Non-Disclosure!

Happy Monday!! Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Today, we are jumping right on in.

We are going back to the BOCC meeting for the VA Clinic approval on March 10th. I received some more public records documents.

If you do not remember, this is the meeting where Commissioner Kinnard answered "No" when the county attorney asked him if he had any ex-parte communication that he needed to disclose.

You can read about that here.

Basically, I had found emails from back in January that showed Kinnard had been having communications regarding the application with the developers and staff. These are supposed to be disclosed per county ordinance. Kinnard is the one that brought the disclosure paperwork to the board when they approved this change.

Remember, these are quasi-judicial proceedings and they are not supposed to have any communications about the project with anyone... and if they do, they need to disclose those communications for the record.

The purpose of this is to keep the hearing "fair" to all sides. If a commissioner has a conversation with a developer, citizen, staffer, etc... all sides should know. This way they can address the conversations and dispute what was said if they wanted to.

Hard to do then when its not disclosed as its supposed to. Had someone been there in opposition, this is a slam dunk appeal.

The information I received via public record documents are the call logs for Kinnard's county device. I had asked for 2 months, January and February. Due to the way the billing dates run, they only had January's available. I will get February's shortly, but it appears the conversations only happened in January.

I also asked for personal call logs specific to the phone number for the applicant, but I was told none existed. This means they were only done on his county commissioner phone device.. Good job there.

I found the phone calls I was looking for. The email below shows the phone number for Steven Vanderhye, who is the representative for the project.

I searched Kinnard's phone records for this number and found 5 total calls in January. I blacked out the phone numbers unrelated to this issue. The first call was January 21st. Followed by the two on January 27th.

Important to note.. These calls take place BEFORE the teams call meeting was scheduled. Presumably, the calls are to schedule the teams call.

Then come the calls on the day of the teams call.

The blue highlight calls above are calls to/from Steve Howard. The yellow are the two calls to Steve Vanderhye. The Orange is the teams call with the developer team.

That Teams call lasted 15 minutes. Immediately following the Teams call with the developers, he calls a staffer. I have no idea what they discussed. Could have been VA.. Could have been something else or could have went to voicemail. I am keeping it off for now, but if that call were regarding the VA project, that is another disclosure that should have been made. Kinnard cannot speak to staff regarding projects under Quasi-judicial rules.

Then he has 3 calls with Steve Howard. Then another call to the developer at 5:37pm, followed by a call to Howard the next morning.

Following the afternoon calls, Howard sends this email to Vanderhye, stating staff will work towards getting a "yes" starting the next day.

The Steve Howard calls align with this email, telling Howard and Eric Landon to call him.

10 or so minutes later, the Howard call takes place.

For the record, I did an email search for Steve Vanderhye's email address. I asked for all emails sent and received by anyone in county government. I wanted to see who else Vanderhye had been in conversations with or who else he may have emailed in the county...

Guess what I found? NOTHING.

No other staffer... no other commissioner... has been in communication with the developer for this project via email, only Kinnard. Remember, email is how the Steve Vanderhye first reached out to Kinnard.

The only two people that I can tell who have been in communication with Vanderhye at that email address were Kinnard and Howard.

Despite a couple of emails (which were also not disclosed, as required)... Despite the teams call for 15 minutes... Despite 5 phone calls with the developer.. and despite subsequent phone calls with Steve Howard... he is going to answer "no" when asked if he had any ex-parte communication? ALL of that is ex-parte communication (Except calls to Howard).

These are the easy rules to follow and it is one he brought to the board himself.

Not a good look.