Mendocino County has a long, well-documented history of what we loosely refer to as “The Whereases,” those empty claims of “accomplishments” that are auto-generated when senior officials depart county employment. Usually, The Whereases are simply a list of nice-sounding things that the official may have “supported,” or which happened to have occurred while they were paid handsomely to be nearby during some ordinary events.
Supervisors and CEOs are the usual recipients of the obligatory Whereases. (Unless your name is John McCowen who occasionally criticized the CEO and took his job seriously, thus not only disqualifying himself from Whereas consideration, but even being falsely accused of stealing county equipment a few weeks after his last term was up.)
When we first read MendoLocal.news reporter Elise Cox’s summary of CEO Antle’s attempt at her own self-serving list of Whereases at last month’s board workshop we realized we missed it in the firehose of workshop propaganda that came out of the Board’s chambers on that Tuesday and Wednesday. So we had to go back to the video to listen to Antle’s claims again.
Ms. Cox reported that:
“Antle cited a range of accomplishments, including securing funding for a behavioral health wing at the county jail, relocating evidence storage to a county-owned facility, purchasing properties during the pandemic for mental health and housing uses, modernizing the county’s long-outdated financial and payroll systems, and creating a centralized grants division to improve oversight of external funding.”
Turns out that’s an accurate summary of CEO Antle’s self-serving “citations.”
So let’s review, beginning with the fact that Antle was appointed CEO in July of 2022 and has chosen June 30, 2026 as her last day, conveniently at the end of her contract. We’re not exactly sure when she was hired by then-CEO Angelo on the personal recommendation of then County Counsel Kit Elliott (recently hired back for at least six more months in a suspiciously cozy arrangement) and DA David Eyster, all personal friends, along with former CEO Angelo. But we think it was around 2016, which would mean she’ll get ten years credit for her pension. Her pension will be based on her salary as CEO which was at last report around $213k per year. So that would be 2.5 percent of that per year of employment, or about $53k per year.
Ms. Antle’s claims:
• Securing funding for a behavioral health wing at the county jail.
Comment: The basic jail expansion funding was obtained in 2016-2017 by a lot of work by Sheriff Allman and his staff, well before July of 2022 and CEO Antle had nothing to do with it. Some additional money was obtained via State Grant after that which Antle probably had something to do with, but as with the original $25 million grant, the Sheriff’s office did most of the work.
• Relocating evidence storage to a county-owned facility.
Comment: We’ll give her some credit on this one, minor as it is. This goes back to the days when former CEO Carmel Angelo refused to let the Sheriff use a logical storage area near the Sheriff’s office out on Low Gap Road because Angelo claimed she was using it (infrequently) as an Emergency Operations Center. After Angelo retired, Antle backed away from that ill-considered opinion and cooler heads prevailed. Not that it’s much of an accomplishment, but it did end up saving the Sheriff some money he had been paying for a private storage facility.
• Purchasing properties during the pandemic for mental health and housing uses.
Comment: All three of those “properties” — the grossly overpriced Orchard Street Crisis Residential Center next door to the Schraeder’s admin offices, the state-mandated Best Western Motel purchase on Orchard Street that has been converted to a homeless waystation, and the dilapidated nursing home on Whitmore Lane now converted to a Psychiatric Health Facility purchased initially with covid money as a covid quarantine facility — were purchased before July of 2022 during the tenure of CEO Carmel Angelo who personally took credit for it on more than one occasion.
• Modernizing the county’s long-outdated financial and payroll systems.
Comment: The failed attempt to “modernize” the county’s “long-outdated financial and payroll systems,” occurred years before July of 2022, also under CEO Angelo. Not only were both new systems a mismatch to County needs, but have been widely criticized as a major source of Mendo’s financial problems, many of which remain unresolved to this day.
• Creating a centralized grants division to improve oversight of external funding.
Comment: We won’t argue with the claim that Antle had something to do with the centralized grants division, most of which also began before July of 2022. But the recent State Auditor report was very critical of the County’s “oversight of external funding.”
Then there are the things CEO Antle left uncited.
Reporter Mike Geniella, January of 2025: “According to Court documents in the Cubbison criminal case, CEO Antle was among County administrators who supported the forced consolidation of two independent County financial offices. They hoped to eventually create a new Department of Finance under control of the County Supervisors. The board in fact did force the consolidation of the Auditor-Controller Office with the Treasurer-Tax Collector, but the plan to create a new Department of Finance requires voter approval.”
Now belatedly seen as the stupid idea it was at the time, not to mention unplanned and unanalyzed and inflicting a major blow to the County’s ability to collect taxes due, the Board has decided to “deconsolidate” the two offices, albeit at a snail’s pace.
Elected Auditor-Controller/Treasuer-Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison is now back in her position after 17 months of unpaid suspension based on bogus misapproprian charges. She is suing the County for defamation, back pay and other damages. Her civil attorney, Ms. Therese Cannata, said that recorded interviews exist confirming that CEO Antle had “numerous communications with the District Attorney urging him to hurry up and bring criminal charges” against Cubbison.
Per Geniella:
“Eyster, stated Cannata, delayed filing charges for a year while he tried to ‘extort Ms. Cubbison’s voluntary resignation’.”
“Cannata contended that during the year-long delay the DA and Antle were in ‘regular communication in 2022 and 2023 about how to pressure Ms. Cubbison to voluntarily resign from her duly elected office.’
“Among the issues cited by Cannata are:
• Antle’s rush to contact Eyster in September 2022 to initiate a criminal investigation into potential financial misconduct [when the obscure pay code being used to pay the County payroll manager for overtime work she did during covid was first brought up by Cubbison herself].
• Antle’s apparent “urgent desire” to see Cubbison face criminal charges.
• Antle’s coordination with the District Attorney to physically eject Cubbison from county offices.
• Antle’s presentation of an unnoticed, off agenda item to suspend Cubbison at the Oct. 17, 2023, meeting of the Board of Supervisors.
• ‘The speed of which Ms. Antle and Mr. Eyster acted to suspend Ms. Cubbison from her position was breathtaking,’ concluded Cannata.”
The County’s attorney has not denied these accusations, claiming instead that they are “irrelevant.”
At this time, Ms. Cubbison’s civil suit against the county remains unresolved, but the criminal case against Cubbison didn’t even make it past the preliminary hearing where Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman tossed the case. Since Judge Moorman is also presiding over the civil case, most observers expect that the County will have to pay court costs, attorney fees, 17 months of back pay, and damages – while Cubbison was suspended and a Deputy CEO was appointed to temporarily fill the position — of up to $1 million. Plus whatever punitive damages may end up being awarded.
Then we have the completely botched Veteran’s Services Office relocation fiasco which Ms. Antle engineered to try save some money, only to end up spending months undoing the ill-considered move and spending additional money to house the Air Quality District offices after they had to be moved to rented facilities.
We’ll stop there.
Mark Scaramella is the Managing Editor of the Anderson Valley Advertiser and a long-time Observer of County operations.
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