CALIFORNIA SUES NURSING HOME CHAIN OVER RATINGS SYSTEM

California prosecutors sued the country’s largest chain of senior living communities on Monday, accusing the company, Brookdale Senior Living, of manipulating the federal government’s nursinghome ratings system.

The lawsuit was filed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and other prosecutors against Brookdale, which operates multiple nursing homes in the state.

The lawsuit is among the first of its kind to accuse nursing homes of submitting false information to Medicare’s ratings program. The system assigns stars — one being the worst, five being the best — to the nation’s more than 15,000 nursing homes.

In the case filed Monday, the California prosecutors said that until April 2018, Brookdale won “undeserved higher star ratings” by submitting false information about its staffing.

Heather Hunter, a spokeswoman for Brookdale, strongly denied on Monday that the company had “engaged in intentional or fraudulent conduct.”

The process of selecting members for the two Colorado Redistricting Commissions

(one for Congress and one for the General Assembly) just became undemocratic and full of partisan politics.

The Legislative Council and the nonpartisan committee has allowed the majority Democratic Party and the minority Republican Party to submit secret lists of people from their parties to be selected to these nonpartisan redistricting commissions. I received an email confirming this development a few days ago.

Based on this development, as a leader of the unaffiliated/independent voters in Colorado, I requested that my name and other independents be placed on a selection list as well. My request to do this was flatly denied.

At lease my short list would have been public. Retired Supreme Court justices make the selections to the two commissions which consist of two Democrats, two Republicans, and two independents. The final selections to the two commissions is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.

So basically, the Democratic and Republican parties are allowed to rig this process with their crony buddies on a secret list provided to the judges. It appears that the 2018 citizen initiatives, Amendments Y and Z, will be altered in favor of the two-party system. Colorado citizens beware that the two parties will continue their gerrymandering and rigging the election system. The Y and Z initiatives will be destroyed by the two ruling parties in Colorado. This is the perfect example of the Democratic and Republican parties rigging our election system at the state and national levels.

On behalf of the citizens of Colorado, we, the independent voters of Colorado, demand democracy and transparency.

Randy Fricke, New Castle

Editor’s note: Fricke is co-chair of the National Election Reform Committee and co-founder of the Western Colorado Independent Voters.