September 30, 2014
Imperial Valley Press
By Heric Rubio, Staff Writer
CALEXICO — Members of the Heffernan Memorial Healthcare
District met with their legal counsel here Monday, finalizing the final report
to be presented to City Council members as rebuttal to an Imperial County grand
jury report released earlier this year.
Board members approved the response 5-0 during a special
meeting. HMHD’s report will be finalized and turned into the grand jury today
and presented to Calexico City Council members at the city’s next regular board
meeting.
Among the litany of findings presented in the grand jury
report, HMHD was accused of “the appearance of improprieties of handling
tax-generated money” in the district’s dealings with MegaPark LLC, the
expenditure of approximately 94 percent of HMHD’s budget for the past five
years on “administrative costs,” such as board stipends, staffing expenses,
legal fees and questionable donations.
The report ended with the grand jury
finding “no practical present reason for continuing with the operation of
HMHD.”
HMHD members vehemently denied the grand jury findings
from the the moment the report was released, calling the report
“unprofessional, and in some instances, just plain false,” prompting the board,
along with its legal counsel Eduardo Rivera, to refute the report.
“We’re very surprised at the report and surprised that
they completely distorted facts,” said Eduardo Rivera, HMHD general counsel.
“It’s such a falsehood that we are amazed at the temerity of the report writers
in making these statements.”
Throughout the nearly 2 1/2-hour meeting Monday between
HMHD board and counsel, Rivera walked members through the entire rebuttal
report, which addressed every point made in the original grand jury report,
including findings of a $650-per-month landscaping fee, money being held
in multiple bank accounts for “no purpose other than to cast a shadow of a
doubt on the accounting practices of the board” and donations made to local
sports leagues.
“We went over every single item,” said board member Sylvia
Bernal. “Every item had a response and now we’re just finalizing the report.”
Bernal continued, stating that she felt confident that the
rebuttal would prove that HMHD was innocent of the claims made in the grand
jury’s report.
“I feel really good because we haven’t done anything
wrong,” she said. “The things (the grand jury) put in the report were things
they never asked for.”
Grand jury foreman Roy Caldwell defended the report’s
findings when it was first released in July, stating, “We have the backing of
all their accounting books. It’s 19 of us doing these investigations. It’s not
like it was just one person looking.”
He went on to explain that upon initial investigations,
everything seemed fine, but as the committee delved deeper and spoke to people
with knowledge of the district’s workings, more and more discrepancies began to
appear.
“The thing I did get from everybody I talked to was that
they did not feel these people were criminals,” Caldwell said, “but they did
not feel they have the education to run a board like this. They were just
running with it.”
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