Judge ousts Nutting from supervisor seat
By Peter Hecht, Sacramento Bee
Ray Nutting was stripped of his seat on the Board of Supervisors in a dramatic sentencing order Friday that will shake up El Dorado County’s political leadership and force an election to fill his job.
Three weeks after the embattled supervisor appeared to emerge victorious when he was acquitted of felony charges of political malfeasance, a judge declared that Nutting must forfeit his elected office because of misdemeanor convictions over how he raised his bail money.
Declaring that Nutting had committed “misconduct in office,” visiting Superior Court Judge Timothy S. Buckley issued a notice to the county that Nutting’s seat is now vacant. He also sentenced Nutting to 30 days of community service in lieu of jail time.
Suddenly, Nutting’s political career appears to be over with 2 1/2 years remaining on his board term. He is out of office as a result of his actions in the frenetic moments after he was ordered to surrender on felony charges that he had failed to disclose more than $70,000 in state grant income for brush-clearing on his family ranch.
A jury acquitted Nutting on May 14 on three felony counts and deadlocked on a fourth felony count of submitting false paperwork when the work was completed. But he was convicted of six misdemeanors for accepting loans from two county employees and a construction contractor to bail himself out of jail on May 28, 2013.