Lisa Rickerd Mills, former director of Mesa County Behavioral Health (Photo: Facebook)
Sources inside Mesa County say the County’s Director of Behavioral Health, Lisa Mills, was “voluntold” to resign on March 11.
Mills played a key role in convincing former Mesa County Commissioner Janet Rowland to push Dr. Jeff Kuhr out of his long time position as Director of the Mesa County Public Health Department in 2023. Kuhr had been director of the health department for 12 years, had assured the Public Health Department was well funded and efficient, and won accolades for helping the County successfully get through the pandemic.
About a week and a half ago several sources contacted AnneLandmanBlog saying Mills had “left the building” and been put on administrative leave. At that time, an inquiry to the County revealed she was currently still employed by the County, but had no County email address or office phone number, which seemed to verify claims she was on administrative leave.
Now it appears Mills is permanently out.
A former employee of the County reported that 3-4 employees who had worked under Mills in the Behavioral Health department had all quit during Mills’ tenure. One had been contacted by an investigator named Christina Harney with the law firm of Bechtel & Santo, who was investigating Lisa Mills on behalf the County. At least one former Behavioral Health department employee under Mills had been put on an extensive paid administrative leave at great cost to County taxpayers while Mills was being investigated by the law firm. An open records request to the County for invoices from Bechtel & Santo related to investigations into Lisa Mills showed the County had received and paid five invoices between July and December, 2023 for investigations into Mills totaling $13,957.92 in taxpayer funds.
Mills is a Licensed Social Worker (LSW) with the State of Colorado. Public records show that in 2019 the State Board of Social Workers received a complaint about her work that, after an investigation, resulted in Mills being sanctioned by the state Board of Social Work Examiners. The Board ruled that Mills had “failed to conduct and document an adequate suicide risk assessment of a patient” and her “discharge plans were inadequate” while she was working at the VA Hospital in Grand Junction.
Despite this, the County hired Mills to head a new Behavioral Health Department created while her friend, Commissioner Rowland, was in office. Mills had depended on Rowland, a longtime county commissioner, to protect her and assure she kept her in job with the County. But after the Behavioral Health department began continuously shedding employees, after voters rejected Rowland’s re-election bid in the 2024 primary election, and after multiple costly investigations into Mills, with Rowland gone, it became easier for County administration to push her out.
