The Gjerde Defense

At Tuesday’s Supervisors meeting, the Board engaged in a lengthy un-agendized discussion of the recent State Controller’s office report which blamed the Supervisors for much of the County’s financial delays and difficulties. The unagendized discussion was allowed to ramble on at length without objection from County Counsel Charlotte Scott who should have told them they were violating the Brown Act by talking about it off-agenda. It arose after Acting Auditor-Controller/Treasurer Tax Collector Sara Pierce was reporting on some tax collection statistics. It is scheduled for discussion at the July 23 board meeting.

Lame Duck Supervisor Glenn McGourty harrumphed that the report was “offensive” to him because the State Controller’s office never talked to him before issuing their report.

The most pointed comments however were from Lame Duck Supervisor Dan Gjerde who objected to the report. His objections were:

• Former elected Auditor-Controller Treasurer-Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison “rebuffed” offers of outside assistance. “They did not want outside people in their office,” said Gjerde, going on to imply without a shred of evidence that something untoward was going on in the Auditor’s office under Cubbison. “It might raise a question from the public,” said Gjerde, “Why did they not want people from the outside in their office who were experts in those offices?”

Of course, as usual, Ms. Cubbison, abruptly ousted from her elected position almost a year ago now based solely on the DA’s filing of dubious charges against her, was not given an opportunity to respond to this near-slanderous implication.

• Gjerde then said, “It is only now, after Sara Pierce was appointed, that the overdue reports are finally being completed.”

How far along was Ms. Cubbison when she was ousted? Gjerde didn’t want to know.

• Gjerde said that the Controller’s office report was “probably political” and was prepared by “a relatively low level employee at the state controller’s office.”

There’s no evidence of a political agenda on the part of the State Controller’s office (of all things) other than that the Supervisors were criticized for a reckless and questionable consolidation of the County’s financial offices at a time when covid was already making things difficult and the County’s property tax software was (and still is) not workable. Calling the Controller’s dry report “political” does not change what it says. Gjerde offered no information about what the Controller’s office’s political agenda might be.

• Gjerde claimed that the State Controller’s office “leaped to conclusions.”

Nevermind that the conclusions were not disputed.

• “A lot of what took place was glaringly absent,” insisted Gjerde.

Like?

• “State legislation that enabled the two elected offices to be one elected office took place before I was elected,” said Gjerde. “There was only one position eliminated and that was one of the two elected officers. No staff was eliminated in either department. The incumbents would always run uncontested.”

This, of course, is irrelevant. The Controller’s office was under no obligation to note that the merger idea had been discussed — and rejected — by previous boards. Nor is the fact that there are very few people qualified to run for those offices in the small population of Mendocino County grounds for merging the offices.

Gjerde was told in blunt terms by everyone who had an opinion on the rash merger of the offices that it was a bad idea, that it would make financial problems worse, and that senior staff would leave. The Board ignored that input and proceeded anyway. As predicted, senior staff left, except for Cubbison, who bravely stayed on in the face of irrational animosity from the Supervisors. Gjerde claims that his Board didn’t eliminate any positions? Nobody said they did! The problem is staffing, not positions on an org chart.

• Gjerde concluded, “When this board tried to engage in discussion about the merger that would take place with the consolidated election of one officer, the incumbents chose not to engage in conversation!”

Absolutely false. Both incumbents went on the record strongly disagreeing with the merger. It was the Board who chose not to engage, much less plan. The State Controller was correct in simply pointing that out.

In December 2021, as the Board was considering the consolidation of the financial offices, then-Acting Auditor Chamise Cubbison “engaged” with the Board by writing:

“The Auditor-Controller’s office and the Treasurer Tax-Collector should not be combined into one elected office. No compelling reasons have been indicated and no in depth review of the offices has been conducted. There has been no communication with myself to discuss the consolidation beyond notifying me of the upcoming agenda items. There has been no discussion about Board concerns, nor desired goals or outcomes other than what may be taking place in other offices behind closed doors.

“In my opinion, there are no efficiencies to be realized and the risk of collapse of two functioning departments that are key to all County departments and functions is real. In each office, the elected department head is a working department head. Both offices require the experience and skills of the various positions within them and if combined would still have the same amount of work for at least the same number of FTEs [full-time equivalent employees], if not possibly more. In addition, consolidation would require yet another annual audit for the County to pay for and participate in. This new audit would be specifically to insure that the internal controls and the separation of duties required by [government] code are adhered to in the combined office.”

And that, more or less, was the beginning of the end for Cubbison. The Board made it clear that they wanted only yes-persons — and woe to anyone who didn’t like it.

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Wednesday morning, the day after Gjerde’s attempt to refute the State Controller’s report, former Treasurer-Tax Collector Shari Schapmire, who retired right after the merger after 41 years in the office, told KZYX’s Karen Ottoboni that when Supervisor Dan Gjerde called Schapmire to discuss the proposed consolidation of the Treasurer-Tax Collector office with the Auditor-Controller office that “it was clear that they did not want Chamise [Cubbison] to be the Auditor.”

So “they” (the Board) were clearly tampering with an independent elected position long before DA Eyster filed charges. The consolidation had nothing to do with claimed efficiencies, or cost savings, or late financial reports. It was all about getting rid of Cubbison.

Schapmire said that Supervisors McGourty, Williams and Mulheren “never set foot in my office. I didn’t talk to them at all.”

Schapmire also said that the previous consolidations were also bad ideas. “The Assessor’s office [which was merged with the Clerk-Recorder in the early 2000s] deteriorated and has not recovered ever since. There was some brief talk [about merging the Auditor and Tax Collector] back in 2006 but nothing after that.” Then-Supervisor John McCowen talked to Schapmire about the possibility of merging the offices, and, said Schapmire, “I told him it was too much for one person. It will fail.” McCowen then withdrew the proposal.

“[The merger] was so reckless,” said Schapmire. “They can say whatever they want to the public. To me, their main goal was to get rid of the Auditor, that was the big thing, and they didn’t care what the risk was. They wanted to have control over that position, they were particularly interested in the Auditor. It was all about the Auditor. The Board wanted control over the Auditor function, basically. By combining the offices, they destabilized the whole financial engine of the County. … I lost a lot of respect for this Board. This was a very reckless move and I could no longer work with them. … They chose to go forward and it’s been a nightmare ever since.”