Governor Weighs In On CALL7 Investigation Of Pinnacol
Gov. Bill Ritter: Board Members Had 'Extremely Poor Judgment'Arthur Kane and Tony Kovaleski, CALL7 Investigators
June 17, 2010
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/call7investigators/23939230/detail.htmlDENVER -- Gov. Bill Ritter, in his first television interview about CALL7's expose' of an expensive Pinnacol Assurance golf trip, said board members he appointed showed "extremely poor judgment."
"They should have been far more sensitive to the way people feel about them in this building (the Capitol)," Ritter told CALL7 Investigator Tony Kovaleski. "They showed extremely poor judgment."
Last month, CALL7 investigators traveled to the famed Pebble Beach golf course and found Board President Gary Johnson, then-ethics chair Debra Lovejoy and board member Ryan Hettich golfing, wining and dining at Pinnacol's expense. Ritter reappointed Johnson and Hettich and they were approved by the state Senate just days before the trip.
State Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, headed a committee looking into Pinnacol's business practices last year and called the Pebble Beach trip "ridiculous" and "obscene."
"When you realize that they are stewards of the public money," Carroll said. "This is a quasi-public entity we are talking about here. I think it's ridiculous.
"The board is supposed to be the oversight check and balance," she added. "It is uncomfortable to me that there's a large amount of wining and dining."
Ritter declined to go as far as Carroll, saying he would not talk about the past.
"Knowing what you know now, would you have nominated them?" Kovaleski asked.
"Well, I don't go back and answer hypotheticals," Ritter said. "I've said what I've said. That they showed extremely poor judgment, that they should have thought differently and thought better, and that's my analysis of the situation."
Ritter also declined to characterize the reaction of Pinnacol Chief Operating Officer Ken Ross, who interrupted and threatened Kovaleski while Kovaleski was questioning Johnson on the propriety of taking such a trip.
"You point your finger at me again I'm going to break it. Get it?" Ross said to Kovaleski.
"You are spending a lot of money on a trip and you have board members who are appointed by the governor," Kovaleski asked Ross as he was being held back by fellow Pinnacol employees and surging at Kovaleski. "Please don't push me. Please don't push me."
Ritter said he did not have enough information to discuss Ross' behavior.
"I wasn't there and I'm not going to go there," Ritter said.
Last year, while the legislature was investigating Pinnacol and there was a proposal to take some of the quasi-public agency's surplus, the board passed a $4.3 million golden parachute for the executives. Some of the same executives that took the board members on the luxury golf outing.
Ritter called that move "outlandish."
"That kind of a golden parachute for somebody who functions in any kind of a public sector or quasi-public sector role seems to me to be extreme -- and I mean extreme -- outlandish even," he said.
But Ritter, who determined he could not recall the board members once they were approved by the Senate, would not go so far as to call on the Johnson, Hettich and Lovejoy to resign.
"Should board members voluntarily resign?" Kovaleski asked.
"I've said a lot by saying I think it was extremely bad judgment," Ritter said. "I think they have to determine based upon their own conscience whether or not they should step down, based upon their own sense of fiduciary duty whether they should. I can't force them to do that."
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