Category Archives: Lake Chelan Mirror

Lake Chelan Mirror

Hospital CEO dismissal

Over a span of eight months, I wrote a series of 10 news stories following the discipline and firing of the CEO of the local public hospital district. In writing this series, I followed a trail of documents in two states and led the effort for my news agency to successfully counter-sue the fired CEO when he attempted to block the release of public records. The unplanned series originally started with a page 2 story, but several months later was becoming the dominant page 1 headline. This coverage not only brought praise from the local community, but the Sept. 2, 2009 story titled “Records detail ongoing payments to CEO at Lake Chelan Community Hospital” won second place in the Society of Professional Journalists Region 10 contest in the general news category for non-daily newspapers.

After my departure from the Lake Chelan Mirror, the former CEO was partially successful in a discrimination lawsuit against the hospital.

Please note this is was a series and each story is on its own page (use the numbered links below each page to navigate).

Open meetings violations at Chelan Fire District 7

Following public outcry into local fire board actions, I made a public records request. I discovered through documents released that elected officials were circumventing the requirements of the state’s open meetings law and that some records were potentially unavailable to the public. That fall, the two fire commissioners who were up for re-election lost at the ballot box by 2-1 margins.

This is a series of stories, each appearing on its own page. Please use the links below to navigate.