Linda Satchwell
Staff Writer
11/4/2009

    
    After months of closed sessions and speculation surrounding John Gullixson’s departure from the Plumas Local Agency Formation Commission, all parties have reached a settlement agreement, announced publicly for the first time at the Portola City Council meeting last Wednesday, Nov. 28.
    Under the agreement, Gullixson receives $35,835.36, representing five months of salary and benefits, and $9,914.31 for accrued vacation leave.
    The settlement converts what started out as a non-renewal of Gullixson’s contract into a voluntary resignation for the purposes of retirement.
    The agreement also requires Gullixson to withdraw a government claim he filed in July alleging he was improperly terminated by Plumas LAFCo.
    Much of the rest of the agreement is given over to promises by all parties not to sue one another.
    All parties also agreed not to talk to the press, issue press releases or otherwise publicize the settlement agreement.
    But even before the agreement was made available to the public, as required by the Brown Act and the Public Records Act, Gullixson had said he was “talking to my attorney about how to react to these guys stepping over the line.”
    He was referring to county supervisors Robert Meacher and Terry Swofford, who represent Plumas County on the LAFCo board, talking to Feather Publishing for its Oct. 14 issue regarding the cost of removing Gullixson.
    While he said Meacher meant well and was just sickened by the waste of money, he had nothing good to say about Swofford: “These guys (LAFCo members Bill Kennedy and John Larrieu, who represent the city of Portola, and Swofford) can inflict ridicule and humiliation and don’t seem to care.”
Gullixson said he was proud of his work as executive officer for LAFCo. “I’ve been involved in government for 20–25 years,” he said. “I looked at myself as a gift—I could make recommendations that would actually help the agencies.”
He felt most of the special districts were mismanaged and, further, they refused to “listen to what they might do to have a better organization.”
One of Swofford’s criticisms was that Gullixson would leave files unfinished for extended periods. To him, this meant Gullixson wasn’t doing his job.
Gullixson had a different explanation for these time delays, though. He said he purposely asked a lot of questions of the special districts. Many times they would drag their feet about getting back to him with answers— “withholding information,” was how Gullixson termed it.
Eventually—after he told them he’d finish the report once he received the data he’d asked for—“it would come.”
“In Plumas County,” he said, “maybe no public agencies are in compliance with the law ... there are some with huge financial irregularities going on.”
Gullixson sees himself as someone who understands complex issues in the special districts like no one else in the county. “I thought the job would last three to four years,” he said. “This county is in poor shape.”
He gave the example of Gold Mountain, “a debacle,” in which only one phase of a three-phase sanitation system was ever completed. Only two leach fields were dug for the entire community, and both of these failed.
There was no oversight or scrutiny he contended. “It was a primer on how not to form a community service district.”
He intended to clean up messes like this one, and there were people in the county who didn’t like that he said. “That’s the way politics works in this county,” he said. “If you want to get rid of somebody, you do it under the table and behind the scenes.”
He maintained LAFCo’s negative grand jury report last year came from a group that was “stacked with special district and city reps who had marching orders to go pound on Gullixson.”
While a number of people in Plumas County were put off by Gullixson’s personality, he saw himself as a highly knowledgeable professional who believed LAFCo filled an essential role in overseeing the direct services provided by special districts to the community.
He felt he had the integrity that some of LAFCo’s commissioners, as well as some Portola and Plumas County decision makers, lacked. “I wouldn’t lower my standards,” he said. “That’s why they hired me.”
Gullixson said he’d planned to retire in summer 2010 at the latest. In fact, he’d suggested extending the lease on his office until that time, because of this plan. He envisioned a 15- to 18-month period of transition, because he knew he had a lot of open files with work in various stages.
He said he tried to approach Swofford to “give him the best approach to the transition I already had in my mind. The worst thing was paid administrative leave,” he added, because the commission “lost all my work on open project files.”
While the retirement agreement stipulates Gullixson “return to Plumas LAFCo all official records in his possession or control,” he maintains these project files were exempt, because “the efforts I make are personal to me.”
He did extensive research, he said, resulting in a 45- to 60-page report complete with budget, analysis and a draft service review. All this work would be wasted if he wasn’t allowed to complete it himself, and the commission would have to start from scratch.
Commissioners ignored his reasoning and put him on administrative leave anyway he said. They had John McMorrow, their chosen interim CEO, take everything out of the office in a two-day period, even though they had to pay for the space at $550 per month for an additional six months.
“I had files open all over the place,” he said. “I knew where everything was, but they wouldn’t be able to figure it out.”
Gullixson is angry that, as he sees it, the LAFCo commissioners didn’t take their job as seriously as he did. Even though they were the Portola and Plumas County representatives on the commission, their first loyalty should have been to LAFCo as an “independent state agency,” he said.
Besides losing all the hard work he did, he said he’s disappointed he set up a complete operation, including forms and templates that will now just go to waste.
Further, Gullixson felt hampered by the limited $100,000 budget that the commissioners would approve. He’d asked for $180,000–$190,000 per year, the amount he felt was necessary to do the work correctly.
Swofford, on the other hand, said Gullixson’s budget was extravagant. The commissioners vetoed it and, according to Gullixson, told him to “get the rest (of the needed funds) from file dollars.”
That meant funding current work from money collected on work that hadn’t yet been done—a bad scheme from the beginning, Gullixson said.
It also meant when Gullixson was placed on administrative leave, there was work paid for that hadn’t been completed and that would have to be started again from scratch he said.
Gullixson also addressed another contentious issue: He served as both CEO and legal counsel to LAFCo. In effect, LAFCo got “a legal mind without payment,” he said.
Without referencing the agreement itself, Gullixson summed up the reason for the retirement agreement: “They tried to interfere with my retiring and my legal benefits.”
Swofford, he said, asked him if he would cooperate with the LAFCo commissioners who wanted him out. “I said, ‘Of course, as long as I’m treated fairly and with dignity.’ Neither occurred.”
Since then, things have continued in the same vein. “Without the ink being dry on the agreement, those guys started blabbing to you (Feather Publishing),” he said, while he didn’t “seek publicity.”
Even so, Gullixson intends to go out with guns blazing. There’s “juicy stuff out there about these districts,” and their financially shady dealings he said. The Almanor area Peninsula Fire Protection District, for example, “fought me doing an MSR (Municipal Service Review) and I think I know why. Chester Public Utility District and fire district have reasons they want to merge, and they’re not good for the public.”
Now, he says, there is a “rubber stamp LAFCo,” with things reverting to the Gold Mountain standard.
Gullixson still has plans to clean up the mess, though. “I’m going to represent the public in actions against LAFCo and the (special) districts. I’m available as a consultant.”
For her part, Sherrie Thrall, chairwoman of the Board of Supervisors, was unapologetic about the county’s handling of the LAFCo situation: “I hate to see the county put so much money out (its half is approximately $76,500, with Portola paying an equal share), but the end result will be worth it,” she said, citing the grand jury’s scathing LAFCo report as evidence.
Thrall, who represents the Lake Almanor area, believes the special districts would never join LAFCo until Gullixson was gone. It will “help tremendously” to have the special districts on board, she said. Not only will it ease the financial burden now shouldered by only two entities—Plumas County and the city of Portola—it will also allow for additional input, thus diminishing the feeling that whichever group (county or city) is in the minority is on the “outs.”
In direct opposition to Gullixson’s view, Thrall said LAFCo needed to change both its management and its structure. In her estimation, it had become “an obstruction to progress.”
On the far other side of the county, Bill Kennedy maintained his cowboy reserve when asked to comment on Robert Meacher’s accusations of collusion and financial irresponsibility in the Gullixson matter.
“Half of the stuff he (Meacher) said was discussed in closed session,” said Kennedy. “I’m sorry that Meacher was so incensed he decided to break the law ... Do I have a different slant? Yeah. Are you going to get it? No.”