Our David Eyster Problem

Whatever shall we do with Dave Eyster?

We can shake our fists and yell at him but we can’t eat him. We can write mean letters to editors but we can’t chase him around the courthouse with sticks. The Supervisors won’t fire him unless Dave tells them to.

Dave Eyster has single-handedly plunged the County of Mendocino, or more precisely her taxpaying citizens, into a legal and financial mess he designed and implemented. Knowing Dave he’s probably proud of himself.

He instructed the Board to fire an elected official, which was itself cowardly, but that our mute and mutant Board members would silently acquiesce and actually vote to fire her was cowardice on stilts.

Can an official elected by the citizens be terminated by other officials elected by the citizens? We’ll let smart lawyers and wisdom-ish judges sort all that out. Now let’s peek at the mess DA Dave has produced.

At bottom it’s a wrestling match over $68,000. It could have been settled over a cup of coffee and a simple agreement scribbled on a napkin, something like “in future such expenditures shall be approved by so and so and this and that, amen.”

To the county a measly $68,000 is pocket change found in sofa cushions. At Redwood Community Services Burning Bridges Homeless Headquarters they pay $68,000 to empty the wastebaskets. It’s the school district travel budget for the first two weeks of every month. The DA’s office spends $68,000 on paperclips.

And it takes far, far more than $68,000 to partly, temporarily, pay for the nice big raises the Board of Supervisors voted themselves last week. (Outstanding Achievement, if you’re wondering.)

Questions: Was the $68,000 authorized? Did it have to be? Who did or didn’t authorize it? These are issues local voters worry about less than they worry about the Giants’ need for pitching down the stretch, or whether to send their ex-President a get well card.

Defense lawyers suggested Dave recuse himself from prosecuting the defendants because we all know it originates in personal malice and bias.

But a testy Dave Eyster (NOTE: Dave’s default setting is “testy”) defied the request and waded ever deeper into the murky muck of a legal swamp that, if he won, would gain him not a moment’s glory and if he lost would bring him shame and blame for the financial burden he’d created.

So Dave, fresh from loudly refusing to quit the case, quit the case. He selected a Sonoma County lawyer (at $400 per hour) to prosecute it in his stead. Dave will then be free to spend his own time, and annual salary, reviewing misdemeanors and parking meter violations.

The price Dave is demanding we pay that he may smite his enemies is modest. Thus far. But just ahead, as sure as the sun will arise at the morning call of the barnyard rooster, lies a swamp of debt this county has never before seen emerge from a single slick of lawyers.

For defense attorneys a big smelly legal swamp is a happy place to visit and an even happier place to set up camp and vacation for a few years, at $400 per hour. Get this: There is no cap, no limit to how many hours the attorneys work. Lawyers keep their own records of hours worked; details of what they do and for how long they do it is their business, and forever a mystery to citizens who pay the bills.

Any incentive to settle a case, or minimize time or expenses plausibly devoted to it while earning $400 per hour from an anonymous client with limitless funds is, as we might expect, no incentive at all. Multiple additional lawyers are also billing the county, plus sundry investigators, paralegals, staff, mileage and office expenses (BEGIN ITALICS) (have you seen the price of paper clips lately?!?) (END ITALICS) and lunches at Patrona’s.

Then comes a wave of lawsuits filed against the county by defendants for wrongful termination, back wages, pain, suffering, whiplash, punitive damages and 24 months of therapy sessions in Hawaii, adding to the many more millions of dollars the county won’t have.

The day this financial bomb lands, all our supervisors will retire, leaving a new board to announce it had nothing to do with the mess we’re in.

Thanks, Dave. It’s a fine and fitting way to show citizens your gratitude for electing you to office, repeatedly.

And good work, County Supervisors. Why not celebrate by giving yourselves another round of raises?