Disrupters Claim Credit For Fixing The Problems They Created

Like most Mendolanders, if you didn’t know the history, after the self-congratulatory November 5 financial presentation you might believe the Supervisors’ underhanded and ill-considered financial office consolidation and abrupt ouster of former Auditor Chamise Cubbison had worked out nicely, like a magic wand had been waved, and poof! Mendo’s finances were suddenly positive.

Not true.

It’s as if Dad knowingly poisoned Mom. Then, after a dedicated emergency room doctor worked feverishly to save her, Dad blamed the poisoning on Mom and denounced the doctor for taking so long to save Mom’s life and then claimed credit for hiring a nurse to tend to her while she recovered.

Our review of the video and written record going back to when Ms. Cubbison was first grudgingly made Acting Auditor and then elected to be the County’s Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector (ACTTC) shows that most of the credit for whatever positive developments were reported recently goes to Cubbison, not the Board’s hand-picked replacement Sara Pierce who inherited what Cubbison had done, or the Board which disrupted County finances with their wrong-headed and obstinate decisions.

For example, the recently completed, long delayed Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) and year-end audit that the Board seems so happy with is the only one completed by Ms. Pierce. All the previous reports, including those done under former Auditor Lloyd Weer, were quietly prepared primarily under ousted Auditor Cubbison.

The County’s fancy new “Munis” Finance System was purchased years ago under former CEO Carmel Angelo. But was never used for anything other than for show because it was incompatible with departmental financial tracking systems and was not, as the computer people say, “user-friendly,” with its confusing set of obscure financial terminology and acronyms, many of which didn’t apply to Mendocino County. None of these problems, however, stopped Angelo from buying it for millions of dollars and bragging about it even though to this day it has yet to produce useful current financial status reports.

In 2019, the County paid for a Munis upgrade to version 11.3. The Auditor’s office under Assistant Auditor Chamise Cubbison (Auditor Weer didn’t bother himself with techno tasks) worked hundreds of unscheduled hours trying to apply that upgrade to Mendocino County. They’re closer now, but Munis still falls far short of providing departmental budgeting and tracking.

The County’s Property Tax conversion project to replace the antiquated 1980s-era precursor with a new package called “Aumentum” saw that system installed in September of 2020. It “went live” prematurely under orders from the CEO at the end of January 2021. But it too was unusable. The Aumentum software had never been used in California, yet CEO Angelo bought it based on Aumentum’s sales pitch and their promises that it could be made to work in Mendocino County. Major issues immediately cropped up, mostly associated with incompatibility of property and tax data between the old system and the Aumentum system structure. Cubbison and her staff, along with the Assessor’s office, had to work hundreds of unplanned hours a year with the data and the software vendor. Finally after several years under Cubbison’s watch most of the data was finally transferred.

In March of 2022 long-time Treasurer-Tax Collector Shari Schapmire retired saying she could “no longer work with this board” in the wake of the Board’s ill-planned and unjustified consolidation. Her long-time assistant Julie Forrester retired a few weeks later with only two-weeks notice.

Thanks in large part to delays in the County Counsel’s office it wasn’t until January of 2023 that the Board officially published the ordinance creating the combined office and allowing staffing and hiring to even begin.

Making matters worse, after Weer retired in 2021, lengthy personnel department delays in reclassifying the new positions under the Board’s ill-considered “consolidation” of the Auditor and Treasurer’s office, prevented Cubbison from filling key vacancies.

Also during this time the Board decided to refinance several outstanding debts to lower interest rates. A good idea, but it created yet another extra workload for the already understaffed and under-experienced combined ACTTC office.

As predicted by the two elected financial officers in formal statements to the Board, four senior staffers from the two combined offices retired in a matter of months after the Board’s rash decision to consolidate the office. Because these were relatively small offices, all of them were “working bosses,” spending much of their time on the accounting tasks while also managing their departments. They were not bureaucrats who sat around doing nothing telling people what to do. So their loss was in both staffing and experience.

After the consolidation spawned those senior staff departures, Cubbison was stuck with the understaffed office and few experienced staffers, especially ones with applicable government accounting backgrounds.

Cubbison spent months recruiting, interviewing and training replacements for these positions (or their equivalent under the consolidation) and they were finally filled, albeit with inexperienced people. As a result, Ms. Pierce is now more or less caught up on staffing.

But work continued with staff available on regular accounting functions plus the non-routine things including a Property Tax data audit going back more than seven years to check the tax records in the newly converted Aumentum system requiring field work on many properties that had not been checked in years.

Cubbison and staff began working with outside auditors to incorporate some never before included adjusting entries in the Munis finance system for the final issuance of the fiscal year 21/22 reports. The 21/22 reports were largely completed prior to Cubbison’s suspension, but they had been delayed due to Auditor’s office short staffing, finance system upgrades, short staffing in other departments’ fiscal units, and incorporating a backlog of year-end audit adjustments in Munis for fiscal years 21/22 and 22/23. When Cubbison was suspended, the Auditor’s office was close to issuing the final reports for 21/22 and 22/23.

Other unplanned extra work imposed on the office included setting up a contract with outside vendor Granicus/Host Compliance for Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) Collection and tracking services.

Cubbison renegotiated better rates for a recurring contract with Chandler Asset management for investment related services, matching the better rate Lake County was getting.

Cubbison also spent dozens of hours working with Supervisor Mulheren and the rest of the Board to come up with Cannabis Tax payment plans and an interest/penalty amnesty program to collect delinquent cannabis taxes.

All of this was reported to the Supervisors in open session during their prolonged “Get Cubbison” project period. But the Supervisors were not paying any attention because to do so would undermine their Get Cubbison agenda. All attempts by Cubbison to explain the difficulties the consolidation had introduced were interpreted by the Board as non-cooperation.

In both software cases — Munis and Aumentum — most of the work to get those systems in something resembling working order was done under Cubbison. By last month (October 2024) various finishing touches were added. Ms. Pierce and the Supervisors then rushed to claim credit for work that was primarily done and nearly finished under Cubbison.

The Supervisors created an accounting mess by consolidating the offices without any planning at a critical time of major software conversion, predictably causing long-time senior staffers to quit or resign, thereby delaying the reports they had been complaining about but never specifying what they really wanted, and in the process incurred a significant legal liability by abruptly “suspending” Cubbison, the last senior staffer who had been deeply involved in the difficult conversion process and the unplanned additional tasks.

Yet, at that November 5 meeting they took special care to congratulate themselves and their “acting” handpicked financial caretaker for belatedly getting somewhat caught up on work that would have been completed sooner had they not thrown their misguided monkeywrenches into the County’s two elected financial offices that everyone with an opinion on the subject advised against.

To top it off, they turned around and accused the people they caused to leave of being uncooperative in the misguided consolidation without the slightest awareness of their own responsibility for the problems.