$800,000 For This? State Auditor Tells Mendo What It Already Knows.

Did we really need an $800,000 audit team of made up of Mr. Grant Parks, California State Auditor, and his overlarge team of green-eyeshaders: Bob Harris, Audit Principal, Grayson Hough, Senior Auditor, Brandy Roberts, Dominik Baer, Julie Magana, Roxanna Jarvis, plus Legal Counsel: Heather Kendrick, and Assistant Chief Counsel Michael Sorich to tell us:

• Mendo has a worsening structural deficit?
• The DA should have paid for his Broiler staff dinners out of his own generous salary rather than using Asset Forfeiture funds?
• That Mendo is behind in collecting taxes due?
• That a few accounting procedures need to be added or tightened up?
• That the Supervisors and the DA made an already-bad post-Covid financial mess worse by rashly consolidating the Treasurer and Tax Collector offices, getting rid of its most experienced staff and then filing bogus charges against their elected Chief and suspending her without pay mid-consolidation?

Of course not.

Did the State Auditor demand that the DA repay the asset forfeiture fund for his “prohibited” Broiler dinner spending?

Did the State Auditor highlight the DA’s and the Board’s role in bringing Mendo to the point that the State legislature determined that Mendo needed an expensive audit?

Did the State Auditor recommend anything new that could be done to fix Mendo’s financial deficiencies?

Again, no, no, and no.

The high-powered nine-member Sacto-audit team basically produced a glorified Grand Jury Report complete with Mendo’s usual empty promises to do better where possible someday.

Granted the audit highlighted a few things that need attention, things that have needed attention for years, as we — ahem — have pointed out on multiple prior occasions to no avail. Fixes for some of the problems identified by the State Auditor were already underway by the time the Audit finally appeared, as well. (cf the belated “deconsolidation” of the Auditor and Tax Collector offices. But there’s nothing in the State Auditor’s lengthy report that Mendo didn’t know or should have known and could have acted on if they were paying attention. Nor did the State Auditor identify any specific “waste, fraud or abuse,” saying only that Mendo was “vulnerable” to waste, fraud or abuse, especially regarding asset forfeiture fund spending.

Here are the State Auditor’s main less-than-original recommendations:

• Increase reserves a little.
• Prepare an “aging report” of assessed properties to keep them from becoming uncollectable.
• Conduct some long-overdue tax lien sales to recoup delinquent property taxes.
• Tighten up asset forfeiture policies. (Despite the fact that the DA has made it clear that he has no intention of changing his asset forfeiture spending or allowing the County Auditor to restrict it in any way.)
• Tighten up contracting procedures to be sure competitive bids are obtained where appropriate.
• Make better use of existing accounting software and review financial reports monthly.
• Prepare for upcoming new federal accounting rules.
• Make sure election related contracts spell out what happens when a mistake is made.
• Fix a few remaining voter roll errors to reflect voters’ proper Supervisorial districts.

Sound familiar?

To all of these recommendations Mendo earnestly agreed and promised to do better in the coming months. (Do we believe they will? Hah.)

Our favorite State Auditor recommendation: “…take steps to address the stagnant tax revenue and increasing expenditures. This should include board meetings or town halls with the express purpose of discussing the spending areas the county wishes to prioritize for reduction and options for the county to increase revenue, such as by increasing tax rates…”

County Response: “The Board of Supervisors agrees the County needs to address stagnant revenues. The Board of Supervisors is concerned about the feasibility of increasing taxes for various reasons. The first reason is the fact that two of the four cities within Mendocino County are capped on max allowable tax that can be charged to residents and narrowing a tax to the unincorporated area would not likely generate significant revenue . A second reason is that a voter-initiated ballot measure may not be politically feasible as indicated in recent polling by the Mendocino Council of Governments. A third concern is there are potentially competing tax initiatives which are already being discussed publicly, one measure being for public safety, and another being for Fire/Emergency Medical Services.”

Translation: There’s nothing Mendo can do or will do. (Not true, but outside the scope of the Audit or this article; to be addressed in an upcoming article.) Mendo is always happy to hold more meetings and workshops. Mendo loves meetings and workshops, most of which produce the need for more meetings and workshops. Accordingly, the Board of Supervisors plans to hold a public workshop in mid-January to discuss the audit and its recommendations.

Over the holiday we will dig into some of the State Audit report’s specifics to make sure they’re on the record for potential follow up and point out that there’s nothing new or significant — and to note some areas that the State Auditors conspicuously overlooked.