In your face, Board critics: Supervisors to raise their own salaries again. From $96k per year to $111k per year! Almost 12% over an already very high salary.
Item 4c on next Tuesday’s Board Agenda: “Discussion and Possible Action Including Introduction and Waive First Reading of an Ordinance of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Mendocino Amending Chapter 3.04.071 of the Mendocino County Code Increasing the Base Salary for Members of the Board of Supervisors (Sponsor: Human Resources)”
“Summary: An ordinance of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors amending section 3.04.071 of Title 3 of the Mendocino County Code increasing the base salary for members of the Board of Supervisors. This Ordinance is amending Section 3.04.071 of Title 3 of the Mendocino County Code, regarding Board Compensation, to increase the base salary for each member of the Board of Supervisors from $95,302 to $110,715, over two fiscal years. The Board of Supervisors has not seen an annual salary increase since 2018 except for COLA’s received in years 2019 through 2021.This Ordinance will take effect sixty (60) days following its adoption.”
Mark Scaramella: We’re pretty sure they can’t raise their own salaries on the spot in mid-year like this. They have to schedule the raise to kick in at the beginning of the year when the new Board members are seated because even the crass lawyers who set this up realized that voting yourself a raise on the spot might be considered a theft of government funds and look bad. Not that this Board cares, Obviously. Also note that their only rationale for their salary increase — over and above a cost of living increase that they didn’t even give notice for — is that it’s been a while since they got a raise. They haven’t even bothered to provide the usual fig-leaf comparison of their salaries with their overpaid colleagues in neighboring counties.
RESPONDING TO CRITICISM over the Board’s plan to give themselves a $15k pay raise over the next few months, First District Supervisor Glenn McGourty told Mendofever.com, “The BOS is committed to fair market wages for all employees, including supervisors. We will be the last group to receive a market rate adjustment in our pay.”
The poor, suffering Supervisors are the last to get a raise! Never mind that they gave their employees a 2% and are about to give themselves a 12% raise. They are not “employees” because they alone decide what they do or do not do and how much “hard work” they do and when, and they are not subject to performance reviews or evaluations (unless you want to call elections every four years, for only the incumbents that choose to re-run, some kind of performance review).
McGourty: “Compensating people fairly for what can be very stressful and difficult work makes sense if you want to continue to have good candidates applying for these positions.”
Only one “good” candidate won election in the last election. The other “good candidates” included the breattakingly unqualified and inexperienced Trevor Mockel that all five supervisors endorsed. There is nothing “difficult” about what Supervisors do. And the “stress” in taking a teensy bit of criticism about what they do is part of the job which they signed up for and are already well-compensated for.
McGourty: “Our understanding of Mendocino County’s financial position has improved dramatically under Interim Auditor Controller Treasurer Tax Collector Sara Pearce and CEO Darcie Antle. Working closely with our consultants, the County has closed books for 2021-22 and 2022-23. Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports have been produced for both years, with the latest one indicating ‘no significant material findings’.”
Their “understanding has improved”? Not only is that not true, but it’s hardly a reason to give anybody a raise. This is nothing but a self-serving assessment, and “closing the books,” is a routine bookkeeping function which is hardly any kind of accomplishment and which the Supervisors deserve no credit for. In fact, they made it harder and more costly by their ill-considered consolidation of the County’s two main financial offices.
McGourty: “While money is tight, at least we have a balanced budget and a clear understanding of our ending balance. Additionally, all financial information and records are now properly managed in the MUNIS system.”
Self-serving and unsubstantiated. The budget was “balanced” (budgets are required to be balanced by state law) with millions of dollars of one-time funds and the cancellation or delay of necessary capital projects on top of significant layoffs, resignations and position cuts. And financial informatio nis “properly managed”? The state Controller disagrees.
McGourty: “CEO Antle and her financial team also played a significant role in this effort, and the BOS made this a top priority with strong support and dedicated resources.”
If this budget fiasco is what happens when the Board makes it a “top priority,” we’d hate to see what they pushed aside. No “resources” have been added to the tax collector’s office and the “resources” added to the Assessor’s office have not even produced enough potential new revenue to pay for their cost.
McGourty: “It is unfortunate that the State Controller’s Office did not interview any of the Supervisors for their report as we could have easily provided additional useful information.”
What this has to do with their pay raise is known only to Supervisor McGourty. If the “useful information” is so easy to provide, where is it so that the public can evaluate it? In fact, the “useful information” that the Supervisors have provided to justify their pay raise is their own high opinion of themselves.
WHEN DA EYSTER FIRST FILED THE CUBBISON charges we wrote that 1. Despite some naïve early expectations that the case would be resolved fairly quickly, it would drag out for a long time and come to a muddled ending; 2. That all allegations of financial “crimes” in Mendocino County in the last few decades have gone nowhere because Mendo has never kept records that hold up in court; and 3. Even if a Supervisor or two had private misgivings about the obvious lack of due process being granted to Cubbison, saying anything on the record about it would undermine their vindictive “Get Cubbison” program so they could try to blame all their financial screw-ups on Cubbison — as is clear by their transparently bogus responses to the State Controller’s report and, lately, their turning deaf ears to complaints about their own pay raise proposal.
HERE ARE A FEW related predictions based on past Mendo history: 1. Although Judge Moorman is probably the most independent and qualified local judge to hear the Cubbison case (after it slo-mo bounced from Faulder and Shanahan), Moorman’s woofing threats to “hold some other kind of hearing” if the attorneys don’t provide her with proper, complete, or timely paperwork are entirely empty threats and everybody involved knows it. 2. Nothing will result from the State Controller’s report and the State Controller’s “requirement” for a plan to fix various financial glitches will be ignored and the State Controller will not follow-up. 3. The big $800k (!) audit that Senator McGuire (!) has authorized will not result in any substantial changes in Mendo’s financial management. (If Mendo can’t even get basic budget v. actual reports, what makes anyone think they can do anything about the bigger, more fundamental financial problems?) 4. The Supervisors will approve their own pay raise as proposed despite a large segment of their “constituents” being against it because they have demonstrated time and again that they don’t care what their constituents think.
REMEMBER, this Board has not honored a single publicly approved voter measure, not one.) The only time they seemed to have been affected by public pushback was in the relatively minor case of the ill-considered relocation of the Veterans Service Office, and that only after staunchly defending it for two months and then grudgingly reversing themselves, mainly because Mulheren was facing stiff opposition by a veteran who was one of the leaders of the vets group complaining about the move for weeks and weeks on end. The Supervisors have not honored or followed a single Grand Jury report; even in the few cases where they “agreed” with a Grand Jury recommendation they made no effort to implement their “agreement.” No one in the public supported the consolidation of the Auditor and Tax Collector yet was approved 4-1. No one supported their firing of Cubbison without due process or conviction. No one outside the Board chambers has publicly supported the appointment of Darcie Antle as CEO or her subsequent raise. No one in the public supported the continued no-questions asked contract extensions to the Schraeders despite their having produced no meaningful measures of value or effectiveness. We could go on. The fact that a big pay raise was even proposed, knowing that it would be very unpopular, is itself proof that this Board is totally disconnected from and deaf to the people they supposedly represent.
The Supes pay raise proposal got off on a bad start Tuesday when Supervisor Mulheren refused to let a county employee complain about it in advance so that she could “go serve her clients in the hills outside of Boonville.”
“I’m sorry,” said Mulheren, “but I’m just trying to follow the process.” The employee threw up her hands in exasperation as she left the podium for her Boonville appointments.
Supervisor Williams was surprised to learn from one speaker that there are at least 12 social services employees who are either homeless or living in substandard conditions. He asked for a tally because “that’s one of the benchmarks that should matter to us.”
Mulheren deflected the comment by referring it to a “team” (Mendo has a “homeless team”?) after which, she insisted, “I am certain there will be follow up,” adding, “I will follow up with you about those specific people.” But, of course, there will be no further public discussion of the situation.
Unfortunately, the discussion of a staff proposal to raise the Supervisors’ salaries by about $15,000 in two steps (about 12%) devolved into pseudo=technical questions of how the Board’s latest insulting raise was calculated, which counties were compared to for what, how much it would cost in total, whether employees have to pay an increased share of healthcare costs, etc.
But they mostly avoid saying about how bad the entire idea is and how hyper-hypocritical it is since the Board has spent the last few years bemoaning the County’s deficit, whatever it actually is.
In financially strapped times in the past at least some Board members realized how bad it looks to give themselves a raise while refusing them to other employees and imposing various cuts.
Not this bunch.
When Supervisor Glenn McGourty called those who disagreed with the large proposed raise “negative naysayers” and “haters,” none of his colleagues disagreed.
Akesh Eidi, President of the local Services Employees International Union Local 1021 got a round of applause when he began his remarks by saying, “You want to do what now?!”
Only Board critic Carrie Shattuck got close to the core of the problem, saying:
“The county is in a financial crisis. It has given raises to all the highest-paid officials recently while knowing we cannot afford them. How could the board possibly consider giving themselves raises while the county is in a financial crisis? The budget was just “balanced” using one time funds for the second year. The in-home support services people have been in here for more than a year trying to get $20 per hour. And they have heard over and over that you can't afford it. You have also tried to get lower paid staff to $23 per hour which this board expressed was a priority. Now you have the money to give yourselves raises? Our roads are terrible. Residents cannot even afford to fix their suspensions. Businesses are failing and leaving this county in droves. Tax revenues are down. This is big government at work right here. You are out of touch with the communities you are supposed to be serving. This board is not deserving of a raise. It is shameful and disrespectful to all county employees that this is even on the agenda today. You should be taking pay cuts not getting raises. It appears recalls are the only remedy for our out of touch supervisors.”
Supervisor Dan Gjerde bizarrely first claimed that the pay raise was “just clean-up language.” Then he whined about the fact that state law requires public officials to vote on the salaries of public officials, including themselves, in public and properly noticed meetings. Gjerde, of all people, who is smart enough and experienced enough to know what the process is for public official salaries, still can’t understand that he and his colleagues have had a net negative impact on the County and the people they are supposed to represent. And yet here they were insisting that they somehow deserve a big raise.
Supervisor Glenn McGourty took the opportunity to launch into “Full Colfax Mode” (with a dollop of Agnew):
“There is a group of people who no matter what we do or what we say are not going to like this. There is a lot of negative naysayers. They are very vocal. They are haters who don't like anything we do. And I'm sure we are going to hear from them. I'm also sure that there are people who say they are not being fairly compensated and they are probably right. Our wage structure given the recent inflation and everything else that has happened and we need to work more. Like Supervisor Williams has talked about some of the people at the bottom too. … This is a difficult job, by far. It is the hardest job of any that I've ever done. I have liked it and hated it at the same time. When things don't go well, when you don't get your way, you still have to suck it up and come up here and go at it again. And when people criticize you and you can't answer because there is information that is confidential, it's difficult for us. We all face it. We all suck it up. We keep coming back. We are trying to do the best we can. I think this is a fair proposition.”
(For those who came in late, when Board salaries were discussed at one of his last meetings in 2009, the late Supervisor David Colfax had said, “I’ve had too much of an investment in this organization and wasted too damn much time bickering over a crappy salary connected to a not terribly rewarding job. … It's not terribly, terribly exciting to put it very mildly.”)
McGourty whined that being a supervisor is “the hardest job of any that I've ever done”? That’s probably because McGourty spent most of his “career” in cush non-job in a guaranteed position with the local Ag Extension Office as a cosseted wine advisory, taking government-paid junkets to France and other places and producing decidedly non-scientific propaganda pieces that he foisted off on the public as “studies” for his pals in the wine industry.
It’s true that in the last few weeks McGourty has had to deal with a couple of complaints about his family situation which are understandably upsetting. But most of the criticism he and his colleagues has received is about bad Board decisions and Board detachment from County operations and the public. McGourty is certainly under no “confidentiality” restrictions to try to defend those dubious decisions and lack of action. Trouble is, like the pay raise itself, all he can do is offer his own opinion that giving himself a raise “is a fair proposition.” To McGourty and his fellow Supervisors, “a fair proposition” is simply that other people get raises (from the Supervisors) so why not us? Where’s his list of accomplishments that deserve a raise? What things did “not go [his] way”? When? Why? Could it be that he and his colleagues have no rational argument for getting a pay raise, much less having the gall to propose one?
Almost unbelievably, McGourty also whined about how hard it is to run for Supervisor, going door to door, going to candidates nights. The effort! The sacrifice! And for no pay!
Supervisor Haschak joined with his colleagues to whine about the “weird position” the salary discussion put him in, adding one of the craziest analogies we’ve ever heard: that “this process makes martyrs out of the Supervisors.” Thus transforming the poor, overpaid Supervisors into helpless victims of the legal process.
In the end, the result was all too predictable as the Board voted 4-1 with Williams bleating a token “no” vote to “approve the recommended action.” (Williams will probably not turn down the raise, however.) The “recommended action” being a proposal from their own captive human resources department to feather the Supervisors’ collective nest as the County faces unprecedented budget shortfalls, oblivious to their own calls for belt-tightening almost everywhere else.
JIM SHIELDS
Pardon my crassness but at today’s meeting (July 23rd) dealing with the Board of Supervisors proposed salary raise, four out of the five collectively gave the finger to their respective constituents and county residents in general.
Supervisor Ted Williams cast the sole opposing vote, although he offered no explanation for doing so. My guess is he knew that the overwhelming number of District 5 residents were in the “No, hell no!” camp, and he voted accordingly. Of course, his four colleagues were facing the exact same situation but they responded with the extended middle digit.
So Williams has earned grateful appreciation, at least in this instance, for doing his job the way it’s supposed to be done.
Let me explain what I’m talking about.
Even though we find ourselves currently where, conservatively, at least 80 percent of County residents are staunchly opposed to the Supes ramming through a pay raise which they think is a great idea notwithstanding the fact this county is experiencing unprecedented fiscal distress. Keep in mind that never-before-seen state intervention in the form of two investigative audits to go along with an incomplete annual federal audit, are occurring in this county.
Notwithstanding the calamitous situation with finances, four-fifths of the Board believe they should be rewarded with a salary increase. Besides they argue, we gave all the other employees raises “bringing them up to market,” and we deserve the same treatment.
Here’s some friendly advice for the Supes:
Stop talking and start listening.
There’s a reason why we are all born with two ears but just one mouth. It’s difficult to hear what people are saying if you’re talking all the time. That’s why you don’t hear what the vast majority of your constituents are saying to you: You don’t deserve a pay raise because you haven’t been doing your jobs. The buck stops with you on all fiscal matters. Among other blunders, you recklessly weakened internal financial controls by your rash decision to consolidate the formerly separate offices of Treasurer-Tax Collector and Auditor-Controller.
The special internal controls audit just completed by the state Auditor’s office made that finding.
Supervisors don’t understand their role as elected officials. Elected officials are duty-bound to carry out the wishes/demands of clear majorities of constituents unless what they’re asking is unlawful or totally unfeasible, neither of which are applicable with the pay raise issue. It’s not the Supervisor’s job to substitute their judgment for that of their constituents when those constituents overwhelmingly demand a different course of action than that contemplated by the Supervisors.
Maybe it’s time to recall the bunch of them. This is the worse bunch of supervisors in my lifetime (80+ years) in Mendocino County. Where are Willians ,Shoemaker, and John Pinches?