Acting Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector Sara Pierce presented her proposed “Corrective Action Plan” response to a state Controller report that had criticized the County’s financial procedures to the Supervisors on Tuesday. As previously noted, the State Controller’s first recommendation was: “For future reorganizations, conduct a risk assessment before implementing significant changes, such as consolidating two elected offices” — a sideways reference to the Board’s poorly conceived, controversial, unwarranted and rash decision to consolidate the elected offices of Auditor-Controller and Treasurer-Tax Collector.
Ms. Pierce’s proposed response was a simple, “County Chief Executive Officer and Board of Supervisors agree with the recommendation.”
That was a simple admission that they had not done any kind of “risk assessment” or any other planning or analysis before consolidating the two offices.
So the Board couldn’t let it go at that.
They again claimed that the problem wasn’t them, but the uncooperative, now-departed elected officials, Treasurer Shari Schapmire and Auditor Chamise Cubbison. Schapmire retired early right after the decision to consolidate the two offices saying she was “unable to work with the current board” because they were proceeding with the unwarranted and unplanned consolidation which would seriously impede the offices’ ability to perform their duties over her objections. Cubbison stayed on over the noteworthy objection of DA David Eyster whose pointed complaint about Cubbison caused the Board to appoint Cubbison as “interim” Auditor rather than their original proposal to make her “acting” Auditor, pending the next election. By the time the next election rolled around, after the consolidation, Cubbison was the only candidate and was easily voted in as Auditor.
Cubbison’s refusal to take the blame for the Board’s and the CEO’s failure’s to do their ordinary budget reporting and her attempts to explain that her office’s delays in generating some required financial reports was the result of the consolidation, put her at odds with the Supervisors who began their months-long “Get Cubbison” campaign to replace her with a more compliant Auditor-Treasurer.
They finally got that opportunity when DA David Eyster abruptly charged Cubbison with misappropriation of funds by alleging that Cubbison had allowed the Auditor’s office’s payroll clerk to pay herself for overtime while she was a salaried staffer during covid who otherwise would not have qualified for overtime.
That case has drifted into months of legal mush and maneuvering ever since with delays, judge changes, prosecutor changes, and the County suddenly unable to find relevant emails which might prove their case.
On Tuesday, lame-duck Supervisor Dan Gjerde who is leaving the Board in December was the first to claim that the problem wasn’t the CEO or the Board, but Schapmire and Cubbison for refusing to cooperate in the Board’s ill-conceived consolidation.
“We did outreach to those offices,” insisted Gjerde, adding that they tried to hold interviews and private meetings. Those officials would not engage with the supervisors about planning the merger, said Gjerde. “So those two officials shut down discussion. The board did outreach but the discussion was shut down by those two officials at the time.”
However, both officials had made it clear with detailed written explanations before the consolidation why the consolidation was unjustified, ill-timed and not thought through and would create unnecessary confusion and chaos in the two offices and would probably lead to resignations of senior staffers and delays in getting financial reports out.
The Board ignored that input and proceeded with the consolidation despite those objections and those of everyone else with an opinion on the subject.
Attempting to answer Gjerde’s question, Ms. Pierce tried to bring the Board back from their usual finger-pointing by noting that the State Controller was simply saying that there was no risk assessment — which is ostensibly the case.
Supervisor Glenn McGourty, a “Get Cubbison” ring leader, still wouldn’t let it go. “We offered to obtain the assistance of Regional Government Services,” said McGourty. “That contract was not used. The idea we did nothing is absolutely not true.”
Nobody said they “did nothing.” With the exception of John Haschak who correctly noted that the consolidation had no accompanying plan, they consolidated the offices without any kind of plan or risk assessment, they tried to force Cubbison into taking assistance she said she didn’t need as she tried to hire replacements for the staff that had quit or retired in reaction to the consolidation. Having been unsuccessful at Getting Cubbison through misrepresentation and finger-pointing, the Board subsequently piggybacked on Eyster’s convenient and so far unproven misappropriation charge to remove Cubbison from office without even giving her an opportunity to respond to Eyster’s charges before her removal.
Gjerde asked, “How could you do [a risk assessment] if the elected officials refuse to participate?”
Pierce, perhaps risking her own appointment, replied, “Yes, all parties all should have been involved. But there should have been a risk assessment. You can send me whatever language you’d like about it for this response.”
One of the “parties,” Shari Schapmire, had retired by the time the Board offered the outside service group, and the Board had made it clear that they wanted Cubbison out. If they had tried to do a “risk assessment” when they first raised the idea it’s likely that “the parties” would have participated and the “risks” would have outweighed whatever alleged benefits the Board perceived. But the Board was not interested in hearing about any risks. So they forced the consolidation, ignoring opinions to the contrary, and then — after the fact — claiming that the elected office holders wouldn’t cooperate in planning, the opportunity for “risk assessment” having long passed.
Conspicuous by its absence from the discussion was the Board’s previous claim that they didn’t combine the offices, only the top positions. On Tuesday, none of the Board members tried that lame excuse, conceding that they had indeed consolidated the offices and asking questions of Ms. Pierce about how the office consolidation was going.
At one point Ms. Pierce told the Board that the Treasurer’s side of the consolidated office turned out to have been the “most impacted by consolidation of the offices” mainly because more of those Treasurer staffers retired or resigned after the consolidation was announced. Ms. Pierce added that on November 5 she belatedly intends to bring a proposal to the Board to hire additional Treasurer staff. So much for the cost savings the Board had hoped for with the unplanned consolidation.
Ms. Pierce, assigned to the position out of the CEO’s office, remains as “acting” Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector in a position that is supposed to be an independent elected position. She’s been “acting” Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector for more than a year now as the two legal cases against Cubbison drag out: the relatively well publicized and increasingly problematic criminal case, and the civil wrongful termination case which in theory could see the return of the duly elected Cubbison to her elected position, especially if the criminal case collapses.
As far as who’s to blame for the lack of a “risk assessment,” the Board was the first to ignore the input of the involved elected officials because they didn’t like what the officials were saying. It was only after they had pushed though the consolidation and realized those officials had been right: it left the two combined offices plagued with staffing and experience gaps. That’s when they started complaining about the predictable non-cooperation from the only remaining elected official who had advised against the consolidation, yet soldiered on until she was sacked.
SUPES CONGRATULATE THEMSELVES FOR NOT DOING NOTHING ANYMORE. STARTING NEXT MONTH. MAYBE.
It used to be said of the British aristocracy in their heyday that they did nothing, but did it very well. Official Mendo certainly qualifies for the former, but falls short of the latter.
You have to be impressed by CEO Darcy Antle’s skill at avoiding providing ordinary budget reports to the Supervisors, and the public. She has amassed a handy collection of ridiculous excuses for not doing or delaying budget reporting over the years, first as Budget Officer and for the last two years as CEO. After all, she knows that her overpaid Board is so lacking in backbone that almost any excuse will do.
The short list: People might ask questions. We were criticized. It’s too much work. The revenues don’t come in monthly but the expenses do. The software is flawed. We can give you last year’s (but never does). Covid…
And all that while acknowledging that the departments are doing their own budget tracking.
On Tuesday, Supervisor Ted Williams, the only supervisor who even seems interested in this gaping hole in County reporting, complained again about the lack of budget status reporting.
“The Board doesn’t get regular financial reporting,” said Williams stating the obvious. “We have no idea where departments are on actual vs. budget. It could be the departments or the CEO. Somehow the public and the board needs to be apprised of spending on a monthly basis. It needs to be in the CEO report. Transparency means regular financial reporting.”
Actually, in Mendo “transparency” means saying the word “transparency” a lot, but delivering the most opaque set of information possible, hiding information in layers of bureaucratese, confusing websites, obfuscating agenda packages, presenting retroactive proposals as done-deals, and sidestepping pointed questions from the public.
Acting Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector Sara Pierce replied to Williams saying that in her next report on November 5 they will present a “preliminary” budget vs. actual report.
Yippee!
Williams prematurely noted, “That seems like a milestone.” But it wasn’t clear whether he meant the announcement that they might have it next month or if he really believed, after decades of incompetence and delay, that the County would finally begin doing what every other organization routinely does.
CEO Antle grudgingly acknowledged that budget vs, actual reporting “has been requested.” The last time the “request” came up Antle told the Board that although they had the info, she was reluctant to provide it to the Board because a couple of years ago after providing a very simplified budget to actual report, “we were criticized.” Har-har. Not only not true, but a joke of an excuse for not providing a budget report even if it were.
On Tuesday Antle offered another excuse saying that putting the budget vs. actual report together is a “huge lift.” But now, after the huge lift, they are “excited” about starting to do budget reporting in November. But of course Antle hedged, saying that whatever she produces in November “will get better and better” over time, meaning it probably won’t be what an ordinary person would view as a true budget versus actual report and it probably won’t be monthly or even quarterly. In all likelihood it will be a time buyer to postpone monthly reporting again.
Reminder: a budget versus actual report should track revenues and expenses separately. What we should see in November is a revenue budget vs actual showing when revenues are due and in what amounts and whether they were received; and an expense budget versus actual. The odds of such a basic distinction being made, much less included in the “preliminary” report are what the mathematicians call “asymptotically zero.”
Supervisor Glenn McGourty was downright giddy to hear that the CEO might finally be getting around to doing her job. “This is an amazing body of work in a short time,” said McGourty, the “short time” being several years of delay and lame excuses. “Congratulations to Sara Pierce and CEO Antle and the IT department and the Board of Supervisors who have taken a lot of public heat about our lack of knowledge of what’s going on financially.”
“A lot of heat”? Not only does McGourty acknowledge budget ignorance, but he thinks that pointing out what Supervisor Williams and others have been saying for years is “heat”? Apparently, being periodically reminded that you are in the dark but making major budget decisions while being paid upwards of $100k per year plus generous perks is “heat.”
Outgoing Supervisor Dan Gjerde concluded with this pearl of budget wisdom: “More transparency on the budget is good.”
B IS FOR BUNGLING THE BUREAUCRATIC BOUNCING BALL
At last Tuesday’s Board meeting, referring to requests the County may make to lame-duck Assembly District Representative Jim Wood, supervisor Dan Gjerde said, “Now is not the time to request that they [the state] pay for the jail project. Now is the time to request reimbursement for Measure B funds. Which may be politically more appealing, you know, because members of the public don't want to see Measure B funds spent on the jail. Honestly, with the County's budget situation, I mean -- I know it's a loan. But really is there a guarantee that it's going to be paid back? If the County doesn't have the money, it can't pay back Measure B bonds. Having heard that Assemblymember Wood thought there was a pathway there, I hope that there will be one or two people in the executive office who are going to follow up on that.”
A lot to unpack there.
First, there’s no basis for expecting the State to consider paying back any Measure B funds since there’s no financial basis for it; in fact no one has ever even asked staff for an accounting or status report on Measure B which has accumulated well over $30 million since being approved back in 2017, a quarter of which is mandated to be spent on “services,” not facilities. (Of course, very little has been spent on services so far; mainly the crisis van or mobile outreach or whatever they call it now.)
Last year, the Board authorized “borrowing” about $8 million from the millions of Measure B funds to help pay for the $20 million-plus overrun on the jail expansion project now underway next door to the old jail on Low Gap Road at a total cost of around $45 million. The state granted an initial $25 million but refused to cover the large increases in cost since the project was conceived years ago despite multiple hail mary requests to Wood and McGuire from the County including the Sheriff, leaving the County to cover the unbudgeted multi-million dollar overrun.
Since the jail expansion will in part house mental patients who have committed crimes, the idea was that “borrowing” money from Measure B was okay (they said out of necessity since the County didn’t have $8 mil sitting around at the time) because Measure B was meant for mental health facilities and services and much of it remains unspent.
Since then, Acting Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector Sara Pierce has twice proposed a multi-year payback schedule, but the Supervisors have yet to commit to any payback schedule or interest rate, despite multiple verbal (i.e., empty) assurances that they would pay it back with interest.
Meanwhile, the construction of the Psychiatric Health Facility on Whitmore Lane where the now-demolished nursing home/covid quarantine center used to be is now underway. There’s been talk of a possible state grant of about $9 million if the construction is complete by the end of next year. If that grant comes through, it might offset the amount of money “borrowed” from Measure B. Fortunately for Mendo, the construction bid came in substantially lower than expected so that might leave millions of as yet unallocated Measure B funds for services — if they ever spend anything on actual mental health services over and above the tens of millions being funneled through the Schraeder monopoly for the reimbursable mentally ill.
But the entire mental health funding picture remains murky.
Among the many financial failures of the Board, neither Gjerde nor his unquestioning colleagues, much less the moribund Measure B committee, have ever asked for a Measure B fund financial report nor have they expressed any interest in the ongoing operating costs of the PHF when it opens in a year or so, even though there are lots of moving parts and the amounts involved are in the millions and deadlines apply and the County is in a very precarious budget situation.
CEO Darcie Antle replied to Gjerde’s question with the least reassuring answer she could possibly make:
“Yes. Those conversations are ongoing. On my behalf most recently with Senator McGuire yesterday roughly about this time I had him personally on the phone discussing options. So it is something we are all actively working on. I know the Sheriff is working through his association to get to the state as well. Nobody has dropped the ball on this. Your fiscal team with your Auditor-Controller are working their very best to figure out how to get those Measure B dollars back to Measure B because we certainly do not want to incur interest on those ongoing expenses. More to come on that. Hopefully by November 6.”
“Hopefully…”
Nobody asked what exactly CEO Antle planned to provide on November 6 nor why that date. Nobody asked for a Measure B funding or status report. Nobody asked how much the PHF will cost to operate and how it will be financed. And nobody expressed any concern about CEO Antle’s dismal record of not delivering on things she’s “actively working on.”
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