A Denver District judge is allowing a whistleblower lawsuit against the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to move forward in a ruling that cast doubt on testimony from the agency’s leader.
In a ruling last week, Judge Shelley Gilman denied the state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by a former high-level employee, Tony Cappello, who was the director of Disease Control and Public Health Response at CDPHE.
Cappello claims in the lawsuit that CDPHE Executive Director Jill Hunsaker Ryan broke the law last year when she fired him after he blew the whistle on financial mismanagement related to how the state handled federal funds for HIV programs.
“The court did not find Director Ryan’s testimony to be credible in her recollection of events that occurred in 2019,” Gilman wrote. “The court similarly has difficulty placing much weight on her testimony regarding her expectations of Dr. Cappello or as to the reasons she took certain actions.”
The Colorado Attorney General’s Office had advised the health department in August 2019 that it should no longer use supplemental drug rebate dollars for HIV prevention. Instead, the state should spend the funds under the same guidelines used in the Ryan White program, which is for people who already have HIV or AIDS — not for prevention. But the state had already been using the money to pay for pre-exposure prophylaxis (called PrEP) to prevent HIV in high-risk communities.
Cappello informed HIV advocacy groups in late...
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