‘Lots Of People Don’t Know’

Tax Collection Still Stalled

Auditor Controller-Treasurer Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison told the Supervisors on Tuesday that the County has not conducted a tax lien sale since 2017 (eight years ago).

Close readers may recall that former Supervisor candidate Carrie Shattuck pointed this out several years ago after having looked into the problem and received zero response from the Tax Collector’s office.

Cubbison said it will be years before another one is conducted, explaining that the process is “very involved,” and requiring not only identifying which parcels are sufficiently in arrears on taxes, but a bunch of administrative and procedural work such as notices, response opportunities, title searches, detailed legal parcel descriptions, and calculations of precise amounts for each delinquent parcel/owner. Cubbison said the County and her department have sent out some notices of default, but the County is now very far behind and has to do quite a bit of catch-up. This might involve additional staff, outside contractors and consultants, in addition to the recently hired “Chief Deputy” for tax collection.

Cubbison, whose primary background is in the County Auditor’s office, not in the Tax Collector’s office, is not experienced in the process even though she was put in charge of it when the Supervisors rashly consolidated the Tax Collector’s office with the Auditor’s office a few years ago without a plan and against the will of the public and the officials in those positions at the time.

At last report we understood that tax delinquencies that go uncollected for four years or more are no longer collectable, so nobody knows how much uncollected revenue has already been lost and nobody knows how much might be collected even if an aggressive effort can be mounted.

Given the continued stonewalling and refusal of the Board and the CEO to work with and support their newly reinstated Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector after the felony misappropriation charges were summarily dismissed by Judge Moorman in March, it’s hard to imagine that much will be done.

Meanwhile, Mendo, while claiming to have a sizable structural deficit projected to only get worse, will go further into the hole. The state decreeing that tax collections would be postponed and suspended during covid interlude certainly didn’t help matters. But most of the responsibility for this mess falls directly at the feet of the Supervisors who undermined the pre-existing tax collection processes by consolidating the independent financial offices without a plan, and failing to prioritize the collection of taxes due ever since.

After Ms. Cubbison’s description of the “very involved” tax lien sale process and the well-behind-the-curve status of those sales, the Board’s entire response came from Board Chair John Haschak who simply said, “Thank you for that.”

Nobody asked Cubbison if she needed any help to speed up the process or if she had any outside service proposals for Board approval. Neither CEO Darcie Antle who has ordered former Acting Auditor-Controller Treasurer Tax Collector Sara Pierce to have no contact with Ms. Cubbison, nor the other Supervisors had anything to say about the dismal situation.

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‘A Big Hit to the County Budget’

In other revenue loss news, the Board belatedly decided to set up an ad hoc committee of Supervisors Madeline Cline and Bernie Norvell to look into Ukiah’s recent giant Ukiah Valley parcel grab in the wake of last year’s lopsided and misnamed “tax sharing agreement” between Ukiah and the County.

Last month, Ukiah officials announced that they want to nearly triple the size of Ukiah which would shift the tax revenues from hundreds of parcels — many of them relatively lucrative ag, commercial and residential — from the County to the City over the next few years according to a convoluted formula worked out in secret between Supervisor Maureen Mulheren (former Ukiah City Councilperson) and Ukiah officials. Mulheren then sold the agreement to her colleagues on the vague promise that the deal would somehow be good for the County and the City, even though it was obvious that the City of Ukiah was the only beneficiary.

When the Board approved the “agreement” last year they had very little time to review it, had no idea how much money might be lost, had not had it reviewed by other senior County officials, and were lobbied hard by Ukiah officials, especially Ukiah City Manager Sage Sangiacomo and Ukiah Councilperson Mari Rodin, who claimed that the agreement would magically produce a win-win spurt of development in the Ukiah Valley.

Despite having voted for the agreement last year, on Tuesday, Supervisor John Haschak seemed to have belatedly discovered that the agreement he voted for "will cause a real potential hit to the County budget.”

Supervisor Williams who again claimed to have his finger on the pulse of public opinion said that “100% of the feedback on this is against Ukiah’s proposal. It is broader than it should be as far as public is concerned.”

Given that the County has already approved the agreement (without the slightest idea what the financial impact would be — early (low) estimates were around $3 million) it is unlikely that another secret ad hoc group with two supervisors who were not even on the Board at the time the agreement was approved will deal with Ukiah’s proposal and address the “real potential hit to the County budget.” If they ever do.

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State Audit Status: ‘A Few Phone Calls’

Retired Ukiah Attorney Barry Vogel asked the Board and the CEO about the status of the big $800k State Audit that was announced to great fanfare last year.

Board Chair John Haschak replied in typical Haschak fashion that, “The audit is happening; it’s proceeding.”

Even more pointlessly, CEO Darcie Antle added, “The Audit has begun with the State Controller’s office with phone calls. I don’t know where they are. It is due to the Legislature by January of 2026. It is supposed to examine procurement and the election process in 2024.:

Vogel replied, “You need to answer to the public. Lots of people don’t know.”

Obviously — including the Supervisors and the CEO. That may be why they’re not answering to the public, on this or anything else.

If the Audit is serious, and we doubt that it is, the County should have already received formal document requests which, if they have occurred, should have been mentioned. Since they were not, we can only conclude that the “audit,” such as it might be, will be a dud.