Chamise Cubbison’s attorney formally asked that District Attorney David Eyster be recused from her case yesterday. Eyster charged Cubbison, the elected Auditor Controller Treasurer Tax collector, with felony misappropriation of public funds in mid-October. On Halloween, the Board of Supervisors suspended her without pay or benefits. She and her co-defendant, Paula June Kennedy, were scheduled to enter a plea yesterday. But instead, Cubbison’s attorney, Chris Andrian, told the court that he was asking the Attorney General to order Eyster to step aside. After the proceeding, he reflected that, “There is potential conflict of interest, in the sense that Mr. Eyster had been public in his opposition to her, has gone before the Board of Supervisors saying that he didn’t think she was qualified to do the job. She was challenging him on some of his claims.” Andrian added that he expects “There’s always going to be an adversarial side” to the relationship between an auditor and what he calls the auditee; “And if it reaches the point where you’re starting to say things about that person publicly, now you have an agenda with that person.”
Andrian also foresees the possibility of a future where Eyster and Cubbison will be in the same courtroom, but in a very different relation to one another. “I’m not handling this part of Ms. Cubbison’s life at this point,” he said; “But it’s my view that when the Board of Supervisors summarily dismissed her without pay, without any sort of due process or right to be heard, that that was not a correct thing…So eventually I think there’s going to be some sort of civil litigation that will emerge from this. I see David Eyster as potentially being a witness in some of those proceedings.” He wants the case to be cleansed of the rift. “When the jury selection comes, that’s going to be kind of a circus sideshow. Everyone’s going to want to talk about the rift and all that. That’s going to prolong the selection of the jury process at my client’s expense. It just seems to me that the case would be cleansed by that. In other words, by him stepping aside, and then we could just, if we had to, go toe to toe on the merits.”
Andrian’s recusal motion, which he planned to file with the Attorney General’s office yesterday, refers to the “Broiler Steak House Reimbursement Claim,” from early 2019.
Two years later, the Board of Supervisors considered appointing Cubbison to retiring Auditor-Controller Lloyd Weer’s position. At that time, Eyster’s office submitted a full investigative document including a timeline of correspondence between Cubbison and Eyster’s office manager. The timeline summarized three months’ worth of correspondence between the two women arguing over which policies the DA was exempt from; which fund could be used to pay for dinner; and the difference between the words ‘maintain’ and ‘control.’
At issue was a dinner at the Broiler in Redwood Valley at the end of 2018. Forty-two county employees and 25 members of the public attended the dinner. Eyster’s office wanted to pay the bill with asset forfeiture funds. Cubbison insisted that only the county employees’ meals could be reimbursed, for a total of $1,470. In March, according to an investigator’s recounting of a telephone conversation, Cubbison told the office manager, Carmen Macias, that the DA could amend an item on the Board of Supervisors agenda to pay the dinner tab. The investigator wrote, “Carmen explained to Chamise that DA is not using public funds and that this got as far as it did because of her fault for not paying the invoice. And the DA doesn’t want to change the Agenda, and why so the Auditor can keep picking on things every time we submit things.”
Cubbison also refused to reimburse the DA’s office for travel to trainings and conferences unless he submitted a travel request and authorization form and travel reimbursement claims. Eyster’s office held fast to its contention that then-CEO Carmel Angelo had exempted it from submitting travel authorizations. Outside attorney Morin Jacob of Liebert Cassidy Whitmore opined that, “The District Attorney’s office may have to obtain Travel Authorizations for expenditures but only for those that are not directly related to a case, and either (1) involve travel outside of California or (2) are over $1000.” Most of the rejected claims were under $500.
In 2021, Kathryn Cavness, an administrative services manager in Eyster’s office, complained that Cubbison had told her she could no longer report expenditures for Cal OES grant-funded victim services the way she believed the state wanted her to report them. In a memo titled “Ongoing Problems re Auditor’s Office,” Cavness wrote that after making her journal entries to account for personnel expenses, “Chamise Cubbison chastised me,” telling her to post the expenses as a debit to one account, “and also as a credit to a Victim Witness Revenue account, which curiously she had yet to create as no such line item for this purported credit currently existed.” Cavness reported that she spoke with the Cal OES specialist, “who confirmed that my accounting process and procedures were correct and met the mandates of the Cal OES grants that we were awarded.”
At the now-infamous Board of Supervisors meeting on August 31, 2021, where Eyster came out against Cubbison replacing Weer for the remainder of his term, Cubbison defended her accounting practices, saying, “No other department or funding agency has had a problem with that practice. Whatever information they conveyed to Cal OES and got an opinion from them, is not substantiated by past practice. It’s been done for the last 20 years in the Department of Transportation, and many years in Health and Human Services.”
Eyster complimented then Treasurer Tax Collector Shari Schapmire, adding, “But should we come to the point where she wants to retire, I think the court should well consider going to a director of finance model, where we have a more qualified, higher experienced and I guess higher powered individual to come in as our CFO…I’ve come to the Board multiple times, and never once has the Board upheld Ms. Cubbison’s decisions or Mr. Weer’s decisions when it comes to the problems we’ve ran into regarding finances and obstructionism…If you do appoint Ms. Cubbison, I expect I’ll see you more often, which may be a good thing.”
The Board did not officially appoint Cubbison to replace Weer after his early retirement in 2021. She ran unopposed for the combined offices of Treasurer Tax Collector and Auditor Controller last year and took office this year. After her suspension, Deputy CEO Sara Pierce took over her role.
Cubbison is due back in court on December 19th.
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Absolutely agree with the defense attorney
I Can’t Breathe!
ALL these criminal folks need to get off the necks of Mendocino County’s citizens…exactly like George Floyd, RIP.
Get off my neck!!
It was interesting to watch the Humboldt County Board meeting from Tuesday where they considered putting it to the voters to combine the Treasurer and Auditor roles. In short, the Humboldt Board seems way more dignified and thoughtful and it all paints the Mendocino Board as the exact opposite. All the Humboldt Supervisors had good points, articulated why they were voting the way they did, were respectful of each others comments and overall seemed concerned about what the public wanted and what was the most democratic option for the good of the people. Its clear their Human Resources department is filling vacancies and that everyone wants the Auditor and Treasurer offices to succeed. In comparing Humboldt to Mendocino it also clarified in my mind exactly why these two offices need to remain separate and elected. Its because those two offices also deal not just with the Board, but also with other elected county department heads, like the District Attorney. In order to maintain the integrity of their function, they have to be at the same level as someone like DA Dave who intimidates, threatens and is willing to do unethical things to get his way. Does anyone think Sara Pierce will be some sort of independent watchdog? Would she cave to an aggressive request from someone like DA Dave to pay out dinner expenses that are clearly in violation of policy? I have no doubt she would and maybe its already happening. And yes, DA Dave is absolutely unethical. He should have recused himself and turned over his investigation to the State Attorney General for a charging decision.
Humboldt’s BOS also didn’t let the growers write their cannabis ordinance either. Humboldt also has a fairly large 4 year university with many young and willing students with a more competitive economy. Keep in mind the offices (Tax and Auditor’s) in Mendo have been separated until real recently and the county still accumulated over $10 mil in debt. The merging of the offices hasn’t really shown anything except under the old guards’ leadership this county put itself in a hole even with separated offices.
Believe it or not, everything doesn’t revolve around cannabis. The demographics of the two communities does not mean the two boards should handle the situations differently. Merging the two departments wasn’t handled well and the Menocino board did not support the new merged department. In their opinion they were eliminating a department head. ilIn reality, by eliminating a department head, the board also eliminated someone who could do more complex processes in the office because the department heads do more than just manage.
Believe it or not Mendo isn’t the only county with merged offices in CA….. And believe it or not some of these very same counties have balanced budgets with merged offices. The problem this county is having isn’t due to merged offices. The county lacks a sufficient labor pool of educated people across the board. This county spent so much money on a Cannabis program that went no where with a poorly written ordinance from an elected body trying to fulfill the wet dreams of legacy growers, which turned into a nightmare. An elected Assessor’s office; with 50% plus turnover for nearly 10 years in a row. An defunct HR dept in name only. You got family members working in the same depts and across different depts. It’s more a toxic family unit than it is a professional gov’t.
Tit for tat? You won’t reimburse me for employee dinners at The Broiler and I will prosecute you for improperly reimbursing Kennedy for outside work she did for your department. This sounds like a grudge match of policy interpretations, and one side may be losing due to hubris.
The dinners at the Broiler cost about 35 dollars each ($1,470 divided by 42 diners). The means the remaining amount Eyster thought was owed him was 25 (number of “public” at dinner) x $35 = $875. The travel expenses were all under $1,000 and most were under $500. So the grand total of these “contested” expenses is in the ballpark of $875 + $1,500 = approximately $2,375. Eyster’s salary is most likely in the $200,000 range, or more. So he was willing to create a stink over this piddling amount, which he could probably have written off on his taxes as “losses”. Then he went further to create a major kerfuffle over this personal affront he felt Cubbison was guilty of. My question is how dare he use our tax money to settle his petty infighting? I think when the dust settles our county is entitled to reimbursement by withholding from his salary!
Classic case of “do what I say, not as I do”, cuts both ways on Auditor and DA.
Auditor enforces claims but then decides negotiated salaries and MOU’s applied to other employees don’t apply to their staff and seek special ways around it where only they have access.
DA doesn’t want reimbursement claim rules applied to his office as evenly as other departments because they are better than non law enforcement departments and free to use asset forfeiture money as they see fit.
Payroll officer enforces pay rules in negotiated MOU/contracts for all employees but somehow she doesn’t have to adhere to those same contracts because she is somehow special, an exception, genius, misunderstood, unappreciated victim who is better than other employees, gets special treatment, and who created environment where only she has control. Threats were constant that employees may not get paid. Nothing done to remedy by adding staff to help, automation, spreading of the duties, asking HR staff to pick up payroll duties, or accept CEO offer to assist with it as to minimize risk and workload. How did the payroll manager report her own salary to the retirement office for these unapproved wages? An audit of the payroll manager salary reported to retirement system needs to be conducted for what she reported as compensable wages. This could be even more egregious than just $68k as it would lead to years of spiked pension benefits. According to transparent California in 2021 Paula Kennedy earned $115k salary, of which $26k was “other pay”, and this does not include benefits. I wonder if, as payroll manager, she even accurately reported her salary to the State for this report?!
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2021/mendocino-county/paula-j-kennedy/
Local idiot here. What a bunch of bullshit. How on earth are we gonna pay new people to take over for this dog and pony show? Both these two, out. I don’t f”‘%## care anymore. We have no industry here. It’s either school district, or hospital work.Marijuana out. Wine out. Places to pee in town out. This is retarted.