DA DAVID EYSTER'S sensible pot enforcement strategies were recently featured in the Daily Journal Legal News, a newspaper for the legal profession. “Under new policy, some offenders can pay restitution and plead to a misdemeanor” by Henry Meier went on to explain how Eyster had “redefined” the pot prosecutions that have clogged the Mendo justice system for years under his predecessors. Eyster has deployed “an obscure law to collect restitution from defendants in exchange for lighter sentences.” Under California's Health and Safety Code Section 11470.2, part of a 1983 law that makes it possible for the district attorney's office to recoup law enforcement costs from a criminal defendant. “It allows us to file a petition in the original criminal complaint asking for restitution from the defendant,” Eyster said. “If they agree to pay restitution and accept the other terms of a settlement, felony charges are dropped and they can plead to a misdemeanor that keeps them out of jail.”
A DEFENDANT typically will end up on probation for two to three years and have to agree to law enforcement searches. They are also allowed to continue to cultivate medical marijuana as long as they comply with all state and local laws.
EYSTER, however, has always made it clear that he'd pursue the big, public lands trespass grows as the felonies they are. No deals for these guys. The DA told the Daily Journal that marijuana-related cases used to take about 15 months to prosecute. Under his approach, those 15 months have shrunk to an average of 70 days. “It's working very well for us,” Eyster said. “We have put deputies on the street paid for with this money.” Eyster said that he” personally looks at the cases that are prosecuted in this manner - more than half the total marijuana cases brought in the office are resolved by settlements under 11470.2 - and makes exceptions for indigent defendants when warranted."
SEIU is complaining that Sakowicz sand bagged them into appearing on his show with Carmel Angelo. After discussing the show with Sakowicz for weeks, so the story goes, Sakowicz suddenly told SEIU that Angelo would be joining them on the air. SEIU, which had been planning to focus on the hardships the county wage cuts had caused to their members, was taken aback and said they wouldn't go on the show if Angelo was included. Sakowicz then sent an email to SEIU saying he was going to publicly rip them if they didn't show up, by saying they were afraid to face Angelo. SEIU, which had already sent an email to their members announcing the show, decided to take their chances and go on with the show.
WAS SEIU AFRAID CEO Angelo would show them up? They needn't have worried. By the time Sakowicz was done patting himself on the back for bringing SEIU and management together “for the first time in history,” the hour had passed and KZYX seamlessly shifted from spoken word to music. Concerns that Sakowicz might ask hardball questions of either side were misplaced. Sakowicz alluded to the County hiring “outside attorneys and outside negotiators” but never asked Angelo how much that cost or where the money came from if the County is so broke. And he missed the opportunity to ask the SEIU leadership why they were missing in action when the Supes discussed the county budget or the RFP for mental health services. Or about the widespread grumbling among the rank and file who feel caught between an indifferent county administration and bumbling union leadership.
LOCAL SEIU PRESIDENT Louise ‘Weezer’ Gonyo (and someone should have asked where she got the nick name) made the usual call for budget transparency. SEIU political organizer Paul Kaplan called for restoring the 10% cut in wages that SEIU just recently agreed to. All the other county bargaining units took the cut at least a year ahead of SEIU, and most of them have extended the cuts for at least another year. Only SEIU seems to think the county has money to restore wages. Or maybe they just want to make a show for their members. If SEIU really can't understand the budget, or if they really think the county is sitting on a pile of cash, they can do like other unions and hire experts to analyze the budget. Or they can just keep mouthing rhetoric about not balancing the budget on the backs of the workers when they know there is no money to do anything else. And there won't be any money locally as long as Washington is focused on missile diplomacy and corporate bailouts.
SAKOWICZ, who sits on the county retirement board, asked CEO Angelo if she was in favor of doing a “CAFR,” a Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. Sakowizc recently pushed the retirement board to do a CAFR and claims something like 57 out of 58 counties in California do one. Only Mendocino does not. Why? It is up to the County Auditor who so far has refused. When asked why, she simply says “we have never done one.” A CAFR would supposedly provide a longer range view of county finances than the budget which is really just a one year projection for cash flow and spending. A CAFR might better identify trends and highlight problem areas. Angelo says she is willing to work with the Auditor to produce a CAFR, but the Auditor doesn't want to do one so it doesn't happen. A CAFR might reveal that the chief financial officers of the county, the Auditor and the Treasurer-Tax Collector, were asleep at the wheel for the last twenty years while county finances drifted onto the rocks. Meanwhile, Randy Goodman, who works for the county (and sits on the retirement board) has just finished doing a CAFR for the retirement board in his spare time. He could do one for the county too, if he was given direction to do so.
THE COUNTY SENT A NOTICE from the Auditor updating County employees on the “Retirement Contribution Correction Project.” Like anything else coming out of the Auditor's office, the notice provided as little information as possible. The notice says “retirement [meaning the retirement board staff] has recently completed a spreadsheet that lists all members' correction amounts” and expresses the hope that the corrected amounts will be distributed “within the next few weeks.” We are told the Auditor's office has been sitting on the spreadsheet with the corrected amounts since March.
REFUNDS should have gone out within a week or two of getting the spreadsheet, but that's not how things are done in the Auditor's office. The notice said nothing about when the error began (July, 2009), when it was corrected (January 2011), how much in over contributions will be refunded (slightly over $500,000), or how much in under contributions will be billed (about $30,000). The notice also neglects to say that the retirement board settlement with Buck requires Buck to reimburse the retirement board and the county for the cost of making the necessary corrections. So there is no excuse for the Auditor not to do the work needed to process the refund checks and get them out to the employees, including hiring extra help, if necessary.
UKIAH'S FOREST CLUB, the famous bar and retreat on State Street opposite the Courthouse, has been closed by the ABC for 30 days because an underage kid, dispatched by the ABC on a sting mission, got himself served a drink. As if the owner, who tends bar himself, doesn't have enough to do simply riding herd on whomever wanders in off the street, and in Ukiah, as everywhere in the land anymore, that often means people who are extremely difficult to deal with short of a baseball bat, which is the way the obstreperous used to be dealt with in Boonville's drinking establishments. Few small businesses can afford to be put on hold for a month. It doesn't seem fair to penalize the struggling owner of the Forest Club, a guy who tries to run the place right, simply because the government has nothing to do but run sting ops. And I'll bet the “kid” looked like your grandpa, the one who runs marathons.
LITERARY NOTE from R.W. Johnson: “Hemingway's famous terseness, his determination to get the maximum impact from the minimum number of words, and when the journalists who heard him demanded a six-word story competition, Hemingway won it easily with, 'For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.'"
MENDOCINO COUNTY'S smallest incorporated town, the City of Point Arena, is taking declarations of candidacy for 3 city council positions and treasurer position. Candidates must have their paperwork in by August 10th to get themselves on the November ballot.
MITCH DELFINO of Cloverdale has signed with the Giants. A third baseman for Cal Berkeley, Delfino is the most recent Cloverdale athlete to go big time, although he'll start out with the rooks in Arizona. The Rowland family saw dad get to the bigs as a catcher while his two sons move steadily in the direction of the major leagues from the minors.
Hi Bruce, Hi Mark.
I never said Friday’s show was the “first time in history”, as you say in today’s blog, that county management and county labor were brought together.
Good God, sir(s).
County management and county labor meet once a month in county offices on Low Gap Road in an effort to improve relations. But the meetings are not open to the public.
What I did say in my reply in yesterday’s blog was that, “The show was ‘historic’ insofar as, to the best of my knowledge, county management and county labor have never shared the same public forum, spoken together with any degree of civility, and done it all on the record.”
Big difference.
About the rest. in today’s blog…”sandbagging” and all. Sounds inflammatory. Provocative. You’re baiting us, right? The county, labor, maybe me.
Well, I’m not biting.
Both county management and county labor should be congratulated for beginning a public conversation together on Friday’s show. True, things could have been edgier and more confrontational.
But think about it: Is on-air conflict a good starting point for a relationship characterized by conflict?
About the issues you raise in today’s about the possibility for a county-wide CAFR, much like the one done at the county retirement system…now there’s an issue worthy of the AVA. You should be all over it. Investigate the possibilities and report on it.
It would indeed appear that the county auditor and/or treasurer oppose a CAFR. So? Are our hands really tied?
No, of course not.
Some very important people have begun to quietly wonder if a referendum should be placed on the county ballot to abolish the elected offices of Auditor and/or Treasurer and to replace those offices with a new C-level position…Chief Financial Officer.
The CFO would be a direct report to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors ( BOS) in much the same way that the CEO and County Counsel are direct reports. In the CFO model, the BOS have control over the financial infornmation they are receiving. Supervisors would have a clearer, more accurate picture of financial reality.
And financial reality for Mendocino County all starts with its biggest liability…its retirement system.
I’ll explain. Our unfunded pension liability was adjusted upward last year by our new actuary, the Segal Company, to $124.9 million.
And today, July 18, the Retirement Board heard its new pension administrator, Rich White, report that the county pension portfolio returned only 1 % year-over-year. Meanwhile, our target rate of return is 7.75 %.
Do the math. Our unfunded pension liability gets bigger…much bigger.
Public pension accounting and reporting standards that place more emphasis on liabilities were approved Monday by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board.
It gets worse.
Public pension accounting and reporting standards that place more emphasis on liabilities were approved on June 25 by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). That means that Mendocino County can’t stick its head in the stand anymore…despite the tendency of our past auditor and treasurer to do exactly that.
Now, GASB won’t allow it. No more sticking heads in the sand. I’ll explain GASB’s new June 25 mandate.
The two sets of rules, for government employers and for public pension plan administrators, were developed after years of deliberation and field testing, to increase transparency about plan liabilities.
Under existing standards, public pension plans have concentrated on the annual required contribution amount to keep the focus on funding targets. The new standards call for having a new “net pension liability” figure directly on balance sheets, along with those funding projections.
Public pension plan executives worry that shifting the focus to liabilities will exacerbate fears about a plan’s financial conditions and lead to short-sighted funding changes.
Da. Do ya think?
Until now, pension plans have focused on the annual required contribution, which highlights their funding targets, while keeping liabilities in the footnotes. Now, the GASB will require plans to put a new “net pension liability” figure directly on the balance sheets, in addition to the funding projections.
In accounting terms, the change means that the unfunded actuarial accrued liability will use traditional entry-age projections offset by the fair value of plan assets. Currently, pension plans vary in which ages they use in their projections.
The standards for public plans’ financial statements go into effect for periods beginning after June 15, 2013. The standards for employers are effective for fiscal years beginning after June 15, 2014. GASB plans to issue an implementation guide for both sets later this year.
All bad news for Mendocino County.