Rivas should resign immediately from elected role
Hospital Board Member Ernest Rivas should step down immediately
from his elected position. If he doesn’t, community leaders should
pressure him to resign.
Rivas, 58, is set to plead down from a misdemeanor molestation
charge alleging he kissed a 16-year-old girl in July. With the plea
bargain set for finality Feb. 4, on a battery charge, it serves as
an admission on some level that he acted inappropriately with this
child.
Rivas should resign immediately from elected role
Hospital Board Member Ernest Rivas should step down immediately from his elected position. If he doesn’t, community leaders should pressure him to resign.
Rivas, 58, is set to plead down from a misdemeanor molestation charge alleging he kissed a 16-year-old girl in July. With the plea bargain set for finality Feb. 4, on a battery charge, it serves as an admission on some level that he acted inappropriately with this child.
Elected in November 2008 and serving his first term, Rivas has no business holding an elected leadership role in this community because he has proven to maintain vastly poor judgment. There is no reasonable explanation for a 58-year-old man to kiss or do anything of a sexual manner with a 16-year-old girl, whose association with Rivas is being withheld by the Pinnacle to protect her identity.
Secondly, Rivas should relinquish his role due to the negative attention the issue will continually draw toward the San Benito Health Care District. It’s an organization whose officials have a lot more important matters to address than Rivas’ behavior, such as overseeing the expansive renovation to the hospital campus.
It’s unclear whether Rivas has any intention to resign. He has continued since his arrest in late August to attend hospital board meetings, though sporadically, and he declined to comment on the accusation when reached by the Pinnacle on his cell phone late last week.
Unfortunately, there is nothing short of a recall requiring him to step down because he is an elected official. Felony convictions prohibit residents from holding office. Misdemeanor convictions do not.
He might serve some jail time – he had the potential for up to a year if convicted of the molestation charge – but likely not much, or enough as to deter his attendance at a string of meetings.
If he intends to stay on the board through a term after which he now has no chance of reelection, his elected colleagues and other community leaders should ask and pressure him to resign and they should explain why – publicly if they must – he is unfit for leadership in San Benito County.
Gordon Machado, president of the San Benito Health Care District, is on the Pinnacle Editorial Board. He did not take part in developing this editorial.
