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The Washington state Department of Health has suspended the license of a Lewis County certified nursing assistant pending further legal action.

David Floyd Potter cannot practice in Washington until the charges are resolved. He has 20 days to respond to the charges and to ask for a hearing.

While the state Department of Health noted Potter is based in Lewis County, the alleged offenses that led to the suspension took place in Vancouver.

Potter was charged by the department April 8 with sexual misconduct, unprofessional conduct and violations of standards for nursing assistant conduct or practice for allegedly sexually assaulting a female patient in Vancouver in 2022 and having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a different female patient at the same facility in 2023.

Charges state that Potter bathed a female patient, referred to as patient A, at the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center Vancouver campus on Sept. 28, 2022, and “focused on rubbing patient A’s chest rather than where cleansing was medically needed and ignored patient A’s request to stop.”

Potter also allegedly engaged in an inappropriate sexual relationship which involved the exchange of “sexually explicit text messages and emails” with another patient, referred to as patient B, in 2023.

An on-duty nurse reportedly “heard noises that sounded like moaning emanating from patient B’s room” on April 10, 2023, according to the charges. The nurse entered the room and reportedly found Potter “standing over patient B as she was lying in bed, which was in a fully reclined position.”

Potter reportedly “appeared nervous and had a red face” when the nurse saw him, the charges state. Potter then reportedly “stated nothing was going on and then left the room.”

The charges note that Potter was not assigned to assist patient B the day the incident occurred.

Potter was “terminated from his employment” with the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center Vancouver campus on April 26, 2023, according to the state Department of Health.

In a summary action order dated April 16, the state Department of Health stated “respondent (Potter) abused their position of trust and blatantly violated multiple professional and ethical boundaries … Violations of such a nature are particularly reprehensible when the provider is acutely aware of the patient’s age, medical issues and resulting vulnerability.”

A health law judge ruled April 16 that “the findings of fact establish the existence of an immediate threat to public health and safety if (Potter) has an unrestricted credential.”

Potter’s credential was first issued in November 2017 and expired April 18, 2024, according to the state Department of Health.

“The Department of Health protects and promotes public health, safety, and welfare in Washington by regulating the competency and quality of health care providers,” the department stated in a news release. “The agency establishes, monitors, and enforces qualifications for licensing, consistent standards of practice, continuing competency mechanisms, and discipline. Rules, policies and procedures promote the delivery of quality health care to people in Washington.”

The sports crew (Dylan, Zach, Kody and Aaron) discuss the updated standings everywhere. Adna and Toutle Lake split in the C2BL baseball showdown; Adna won big in a C2BL softball showdown against Toledo. The big Activators track meet starts now and The Chronicle Cup wraps up later. Kody is off to the Swap Meet and Dylan stumbles upon a name he cannot pronounce.

Editor’s note: Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez was offered an opportunity to write an op-ed on a topic of her choosing after the previous publication of a commentary by her Republican opponent Joe Kent, which can be read at https://tinyurl.com/bdeyzyrh. 

By answering the call to serve our country and protect freedom and democracy, our nation’s veterans put their lives on the line.

In today’s world, choosing service and sacrifice to put community ahead of self-interest is incredibly countercultural. Each time I’ve spoken with veterans across Southwest Washington, they’ve exemplified this selflessness and courage.

The nature of their sacrifice means we can never fully repay it, but it’s our government’s sacred obligation to try its damndest. Getting veterans the high-quality care they’ve earned to live healthy lives after returning home should be one of Congress’s highest priorities. 

Unfortunately, many of our 62,000 Southwest Washington veterans and their families aren’t experiencing that reality.

More than two and a half years ago, VA Puget Sound closed its clinic in Chehalis to cut costs, leaving a void from Olympia to Vancouver for the 3,400 heroes it served.

Making it to the nearest clinic can be a full day of travel for rural veterans in East Lewis County — or just impossible for those who have difficulty traveling or live on a fixed income. In many cases, telehealth appointments aren’t a realistic replacement for seeing a doctor in person, especially if you have limited broadband access in a rural community.

Veterans have also told me they’ve faced hours-long hold times to simply schedule an appointment over the phone — it’s unacceptable.

A VA Mobile Medical Unit (MMU) began visiting Chehalis after the clinic closed — and when I visited, providers told me they share these concerns and wish they could be more available to fill these gaps in care. 

But, with eight appointments weekly and effectively no walk-ins, the MMU just isn’t a substitute for a full VA clinic.

In Skamania County, where I live, rural veterans recently lost eligibility for critical federal grant funding for transportation to VA medical appointments — all because the VA is using outdated measures of rurality to determine which regions are eligible. 

This transportation service has put lifesaving care into reach for folks since 2014, and it made roughly 300 trips in 2022 alone. I was furious when I learned community leaders were given minimal notice from the VA to find alternative solutions or sources of funding.

It seems our veterans paid the price for freedom, yet our government won’t pay the price to uphold its promise to them.

I’m working to change that — and honor Southwest Washington veterans through action. They’ve had enough empty promises.

I’ve spoken with many of you, holding 11 in-person Town Halls across each of our counties, and I’ve taken to heart what I’ve heard. Your experiences are critical to informing my work on bipartisan solutions.

As a first step forward for veterans in Lewis County, I urged the VA to provide additional county-level data regarding gaps in care. When the agency was unable to produce it, I delivered a petition to their door with two years of signatures from more than 16,650 veterans, loved ones, and caregivers, along with my own letter calling on the VA to immediately reopen a clinic in Lewis County.

To address the lapse in federal funding in Skamania County, I introduced the bipartisan Rural Veterans Transportation to Care Act, which would help more rural veterans access transportation to their medical appointments.

My bill will restore this critical funding for Skamania County — and also make rural veterans newly eligible in Lewis, Clark, Cowlitz, Pacific, Thurston and Wahkiakum Counties.

I also co-led the bipartisan VET MEDS Act to support veterans’ access to VA-certified specialists and examiners in rural communities, and it was signed into law as part of a Senate package in October.

When Congress was working to fund our government, I fought to ensure the VA was fully funded. So, when the Majority tried to ram through a hyper-partisan VA funding bill that reduced funding for our veterans in July with no chance of becoming law, I refused to take the bait. I worked for a stronger, bipartisan deal for our veterans. Lo and behold, we recently got a bipartisan bill signed into law with $7.8 billion more for the VA than the prior proposal and $4 billion more than fiscal year 2023 funding levels.

To me, serving our community is about working across the aisle to get stuff done and tuning out the noise of clickbait politics and culture wars. Our commitment to veterans should rise above party, so I’ve been laser focused on bipartisan legislation that can make it through a divided Congress.

It takes our whole community to support veterans when they return home. That’s why I introduced bipartisan bills to make it easier for experienced veterans to become certified paramedics and EMTs, support veteran families’ access to peer support and mental health care, and ensure service-disabled veteran-owned businesses have a fair shot accessing government contracts, which unanimously passed the Small Business Committee.

While legislation can move at a glacial pace in Congress, I’ll keep building bipartisan support to get these bills over the finish line. My bipartisan team can also do a lot to cut through bureaucracy to directly help you access the benefits you’ve earned.

We’ve already returned $1.7 million to constituents owed to them by federal agencies – $153,000 of which was from the VA. I also held my first-ever Veterans Career and Resource Fair to help bring opportunities directly to our community.

Over 3,100 brave men and women in Southwest Washington have already filed claims for toxic exposure under the PACT Act, and we can help you navigate that process as well. So, if you or a loved one need assistance — or you don’t think you’re getting the quality of care or benefits you’re owed — we are here to help.

Please spread the word and feel welcome to contact my office by calling 360-695-6292, filling out my online form at gluesenkampperez.house.gov or visiting my offices in Kelso or Vancouver. I also want to be as accessible as possible — so to stay updated on what I’m working on, you can sign up for my newsletter on my website or follow me on social media at @RepMGP. And look out for my team holding mobile office hours in a community near you.

Without our veterans’ service, we wouldn’t have the rights, freedoms and opportunities we enjoy today, so I’ll keep working to honor their sacrifice in Congress.

U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Washougal, represents Washington’s Third Congressional District in Congress.

Republicans see absolutely no need for an income tax in Washington. Thanks to unanimous support from Republican legislators, Initiative 2111 was passed on March 4. It outlaws any income tax at any level of government in our state.

That said, it’s often overlooked how our state constitution does allow for a state income tax, provided the tax is applied equally. The trouble is, that condition doesn’t fit with the legislative Democrats’ bias.

In 2021, when approving a tax on income from capital gains that would affect certain Washington residents, rather than all, Democrats found a creative way to avoid complying with the constitution: they claimed their tax on income is actually an “excise” tax.

This past year, a majority on the state Supreme Court upheld the capital-gains tax against a constitutional challenge. As a result, we now have Initiative 2109.

Republicans would have supported I-2109 while we were in session if there had been an opportunity. But that would have required majority Democrats to comply fully with Article II, Section 1 of Washington’s constitution.

Instead, the majority limited the Legislature to consideration of just three of the six initiatives submitted this year.

It’s great that I-2111 (no income tax), I-2113 (restore reasonable police pursuits) and I-2081 (parental rights concerning school information) were approved and will take effect June 6.

Still, there at least should have been public hearings on I-2109 (capital-gains tax), I-2117 (cap-and-trade law) and I-2124 (mandatory payroll tax for the state-run long-term care program) so the people could testify, as they did at the hearings on the three measures that were passed.

Although it’s never right for lawmakers to ignore the constitution, the disrespect Democrats showed by playing the income tax-versus-excise tax game in 2021 and shrugging off three of the six initiatives this session doesn’t come close to a little-publicized vote they took on the 10th day of the 2024 session.

That vote has to do with our state’s redistricting process, which adjusts electoral-district boundaries as Washington’s population shifts and grows.

Washington used to be among the states where legislators control redistricting. In 1983, after a series of problems, Democrat and Republican legislators approved a change to our constitution that gave the responsibility to an independent, bipartisan commission. The voters agreed.

Our redistricting process has since been a model for the nation. By requiring bipartisan agreement on maps, it prevents the discriminatory boundary-setting called “gerrymandering” that can give one party or the other an unfair advantage.

In November 2021, the redistricting commission unanimously adopted an updated map of the state’s 49 legislative districts, using the 2020 census figures.

The two Republican appointees to the commission and the two appointed by Democrats agreed the 15th Legislative District, which spans much of the Yakima Valley, would be a “majority-minority” district. They drew the 15th District so its voting-age population, based on the census numbers, was 51.5% Hispanic and the overall population was 73% Hispanic.

Out-of-state interests sued soon after, basically claiming the district wasn’t Hispanic enough. Yet in the 2022 general election, the district’s voters overwhelmingly chose a Hispanic woman as their new senator.

It didn’t matter that the new senator is the first Hispanic and first woman to hold that office — she’s also a Republican. The legal challenges went forward. This past August, a federal judge based in Seattle and appointed by former President Bill Clinton ruled the 15th District map doesn’t comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

By law, responsibility for modifying a legislative-district map clearly belongs to the redistricting commission. This past fall Republicans repeatedly called for a special legislative session to reconvene the commission. The governor and the Legislature’s top Democrats all refused.

After this year’s regular session began, I filed legislation to reconvene the commission. While we were on the floor of the Senate chamber on the 10th day, I made a motion that would have brought that legislation to an immediate vote. Had it passed, the commission would have had enough time to rework the map ahead of deadlines related to this year’s general election.

Every Republican supported the motion. Not a single Democrat senator did, so it failed.

My counterpart on the Democrat side of the Senate is on record as saying redistricting is “essential to a fair and representative democracy” and calling Washington’s process “one of the most balanced” in the nation.

Yet when he and his fellow Democrats could have joined Republicans to honor Washington’s constitution, and direct the redistricting commission to fix the map, they instead treated the constitution as a hindrance. Their vote left the redistricting question in the federal arena, free from bipartisanship requirements or legislative oversight.

To no one’s surprise, the map of the 15th District — which has been represented in the Senate by Republicans since 1943 — was just redrawn by the federal court in a way that clearly favors Democrats. It not only makes the 15th and surrounding districts lean Democratic but also pushes three sitting Republican senators out of their districts.

Put another way, a single federal judge has endorsed the gerrymandering our constitution is designed to prevent. It’s a travesty that should offend anyone who believes in fair play and appreciates a balanced approach to lawmaking.

Legislators could and should have done better.

•••

Sen. John Braun of Centralia serves the 20th Legislative District, which spans parts of four counties from Yelm to Vancouver. He became Senate Republican leader in 2020.