by Mark Scaramella
At their typical snail’s pace, Mendocino County finally seems ready to correct the rash and ill-advised December 2021 decision to consolidate the County’s Treasurer/Tax Collector and Auditor-Controller offices. Not only did the County lose several experienced financial officials in the move, but the offices were disrupted forcing remaining staff to scurry around trying to keep up with reporting deadlines. Among other negative impacts, the County’s tax collection office, already depleted and delayed by covid at the time, suffered further delays in collecting taxes due as the County fell deeper and deeper into a burgeoning budget deficit.
On Tuesday, current Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison urged the board to begin the process to disentangle the offices, pointing out that the Board has to make an official decision before the end of the year so that it can be on the ballot in June of 2026. Why the 2021 Supervisors (John Haschak dissenting) could consolidate the offices without an election but the unconsolidation requires an election was not explained.
Back in 2021 everybody but the four supervisors who voted for the consolidation — chiefly former Supervisor Glenn McGourty and current supervisor Ted Williams, along with Supervisors Dan Gjerde and Maureen Mulheren – were against the idea, including the officials involved, the Mendocino Farm Bureau and everybody else who had an opinion on the subject. The basic idea that the person in charge of revenue should not be in charge of expenses was unceremoniously tossed out the window by the Board based on unfounded charges from Williams that the Board wasn’t getting financial status reports from the Auditor — reports that the CEO ought to provide (and still does not).
The consolidation of the offices coincided with the now-discredited charges by District Attorney David Eyster that elected Auditor Chamise Cubbison had somehow connived to pay the County’s payroll manager for overtime that the payroll manager actually worked. After more than 17 months of legal stalling and obstructionism by the County, those charges were dramatically tossed last year by Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman at Cubbison’s long-delayed preliminary hearing with Moorman denouncing the County’s “investigation” and the convenient post-charge disappearance of exculpatory emails.
That hearing also uncovered the fact that District Attorney Eyster had met with the Sheriff’s investigator multiple times to steer the investigation against Cubbison that lead to the bogus charges being filed.
Prior to charges being filed, District Attorney Eyster, irked by Cubbison’s legitimate questioning of his asset forfeiture spending, emailed former Supervisor McGourty outlining how the Board could oust Cubbison by combining the financial offices. That backfired when Cubbison was elected to the newly created Auditor-Treasurer position. Frustrated, Eyster then filed the charges that were later tossed, but on which the Board had wrongly based their suspension of Cubbison without pay.
Cubbison filed a civil suit against the County for denial of due process, defamation and wrongful suspension which is still underway as County officials drag their feet running up hundreds of thousands of dollars in outside attorney fees in advance of what many believe will be a multi-million dollar settlement.
Interestingly, Tuesday’s belated unconsolidation proposal comes at a time when the County is being audited by the State Controller, leading to speculation that the Board is anticipating criticism of the consolidation since the state controller has already gone on record saying that the consolidation was made without a required “risk analysis.”
On Tuesday, Board Chair John Hashack revealed that he has been working on an agenda item to unconsolidate the offices for some time after Cubbison and several others, including the County Farm Bureau reps, urged the County to undo the misguided consolidation on Tuesday.
It is also interesting that Haschak’s previously undisclosed plans to introduce an item to undo the consolidation was happening while Cubbison’s civil suit is pending.
Haschak said that he expected to have an agenda item for the mid-November Board meeting so that the unconsolidation process can proceed to the June 2026 ballot on time.
Also on Tuesday, onlookers were surprised that the two current supervisors who supported the consolidation back in 2021 — Maureen Mulheren and Ted Williams — offered no objection to Haschak’s plan to undo it.
But anyone who follows County affairs knows that such intentions, perhaps well-meaning but very belated, are unlikely to unfold in anything like a timely manner.
Mark Scaramella is Managing Editor of the Anderson Valley Advertiser and a long-time Observer of County matters.
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