Here’s a wonderful expenditure by Mendocino County in a time of tight budgets and unknown bank balances. (We apologize for somehow missing this item back in December when it was buried on the consent calendar and approved with no discussion.)
The County Counsel’s office (i.e., the recently rehired as “interim” County Counsel Kit Elliott) has contracted with an attorney in South Lake Tahoe named Charles J. McKee to “provide Management and County Counsel Assessment Services,” from December 16, 2025 to March 31, 2026. The contract is for a whopping $160,000. Mr. McKee’s rate is $325 per hour. Again, that’s $160,000 for just over three months (almost 500 hours, equivalent to a full-time employee for 3.5 months) of “assessment services.” Mr. McKee is a former County Counsel/CAO (he held both positions simultaneously) for tiny Alpine County. According to the 2020 census, Alpine County is the smallest County in the state with a population just a little more than Boonville at 1,204, about 1,000 of whom are adults. About two-thirds of the homes in Alpine County are vacant, meaning mainly vacation rentals. Alpine County’s county seat is the town of Markleeville with a population of 191 in 2020.
Mr. McKee retired as CEO of Monterey County (Salinas) after 19 years prior to which he had been Monterey County Counsel for 16 years. He has also been president of the Monterey County Bar Association and “legal advisor” to the California State Association of Counties.
According to the terms of the contract Mr. McKee will perform “general services,” “executive management services,” an assessment of the County Counsel’s office and its “structure, workload, staffing, effectiveness, service delivery and intra-County relations.” He will also “collaborate with and assist the Acting and/or Interim County Counsel on office operations and County legal issues,” and, of course, “assist with the recruitment and hiring of the next County Counsel.” Mr. McKee will also receive $100 an hour for travel time to and from South Lake Tahoe and full reimbursement for travel costs (but not meals).
We hereby offer our own “assessment” of the County Counsel’s office and the County’s “executive management” at the bargain price of $0.00: Anyone who hires a $325/hour attorney to “assess” themselves has no business being interim County Counsel (especially one who presumably performed in the position for a couple of years in Mendocino County just recently). As far as we can tell no other bids were solicited or sought for this “service,” even though it is well above the contract value that the State Auditor recently said required competitive bids. The Supervisors’ approval of this contract on the consent calendar without discussion proves again, if any more proof was needed, that the Supervisors are not paying any attention to what’s going on right under their noses or how much their “staff” is spending.
Prediction, Mr. McKee will recommend, recruit and hire himself as either the next County Counsel or the next CEO.
That pork barrel is getting a bit over ripe.
Phew