Chief court administrator quits

Move comes after contract canceled for company owned by ex-chief of staff

Colorado’s chief court administrator, the second-highest-ranking administrative official in the state’s Judicial Department, resigned Thursday amid a Denver Post investigation into a $2.5 million contract he awarded this spring to his former chief of staff, whom he earlier disciplined because of concerns about her expense receipts.

Christopher Ryan’s five-paragraph resignation comes a day after he canceled a contract he gave to The Leadership Practice, a Denver business owned by Mindy Masias, the department’s former chief of staff. Masias resigned in March with an agreement that included removing “any disciplinary action(s) and documentation” from her personnel file.

The contract — to provide leadership training to judges and other administrative officials across the department’s 22 judicial districts — was given to her after a one-month public bidding process yielded no responses from across the nation. Masias formed her company in January, just before the contract went public and while she was on a medical leave that began in November.

Chief Justice Nathan Coats informed employees of Ryan’s resignation and named chief operations officer Steven Vasconcellos as interim administrator, “hopefully avoiding any more disruption in the operations (of ) that office or the branch than absolutely necessary.”

He said the high court would begin the process of finding a replacement.

Masias’ resignation agreement, signed by Ryan, contained a provision that all of the vacation and sick time she had used while out on medical leave since November

2018 would be restored and paid to her. It amounted to more than $35,000.

It also required her to provide a copy of a recording she made of a conversation she had with then-Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice Nancy Rice, according to a copy of the March 15, 2019, agreement obtained by The Denver Post.

In the recording, Rice explains to Masias why she was not promoted to state court administrator in 2017 and that to be in charge is the only way to fight sexism, which Rice said still exists in state government, according to a copy of the recording obtained by The Post via an open-records request.

“You know there is sexism out there still,” Rice told Masias in the undated recording, “… and the only way to make the sexism go away, I’ve noticed, is to be the boss.”

Rice retired in June 2018 after nearly 20 years on the state’s highest court. She had been chief justice since 2013.

It’s uncertain what role, if any, the recording had in Masias’ resignation or the terms of the agreement.

Ryan, the former clerk to the department’s Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, did not apply for the administrator’s job, but was named interim to the post in July 2017 after the justices could not decide among three finalists, including Masias. He was given the job outright in September 2017.

Ryan could not be immediately reached for comment.

Masias has not commented about her departure from the department or the contract she received.

Ryan canceled Masias’ contract Wednesday for several technical reasons including her failure to get a timely background check and to provide the state appropriate proof of insurance, according to a copy of a letter the state sent to Masias and obtained by The Post.

The seven Supreme Court justices, including Chief Justice Coats, approved of Masias’ contract, as well as its cancellation, a department spokesman said. It is unclear if they were aware of the terms of Masias’ resignation agreement.

It was Ryan who reported concerns about Masias’ expenses in August 2018 to state auditors, records obtained by The Post show. They were serious enough that Ryan barred Masias from future travel or out-of-pocket expense reimbursements, from approving any expenditures for anyone in the department, and from signing any department documents including contracts — all critical components of her job.

Ryan took those steps after discovering Masias “attempted to circumvent” reimbursement policies “by submitting altered documents” and “likely violated Colorado law,” according to the letter.

“If it was anyone else, we’d have been fired,” said Myra Dukes, the department’s controller for 19 years until her retirement in May. She was the first to have concerns with Masias’ receipts and reported it to higher-ups, including Coats. “I talked personally with the chief justice when it appeared nothing much would happen as a result.”

She said she voiced concerns over a lack of strong discipline and what that indicated to state employees. That was in October, before Masias left on medical leave.

“I wanted that face to face so (Coats) knew where I was coming from,” Dukes said. “This is about integrity and someone at the top who did something unnecessary and ridiculous. What kind of example does that set?”

Judicial Department auditors found additional problems when they checked a sampling of Masias’ travel reimbursements dating to 2016, according to a letter outlining their findings in late August 2018.

Those findings included missing receipts, payments for meals that were already free, car mileage when an airplane flight was cheaper, payments for hotel rooms she didn’t use, and reimbursements for items already paid for on a state credit card.

Ryan refused to discuss the discipline or the auditors’ findings.

Masias went on medical leave Nov. 15, 2018, according to a department-wide email announcing her departure. Insiders say that was after several top officials in the department’s finance office — all now gone — refused to sign off on auditor paperwork saying they knew of no internal problems with potential fraud or malfeasance.

“I told them I could not sign that letter because we knew there were problems,” Dukes told The Post. “A day or so after that was the email saying she was out indefinitely on medical leave.”

Dukes said she retired in May “out of disgust for this whole thing.”

The day after Masias resigned on March 19, the department’s human resources director and Masias’ former subordinate, Eric Brown, recommended a company that she had formed two months earlier be awarded the executive leadership training contract, paying her more than $44,000 a month for five years, according to a copy of the deal.

“This knowledge cannot be found in any vendor,” Brown wrote in supporting Masias, noting she had led the design and delivery of the department’s leadership program, but not mentioning that two other companies had done the work the previous five years.

Brown was recently promoted to the department’s chief administrative officer, one of two positions created in place of the chief of staff job. The other went to Vasconcellos, who had been the director of court services.

Masias signed the leadership training deal on April 8 after Ryan approved giving it to her as a “sole-source” contract. There are no written department rules on how contracts are to be awarded or the process it must follow.

There are rules preventing employees from negotiating or discussing potential contracts for themselves, and Ryan told The Post those rules were followed in Masias’ case.

Ryan said he used his discretion in approving the deal largely to make sure Masias’ talents were not lost to the private sector. Masias is a highly regarded speaker nationwide on a variety of management topics and has taught at her alma mater, the University of Denver.

“In some ways we wanted to ensure we locked her in to work for us,” Ryan said. “This was a unique opportunity we wanted to ensure we took advantage of. Time was of the essence.”

A state law prohibiting government employees from accepting any government contract work within the first six months after they leave the job, specifically on matters they handled for the state, does not apply to the Judicial Department, which is an autonomous arm of state government.

In February, the bidding process for the executive leadership training contract closed after a month without a single bid even though more than a dozen companies showed interest. Several of those companies told The Post they saw the contract as focused too narrowly for them to take a shot.

Ryan said it was likely because the department wanted to take the training in a different direction, more specialized toward courtrooms than to boardrooms.

“I’d been through the training from the current contractors, along with the chief justice (Nathan Coats), and we saw the deficiencies in generic training for more corporate entities rather than specifically judicial,” Ryan said.

A week after signing the contract, on April 15 and just a day after running her third consecutive Boston Marathon, Masias sent a department-wide email announcing her resignation for personal reasons, ending a 23year career in the department. It made no mention of the contract she was just given, according to a copy of the document obtained by The Post.

“My decision to leave is based on what I think is best for not only my family and me, but the (Judicial Department),” she wrote, noting she had been away the previous four months battling “a very serious health condition.”