Near the end of Wednesday’s Board workshop Fifth District Supervisor Ted Williams asked his colleagues what they were going to do about the District Attorney‘s broiler dinners which the state auditor declared were “prohibited“ because “the District Attorney’s Office made a gift of public funds when it spent $3,600 on an end-of-year gathering and dinner event for its staff and their guests.”
The District Attorney wrote a lengthy rebuttal to the State Auditor saying he had done nothing wrong in using Asset Forfeiture funds to pay for those dinners and that the State Auditor was wrong.
Williams: “My read of the state audit told us, Don’t do these broiler dinners again. I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t want to be involved. I don’t think the board should be involved. The District Attorney – he has some arguments. Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong. But that should be between the District Attorney and the State. I’m concerned that some of what they told us not to do, if it happens again after they told us, am I responsible? Is the board responsible for not setting policy?”
CEO Darcie Antle: “As you know, we have a new County Counsel. She is not up to full speed on that. Our prior Counsel said that said that we should bring something back at a different date.”
Williams: “Is it safe to assume that until we come up with a policy or we figure out what’s allowable that such activities are paused?”
Antle: “They should be paused, yes.”
Williams: “I am asking out of paranoia that someone will show up at one of these meetings and say, Hey this just happened and we are responsible. Until we figure it out I think that such transactions should be paused.”
Antle: “Yes. Those meetings typically happen towards the end of February. So hopefully we can have a discussion on February 3.”
Williams: “Anything that the state audit highlighted as violating best practices, we should pause until we decide how to be compliant. Some department heads may have arguments that they disagree with the report and I don’t know where that goes. But I think we should all agree to pause where we have been told, Don’t do this, or it’s a red flag the way you are operating. We should take note to halt such activities until Counsel can review and guide us.”
Supervisor John Haschak: “On the flipside, if, like the executive office is working toward compliance from those issues that were identified in the state audit they can continue on.”
According to the State Auditor, “[the District Attorney’s office] also stated that the CEO preapproved this expenditure, although we saw no independent evidence of that approval.” So whether that was true or not, the Board could simply declare that if the CEO (Carmel Angelo at the time) had “pre-approved” the DA’s “prohibited” expenditure, the Board hereby rescinds that “pre-approval.” The current CEO has not been asked if she too “pre-approved” the DA’s prohibited dinner expenditures. (There were several, not just one.)
The State Auditor was clear: “Determinations about whether an entity’s expenditures serve public purposes must be made by a governing legislative body [i.e., in this case the Supervisors, NOT the CEO]. None of the records we reviewed showed that the State’s Legislature or the county board approved of the expenditure of public funds for the end-of-year gathering. Because of this, we believe that it constitutes a gift of public funds. Such gifts are violations of the California Constitution’s prohibition of gifts of public funds. This use of asset forfeiture funds is another example of why Mendocino must take steps to better control and oversee this funding.”
So, if he was serious, Williams could simply make a motion declaring that the Supervisors do not approve of such expenditures. This in turn would give Auditor-Controller Chamise Cubbison the clear authority to deny the DA’s next request for a reimbursement check for the Broiler dinners and let the DA either pay for the dinners himself or take other steps. Given that Eyster’s term as DA runs out in a couple of years, he might finally decide to do the right thing and not submit another Broiler dinner bill. But history tells us that the DA can be quite stubborn on petty matters like this, even going so far as trying to engineer the ouster of the Auditor by filing bogus charges against her for rightly questioning his asset forfeiture spending.
What a ridiculous, ongoing issue, typical of County BS. The BOS simply need to tell the DA to “knock if off.”
The BOS has already shown they’re his toadies, for some reason, so why would they go against him now?
Ahh, this is so typical of TT, Travesty Ted, as his fingerprints are all over the Cubbison scam, with is buddy his buddy Eyster, but rather than actually have the BOS actually do something TT, can show”concern” and “I assume”, as he tries to figure out how to live off taxpayer $ for another term..
There have been multiple steakhouse events since DA Eyster took office in 2011, costing significantly more than the $3,600 Supervisor Williams cited.