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County Notes: ‘Get Cubbison’ Effort Flops

THE BIG SHOWDOWN between the Supervisors and Auditor-Tax Collector Chamisse Cubbison devolved into another fizzle Tuesday morning after the feisty Cubbison gave the Board her blunt initial reaction to their catch-all list of things they wanted from the Auditor/Tax Collector. Much of the list reflected the ignorance and inexperience of the Board and their so-called “Budget Ad Hoc,” as they included things like Special District Audits and back up procedures which at best are low priority and at worst, as Ms. Cubbison noted, insulting to even ask. After Cubbison’s initial push-back blast, the Board backed off and insisted that, Oh no, they didn’t want to create any new additional work for Cubbison’s overworked and understaffed office and they’re open to considering staffing increases and outside consultants or extra help. Supervisor Williams sheepishly insisted again that all he wanted was basic financial information and he didn’t care who did it. His fellow ad hoc committee member Glenn McGourty agreed that the County wasn’t providing what other Counties and local agencies routinely do: basic budget and financial information on a monthly basis. 

THE AIMLESS and overdetailed discussion could have ended when CEO Darcie Antle told the Board that: “The reports the Executive office has is out of the MUNIS software. So it’s all related to budget that we can run. You saw some of those reports, they were presented in prior CEO Reports. They were just budget to actual. Those are reports that we can run.”

WELL, RUN THEM THEN! SHEESH! Is the Board even listening to their CEO? Yes, there are caveats and explanations and formatting and so forth. But they’d be a good start. Instead, the Board rambled on through their overlong list of things they wanted, noting all along the way that they didn’t care who did it and they didn’t mean any criticism of their elected Auditor/Tax Collector, although the opposite was pretty obvious. 

WE WERE DISAPPOINTED to hear from both Ms. Cubbison and Supervisor Mulheren that part of the reason they haven’t produced the reports in the past is that — gasp! — somebody might ask a question about them. Mulheren even implied that the last time they ran a budget vs. actual there was— gasp! — some criticism about it. There wasn’t. None. There’s no criticism except from us and we didn’t criticize that one-time summary. We’re pretty sure she’s (mis-)referring to the May of 2021 CEO report that included a departmental budget snapshot which we asked a few very ordinary questions about. They were not criticisms at all and then-CEO Carmel Angelo answered our questions with her usual half-assed replies which we let stand for readers to evaluate. No complaints, no criticisms. That’s when the CEO prefaced her answers with her now-familiar bogus claim that she was reluctant to produce budget vs actual reports because there might be questions like ours. And yes, we did complain about that dumb statement, but not about the reports.

IN THE END, having postured about how concerned they were about the County’s finances, the Board directed the Auditor and the CEO and their own ad hoc committee of Williams and McGourty to go back to the drawing board and do what they should have done the first time: look at existing reports that are already available and compare them to other counties and so forth. As usual, no dates were set, no objectives specified, no narrowing down of the ad-hoc’s long list to its most essential parts. 

AFTER THE TRANSPARENT GET-CUBBISON exercise had failed miserably, the Board went into closed session to discuss “labor negotiations.” So, as before, they are sure to tell their employees that they still can’t offer them any wage or cost of living adjustments because they just can’t seem to get those gol-durn financial reports that they had just finished putting off indefinitely again. 

The Schapmire Prophecy

Retired County Treasurer/Tax collector Shari Schapmire was Karen Ottoboni’s guest on her biweekly KZYX talkshow last Wednesday, the day after the ‘Get Cubbison’ meeting. Readers may recall that Schapmire retired prematurely last March when the board ignored her attempt to block or slow down the consolidation of her office with the Auditor’s office in the weeks leading up to her retirement. 

At that time Schapmire said she was retiring early because, “I don’t feel like I can work with the current Board of Supervisors.”

“There are a lot of moving parts,” said Schapmire about the problems that might ensue from an unplanned consolidation. “If you have one person who oversees the whole thing, things will get lost in the shuffle.”

Instead, “The majority of the board [only Supervisor John Haschak was opposed to rushing the consolidation] just wanted to push this through.”

“I’ve been very vocal that I oppose the consolidation because there are risks the board is not looking at.” 

“The disruption of leadership, practice, and scope of work would basically drop a bomb on the two offices.”

“As somebody on the inside, this is absolutely not what is best for the county.”

“I am leaving early,” concluded Schapmire. “After being in this office for 40 years, I cannot watch what it is going to do to staff. Also, I feel like now that this is a done deal, I need to get out of the way.”

Schapmire said the County’s finances were in good shape and in a “stable place” despite the glitches the staff has encountered with the installation of a new property tax computer system and some incompatibilities between the County’s existing data and the new software that wasn’t designed to incorporate it.

Since her retirement most of Schapmire’s predictions have come true. Not only that, but the Supervisors seem intent on placing blame on newly elected Tax Collector/Auditor Chemise Cubbison rather than accepting responsibility for what they have created. 

Schapmire told Ottoboni that the problems and shortfalls the Board is now trying to address were “self-induced problems.” 

Last week the board’s budget ad hoc committee of Ted Williams and Glenn McGourty presented Ms. Cubbison and with a long laundry list of financial requests and questions that were not only ill considered and misdirected, but a clear attempt to put Ms. Cubbison on the spot for those “self-induced” problems the board created when they rashly consolidated the offices in the vague and unrealistic hope that somehow some money could be saved. (It can’t.)

On Wednesday Ms. Schapmire said that in the months prior to the consolidation former CEO Carmel Angelo had been engaged in “empire building” by creating higher paid positions in the CEO’s office which were filled in part by transfers from the Auditor’s office staff, thus depriving the Auditor’s office of important senior staffers.

Schapmire also pointed out that the consolidation has put the county’s finances on a very predictable “negative path” which has validated many of the predictions she made in February prior to her retirement.

Ottoboni had some phone problems during her Wednesday show and was unable to take calls. We later heard that Supervisor/Board chair Ted Williams was unhappy with Ms. Schapmire’s assessment of the situation and started texting cryptic complaints to Ottoboni in the middle of the show.

In those texts Williams claimed that Schapmire’s observations, those of a well-respected and long serving senior county official, were “full of misinformation.” Williams also complained about not having a balance sheet which he said jeopardized a state grant, and disagreed that the county had combined any offices in the past — apparently not knowing that they combined the Assessor’s office with the Clerk-Recorder’s office a couple of decades ago creating a number of problems in the Assessor’s office which took years to straighten out.

Williams was particularly upset that Schapmire described the County’s current financial status and reporting as “self-induced,” meaning that many of the things the supervisors are complaining about were the predictable result of the ill-considered and ill-timed consolidation.

It is possible that Williams was frustrated at not being able to call in to the show, but if he is so convinced that his committee’s financial requests and complaints are defensible, he should do so publicly, not in a series of cryptic private texts. He should also explain his Board’s failure to properly staff the offices they consolidated and the Board’s failure to plan the accelerated consolidation which has made the county’s financial situation worse than it already was.

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