Two bricks for Leslie Devaney and the San Diego Union Tribune for hypocrisy and secrecy

I'm concerned that attorney Leslie Devaney's demands for openness at Tri-City Healthcare are actually an attempt to STOP OR SABOTAGE THE FORENSIC AUDIT. Which does the public need more: an effective audit of financial shenanigans, or a long fight at a board meeting at which the final outcome was predetermined since the majority had all the votes they needed no matter who showed up? I think that the shortness of the meeting was merely an effort to protect the psyches of the board members, who apparently don't have much of a taste for being yelled at. I think they need to toughen up and summon up some courage. They're way too afraid of Leslie Devaney and Ray Artiano and the bigshots who hired them. The board needs to do some homework, to make sure it really understands the situation, and then stand up and go to bat for what it believes in. Too many board members across the spectrum of public entities simply do what their lawyers tell them to do.

This blog has awarded a big brick to attorney Leslie Devaney for hypocrisy and secrecy. Since 2001 Leslie Devaney's law firm Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz has been paid $100,000s of tax dollars by Chula Vista Elementary School District to cover up crimes and other violations of law.

Yet Devaney has the temerity to denounce the new Tri-City Healthcare board majority for lack of openness. Why is she doing this? Apparently to stop the board's investigation into possible criminal activity by her clients Art Gonzalez and seven of his fellow administrators.

But it gets worse. At the same time that Devaney is denouncing board members for putting administrators on leave during a forensic audit, she and her partners at Stutz law firm are suing this blogger (Maura Larkins) for defamation, and REFUSING TO PRODUCE DOCUMENTS RELATED TO THE CRIMINAL ACTIONS AT CVESD.

How do I know these documents exist? Because I have over half the pages from the 87-page set of Bate-stamped documents--the ones that were cherry-picked by CVESD because they were less incriminating. The documents were collected by Daniel Shinoff at Chula Vista Elementary School District during the fall of 2001, and Bate-stamped with the number “1” (not “01” or “001”) through 87, inclusive.

In order to make it impossible for Stutz law firm to claim that they couldn't identify the documents, I sent them copies of many of the documents from the set. Still, Stutz says it can't find the documents, and blames a paralegal.

Here's where the story gets humorous: Stutz is suing me for saying that "Daniel Shinoff keeps documents locked up in his office."

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And here's a brick to the San Diego Union Tribune for hypocrisy and secrecy on behalf of Stutz law firm, for publishing tirades against CVESD for transferring the "Castle Park Five" while at the same time keeping secret the $100,000s of tax dollars the district had paid to defend many of those same teachers.

Don Sevrens goes to bat against new Tri-City Hospital board, and once again supports Stutz, Artiano Shinoff & Holtz

It's Leslie Devaney, not Dan Shinoff, this time, but San Diego Union Tribune editor Don Sevrens has once again gone out on a limb for his pals at Stutz law firm.

[Note: Don Sevrens does not make these decisions alone. He got full approval from editor Karin Winner for the cover-up of Stutz law firm's involvement in the Castle Park fiasco discussed below, and I'm sure Winner approved of all the protection the paper has given Stutz law firm over the years.]

Sevrens told a caller today that he will publish corrections to his December 7, 2008 editorial about Monday's Tri-City Healthcare board meeting. Apparently quite a few people called to complain about inaccuracies in his writing.

Here is my response regarding the inaccuracies.

Currently Sevrens is supporting Leslie Devaney, attorney for Tri-City CEO Art Gonzalez. She's the lawyer who helped Laurie Madigan fleece the City of Chula Vista.

But Sevrens and the SDUT seem more strongly connected to Devaney's partner, Dan Shinoff. The San Diego Union-Tribune has never told the full truth about one of Mr. Sevrens' favorite stories, the "Castle Park Five." Mr. Sevrens championed the teachers in story after story. Many letters of support were printed. But Mr. Sevrens never mentioned that the district was paying $100,000s to cover up illegal actions by teachers, with most of that money going to Daniel Shinoff. The SDUT supported the school board candidacy of Felicia Starr, a parent who was deeply involved with the teachers who had initiated illegal actions at the school. Of course, this may have been designed to split the anti-incumbent vote and ensure the election of board member Pamela Smith, who was authorizing the expenditure of taxpayer dollars on the cover-up.

The SDUT and Sevrens got help in the coverup from Linda Rosas Townson, publisher of the Chula Vista Star-News. Townson published the rants of a couple of former PTA presidents from Castle Park School, including Kim Simmons, who was later arrested for embezzling $20,000 from the PTA. The Star-News didn't bother to present the true story, though it had possessed documentation of wrongdoing at the school long before anyone decided to transfer the "Castle Park Five."

Both Sevrens and Star-News reporter Kelley Dupuis pretended that Castle Park teachers were perfectly ordinary teachers and that nothing out of the usual had been going on in the teachers lounge.