In December of 2010, in the aftermath of the “Great Recession,” when the County faced a budget crunch similar to today’s (but for different reasons), then-newly appointed CEO Carmel Angelo boldly proposed that six of the Sheriff’s clerks, three deputy positions and five sergeant positions be eliminated. Ms. Angelo said these cuts would reduce the Sheriff’s $1.35 million deficit by about $600,000 for the rest of that fiscal year, through June 30, 2011. The CEO didn’t even try to deal with the rest of the Sheriff’s estimated $1.35 million budget gap just for that current year.
Angelo, who had been recently promoted to CEO specifically to make some tough decisions to balance the County’s budget, was the only person in the County with the moxie to bring up the unpopular idea of major cuts to the Sheriff’s budget, and she’s now gone. We can’t imagine anyone in the current bunch at 501 Low Gap even mentioning the possibility of substantial cuts to the Sheriff’s budget. But there it was; the numbers were the numbers…
Then Sheriff Tom Allman disagreed, declaring Ms. Angelo’s list of proposed cuts to be “illegal” because he, the Sheriff, had not prepared it.
But then-County Counsel Jeanine Nadel disagreed, saying the Board was within its authority to eliminate positions in the Sheriff’s office, the Sheriff being elected, the Supervisors controlling his purse strings.
Allman complained that although the Board had ordered Ms. Angelo to work with him in preparing the list, “the phone never rang.”
Ms. Angelo replied that she had had a lot of trouble figuring out which Sheriff’s positions were funded out of which fund and which were vacant and which weren't. She'd sent her layoff recommendations to the Sheriff the week before but but hadn't heard from him.
Allman then asked for a 45-day stay of execution because the CEO's hit list didn’t account for looming resignations and retirements.
Angelo said the list did include those she knew about, but that if the Sheriff had more, fine.
At one point Allman said if the Board went through with the proposed layoffs he’d be forced to sue the Board on grounds that public safety would be jeopardized.
Seeing that the CEO and the Sheriff still had “issues,” the Board took a lunch recess to give the Sheriff and the CEO an opportunity to address their differences.
After lunch Allman said he could re-allocate about $257k in asset forfeiture funds currently earmarked for a new digital phone system to offset the cost of the clerical workers on the layoff list, bringing the deficit down to a still very large $1.1 million. Allman also wanted to swap two deputy positions for corrections officer positions, meaning that two deputies would be transferred to funded vacancies at the jail.
Most of the rest of the Board discussion revolved around whether the Board would impose the position eliminations on the Sheriff or if they’d “trust” the Sheriff to make the necessary cuts himself.
Allman wanted to retain flexibility to see if new revenues came in by the end of January and if more resignations or retirements might further reduce the number of layoffs required.
Ms. Angelo and County Auditor Meredith Ford said that the County’s overall budget picture was actually much worse than just the Sheriff’s still-large budget gap.
After some discussion about pot money and reserves, CEO Angelo stuck to her original hard-line proposal of laying off all 14 Sheriff's Department people, emphasizing that it’s important to get started now because the layoff process takes 45 to 60 days. If some pot funding “miraculously” became available, the layoff notices could be rescinded.
“If it's deputies I lay off,” said Allman, “I will demote sergeants. At this point my command staff and I are going to regroup.”
The overall picture remained bleak. The Sheriff was already applying $200k of asset forfeiture money to overtime and part of this latest precarious offset arrangement involves covering $257k worth of budgeted overtime with the additional asset forfeiture money, then applying the $257k of overtime money to fund the clerical staff that was slated for layoff.
“If the pot money comes in there’d be a revisit,” said Allman, “but the turnip is running dry. If sergeants are demoted, five deputy sheriff’s will lose their jobs per civil service [bumping] procedure. So five deputies is the same thing. I will demote sergeants to deputies.”
“But,” added CEO Angelo, “this is only half way there. I don’t know where the rest [of the approximately $600k of deficit reduction money for the current year] will come from.”
“If this doesn’t achieve the savings,” promised Allman, “we can deal with it then. I ask you to trust the Sheriff’s Office and our command staff.”
Supervisor John Pinches agreed with Ms. Angelo.
“We still have to solve the $1.1 million problem by the end of June. This is just a good start, but not a solution.”
“Thank you for putting the trust in the Sheriff’s office,” concluded Allman. “You’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
“Pleasantly,” however, probably would not be a word anyone would apply to that day’s dismal proceedings.
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A few weeks later Sheriff Tom Allman took another stab at convincing the Board to postpone the pending layoffs of five deputies (down from seven when two of them decided to take resident deputy positions in Covelo, the toughest area to police in the County).
Response from the Board? Supervisor McCowen asked CEO Angelo what she thought.
Predictably, Ms. Angelo said, No way. “At this point,” said Angelo, “we are looking at an $818,000 shortfall in the county general fund budget,” Ms. Angelo added. “If you delay the layoffs, you would be adding another $100,000 to $150,000 to the county's deficit. I would not recommend delaying this layoff.” And that was it. The Board was with their CEO. Cuts had to be made.
The Board treated Sheriff Allman more or less like just another ignorable person rambling on irrelevantly. Not one question was posed to Allman, no discussion about Allman’s decision to discontinue deputies being on patrol. The cuts would be made; the layoffs would apparently proceed, the seemingly spiteful operational changes would be made, and then, in the not too distant future, yet another round of layoffs would be forced on Allman since there’s nothing significant on the horizon that will change the Sheriff’s budget situation for the better, only for the worse.
“We do this for public safety, to protect and serve,” insisted Sheriff’s Captain Kurt Smallcomb. “To lose 10% [of our uniformed staff] means now we have to worry about the safety of our own officers.” Since patrol deputies have been put on on-call status, instead of on-patrol, response times are increasing throughout the county. The five positions slated for layoff were made up of two corrections officers and three (presumably coastal) patrol deputies.
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County Denies Brown Act Violation in Cubbison Suspension Action
On October 20, 2023 we filed a Brown Act violation notice with the County alleging that the October 17 agenda item which ended up suspending Auditor-Controller/Treasurer Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison violated the Brown Act.
Basically we said that the County had cited the wrong code in the agenda item and they didn’t comply with the code they cited. By citing the wrong government code section, they effectively deprived the public from properly commenting or disputing the proposed action. The government code they cited, Section 27120, applies to a “County Treasurer,” not the unique title Mendo had given Ms. Cubbison with three additional functions. Further, Section 27120 requires that whoever the Board appoints “shall qualify.” Yet, neither the agenda item nor the attached resolution mentioned anything about the qualifications of Sara Pierce who the Board immediately appointed in the same agenda item. (Probably another Brown Act violation because the entire suspension exercise was obviously planned and orchestrated in advance in illegal closed session.)
We demanded that the action taken be corrected and cured by being rescinded and re-agendized with the proper government code and with a demonstration that the person appointed “shall qualify” for the position.
The County had 30 days to respond. They took 29 days. On Friday, November 17, County Counsel Christian Curtis responded.
“Mr. Scaramella,
The County reviewed your email dated October 20, 2023 and determined that it was not a ‘cure and correct’ demand under Government Code section 54960.1. That process allows for a member of the public to request that the Board take action to correct an alleged violation of certain portions of the Brown Act (i.e., violations of Government Code sections 54953, 54954.2, 54954.5, 54954.6, 54956, or 54956.5). The ‘cure and correct’ process affords a legislative body the opportunity to fix noticing or similar errors that are easily remedied by offering additional opportunity for public input prior to retaking the underlying action. Your email did not identify any agenda error or other Brown Act violation. Instead, that email exclusively sought to argue the merits of the underlying action and debate interpretation of the statutes authorizing Board action. Your email has been provided to the Board as public comment, but no action under Government Code section 54960.1 is possible or appropriate at this time.
Sincerely,
Christian M. Curtis
County Counsel, County of Mendocino
501 Low Gap Road, Room 1030, Ukiah, CA 95482
Phone: (707) 234-6885 · Fax: (707) 463-4592
Email: curtisc@mendocinocounty.org”
* * *
In effect, Curtis said that they can cite the wrong code in the agenda item and not follow the code they cited and yet it’s not a Brown Act violation.
We disagree, of course. But Curtis may be legally correct. We do not want to spend a lot of money on lawyers in a court dispute which we might well lose on a technicality, given that the courts in this County are not known for their concern about public matters.
We’re still smarting from our attempt back in 2011 to force then-Supervisor Kendall Smith to return over $3,000 in travel reimbursements she falsely claimed, as documented thoroughly in four (4) consecutive Grand Jury reports.
In that case, Judge John Behnke ruled that our attempt to get then-Auditor Meredith Ford to take the money back via a paycheck deduction “wasn’t cognizable under the law.” And the only person who could force Smith to return the money was the District Attorney — the public didn’t have standing to bring the case. Behnke also ruled that the statute of limitations had run out on Smith’s misapprorpriation, never mind that we had been forced to wait for the Grand Jury and District Attorney (Meredith Lintott) to do their jobs before we could file a case.
(The kinds of irrelevant “not my job” legalistic evasions that Behnke invoked are unfortunately typical of the way Mendo courts work in such caases. If anyone thinks that Ms. Cubbison’s case will be adjudicated in anything like a timely manner — much less fairly, even with the considerable skills of her heavyweight attorney Chris Andrian — they’ve never had the pleasure.)
Although the District Attorney could pursue this current Brown Act violation, given DA Eyster’s personal involvement in this case, we doubt he’d take any action.
At this time we are considering our options. But for now we may have to wait, perhaps for years, until the Cubbison suspension and associated misappropriation matter is heard in court before we find out if the suspension process was legally sufficient. We remain unconvinced by Mr. Curtis’s narrow interpretation of the Brown Act.
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