Passes & Canyons Blog

I wouldn’t have missed my ABATE District 10 meeting Sunday for anything. Theoretically Rocky, our newly drafted district rep, was to inform the membership of the issue that led to the firing of Terry Howard as state coordinator and read a prepared statement from the board.

Before the meeting got started there was no discussion of the issue, which led me to wonder if a lot of these folks had no idea or if perhaps everyone knew a lot more than I knew and for them there was nothing to discuss. Then I heard a little veiled, discrete mention so I suspected it was the latter.

We got to this topic in the agenda and again there was almost nothing said and no one asked any questions. This was too much for me. I said that if I hadn’t received a tip that something was going on and if I hadn’t pursued that to where I received a copy of the board’s statement, I would have been sitting there asking “What the hell are you people talking about??!!” And I got some questions answered. Here’s what I’ve learned.

As we already knew, Terry was removed because the board concluded that she had not fulfilled her fiduciary responsibility to the organization. Apparently there were some expenses that were paid for more than once. I have no idea if there was anything more than that. And something of that sort could easily happen by accident–heck, I’ve paid the same bill twice myself once or twice. So the board is wise to phrase it the way they did. You can be bad at managing money without being a criminal.

I asked if there was a criminal investigation underway. The internal investigation is continuing, we were told, and in compliance with the law regarding a 401(c)3 organization, a report has been made to the state and to the City and County of Denver. What happens next may depend a lot on the response from them. That response is not expected for a couple weeks.

So that’s not a lot but it’s something. It’s more than I knew before. And I really did feel like everyone else in that room knew way more than I did, but most of them are officers or state staff members or whatever–insiders–and I’m just a member, nothing else.

Oh, and as for Rocky reading the board statement, up to that point he still had not seen it himself. More than one person suggested strongly that this whole business be made known to all ABATE of Colorado members immediately. This sort of delay is unconscionable.

Biker Quote for Today

The good news is that heaven has a motocross track. The bad news is you’re racing next Tuesday.

Tags: Terry Howard

This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2014 at 11:28 am and is filed under ABATE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.