{"id":54164,"date":"2013-04-12T00:56:04","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T06:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/county-administrator-quits-abruptly\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T18:10:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T18:10:26","slug":"county-administrator-quits-abruptly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/county-administrator-quits-abruptly\/","title":{"rendered":"County administrator quits abruptly"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Harrison\"
Harrison<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Luke Groskopf<\/p>\n

Journal Staff Writer<\/p>\n

Montezuma County Administrator Ashton Harrison resigned unexpectedly Tuesday morning after almost seven years on the job.<\/p>\n

He delivered a resignation letter to the Board of County Commissioners at 8 a.m. Tuesday, saying his decision was effective immediately.<\/p>\n

Harrison\u2019s exit came as an abrupt surprise; he was present at the weekly commission meeting on Monday, and gave no signal of his intent to step down.<\/p>\n

Commissioner Steve Chappell questioned whether Harrison was truly gone for good, saying Tuesday afternoon that Harrison had twice before \u201cdecided to resign or quit\u201d and then reconsidered.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s changed his mind before,\u201d Chappell said. \u201cThe other two times he slept on it and took it back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrison, however, disputed this account.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t recall ever resigning,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s a new one.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a phone interview, Harrison did not indicate he would backtrack on his decision, saying he was no longer affiliated with Montezuma County.<\/p>\n

When asked the reason for his sudden departure, Harrison declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n

He was first hired in May 2006 and reappointed on an annual basis.<\/p>\n

In his absence, Harrison said the three commissioners \u2013 Chappell, Keenan Ertel and Larry Don Suckla \u2013 are \u201cin charge\u201d of administrative duties. County Finance Officer Amber Kingery, who worked closely with Harrison, said she and colleague Lynette Reece were doing their best to keep the administrator\u2019s office functioning normally.<\/p>\n

The matter will be discussed further at next Monday\u2019s commission meeting, Chappell said.<\/p>\n

lukeg@cortezjournal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harrisondu1-i-syn By Luke Groskopf Journal Staff Writer Montezuma County Administrator Ashton Harrison resigned unexpectedly Tuesday morning after almost seven years on the job. He delivered a resignation letter to the Board of County Commissioners at 8 a.m. Tuesday, saying his decision was effective immediately. Harrison\u2019s exit came as an abrupt surprise; he was present at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13,237],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-54164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-montezuma-county-government"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54864,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54164\/revisions\/54864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54164"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=54164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}