Decrying “deliberate stalling tactics,” Colorado’s retiree benefit provider has asked a judge to quicken the pace of its $50 million lawsuit against three metro-area counties and the Tri-County Health Department.

The Public Employees’ Retirement Association is suing the Tri-County Health Department and Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties because, it alleges, they owe PERA at least $50 million to pay for current and future retirees of the soon-to-be-extinct Tri-County Health Department.

But the case has stalled since the spring, when the counties and agency asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit. Adams County District Judge Teri Lynn Vasquez has yet to rule on those requests.

In September, Douglas County announced it was leaving Tri-County over the agency’s masking order for school children. Adams County followed suit, and that left Arapahoe County with no other choice but to stand up its own agency, too. That means Tri-County — the largest county-level health department in the state — will cease to exist at the end of the year.

Unsurprisingly, it has not been a clean break, and the counties have denied that they owe PERA any money. PERA, in turn, accused them and the health department of engaging in “deliberate stalling tactics” with the court, which, the organization argues, has delayed the court from ruling on a case that will impact millions of Coloradans. PERA is seeking the money to pay for current and future Tri-County retirees; once Tri-County ceases to exist, it won’t pay into the benefit program anymore, but its staffers will continue to be enrolled in PERA.

The litigation cannot be allowed to stall forever, PERA’s attorneys wrote: Tri-County is slated to stop operating by the end of the year. Douglas County already has its own health department, and Adams and Arapahoe counties have set about establishing theirs: Adams hired a “director of public health transition,” and Arapahoe County has named an initial board of health and hired its first executive director.

PERA argues that the counties and health department are legally required to pay the money and that it’s disappointing that they “will not do the right thing legally and commit to paying what is owed under Colorado law.” 

The organization also alleges that Douglas County reached an explicit agreement with Tri-County to pay for “any debts or penalties imposed by Colorado PERA.”

The counties have argued that Tri-County is responsible for the money, not them. In March, they asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit and said Tri-County has not dissolved yet, hasn’t severed its relationship with PERA and may not dissolve at all. In a separate lawsuit, the counties all agreed that, if they are found to owe PERA money, they will all pay their share of it.

In their request that the judge move forward on the case and compel the counties to respond to the lawsuit’s allegations, PERA’s attorneys noted that the recent movement by Adams and Arapahoe counties to hire public health officials and that the health department’s own website indicates that its end is near. 

The $50 million that PERA seeks from the counties isn’t the only cost they may have to shoulder for breaking away from Tri-County. All are set to spend millions standing up their own health departments. 

There does remain one wrinkle to the case: Two Douglas County business owners sued the county’s new health department over a mask exemption passed by the board of health. The lawsuit alleges, among other things, that Douglas County did not correctly breakaway from Tri-County and that, as a result, the county’s new health department is illegitimate. The suit argues that the county didn’t give Tri-County enough advanced notice, as required, and that nullifies the dissolution. 

That lawsuit is ongoing; a judge’s ruling on another facet of the case is under appeal, stalling the rest of the proceedings. It’s unclear whether that decision will impact Tri-County’s fate: While Arapahoe County pulled out only because Adams and Douglas had before it, Adams left voluntarily, and both are well into the process of launching their own agencies.