Supervisors put Nutting’s future in judge’s hands
By Peter Hecht, Sacramento Bee
Amid a spectacle raw with anger and emotion, four El Dorado County supervisors voted Tuesday to ask a judge to decide whether their colleague, Ray Nutting, should be removed from office.
It was another searing chapter in the political saga of the embattled supervisor as fellow board members went into closed session without him to discuss whether to kick him out for his conviction on four misdemeanors last week.
But before they convened with the county attorney and outside legal counsel, they got an earful from Nutting’s wife, Jennifer, who took to a lectern to blast authorities who “maliciously prosecuted my husband.”
Nutting, 54, was acquitted of three felony malfeasance charges last week in connection with allegations that he failed to properly disclose more than $70,000 in state grant income for clearing brush on his family’s 340-acre ranch in Somerset.
However, jurors did find the four-term supervisor guilty of six misdemeanor government code violations.