Peters (L) set up a cell phone under Tina’s alias, “Tammy Bailey,” the person Tina told police was the actual owner of her IPad. The woman on the right is Cory Anderson’s wife, Jacqueline Anderson, who is the former First Vice Chair of the Mesa County Republican Party. (Photo: YouTube)
New information was revealed about “Tammy Bailey” during Tina Peters’ obstruction trial, which just concluded yesterday afternoon.
Wondering what’s next on Tina Peters’ Law & Order docket?
Well, you won’t have to wait too long for the next episode.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, 2/28, at 3:00 p.m. Tina has a one-hour, in-person hearing in Courtroom 2 of the Mesa County Justice Center about her upcoming obstruction trial, Case No. C392022M364. That’s the case about her using an IPad to record a Court proceeding in violation of Court rules and kicking a cop in the bagel shop.
Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters
Tina’s jury trial on obstruction charges starts the next morning, Wednesday, March 1 at 8:30 a.m. in Courtroom 2. That’s Judge Bruce Raaum’s Courtroom. You should be able to access the 2/28 hearing and the 3/1 trial online via the Court’s WebEx system via this link to Judge Raaum’s Courtroom. Her obstruction trial is scheduled over two days, and should continue on Thursday, March 3 starting at 8:30 a.m.
“Support America”: Tina Peters trying to get someone to abet her parking illegally at the state Capitol in Denver. (Photo: Taylor Corpier via Facebook)
Heidi Hess was at the state Capitol for lobby day February 13 when she was approached in a parking area by none other than former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who tried to con Hess out of her parking pass.
Making the encounter even more ironic was the fact that Hess had been Mesa County’s registered elector who served as the plaintiff in Secretary of State (SOS) Jena Griswold’s 2021 lawsuit to block Peters from administering elections in 2021. That August, 2021 lawsuit asked the Court to remove Peters as the County’s Designated Election Official and install Wayne Williams and Sheila Reiner in that capacity instead.
The Court granted Griswold’s request.
So Peters had previously faced Hess in Court when she had testified against Peters in that case in 2021. Peters lost, and never again ran an election.
CMU President John Marshall poses, smiling, with Lauren Boebert, who helped spread lies about the election and supported the January 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol on Twitter
Colorado Mesa University President John Marshall attended President Biden’s 2023 State of the Union speech in Washington, D.C. on February 7 at the invitation of far right wing extremist House Rep. Lauren Boebert, who spread lies about the 2020 election and supported the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
This article was authored by Erik Maulbetsch and originally appeared 2/2/23 in the Colorado Times Recorder.
Tina Peters’ mugshot from her arrest on 3/9/2022
Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters took her conspiracy promotion to a new level this week when she implied that law enforcement murdered two family members of her former staff members in order to compel them to testify against her.
Appearing on Joe Oltmann’s far-right podcast, Peters falsely stated that the brothers of her former deputy Belinda Knisley and staffer Sandra Brown were both killed in separate unsolved hit-and-run accidents prior to the Mesa District Attorney offering them plea deals in exchange for their testimony.
Colorado House Rep. Lauren Boebert’s joke portraying her district as a redneck hillbilly paradise drew embarrassment to western Colorado nationally on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert in Colbert’s monologue on February 2, 2023. The Late Show is broadcast nationally.
Tina’s new crowdfunding campaign on GiveSendGo, which has become a favorite fundraising site for far-right extremist groups like QAnon, the Proud Boys and anti-vaccine groups, which have been banned from GoFund Me.
Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters is at it again, begging people to send her money while she awaits trials in March on obstruction charges (for recording in a courtroom and kicking a cop) and on multiple felony charges related to her election tampering.
Now Tina is using a free Christian crowdfunding website called GiveSendGo.com, that was originally created with the idea of helping religious people raise money for missions. GiveSendGo’s website says the “reason we started GiveSendGo” was “to share the Hope of Jesus through crowdfunding with everyone who comes to our platform.”
Get out the popcorn!
Tina Peters’ jury trial on charges of obstructing a police officer and government operations and kicking a cop (Case No. C392022M364) is coming up on January 25-26, 2023. The trial will start at 8:30 a.m. each day at the Mesa County Justice Center in Courtroom 2, before Judge Bruce Raaum.
People may be able to watch the trial from home using the WebEx video conferencing link to the judge’s courtroom. Here’s how:
Longtime Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce President Diane Schwenke
The former longtime CEO of the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce, Diane Schwenke, has announced she will be running for the at-large seat on Grand Junction City Council in 2023.
Yes, THAT Diane Schwenke.
The one who endorsed convicted felony embezzler Steve King for state Senate in 2012.
The one who endorsed Ray Scott as a replacement for convicted felon Steve King. In 2018, Scott double-billed both his legislative and campaign expense accounts for over $1,000 in Uber rides, effectively doubling his personal reimbursements. He was also sued by the ACLU for blocking constituents from his official social media accounts, costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.
The same Diane Schwenke who endorsed Laura Bradford for Colorado House of Representatives in 2012. Bradford was pulled over by Denver police for driving under the influence of alcohol during her first and only term in the House. She quit after that term.
The same Diane Schwenke who endorsed Rose Pugliese for County Commissioner. Pugliese worked to kill the Riverfront Trail System by gutting all funding for it, circulated a petition to force D-51 teachers to stop teaching kids about climate change, and also stumped for the disastrous Tina Peters to be elected County Clerk.
