Editorial
An Open Invitation to Behavioral Health
This is a public offering to the ranking staff of the Behavioral Health Departments of Modoc County.
Our offer is to come to the table and air your grievances against the Modoc Independent News.
We make this offer in all sincerity because we firmly believe that public agencies, especially those responsible for caretaking the state’s tax dollars, should openly explain their decisions on how that money is spent.
We are referring to an order to discontinue ads in this paper followed by an anonymous grievance from someone in Behavioral Health that there be no further “Prevention Collaborative” ads placed in this newspaper. Why?
The reason for this order, we’ve been told, is because these same unidentified employees of the Behavioral Health are offended by the series we are running on this blog titled “Balancing the County Budget Deficits on the Backs of Children.”
The series is an examination of the original Children and Families Commission, now First 5, and its internal debate over removing state funds from the county treasury -- an issue closely tied to the on-going multi-million dollar misappropriation of the treasury.
We were told, “Because you have targeted people that work for Behavioral Health without ever talking to them, the departments are no longer willing to support the Independent News through any advertising.”
An interesting accusation, wouldn’t you agree, considering the series is based on ten-year-old documents? Even so, our offer still stands.
So, how does this order effect the general public and what does it have to do with the spending of state tax dollars?
Our answer is, and please prove us wrong, that someone in the Behavioral Health is attempting to use state money to leverage the editorial content of this blog and its sister publication the Modoc Independent News.
We repeat, please prove us wrong by coming to the table and openly discuss your complaints against this newspaper. This is a standing invitation.
-- Ray A. March
20 comments:
Isn't this a department run by Chester's mother-in-law? Didn't they just buy a $32,000.00 car?
They've violated every other law and gotten away with it. Why not use public funds to thwart freedom of the press?
They will never sit down and talk openly for the same reasons that keep other county officials from openly discussing their actions:
Fear of accountability.
Even ten years after these facts are coming home to roost, these county folks are continuing the same tactics to dissuade public involvement and squash information that is public:
1) Limit access and ridicule those who disagree (i.e., Sheriff, Auditor, Tea Party folks)
2) Take away business (or fire you or not hire you) as a punitive measure if your ideas do not exactly match their agenda (i.e. The Modoc Independent News and countless former and current Modoc residents)
In the end they are cowards.
The fact that they that are being paid by the taxpayers and yet misuse their positions as public advocates, and instead use those tax dollars as punishment and extortion is inexcusable.
Welcome to Modoc, Ray & Barb. Please keep up the good work.
Is there anybody in the TEA party other than Doug?
12:51 PM, Yes, Mr. Knox is not the only member. But what remains unsaid here is that more people than just the Tea Party want an honest accounting of our local affairs, and our current crop of officials is not cutting it.
Not used to real reporting, it seems, no matter how long the real story has been out there. You can sure tell that the Modoc Record has coddled this public thuggery for years. If they had been asking these questions on the public's behalf all along we might not be in the fix we're in now. Just sayin'.
Pavlovian conditioning of the public media. How can these public health officials condone their own behavior?
Didn’t their years of college tell them that withholding public information is against the public interest? How about the novel idea that, from a behavioral standpoint, you get better results with openness and honesty, rather than denial and self-delusion?
Or is this just another attempt at heavy-handed county censorship designed to silence anyone that tells the truth?
Our behavioral health department is showing itself to be dysfunctional by this conduct.
For god sake Karen, if anything printed here is not factual, sue the Independent News. I’d support spending my taxes on keeping things honest and above board, but this constant suppression of public information is against everything America stands for.
Karen Stockton, Director of the Behavioral Health department, makes over $100,000 dollars per year before taxpayer provided health care benefits are even considered.
Last time I checked, the taxpayers in Modoc were not paying this much money to have Mrs. Stockton decide what we taxpayers should see or hear, or to decide in which publication(s) that we taxpayers should get our public health information from.
The health dept. has had ads in the Independent News for years. The question is: What has changed?
This appears to be nothing but trying to control the public’s right to know using censorship, pure and simple, and the fact that someone with a PhD. is OK with this is not OK with me.
“Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.”
~ Potter Stewart
So now our county leaders must aprove of political editorials as a condition of doing business with a newspaper. With Cantrall at the helm this should be no surprise. All department heads are following the example set by the BOS chairperson to retaliate against any oposition. This is the county government that threatons to "blow his head off" and "blow cigarette smoke in his face until he dies" as a way of dealing with dissent.
I believe our behavioral health department need some improvement to its behavior.
For quite some time, bloggers here on the Modoc Independent News have been able to express legitimate and reasonable reviews of how they felt about the job that the Modoc Record has done reporting on public officials, as well as commenting on news that the Modoc Record may have under-reported, much of which, such as the First 5 fiasco, has since come to the public’s attention only through the efforts of the Modoc Independent News.
Of late, however, this ability to assess and critique the Modoc Records reporting is being censored by the Modoc Independent News editors.
Given that the track record on this subject is completely verifiable, since the Modoc County Record has archives of its reporting going back almost 20 years, it begs the question:
If the statements on this blog about the Modoc Record are either an opinion, or, if they cannot be proven to be untrue and thus injurious to the Modoc Record, then:
Modoc Independent News - Why the self-censorship?
If it’s a legitimate concern over libel, even if brought against the Modoc Independent News by the Modoc Record itself, then let the Record ask for a retraction publicly, and provide the disputed information for review – and only then set the record straight.
Given that newspaper editors are notoriously thick-skinned, and that none of the statements seen thus far on this blog regarding the Modoc Records coverage have been anything other than factual or expressed as an opinion; and that none of the comments are untrue and thus injurious, one would hope that the Modoc Independent News would continue to be just that – independent enough to withstand both the bullying by county thugs who would take away their business for speaking the truth, as well as autonomous enough to continue providing the news coverage that has not been provided by the other newspapers in our area.
From what this long time reader of both the Modoc Record and The Modoc Independent News has seen thus far, the journalistic record of each publication must be required to withstand public scrutiny – and it is we, their readers, who must hold them both accountable.
To 6:38 PM, the record of the Modoc County Record speaks for itself, especially since Ray and Barb have been running this expose' (with publicly available information, no less) about how the First 5 commissioners and the county officials commandeered the cash for kids program only to use those funds illegally to prop up the floundering Modoc County Treasury.
The Modoc Record didn't report on this when it happened right under their noses 10 years ago - and they haven't really said a peep about the who, what, why of the Modoc Fiscal Crisis since it has began.
3 cheers for the Modoc Independent News! Wish you folks were around here years ago!
Perhaps health services should quit buying cars, SUV's, travel trailers and large amounts of advertising?
They are going to need a bigger parking lot soon if they keep buying vehicles.
Perhaps the money could be be better spent providing actual services to the residents of the count
Modoc County spends enormous sums on advertising. Look in the Modoc Record sometime and count up how many column inches are paid for by that county. Could the revenue be a reward for being quiet all these years?
This latest action by a county administrator to control the free flow of information is a sign of the county corruption spreading like a cancer in our county. Every time this type of thing happens more people become afraid to speak up. These people are supposed to work for us, not against the public.
With Cantrall in charge we can expect more of this type of control of public information for the benefit of overpaid county administrators like Chester's mother-in-law. The only thing that will change the problem is a large number of citizens filling the room at BOS meetings and expressing themselves at several meetings. One meeting won't work. We started good at the special meeting a couple weeks ago, let's keep it going. These people we have elected are very thick skinnned and arogant and they realy think they know best so it won't be easy.
Hey Supervisor Byrne. You have responded to posts here to defend past BOS actions. How about defending the latest actions of Chester's mother-in-law to control the press and the terrible way the BOS chairman was replaced with a hatchet job nearly a kangaroo court and Cantrall's ongoing threats of violence toward citizens. To say nothing here or at BOS meetings is to say you agree with the way things are done including the use of threats. I put my name on my statement, let's see your name on a statement saying I am wrong.
Karen and her ill-mannered statement at a previous BOS meeting, where she personally attacked County Sheriff Poindexter & County Auditor Locken is coming back to haunt her.
At that meeting, Ms. Stockton devoted the opening remarks of her department head report to scold the Sheriff and the Auditor for speaking out in public, saying to them, "If you feel victimized there must be a reason for it," or words to that effect.
Now that Stockton's department has been under scrutiny, albeit ten years prior to the unprofessional comments she made at this BOS meeting, it seems that "victim-hood" is now on the other foot.
But in this case, unlike when the Sheriff and the Auditor presented themselves with professionalism as they spoke publicly about their concerns on behalf of the taxpayers of Modoc County, Ms. Stockton has taken the cowards way out – using the taxpayers’ dollars to do the talking for her, while she hides safely behind the upper county management that support her.
What Ms. Stockton really needs is a refresher course on the behavioral health aspects of “secondary victimization,” because this is exactly the victimizing behavior that she - a highly paid behavioral health professional - doled out onto two public servants who, by speaking out at a public meeting, were doing nothing other than following their conscience and the mandates of their elected position.
With regards to the Sheriff and Auditor, the hallmarks of secondary victimization include being ignored or shunned by your peers and other elected or hired public officials; being purposefully uninformed by your peers and other elected or hired public officials about updates in matters that affect your department; and, if left unchecked, this victimizing behavior continues to such an extent that another department head (Stockton) feels comfortable enough to marginalize your actions at a public meeting, all for their own personal gratification.
This is all unacceptable behavior on any playground in the county, but then again, Stockton’s behavior sounds an awful lot like the conduct of most of the BOS and a lot of the hired county staff.
One has to wonder: where do they all get it from?
Since when is it the responsibility of the public health agency to support local newspapers?
The health departments job is to get factual information out to the greatest number of taxpayers for the least amount of money.
If there is a cost analysis stating that the health dept. gets more coverage to more taxpayers using only the Modoc Record to place its public health advertisements, that is one thing.
But given this county's lack of doing any type of homework or cost-comparison when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars, that hardly seems the case in this instance.
Here is where the problem of nepotism gets in the way. If she were another Department Head, the level of accountability would be entirely different. However, because the CAO is her son-in-law, it is doubtful that there will be a personnel action taken.
I'm sure there are a certain amount of funds that are given to Health Services for advertising and outreach. The media is the best avenue to ensure that those messages about programs, flu shots, etc., get out to the public. Choosing to pull the advertisement from one of two publications within the County now hinders the process of spreading the word about those funded programs that they have to offer.
Possibly a little research should be done as to where the funding comes from for advertising, what they budgeted for advertising, and the assurances that were made that they would advertise need to be checked into. Though they probably aren't obligated to fund both media sources, that they pulled advertising from one because they disagreed with March's printing documented facts about their employee's may have a negative impact on their current funding streams.
It is doubtful that the County powers that be will care, however someone further up the chain, that monitors their programs, i.e., State and Federal agencies, might be interested. Those same agencies may be interested in their procurement of those vehicles. If they didn't follow County Policy, the State might be interested. Generally sole source purchases can be made if it is less than 100K, however if audited they will be asked for the County procurement policy, and will be asked to provide the documentation that supports the written policy. Did they in fact write specs for a bid process, advertise those specs and ask for bids, as well as send those specs out to vendors to include our local vendor? Did the BOS review those bids, then award based on the received bids? The procurement policy states that the procurement officer is the CAO, and the Assistants are the Department Heads. This is a little dirty in that the Procurement Officer and the Assistant Procurement Officer are related. Therefore the BOS would need to be the checks and balances to ensure that the process was followed precisely with all documentation in order. The BOS approved it based upon the recommendation of the CAO, though it wasn't clear whether they went out for written bids. They did not advertise though, which would be in direct conflict with the policy, and they (Chester Robertson & Karen Stockton) could be held personally liable for those vehicles and could be asked to pay the County back for those purchases.
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