Driving force behind county's new behavioral health facility resigns months before opening

When Larimer County officials gather Sept. 22 for the ribbon-cutting ceremony on the new Acute Care Center at the Behavioral Health Services Longview Campus, a key building block will be missing.

Laurie Stolen, the county’s former director of behavioral health services, abruptly resigned July 26 after nearly 23 years with Larimer County.

A resignation settlement prevents Stolen and county officials from disclosing the reasons for her departure.

“What I’m legally allowed to say is we reached a mutual agreement for me to resign in good standing,” Stolen told the Coloradoan.

She’ll be paid $140,000, and the county will contribute $11,200 to her mandatory 401(a) retirement account, according to financial terms of the agreement obtained by the Coloradoan through an open-records request. Stolen's annual salary was $162,457.

The position of behavioral health director was created by Larimer County in January 2019, following voter approval of a 0.25% sales tax for 20 years to address mental and behavioral health care needs in the county. Stolen is the only person to ever hold the now-vacant position.

She previously served as the county’s behavioral health project director, director of the alternative sentencing department and in various roles with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office from 2000 to 2010.

Stolen’s performance reviews as director of behavioral health services, also obtained through a Colorado Open Records Act request, were all positive, praising her for exceptional work in building the behavioral services department from the ground up.

“Laurie’s commitment to community well-being continually inspire me,” her supervisor, Laura Walker, wrote in her most recent performance review, completed and signed Jan. 6, 2023. “I believe that most people who come to work for government are concerned with serving the public and contributing to the greater good, but not everyone shows the tenacity and passion that Laurie does in her role. Larimer County is lucky to have someone of Laurie's caliber to lead us into very new territory of actively supporting community behavioral health."

Walker is the county’s director of human and economic health services. Terms of the resignation settlement prevented her and others with the county from commenting further, officials said.

Emails to the three county commissioners were answered with identical responses from two − chair Jody Shadduck-McNally and Kristin Stephens: “I am aware that Laurie resigned her position with the county on the 25th. Personnel matters are private, so I cannot comment further, but I am thankful for Laurie’s time with the county.”

SummitStone Health Partners will provide professional services and operate the new Acute Care Center at the Longwood Campus west of Fort Collins under terms of a renewable five-year contract approved June 27 by the county commissioners.

The facility along Taft Hill Road between Fort Collins and Loveland is expected to open the first week of December, SummitStone’s chief medical director, Dr. Lesley Brooks, said last month. Brooks will serve as executive director of the Acute Care Center, which will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week to serve Larimer County residents experiencing a wide range of behavioral health issues, ranging from substance-use disorders and serious mental-health illnesses to anxiety attacks that keep them up at night.

More: What to know about Larimer County's behavorial health center opening in December

“SummitStone is proud of its strong relationship with Larimer County over the last 65 years, including our collaborative work in supporting the multiple campaigns that led to passage of the sales/use tax in 2018, collaborating and giving feedback on the design of the facility, and many other projects over the years,” SummitStone CEO Michael Allen and Brooks said in a joint statement to the Coloradoan's questions about Stolen's resignation.

There wouldn’t be an acute-care facility designed to meet the behavioral health needs of the entire county without Stolen’s leadership on the issue, former county commissioner Steve Johnson and others said. She helped educate the community on the need for more mental and behavioral health care services in the county and, following the failure of a similar initiative in 2016, helped write the ballot language for the 2018 measure that passed.

“When that (2016) measure failed, I was sitting in the restaurant as the election results were coming in, and we were all shocked,” said Mary Beth Swanson, a licensed clinical social worker who has served on mental-health advisory boards with Stolen. “Laurie stepped back and used her strategic mind to think through, ‘where did we drop the ball.’ Instead of going into anger and giving up and saying this community’s terrible, she really dug deep at why it failed, and she spent the next two years really strategically reaching out.

“So, the second time, it passed, and there is literally no way that it would have passed without Laurie’s work over those two years around it.”

Stolen was honored as one of 10 Women of Distinction in Northern Colorado in 2023 by BizWest Media for her work in the government, energy and utilities sector. Winners were announced July 25, “the day the county forced her out,” Johnson said.

More: Take a photo tour of the soon-to-be-completed Larimer County Behavioral Health Center

Johnson and Swanson both strongly believe Stolen’s resignation was “forced.”

“She would not walk away from this, especially a couple months before the behavioral health center was going to open,” Johnson said. “I just can’t help but fault the county commissioners and county administration. They really shot themselves in the foot with this one.

“She never told me anything bad about the county, but I know all the players, I know the county administration, and I can put all the pieces together and see who’s at fault. It just makes me sick.”

Allen and Brooks, in their joint statement, praised Stolen's “immense and enduring contribution to the herculean task of bringing the Acute Care Facility at the Longview Campus to fruition. Her contribution to this work was an invaluable ingredient in the success of an effort that required the commitment and dedication of so many.”

They went on to say “SummitStone was not involved in Ms. Stolen’s decision to resign her position.”

Johnson and Swanson, a therapist with the Willow Collection, aren’t so sure. Both said Stolen was committed to making sure taxpayers were getting what they paid for with the approval of the 2018 sales tax.

“You never went to a meeting where you didn’t have the ballot language right in front of you, saying this is what we’re doing and what we’re not doing,” Swanson said. “We all had our crazy ideas of what we needed to do, and she kept us very focused.”

Johnson said Stolen was adamant about including performance measures based on the outcomes provided in the professional services and operations contract for the Acute Care Center, knowing that the county will have to ask voters to reauthorize the sales tax in 20 years to maintain the funding.

“I think she was pushing very hard for performance measures, and providers probably don’t like that as much as commissioners and taxpayers do,” Johnson said. “I think it’s really disgusting that they — county leadership, the administration and commissioners — couldn’t find a way to work this out with Laurie. They made a huge mistake.”

Although specific outcome-based standards were not included in the contract with SummitStone to staff and operate the Acute Care Center at Longview, there is a significant amount of data and demographic information specifically spelled out that SummitStone is required to collect. That data, Allen and Brooks said, can be used by county leadership and the public to determine the effectiveness of the facility and its services.

“We want to assure our community that the county and SummitStone have planned for robust metrics to help us determine the impact of services at the Acute Care Facility at Longview,” their statement said. “These metrics and a vigorous framework to govern and monitor behavioral health outcomes related to the availability of these services are included in the publicly available operations contract. We look forward to sharing these metrics with our community on a regular basis as the facility becomes operational.”

Larimer County Behavioral Health Facility Contract by Coloradoan on Scribd

(Editor's note: This story has been updated since it was first posted to reflect that two county commissioners replied to a request for more informatin with identically-worded emails)

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Driving force behind Larimer County behavioral health facility resigns