Friday, October 3, 2014

[Imperial County] Heffernan Memorial Healthcare District approves rebuttal to Imperial Country grand jury findings


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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