When Neglect Becomes Policy

Reading the transcript of Judge Moorman’s rambling, at times almost incoherent, but fully justifiable, ruling dismissing the criminal cases against Chamise Cubbison and Paula Kennedy, there was one particular issue that stands out that has not been discussed elsewhere: the shift of the County’s payroll function from the Auditor’s office to the CEO’s office on dubious grounds having to do with the CEO and the Supervisors giving the impression that the Payroll function in the Auditor’s office was somehow screwed up or otherwise in danger of being screwed up.

Moorman basically says that the CEO failed to address the one-woman (Paula Kennedy) show that the payroll function had become during covid. Moorman adds that the CEO knew how precarious the payroll function had become and did nothing about it, letting it fester until it blew up when Ms. Kennedy threatened to sue the County for denying overtime compensation to Kennedy.

Moorman: “The evidence is clear to me that [Kennedy] was frayed emotionally by the time all of this came to light, that she was suffering under an inordinate amount of stress, not only because of the responsibilities of her job but also the stress that she was experiencing because she couldn’t get any relief, because she couldn’t take any time off because there [was] no one else to do the job. And I think Ms. Cubbison -- there’s evidence Ms. Cubbison was aware of it. There’s a lot of evidence Mr. Weer was aware of it. And the CEO’s office was aware of it. Yet nobody really figured out a solution.· They just — as counsel has indicated, they let the situation go on to try to figure out a solution later…”

Translation: This was another branch of the Supervisors’ Get Cubbison project. The only conclusion one can draw is that the CEO’s office wanted the payroll function to fail in some way so they could blame Ms. Cubbison for it and then take it over letting the Supervisors think that the problem was Ms. Cubbison.

Exactly how this played out is not entirely clear. But the underlying animosity that the CEO and the Board had for Ms. Cubbison for not being sufficiently in agreement with the Board’s bad decision to consolidate the financial offices, was clearly a factor in letting the payroll problem go unresolved for so long.

Obviously, this payroll problem was a predictable result of the ongoing staffing problems in the Auditor’s office created by the Board’s rash decision to combine the offices and overwork everybody in the combined office while dragging their feet or simply ignoring the staffing problems they had created.

This seemingly intentional failure to address staffing problems, especially in core functions like payroll and tax collection, based on petty personal animus is probably reflected in other county offices. For example, the County’s inability to collect all taxes due and conduct tax lien sales is another simmering offspring of this intentional neglect.

The Supervisors and the CEO deserve full blame for screwing up the Auditor-Controller’s office and the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s office, knowing that experienced people would quit, knowing it would create staffing and experience shortages. Then they denied that the problems in the understaffed Auditor’s office had anything to do with their own awful and totally unplanned decision to consolidate the offices against the advice of everyone who had an opinion on the subject but them.

Moorman: “The CEO’s office determination to take over payroll I think has some relevance in the case because there’s evidence and suggestion that Mr. Weer made salutations [Moorman probably said or meant solicitations] to the CEO’s office about getting on the board of supervisors to provide compensation to Ms. Kennedy and that was rebuffed.”

Actually, as best we remember, Ms. Cubbison tried to tell the Board that her office needed help doing payroll early on. (They should have solicited an outside payroll contractor early on, but apparently nobody considered that). Instead of insisting that the CEO and the Auditor resolve the problem, they let it fester. ·

Moorman: “I think the tension over the CEO’s office’s desire to take over the payroll system, which Mr. Weer and Ms. Cubbison and Ms. Kennedy all said was a bad idea, I think that tension played into decisions about whether to ignore Ms. Kennedy’s very desperate situation.· It was emotionally desperate. It was psychologically desperate. It bordered on cruel. In fact, it was cruel. It didn’t border on it. It stepped over the line.”

Apparently, by “it” Judge Moorman was referring to the “tension over the CEO’s office desire to take over the payroll system.” But what she really means is the Board’s and the CEO’s Payroll takeover element of the Get Cubbison project to undermine the elected Auditor-Controller. And if it meant “cruelty” to an employee, or jeopardizing paychecks to employees, well, that was just collateral damage.

It’s apparent that versions of this kind of neglect are manifest in many County departments these days.

These people have no business running an organization like Mendocino County. But we’re stuck with them because Mendo keeps electing people whose hubris exceeds their capabilities and whose shallow campaigns are run like high school popularity contests with empty slogans and generic pseudo-liberal position statements rather than serious interest in how the organization functions.

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MIKE GENIELLA WRITES: Characterizing Judge Moorman’s verbal statement as rambling and incoherent was, in my opinion, unfair. Moorman could have retreated to her chambers, and wrote a carefully crafted  opinion sometime later. Many judges might have. Moorman choose not to. It was clear after days of sketchy testimony she was in no mood to prolong the obvious. She spoke forcibly. It was not hard to follow. Moorman’s message was clear.

MARK SCARAMELLA REPLIES: OK, maybe so. I wasn’t in the courtroom. Maybe that was too harsh. I agree that important parts of the judge’s ruling were refreshingly forceful and pointed. Perhaps I over-reacted to paragraphs in the transcript like this one:

Moorman: “But the disclosure of the evidence in the last couple of days, including what is on Court Exhibit 1, which is the summary of -- of material, is that while the pay-type reports are accessible because they are generated from the SQL system, the emails are not.· The emails are not. ·And I refuse to engage in some inference that these emails that attached these pay-type reports were simply perfunctory, sent to a distribution list that included not Ms. Cubbison, not Ms. Kennedy.· Yes to Mr. Weer, every two weeks.· Yes to Ms. Johnson, who, at some or all of the time period involved in this case was either employed by the CEO's office or HR, claims she knew nothing about pay code 470 until this case -- this criminal case emerged, which I now find to be a completely false statement.· And others, anybody from the HR, all of those emails preceding June of 2020 have been lost in this -- this archive corruption.· That is not an intentional act by anybody.”

We’ve all been worn out by this drawn-out farce under piles and piles of dithering on the part of County officials. It’s not surprising that the Judge was drawn into some of the verbal quicksand that County officials routinely operate in.

PS. It would have been even more forceful if Moorman had mentioned the DA’s abuse of discretion in filing charges against Cubbison based on the lousy investigation the judge justifiably criticized. Cubbison’s attorney, the formidable Chris Andrian from Sonoma County, has said specifically that DA Eyster will be deposed. So hopefully, some of that will come out in the civil case.