Tuolumne Utilities District GM on the outs after closed session

The Tuolumne Utilities District Board of Directors voted in a closed session Friday afternoon to place TUD General Manager Ed Pattison on paid administrative leave until further notice and revoke his access privileges immediately.

Barbara Balen, the TUD board president, announced the decision after a performance evaluation of Pattison behind closed doors that began at 3 p.m. The vote was reportedly 3-1-1, with Balen and directors Ron Ringen and Lisa Murphy in favor of placing Pattison on leave.

Director Jeff Kerns was the lone dissenting vote, while Director David Boatright abstained.

Balen said after the meeting that there would be no further comment on the decision. Pattison could not be reached for his reaction.

Pattison, who was hired by the district’s board in October 2018, currently receives a salary of about $202,500 per year, not including health and retirement benefits. He started at $190,000 per year, but received a board-approved 1.5% cost-of-living increase in July 2019 and a 5% raise in January 2020 based on a satisfactory performance evaluation at the time.

His current contract does not expire until 2023, though there was an attempt last year to extend it through 2025.

Talks about extending Pattison’s contract by an additional two years came shortly after the Nov. 3 election while the TUD board consisted of Balen, Ringen, Kerns, and former directors Ron Kopf and Bob Rucker.

Rucker decided not to seek reelection after serving a single four-year term, though Kopf was ousted in November after voters reelected Balen and put Murphy and Boatright into the other two open seats.

Murphy and Boatright took their seats on the board in early December.

Pattison’s proposed contract extension generated public outcry at the time because it also included a provision that would double his severance package from six months to a full year of pay if he was terminated early, which some argued would essentially handcuff the incoming board.

The board ultimately could not reach a consensus on how to move forward regarding Pattison’s contract, so no action was taken at the time.

This comes as TUD is in the midst of several major endeavors started under Pattison over the past two years, including negotiations with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for additional water out of New Melones Reservoir and ongoing talks with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to water rights and Pinecrest and Lyons reservoirs.

Randy Hanvelt, a former Tuolumne County supervisor, sent an email to the TUD board Friday morning in which he implored it to “encourage our GM to continue on this path and to secure his long term commitment to stay here and fulfill the current plans and direction of TUD.”

Hanvelt also said in the email he be

lieved Pattison was the best GM for the district’s he’s seen and the only one who has lived up to his title and position.

“Mr. Pattison is a man with great passion, vision, energy, knowledge and accomplishment,” Hanvelt said in the email. “In addition to all of these, he is well connected in the complicated water community of California.”

The admiration between Hanvelt and Pattison appeared to be mutual.

Pattison floated a proposal in March 2020 for TUD to pay Hanvelt as a consultant on forestry issues when the board was considering joining Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions, or YSS, a coalition of local stakeholders that includes logging and environmental groups.

At the time, Pattison said he believed Hanvelt’s “contacts, expertise and knowledge could bring back millions of dollars for a small investment,” which was estimated to be between about $10,000 and $15,000 for six months of work.

It’s also not the first time Hanvelt has gotten involved with politics at TUD.

Hanvelt sent a letter to the Tuolumne County Superior Court before the Nov. 3 election demanding an investigation of a Civil Grand Jury report released last summer that alleged Kopf potentially had conflicts of interest while serving on the TUD board.

The court shot down the request as not being within its authority under the California State Constitution, which establishes civil grand juries as an independent watchdog of public entities in each of the state’s 58 counties.

Hanvelt also was the leader of a political action committee called the Constitutional Patriots of Tuolumne County that spent thousands of dollars on advertisements supporting Kopf for reelection to the TUD board and urging voters to reject Balen and Murphy.