Corizon's short cut to big profits...

Meet the medical provider for arizona's state prisons...

"we save money because we skip the ambulance and take them straight to the morgue..."

for more information about prison profiteers, hit  https://www.aclu.org/prison-profiteers

Deliberate indifference in AZ DOC custody continues under Corizon.

Good article today in the Tucson Weekly about the DOC's deliberate indifference to human life and their unnecessary deaths in custody.  Please go to the source and leave your comments, especially if you have personal experience with the DOC. 

This is what I had to say:

"Thank you so much for this article. As one who hears daily from prisoners and their families and fights with the DOC about health care and safety in custody, I can attest to the unconstitutional - the outright inhmane - standard of medical care in AZ prisons. From the deliberate indifference to pain and suffering of cancer patients to the brutal, degrading treatment dished out to the traumatized and mentally ill, the conditions of confinement under DOC director Charles Ryan are horrendous.

Ryan's reputation for running the cruelest system in the country actually invites some pats on the back from thick-headed legislators here, but from the junk laws and sentencing guidelines we pass to the implementation of our penal system, Arizona is exceptionally stupid on crime. What is the logic behind depriving prisoners of access to the resources they need to be rehabilitated while subjecting them to the rising violence, trauma and terror that has caused AZ prison homicide and suicide rates to double under Brewer's adminstration? We are simply inflicting further injury on already-damaged people.

Chuck Ryan seems to implement policy based on his contempt for prisoners and desire to punish rather than his duty to try to rehabilitate any of his charges so they are safe to be released back to the community. He's an embarassment to other law enforcemnt professionals in arizona, many of whom don't subscribe to his ideology. He doesn't seem to know what "evidence-based practice" is, or why it's so important to invest public resoures in corrections programs that are actually proven to increase parolee success and public safety.

For example, despite the fact that 75% of incoming prisoners are identified as having problems with addiction or alcoholism, and the growing epidemic of hepatitis c in the prison system (being spread by the obscene abundance of heroin and lack of access to clean needles behind bars) - only 4% of all state prisoners even got substance abuse treatment last year. That's unacceptable. In their 5-year plan the DOC claims not to have enough funding to increase the number of prisoners to more than 3000 a year who get treatment, either (that's out of a total of 60,000 prisoners who cycle through there). 

The problem with the AZ DOC isn't a lack of money, though - they have a billion dollar budget, and its still growing. Their problem is the failure to spend it responsibly. Instead of fully funding programs to help prisoners transition to the community again, the DOC actively convinced the legislature to take money out of an account for those kinds of services and put it into the building fund to support the construction of their new $50 million supermax to warehouse people in.

In fact, the state is facing a class action suit not only for gross medical neglect, but also for their illegal use of administrative segregation (i.e solitary confinement, which the DOC denies they ever use) to manage the symptoms of priosners with serious mental illness in the current supermax facility. If some of the folks currently filling those cells don't belong there to begin with, why build another one?

The only explanation I can see for that new supermax - other than the financial incentives all the obvious beneficiaries have to push this through - is that Chuck Ryan wants this monstrosity to stand as a monument to his brief reign as the DOC's king-baby. I think it's criminal for the public to have to pay for him to fulfill that immature fantasy, especially while other state DOC's are shutting down prisons AND bringing down crime rates by redirecting resources to supporting the reintegration of prisoners in their communities. If Jan Brewer had any real courage or common sense she would fire DOC director ryan immediately and reconstruct the entire system based on contemporary models of crime reduction and the rehabilitation of offenders."

If you are a prisoner's loved one fighting Corizon and the DOC for their access to health care, here's a link to a post that may help:

Corizon and the AZ DOC: Prisoners Families, Know Your Rights.

 please also feel free to contact Peggy Plews at 480-580-6807 or arizonaprisonwatch@gmail.com

----from the Tucson Weekly-------

Cruel, But Not Unusual

State prisoners say lousy medical care is killing them

Tucson Citizen

by Tim Vanderpool

June 27, 2013

 

A narrow road shadows the outer fence at Arizona's state prison in Tucson. Composed of light gravel, always raked smooth, the lane is a blank palette for the footprints of escape. Yet much of this complex holds only petty offenders—short-termers, really—for whom such capers would seem pointless.

But it seems even they can face a death sentence of sorts, delivered by a culture of medical neglect.

That's why two top dogs at the Arizona Department of Corrections are currently being sued, not only by the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, but also by the potent, San Quentin, Calif.-based Prison Law Office. In 2011, Prison Law scored a resounding U.S. Supreme Court victory that compelled California to reduce prison overcrowding.

The Arizona lawsuit was filed in March against Corrections Director Charles Ryan and his health services director, Richard Pratt. It alleges that "medical, mental health, and dental care" provided to inmates is "grossly inadequate and subjects all prisoners to a substantial risk of serious harm, including unnecessary pain and suffering, preventable injury, amputation, disfigurement and death...

"Critically ill prisoners," the lawsuit continues, "have begged prison officials for treatment, only to be told 'be patient,' 'it's all in your head,' or 'pray' to be cured."

Dan Pochoda is legal director for the ACLU of Arizona. He calls health care in our state prisons "the worst I've ever seen, in terms of clearly increasing harm unnecessarily because of the inadequate care, and the absence of anything except trying to save money on the backs of the prisoners."

Because of its sweeping implications, the case has since evolved into a class action lawsuit. The next step is proving in court just how dire the situation truly is, says Pochoda. "The ideal outcome would be a finding that there is clearly deliberate indifference to the serious medical and mental health needs of the inmate population, that people are dying unnecessarily, that folks who are in for sentences of a few years—not life sentences or death sentences—are coming out with permanent and serious illnesses."

Their ranks include Robert Plasa, now doing three years at the Tucson prison for violating his probation. Back in 2011, before he was sent to jail, Plasa says he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He was waiting to have the gland removed when he was arrested.

Today, he's still waiting. "I have been strung along for almost a year-and-a-half here without treatment," he wrote me in a letter this March.

In that time, Corrections has turned its state-run prison medical program over to one private health care provider, and then to another. But for Plasa, apparently little has changed—except that his diagnosis has grown even more grim. "I have recently had blood work done and ultrasound on the thyroid," he wrote. "This revealed that the cancer not only spread through the whole thyroid, it is now in the lymph nodes. The thyroid could have been cut out before, and isolated the cancer. Due to the lack of medical attention and negligence on the part of the Department of Corrections, I have a more serious and maybe life-threatening medical condition."

When I asked Corrections for details on Plasa's plight, spokesman Andrew Wilder referred me to the state's current prison health care provider, Corizon Inc. of Brentwood, Tenn. Citing privacy laws, Corizon also refused to comment on Plasa. But in an email, company spokesman Brian Fulton did issue this boilerplate response: "We can say that since Corizon assumed providing medical services for the Arizona Department of Corrections in March 2013, our caregivers have worked hard every day to provide quality health care services that meet and exceed national accreditation standards."

To Caroline Isaacs, however, Plasa's version sounds much closer to the truth. She heads the American Friends Service Committee's Tucson office, which has long agitated for Arizona prison reforms. "This guy's problem is not an isolated issue," Isaacs says. "There are really serious consequences to this type of incompetence. But prisoners are people that nobody cares about."

Indeed, the ACLU's Pochoda provided a stream of examples in which prison medical care was seemingly riddled with negligence. They include the inmate displaying chronic and mysterious flu symptoms that were never treated. Or the prisoner with a growth on his throat that was left untreated until it burst. Following surgery, his condition was again ignored until it worsened. Only then did the doctors decide that the growth was cancerous; the man has yet to receive standard treatment such as radiation.

Then there's the guy who did have his cancerous prostate removed, but then received no follow-up testing to ensure that the cancer had not returned. Only much later—too much later, it appears—did he receive tests showing that the cancer had not only rebounded, but was now spreading.

In response to their panicky letters, distressed relatives or partners of inmates received cavalier responses from Corizon—at least when they weren't outright ignored. "Please be assured that (your boyfriend) is not going to die," a Corizon apparatchik finally wrote to one worried woman, after she repeatedly tried to get information. "It is important to remember that (the inmate) is an adult and must take some part in his day to day health care."

This current wave of incompetence dates to 2011, when the Legislature directed Corrections to put its health services out to bid. Last summer, a three-year, $349 million contract was awarded to Pittsburgh-based Wexford Health Sources despite the company's troubled history in other states. True to form, Wexford's Arizona tenure soon hit turbulence when Corrections blamed it for poor record keeping and staffing problems. In less than a year, prison medical care had switched over to Corizon.

But for critics such as Pochoda, that's like choosing which train to ride off the rails. "Wexford has a very spotty record, after getting kicked out of other states, and it was a disaster," he says. "After nine months, they got fired or quit, and now (Corrections) has brought in Corizon, also with a spotty record. And we don't believe it will make a bit of difference because the goal is to reduce costs. For the private firms, there's a profit motive: the less they spend, the more they keep."

Ultimately, he blames state lawmakers for privatizing prison health care to save a buck, "but not uttering a peep about how it should be a better service, and not result in so many deaths, etc."

That's hardly news for guys like Robert Plasa.

"I have a good company I work for and a beautiful family waiting for me," Plasa wrote in his letter. "I wasn't figuring that paying my dues to the state of Arizona meant a life sentence from cancer."

Corizon's deliberate indifference: fighting back.

 The Ghosts of Jan Brewer, from Arizona's Other Death Row...

Firehouse Gallery Sidewalk, Phoenix (July 2012)

 

Hey friends and families of AZ DOC prisoners:

I received this piece of correspondence aboout Corizon's recent performance at the AZ DOC from someone on Donna Hamm's (of Middle Ground Prison Reform) email list. Corizon has the contract to provide health care to prisoners now. 

I encourage friends and family members of prisoners to contact your legislators with alarm about this information, as well as the persistently high rate of prisoner suicides and homicides under this administration (both are twice the rate as under the previous director), the gangs dominating the yards and the high level of violence, the class action suit over prisoners' shoddy medical and mental health care, and the deliberate indifference that DOC Director Charles Ryan's staff have shown to prisoners who are suffering terribly (like marcia powell, tony lester, ferdinand dix, anthony brown). They are just some of the Ghosts of Jan Brewer...

If you have a loved one at ASPC-Eyman, legislators for their prison (as well as for ASPC-Florence) get all sorts of bonuses for having so many prisoners in district #8, so put them to work protecting their constituents' rights. Send them an email as well as a personal, hand-written note asking for their intervention - which you will probably have to folllow up with a phone call to their office. Don't wait for them to call you, in any case. They are: Senator Barbara McGuire  and Representatives Frank Pratt and TJ Shope. Their snail mail addy is:

AZ State Legislature

 1700 W. Washington St

Phoenix, AZ 85007

Senate
(602) 926-3559

House

(602) 926-4221 

Please also print and send this post to your loved one, and send them copies of the AZ DOC health care access policy (DO 1101)  and the grievance process (DO 802). That's the language they'll have to fight in if they are to survive their sentences. There's a pretty good prisoner's guide for handling grievances here, and my February newsletter touched on the issue of grieving problems accessing health care as well. 

Here is the Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual that I send parts of to prisoners: download and print chapter 23 if your loved one is struggling to get adequate (or any) medical care. Send them chapters 14 and 16, too, if they plan to sue the DOC themselves.

Here's a list of attorneys I know are capable of suing the DOC as well. If your loved one in prison has suffered actual harm,  has done the grievance process properly, and can make a compelling argument of deliberate indifference (which is a higher standard than simple negligence), you may find a lawyer willing to take it on contingency.


Here is the actual complaint which forms the basis of the current class action suit agaisnt the DOC, "Parsons v Ryan". It's a good read for understanding what the ACLU does and doesn't think is unconstitutional in re: medical and mental health care in prison, in case you're trying to figure out how to gauge and respond to what your oved one is experiencing. Contact the ACLU-AZ, too, to report human rights abuses and deliberate indifference to prisoner physical and mental health - they're in on the class action.

The people who are being prosecuted via  Parsons v Ryan  are AZ DOC Director Charles Ryan and DOC Health Services Division Director Richard Pratt. Their email addys are: cryan@azcorrections.gov and rpratt@azcorrections.gov. Those are the guys whose desks the buck is supposed to stop at, anyway. The AZ DOC street address, for registered, return-receipt mail (better than certified, I'm told), is 1601 W. Jefferson St. PHX, AZ 85007. Make sure the prisoner you care about is following the grievance policy to the letter, but nothing stops you from hitting up those guys for help if corizon isn't doing their job - it will take less time to pressure them with your legislators in tow than it will to sue them into compliance.

You may also want to hit Corizon's compliance office if their help-line people at 1-855-276-5416, or InmateHealthInquiry@corizonhealth.com don't respond in a timely or approprite manner (preferably use email so you have a written record of all future exchanges with them). The Corizon compliance office email is compliance@corizonhealth.com

 I can usually be reached at arizonaprisonwatch@gmail.com or 480-580-6807 if you nee dmore help than this - just keep in mind that I'm just a civilian - I'm certainly no lawyer.  I just believe in mutual aid and have figured out some ways to help prisoners and their families help themselves, so I'm willing to share. Please also feel free to contact me with your own stories and tips for survival for me to share with others, as well.

Good luck and take care.

---------------from Middle Ground Prison Reform-------------

Middle Ground Prison Reform
139 East Encanto Drive
Tempe, Arizona 85281
480 966-8116

Donna Leone Hamm
Executive Director
James J. Hamm
Director of Program and Advocacy Services

May 22, 2013

Mr. Charles Ryan, Director
Arizona Department of Corrections
1601 West Jefferson
Phoenix, Arizona 85007

In re: Serious Concerns/Contract Violations Corizon Healthcare

Dear Mr. Ryan:

As you know, I have many contacts within the Dept. of Corrections, both among the staff and the inmate population. It has recently come to my attention that there are serious concerns about the delivery of healthcare to inmates throughout the entire prison system as contracted with Corizon. In particular, there are special concerns about the treatment being afforded to mental health patients.

While my specific comments below are focused on conditions and practices at the Eyman Complex (which consists of SMU I and II, Meadows, Rynning, and Cook units), I strongly suspect that the same problems exist system-wide. Therefore, this letter is intended to address problems on a system-wide basis that are similar to the specific ones that I will mention in this letter regarding the Eyman Complex. It will not be acceptable to conduct an investigation into what is happening at the Eyman Complex; it is necessary to learn if the same problems and issues are taking place throughout all facilities under contract with Corizon.

As reported to me by reliable sources who have requested to remain anonymous, there is presently only one psychiatric nurse in the entire Eyman complex. As of April 30, 2013, the Eyman Complex housed over 5,100 prisoners. Prior to when Wexford took over the medical care for inmates, there were 4 to 5 such nurse positions at Eyman. The Wexford contract mandated that all inmates with Mental Health classification scores of Level 3 or above were required to be seen at least once/month by a Mental Health provider. Such provider could be an RN, a Psych Associate, a Psychologist or a Psychiatrist. Psychiatrist appointments were scheduled every 3 months or sooner if deemed necessary through referral or via an inmate’s own HNR request.

This deliverable, under the present contract with Corizon, has been deleted and services are now set at the level of what the Department mandated of itself prior to Wexford, which is a Psychiatrist visit once every 6 months, and a Psych RN visit every 3 months. Notwithstanding the obvious implication that this deliverable was reduced in contract negotiations with Corizon simply to save money, it will be impossible for one Psychiatric Nurse to accomplish even every three months. Who will screen the HNR’s that refer to medications or negative side effects?

Apparently, Corizon functions in other states with no psychiatric nurses at all; instead, they allow regular medical nurses to assume those duties even though psychiatric nurses have special training to deal with psychiatric patients. RN’s without psychiatric training or experience cannot assess psychiatric symptoms.

At the Meadows Unit, and very likely at other units as well, nurse positions (medical nurses) are being slashed by Corizon. The staff at Meadows have been advised that they will have 2 nurses with 1 supervisor. The unit has, as of April 30, 2013, about 1,200 men, including an 80-bed CDU. On Meadows Unit, there are approximately 330 inmates who have MH scores of at least Level 3.

A supervisor, Nicole Bradfield, resigned about a week ago because she was working 60 hours/week at a salaried position (no overtime) and saw no reprieve to this schedule. There are apparently several LPN’s on the unit, but they are not qualified nor licensed to make assessments and must function under the supervision (on site) of an RN. As noted above, they cannot assess psychiatric symptoms due to lack of training and experience, not to mention not being qualified by licensing to do so.

The Meadows Unit has about 60 insulin dependent diabetics. Glucose tabs are now non-formulary and a paste has been substituted (to save money?) With the paste, it is much more difficult for the nurse to know how much to use to augment the sugar levels. Also, the unused paste is discarded after the package is opened. This would seem to be an expensive, waste.

Medical nurses are unable to complete their tasks and this directly and negatively affects patient care. Supervisors have been getting prescription renewals with verbal orders without readbacks.

A readback is essential to insure that the specific information communicated has been accurately understood. Noting orders are not being completed. Once orders are written, they have to be implemented. They have to be noted, sent to the pharmacy, etc. My sources advise that on one day recently there were three stacks of charts (total number unknown) that had been sitting on the desk for two days. The nurses have to make a decision about whether to do the nurse line or note the orders. On some days, there can be as many as 5 ICS’s. These emergency incidents obviously halt all other duties the nurses are doing in the health unit.

The Meadows Unit has a psychologist who does watches every morning at Browning Unit. This severely dilutes the time she is available for direct patient care or consultation.

It has been reported to me that the Meadows yard has many elderly patients who are medically compromised. New policies are issued by word-of-mouth. Outside consultations with specialist are not being scheduled. Suicides at the Eyman Complex seem to be increasing in frequency (1). The list goes on.

It is my understanding that there is an assigned Contract Monitor who is employed by ADOC whose job is to insure contract compliance. What is this person doing? Clearly, the Department must avoid similar problems to the ones you had with the Contract Monitor who utterly failed to do his job at the Kingman private prison facility, which ended in tragedy and enormous liability for the State of Arizona.

We are calling for a full-scale investigation/audit of the contract with Corizon. Audits need to be conducted of contract compliance in each unit of every prison where Corizon provides medical care. All prisoners have a well established constitutional right to the community standard of care for their serious medical needs. The Department has both a legal and ethical duty to provide mandated medical care.

I hope to hear from you that an investigation/audit will be ordered, and please consider this as a public records request, pursuant to A.R.S. 31-121 et seq., for any/all records you may have (written, electronic, audio, video, telephonic) or which you produce within the next 90 days which deal with Corizon’s contract compliance.

Your immediate attention will be appreciated.

Sincerely,

Donna Leone Hamm

Director

1. Within the last month, there have been three suicides at Eyman Complex (Joaquin Tamayo # 106163; Paul Henderson # 247636 and Milo Stanley # 064794) which lend credibility to the fact that mental health care is wholly inadequate.

Prison Health Care Lessons: Vermont

Vermont: Death raises concerns about PHS and care


Case highlights prison medicine concerns

By BRENT CURTIS Staff Writer - Published: September 20, 2009

When Ashley Ellis arrived at the state women's correctional facility in Swanton last month, she expected her medications to be there.

After all, the 23-year-old's family had made calls and forwarded doctor's notes and prescription information to the Department of Corrections weeks in advance of Ellis' Aug. 14 arrival at the jail.

But Ellis' grandmother has said corrections officials she spoke to just before her granddaughter went to jail didn't know about the prescriptions, and told her Ellis could face sanctions if she showed up the jail with her prescription drugs in hand.

The cause of Ellis' death two days after she arrived at the jail still is unknown, pending the results of a toxicology test. However, her grandmother and many of Ellis' friends and family believe Ellis was denied medicine for her eating disorder, and they are convinced the lack of medications was a factor in her death.

It remains to be seen whether they're right about Ellis' cause of death.

However, there is a consensus among watchdog groups and key members of a legislative committee set up to oversee the state's corrections system that there are problems with the delivery of medicines and medical treatment in state prisons.

"It's been a problem for a number of years," state Defender General Matthew Valerio said. "There should be a way for people to get their meds. Unfortunately, this is a problem that goes back decades. It's not unique to this current administration."

Valerio's office includes the Prisoners' Rights Office.

But DOC officials said corrections staff and medical staff from the private company that contracts with the state to provide health care services at Vermont's prisons are doing the best they can meeting the needs for a challenging group of patients.

"Some offenders don't answer questions truthfully or fully," said Dr. Deloris Burroughs-Biron, health services director for DOC. "It leaves the intake person in the dark."

"Intake" is a process every Vermont inmate undergoes whether they're new arrivals off the street, post-conviction offenders arriving to serve their sentence, people on furlough or probation returning to jail or prisoners transferred from one jail to another.

The process involves searches for contraband, evaluations for potential suicidal behavior and a question and answer session about medical needs and prescribed medications.

DOC policy requires all incoming inmates to be interviewed by a nurse who collects information and then tries to verify prescriptions by calling the pharmacy that filled them, Burroughs-Biron said.

For people incarcerated off the street, that process is the only way to determine an inmate's medical needs. For offenders who know they're going to jail days or weeks in advance, Burroughs-Biron said verifications can be made in advance and medicines can be ordered before they arrive.

Asked about the complaints made by Ellis' family, Burroughs-Biron said she couldn't comment on an ongoing investigation.

However, she said many problems could be cured through better communication.

During her two years as director, Burroughs-Biron said she has tried to get the word out that her office needs to know about people with "complicated medical conditions" on their way to jail.

Generally speaking, she said her attempts to foster dialogue have failed.

"I've attempted to speak to public defenders, police and anyone else bringing us patients," she said. "It's important for us to know when someone has a complicated history. … Unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of feedback."

But Valerio said the state's public defenders have been contacting Burroughs-Biron's office about client medical issues — most notably in Ellis' case.

"(Public defender) Mary Kay Lanthier contacted Burroughs-Biron herself (one week) in advance," Valerio said.

According to Valerio and members of Vermont Protection & Advocacy, a group that defends the rights of people with disabilities and mental health issues, the policies that Burroughs-Biron described aren't always adhered to.

Valerio said he has seen a number of former inmates who have "deteriorated" inside the state's prison system because their medical needs weren't met or they were denied medicines for lengthy periods of time.

"The issue goes deeper than verification," he said referring to the DOC emphasis on making sure the drugs inmates say they are taking are what they're actually prescribed. "Issues of cost cutting and institutional inertia exist."

As an example of cost-cutting, Valerio said inmates have less access to doctors on weekends than on weekdays.

But Burroughs-Biron said Valerio's example shows a "lack of familiarity" with the delivery of health care services in prison settings.

"In general, there are nurses in the facilities 2-4/7 so there's always someone there to take care of the population," she said. "But it's not often if ever that you find a corrections facility with a 2-4/7 doctor on hand. We have doctors on call all the time to approve medicines but they're not in the facility."

At Vermont Protection & Advocacy, executive director Ed Paquin and supervising attorney A.J. Ruben said deviations from DOC policy contributed to a number of complaints and a handful of inmate deaths during the last decade.

Of the roughly 200 inmate complaints the VPA receives every year, only a small percentage prove justified, Paquin and Ruben said. But when the complaints are justified, the pair said failure to follow departmental policy is usually a factor.

"Very often, policies are not followed," Ruben said. "When you see that over and over, it makes you wonder if there's a culture in DOC that knows there's no consequences if you don't follow policy."

Ruben and Paquin said VPA officials meet with Burroughs-Biron once a month to talk about concerns. But while they said the DOC medical director was good at troubleshooting, they said it would be more reassuring if they didn't need to call about problems in the first place.

"It's not the way to run things," Ruben said. "We shouldn't have to be calling."

The concerns of the VPA and Valerio are well known to members of the legislative Corrections Oversight Committee.

That committee, made up of members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees as well as representatives from related House and Senate committees, has had recurring discussions about shortcomings in the DOC health care system for years, according to committee chairwoman Alice Emmons, D-Springfield.

From Emmons perspective, the delivery of medical care is hindered by a number of factors unique to a prison sentence.

First on her list are security issues which patients at regular medical clinics never have to deal with.

But beyond that obvious issue are some more subtle complications such as an "antiquated" computer system at DOC that Emmons said she believes impairs communications between private doctors, DOC and Prison Health Services, the company that contracts with corrections to provide medical services.

"Medical files don't follow inmates from facility to facility," she said. "My hunch is there are issues with that."

Also muddying the waters, she said, is the need to keep spending on pharmacy drugs within contracted amounts — spending that Emmons said probably ought to be higher.

But increasing spending for inmate's health care needs is an uphill battle, she said.

"The public is very resentful that offenders receive medical care at all," she said. "There are a lot of people who think if someone goes to jail, they don't deserve that but most of them will be out at one time or another and if we don't take care of their health issues inside we'll have bigger problems down the road."

brent.curtis@rutlandherald.com