ROARING FORK BROADCASTING COMPANY
The Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority board decided to part ways with hearing officer Mick Ireland on Wednesday after months of fielding claims of bias about him in the role of adjudicating disputes between ACPHA residents and staff.
APCHA board members voted to appoint Thomas Snyder as the housing authority’s new hearing officer, nearly five years after Ireland became the first officer. Board members heard proposals from three finalists, including Snyder and Ireland, during a Dec. 11 board meeting.
The board voted in support of Snyder during its Wednesday meeting. The Roaring Fork Valley resident is expected to provide an unbiased perspective to his APCHA hearings.
“I have not seen any bias from Mick, but I have definitely had a number of people in the community approach me and say that they perceived it,” said board member Carson Schmitz. “Again, I’ve not seen it from Mick, but I do think that there is value in getting somebody who is not closely interwoven with APCHA.”
APCHA’s hearing officer is meant to be an impartial judge of conflicts between APCHA residents and staff. When APCHA issues evictions or other orders against residents, residents can appeal the orders to the hearing officer. After that, they can appeal to the board before possibly taking the matter to court.
The APCHA board in July decided to search for a new hearing officer after board members suggested Ireland stoked controversy in his role. Critics of Ireland, an attorney who has previously served as mayor of Aspen and a Pitkin County commissioner, have said he is biased because he is an APCHA resident. In addition to his previous positions in public office, Ireland is a columnist for the Aspen Daily News.
Reached Wednesday evening, Ireland rejected claims of bias and maintained that he acted fairly during his tenure as a hearing officer.
“I categorically reject the notion that I somehow was biased. The allegation of bias apparently stems from my living in affordable housing, and each of the written decisions I entered were adverse to the affordable housing owners,” Ireland said. “So I don’t understand what bias I was showing if I was buying in favor of abstract as opposed to some bias predicated on me and my living in affordable housing.
“I think I served the interests of the public, as opposed to the private representatives of law firms that came in on behalf of people who were clearly in violation of APCHA rules, and that may be something that is considered controversial among some, but it is the job to apply the facts and the law evenly to both parties,” he added.
While board members said they stood behind Ireland’s decisions as hearing officer, some agreed that perceptions of bias may be just as bad as actual bias.
“I also appreciate Mick’s work, but Mick does a lot of work. He’s kind of a hired gun in certain ways, and I think we should thoroughly appreciate the work he’s done and move on,” said Pitkin County Commissioner Francie Jacober, who also serves on APCHA’s board.
APCHA Chair John Ward said he wanted a “faceless” officer that “wasn’t as tied to the program.”
Snyder is a partner at Kutak Rock in Denver, but he and his family recently moved to Basalt. He represents local governments with public financing deals and other municipal law matters. Snyder has represented several municipal housing authorities in Colorado and has worked with public entities in election counseling.
In 2014, Snyder founded the Colorado Poverty Law Project, which provides free legal representation to low-income people in Colorado in eviction and other housing-related matters.
Snyder proposed maintaining the current hearing officer fee — $150 per hour — for his first year of service, with an annual 5% increase to account for cost of living adjustments.
The third finalist, Tom Downey, is APCHA’s secondary hearing officer and is working on his first case for the housing authority. The board decided against Downey as the primary officer because he works from Denver and requested primarily virtual hearings. The board agreed residents should receive a hearing environment they prefer, whether in person or virtually.
The board will retain Downey as secondary hearing officer.