Things Get Worse 

Just when you think things couldn’t get any worse in Mendocino County given its fiscal mess and talk of a bankruptcy-style reorganization plan, things get worse.

At this week’s BOS meeting (Oct. 17), the situation was propelled even further into chaos when the Supes unanimously suspended, without pay or benefits, Chemise Cubbison, the elected Treasurer-Tax Collector/Auditor-Controller. Both Cubbison, and Paula June Kennedy, the county’s former payroll manager, are facing charges they allegedly misappropriated $68,106 in public funds beginning in 2019. In fact, on the same day of the BOS meeting, Cubbison and Kennedy were in court awaiting their arraignment. However, the arraignment was postponed until Oct. 31 to provide Ms Kennedy the opportunity to arrange representation by the Public Defender’s Office. 

The Supes needed less than 9 minutes — surely a record of some sort — in making history by the disposal through suspension of Ms Cubbison from elected office. 

Here’s how they did it.

As is the case far too often, the County didn’t utilize their nine-attorney County Counsel Office for an opinion on how to proceed with the proposed Cubbison suspension. Instead, they relied on a San Francisco-based firm, Liebert, Cassidy Whitmore, to guide them through the process, at taxpayer expense, of course. 

Morin Jacob, of the SF firm, told the Supes, “that under Government Code Section 27120, this Board has the authority to suspend [Cubbison] during the pendency of the criminal case against her, which at this point in time, as of this afternoon, is still ongoing. So you have the authority to take that action this afternoon. And then the same statute similarly gives you the authority to appoint someone in an acting position during the pendency of the criminal action against [Cubbison].”

District 3 Supe John Haschak inquired, “So if we suspended the Auditor-Controller/Treasurer and put in an acting [person], then the person would be acting until this issue were resolved.”

“Correct,” replied Jacob. “They would be in an acting role unless removed by the County Board of Supervisors for some reason, or at the time at which the criminal charges currently pending are resolved.”

Haschak: “And this could go on for months or …”

Jacob: “Correct. It just depends on what happens in the criminal case, which is run by the DA’s Office.”

Williams then asked, “Chair (McGourty), are you ready for a motion?

McGourty: “I am.”

Williams: “I move we suspend the Auditor-Controller/Treasurer and appoint Sara Pierce as Acting Auditor-Controller/Treasurer.”

After Dan Gjerde provided the second, Haschak asked, “Well, if we appoint Sara Pierce, I guess in this situation, is she going to be independent? I’m just looking at process and policy. You know we need to put in place a good process not based on personalities or anything. So is this going to be a person acting independent of the CEO’s Office?”

Williams: “That was the understanding of the maker [Williams] of the motion.”

Haschak: “OK. So we’d appoint her to be ‘independent’ Acting Auditor-Controller/Treasurer?”

Williams: “I think she’d be as independent as that office always is, irrespective of who is seated.”

McGourty: “She’s a Department head. She’s running a Department and we’re hoping, of course, for collaboration but she will be making decisions on how to execute her duties for the job.”

You may want to bookmark the foregoing dialogue, as we may be discussing and parsing such words and phrases as “independent” and “collaboration” and “making decisions on how to execute her duties for the job” and so on.

Anyway, at this juncture, the Board voted unanimously to suspend Cubbison and appoint Sara Pierce, an analyst in the CEO’s Office, to temporarily fill the vacancy in the Treasurer-Tax Collector/Auditor-Controller Office(s).

I was tied up Tuesday afternoon when all this occurred so I couldn’t caution the Board not to do what they did. I would have advised them to postpone any action pending the preliminary hearing. That way they would have had the opportunity to review what kind of evidence the DA was relying on, and whether the judge found it sufficient to proceed to trial.

Someone who did speak during public comment was Carrie Shattuck, who said, “I think the board is really jumping the gun. Ms. Cubbison has not even been arraigned yet. Generally, a felony charge can be dropped to a misdemeanor or whatnot at your first court hearing. It's very obvious now that we know why there was a contingency plan for a Department of Finance.”

I’ll save this for another time but the County is on shaky legal ground surrounding this entire, unseemly affair, including the justification provided by the outside attorney.

Additionally, Ms. Cubbison has both substantive and procedural rights that were denied her by the BOS. At minimum, she was entitled to the opportunity to appear before the Board and respond to the proposed action prior to the vote being consummated by the Supes. I don’t believe she was ever put on proper notice that the Board was planning to take action by suspending her from office. In fact, that very action item was only placed on the agenda subsequent to the Board opening the meeting on Tuesday morning. The Board had an affirmative obligation to notify Cubbison that her tenure in an elected position was in imminent peril.

Let’s take a quick look at the financial department consolidation issue before getting back to Tuesday’s meeting.

With the exception of Haschak, the rest of the Board voted in December of 2021 to consolidate the formerly independent, elected offices of Treasurer-Tax Collector and Auditor-Controller into a single office, thus eliminating vital internal controls over finances. Without a doubt, the numero uno principle of fiscal matters, whether your books are kept in either the private or public sector, is you never, ever eliminate internal financial controls. The more eyes you have on the numbers, the better off you are. 

At the time of this consolidation incident, I said the impetus for it was a 2021 petty bureaucratic squabble instigated by DA David Eyster over his office’s travel reimbursements being (correctly) rejected by then Acting Auditor-Controller Chemise Cubbison because he refused to follow county reimbursement guidelines. It should be noted that Eyster has tangled with other Auditors, namely Meredith Ford and Lloyd Weer, over his refusal to comply with established reimbursement policies and asset forfeiture claims. Note likewise that Eyster was a vociferous supporter of the financial consolidation plan, and also vehemently opposed the appointment of Cubbison to fill out the unfinished term of Weer’s office when he retired early.

At Tuesday’s BOS meeting, Eyster, leading off public comment, read a statement explaining the genesis of and his involvement in filing a felony criminal charges of misappropriation of public funds against Cubbison and Kennedy.

Eyster countered accusations that “he was out to get” Cubbison: “Neither my staff nor I have used or will use our positions to seek retribution or purported vendettas against any defendant, public sector or otherwise, here in Mendocino County.”

He urged “law-abiding citizens” to: “Not be influenced by the misinformation. Not to engage in non-factual speculation. Let the local courts do their job and resolve their matters.”

Bottom line, Eyster wanted everyone to know he was not responsible for the investigation of the two women. Rather, it was Sheriff’s Office investigators who put the entire case together and forwarded it to him for his review and consideration of formal charges. Eyster stated a number of times that, contrary to numerous reports and public comments, he had nothing to do with the Sheriff’s Office investigation of Cubbison. The investigation “was not initiated by me or anyone else in the DA’s Office. It was initiated and conducted by the professionals in the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office. 

He also said the Sheriff’s Office received “information” of the alleged crime from “outside the criminal justice system” alerting them to the alleged wrongdoing. 

Shortly after Tuesday’s Supes meeting adjourned, the Board issued a 348-word, self-serving press release, most likely co- written by the County Counsel’s Office and District 5 Supervisor Ted Williams. The statement “clarifies” the DA’s claim about the source of the alleged crime coming from “outside the criminal justice system.”

According to the BOS statement, “The District Attorney’s investigation was prompted after the CEO’s office found evidence of misappropriation of funds in September 2022.”

However, Mike Geniella has reported that “Cubbison is believed to have relied on an agreement reached by retiring Auditor Lloyd Weer and her co-defendant before she took over as head of the office for not contesting the payments to Kennedy … Kennedy was placed on administrative leave by Cubbison after the pay dispute unfolded, and she eventually was terminated a year later. Kennedy’s pay pact for extra work was originally reached with retiring (Auditor) Weer during the Covid pandemic. Attorney Chris Andrian [who represents Cubbison] said the facts will show that Kennedy performed the work she was paid for no matter the method.”

So the record actually reflects that the CEO’s Office, most likely with an assist from Supe Williams, were involved in the Cubbison affair from the very beginning. For months, Williams has taken to social media disparaging Cubbison and renewing his demand for abolishing all elected financial offices, which would be supplanted by a single Department of Finance, with reporting lines to either the BOS or CEO.

This sordid affair is a long ways from being over, after all, this is Mendocino County.

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)