Residents in Rio Grande County on Wednesday continued to make their objections known to their county commissioners about the decision to employ a county attorney and public health director who live outside of Colorado.
At the weekly county commissioners meeting, residents expressed ongoing frustration with the remote working conditions of County Attorney Nancy Lake and Public Health Director Dr. Kolawole Bankole, seeing both as examples of the county commissioners preaching about the importance of supporting local businesses but then allowing two key employees to reside outside the state.
“I’m not a Trump fan, but even Trump said everybody’s coming back to work at the office, no more remote business,” said Mike Trujillo.
“If everybody here spent their money somewhere else, the county would be out of money,” said another resident.
The commissioners, in a 2-1 vote, approved a public statement “regarding remote work for key personnel.” The agenda item sparked an exchange between commissioners Tyler Ratzlaff and Scott Deacon after Deacon voiced regret for initially supporting the two hires when the positions came up for review in 2024.
Deacon voted against approving the public statement on remote work and said he should have voted against keeping Lake and Bankole after they moved away.
“Like our constituents are saying, we need to keep this county growing, we need to have people that live here and work here and their hearts with the county,” Deacon said.
Ratzlaff told residents he understood the points they were making but said it was in the best interest of Rio Grande County to keep Lake and Bankole in their jobs.
“These two positions are positions that require extensive knowledge and experience, and I believe the two people that we’re talking about would agree with me in saying it’s not an ideal situation by any means but in life nothing really turns out ideal,” Ratzlaff said.
Rio Grande County appears to be unique in having its county attorney and public health director working from outside the state, attending meetings via Zoom, and making occasional visits to Rio Grande County.
No other counties in Colorado that have been contacted so far by Alamosa Citizen have similar arrangements with their county attorney or public health director. Rio Grande County residents wondered what would happen if another public health crisis arose that the remote public health director would have to handle.
“If something happens, environmentally, water, sewage, contamination, our public health director needs to be Johnny-on-the-spot,” one of the residents who spoke to the commissioners said.