County Counsel Christian Curtis, the highest paid public attorney in Mendocino County, was scheduled for a performance review during closed session on Tuesday, March 14. The Supes gave him a big raise a couple years ago (which he botched and had to re-agendize after we pointed out that his raise agenda item didn’t comply with the Brown Act).
By almost any measure Curtis has been pretty bad, not that these Supervisors are likely to care. He helped the Board waste almost $400k on the pointless dispute with the Sheriff, he routinely farms out cases to very expensive outside law firms without a second thought, even though he has seven or eight attorneys working for him; he refuses to settle losing cases choosing instead to send them out to costly those outside attorneys (cf the Harindar Grewal case); he enabled the ill-fated consolidation of the Treasurer Tax-Collector with the Auditor Controller; his department overruns almost every year; he orders the Board around as if they work for him rather than the other way around; and he’s a big reason the County’s failed pot program is stuck in a very costly neutral that they can’t get out of.
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Also on the Tuesday, March 14 closed session agenda was a discussion of another Curtis engineered waste of money:
Item 6e: “Pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.9(d)(1) - Conference with Legal Counsel - Existing Litigation: One Case - County of Mendocino v. Ortner Management Group, LLC et al. 22CV00511.”
That’s right. Curtis has pressured the Supervisors to sue a non-existent former Mental Health Services company (they went out of business in 2017) alleging they haven’t provided adequate or proper documentation for their under-performing services back in 2013 to 2016. Mendo never should have awarded any contracts to Ortner who had no experience doing what they were contracted to do. But they got the contract because then-CEO Carmel Angelo’s friend Camille Schraeder didn’t bid the adult mental health services at the time and Angelo hired a former Ortner executive to steer the contract to Ortner (which the Grand Jury cautiously said had an “appearance” of a conflict of interested and the Supervisors said it “wasn’t illegal”) and then oversee their contract performance, such as it wasn’t. Ortner was also handed a mess of mental health documentation to begin with so they started out playing catch up. Ortner blew up after three years of poor performance, and Camille Schraeder, who had the juvenile mental health services contract bid and won the adult services half of the mental health services contract and has been given tens of millions a year in cozy sole source non-competitive contracts ever since. Mendo has never required proper reporting from whatever mental health service providers they hired, public or private. But now here’s Curtis steering Mendo down a bottomless rabbit hole with another expensive lawsuit to get data that doesn’t exist from a company that doesn’t exist for services that were semi-performed up to ten years ago and which Mendo permitted without a formal documentation complaint during the entire period of the Ortner contract.
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Remember that mystery lawsuit that was listed last month for discussion in closed session? The case number they provided wasn’t listed in Mendo’s Superior Court case list and we were stumped as to what it was. It turns out, based on an attachment buried deep in next Tuesday’s agenda, that it’s a class action lawsuit filed in Humboldt County by a (presumed) Humboldt pot grower and lawyer against Humboldt County and 12 other counties including Mendocino. We have been unable to find the particulars of the case, but they’ll probably be made public at some point in the not too distant future. The case is Humboldt case number CV-22-01700 and the plaintiff in the Mendo case is named “John Doe #1.” But in Humboldt County it’s called “Elizabeth Schwab et al v. Humboldt County.”
The 13 Counties being sued are being represented by an expensive Sacramento law firm named Shook, Hardy & Bacon which Mendo intends to sign on with. According to the SH&B “engagement letter,” they will “bill for our services on an hourly basis, generally recording our time in six-minute increments. The hourly rates for the partners who will work on your matter is $595 and associates is $395. We also bill for the services of paralegals who assist the attorneys at a rate of $195 an hour.” SH&B will also “be representing twelve other counties in this litigation and will be splitting our fees among all 13 counties. We will also be implementing a joint defense agreement that will be sent separately.”
And Mendo better pay and pay promptly because SH&B is as bluntly mercenary as they come.
“We will bill you for expenses we incur on your behalf. We will ask you to pay directly any significant outside expenses incurred on your behalf, such as deposition costs, investigators, consultants or experts necessary in our judgment [sic/our emphasis] to represent you in this matter. We will direct statements for such expenses to you for payment. It is our policy that clients advance any required filing fees. We bill for long-distance telephone calls, outgoing FAX charges, photocopying charges, after normal hours word processing, travel expenses, delivery charges other than normal postage [wow! no separate charge for stamps! such a deal!], and other necessary [sic] expenses. We separately bill for computerized legal research (LEXIS, WestLaw and similar services) and related expenses. All expenses will be itemized on the statements we will send you. Payment is to be made in U.S. dollars, by check or draft payable to ‘Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P.’ If any of our statements remain unpaid for more than 90 days, we may, consistent with our ethical and court-imposed obligations, cease to perform services until satisfactory arrangements have been made for the payment of the unpaid statements and future fees. In fairness to our many clients who promptly pay their statements each month, we reserve the right to take appropriate action with respect to delinquent accounts.”
Translation: Some well-funded pot growers are apparently suing every government agency they think has harmed them financially including Mendo, somehow, for as yet unknown damages, and now Mendo is signing on to an open-ended lawyer contract which they will have no control over and which will cost a lot of money and will do nothing to help the pot growers or the counties, but will enrich lawyers all over the place.
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Midyear Budget Downdate
Catching up on another item from the March 14 Supervisors agenda we found this excerpt from the belated “Mid-Year Budget Report” (for July 2022 to December 2022):
“The following statistics are from the County’s most recent sales tax report, provided by HDL Companies [a sales tax forecasting consultant], for Jul-Sept 2022, when compared to the same timeframe last year (Jul-Sept 2021). [I.e., from two years ago to one year ago…]
Mendocino County’s overall sales were down 5.2%, excluding all reporting aberrations.
Fuel and service stations increased by 7.3%, mostly due to the rising prices at the pumps.
Grocery Store decreased by 7.1%.
Casual dining restaurants decreased 4.3%.
Contractors decreased by 7.3%.
Garden and Agricultural supplies decreased 42.1%, due in part to the decline in the Cannabis industry.
Hotels and Motels increased 6.3%.
Building Materials decreased 7.7%.
Wineries decreased 13.6%.
Quick-Service Restaurants decreased 4.8%.
Light Industrial and Printers decreased 14.1%.”
The Board was too busy trying to blame their budget problems on Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison to discuss the worrisome implications of this across the board sales tax revenue decline, especially in the “garden and agricultural supplies” category, and the not quite so dramatic but still significant decline in wine and tourism tax revenues.
According to the accompanying revenue projection for 2022-2023 (the current fiscal year from July of 2022 to June of 2023), Mendo’s portion of local sales taxes is expected to drop from about $8.5 million to just under $8.4 million. But if the above downward trend continues at about 5%. Then next year the sales tax revenue would drop from $8.4 million to around $8 million. And that seems optimistic, given the collapse of the legal and illegal pot market. The other shoe will fall a bit later when the ripple effects of abandoned grow site properties being re-assessed based on the lower real estate values kick in.
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