Sierra board takes flack

Auburn Journal

Trustees make final edits to grand jury response; Klein offers no apology
By: Loryll Nicolaisen, Journal Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 3, 2006 12:04 AM PDT

ROCKLIN - Sierra College trustees got an earful from disapproving staff and residents Tuesday during a board meeting to review and revise a formal response to a Placer County grand jury report.

"This is an academic institution, the foundation of which is truth," said Barbara Fairchild, history department chairwoman. "People get failed at this school for lying, inventing."

Fairchild, like those who spoke before her during a special meeting of the Sierra Joint Community College District board, scolded trustees."

You are in charge of a college," she said. "We expect you to hold near and dear the things that cannot be bought or sold."

Trustees met in special session Tuesday to discuss a drafted response to the Placer County grand jury report. Sierra College instructor Joe Medeiros described the draft response as "lame" and expressed his distaste for new members of the board and board president Jerry Simmons.

"This college desperately needs you gone ... This kind of junk does not belong where honesty, fairness and integrity reigns," he said.

The meeting went on for hours into Tuesday night, and no action to approve the draft or revised draft had been made by the Auburn Journal evening deadline.

The board has until mid-June to submit its formal response to the grand jury report released in March. The report states charges made by Sierra trustee Aaron Klein against then-Sierra Joint Community College President Kevin Ramirez were "utterly without merit" and asked for an apology from Klein for harming Ramirez's career.

Although Ramirez was praised in the draft response, there was no apology given.

In the complaint filed Dec. 20, 2004 against Ramirez, Klein stated that Ramirez violated campaign finance law, using a "money laundering scheme" by accumulating funds from the Sierra College Foundation and directing them on to the Measure E bond campaign.

In the preliminary draft response, prepared by two board members and released less than 24 hours before Tuesday's meeting, trustees and subcommittee members Nancy Palmer and Scott Leslie, said, among other things, that the board wishes the grand jury hadn't waited as long as it did before investigating Klein's complaint."

At this late date, the report is not particularly helpful as it is requiring that the college focus on contentious issues of more than one year ago regarding Sierra College's retired president, instead of spending the same time working to move the college forward," the draft reads.

The draft response also notes that conclusions reached by the grand jury report would have been different had all trustees been interviewed. Trustees who did speak to the grand jury weren't given the opportunity to express opinions or give answers to all elements of the report, "which the board believes led to inaccurate information in the report," the draft reads.

Trustee Leslie said he and Palmer did the best they could, understanding that they were just two trustees drafting something that would represent the board as a whole.

"We did not try to guess how all seven board members would react," he said. "Nancy and I... didn't want Sierra College to be dragged down by this grand jury report."

Palmer said drafting the response was a less-than-desirable task but one that needed to be taken on.Although writing the draft response "has not been easy," Palmer said, " I stand by what we printed."

Trustee David Creek said the draft was "verbose" and that it "seems defensive," and provided copies of a suggested revision. His suggestions included cutting back a number of paragraphs throughout the eight-page draft."

I'm suggesting that the best thing for this college is terse replies and getting on with business," he said.

The Journal's Loryll Nicolaisen can be reached at lorylln@goldcountrymedia.com.