Supervisor Geri Byrne’s Vision for Modoc’s Financial Future

Editor’s Note: Barbara March, publisher of Modoc County Daily News, conducted this interview via e-mail and telephone with Modoc County Supervisor Geri Byrne.


Q - Has there been competition from other counties during this period of Modoc County’s search for qualified CAO candidates?

Byrne - There are a lot of counties looking for a chief administrative officer or administrative services officer right now that have a lot more to offer than we do, and they do not have the reputation we do for financial mismanagement. Besides, what qualified candidate would want to put up with us crazies?

Q - The search for a new administrator has centered on Chester Robertson, currently director of public works for the City of Alturas. What can you tell us about Robertson’s credentials for holding the top job in the county?

Byrne - Chester Robertson has a degree in managerial economics from U.C. Davis. He has extensive experience in the financial world and has worked as a licensed registered representative for a brokerage firm and portfolio manager and operations manager.

Q - Without violating information discussed in closed sessions of the Board of Supervisors, can you say what your personal impressions are of Robertson?

Byrne - I first met Chester a little over a year ago when I was considering running for supervisor. Every time I have spoken with him I have been impressed with his extensive knowledge of the county's budget, funding sources and the financial problems associated with them.

He has investigated a great many ways to help fix the financial hole without going for a full restitution bond. He thinks outside the box and is one of the smartest and most talented people I have run across. He is also very honest and ethical and it bothers me a lot to hear some of the things people are saying about him.

Q - If Roberston is the board’s choice, what will his job title and responsibilities be?

Byrne - If we hire Robertson, it would not be as a full time chief administrative officer, but as a part time administrative services director, overseeing the financial issues of the county. He would also stay part time in his present job with the City of Alturas.

Q - Is an administrative services director of higher rank than a chief administrative officer?

Byrne - The county code doesn’t specify a chain of command, but the administrative services officer is at the top of the pay schedule. This position pays more than the CAO.

Q - How does Robertson differ from current CAO Rick Rudometkin in what he can bring to the position of administrative services officer?

Byrne - We need someone who is really focused on the finances. Chester knows if the county goes down the city goes down too. He has an amazing amount of knowledge. We had applicants for the CAO position who would be great in normal times, but these are not normal times.

Q - Were there any applicants that you know of who had a financial background equal to Robertson’s?

Byrne - No. Plus a new CAO or administrative services officer from out of the area would take at least six months to get to know Modoc County. Chester knows the history of the county.

Q - What would Chester do that Rudometkin is or is not doing now?

Byrne - Without going into detail, Chester would do the financial work, not the day-to-day. The CAO would attend board meetings. Chester would do the budget reviews and work with the auditor. He would find creative solutions to make the money work. There’s a lot of things other counties do regarding their finances that we don’t do.

Q - Do you foresee any legal problems with the arrangement of Robertson as part time administrative services director and apparently Rudometkin continuing as CAO?

Byrne - I just came back from supervisor training at the California State Association of Counties (CSAC) ) and their expert in the field on intergovernmental collaboration, Bill Chiat, thought it was a brilliant idea to share the Chester’s services between the city and the county. He is aware of the troubles Modoc has along with many other counties, and thinks this is the direction of things to come.

Q - But, would Robertson supervise Rudometkin?


Byrne - In my vision Chester needs to be top dog to make the decisions that need to be made. Not, micromanage, but he needs the power to put board-approved plans into effect.

Q - What would Rudometkin’s duties be?


Byrne - County counsel John Kenny has advised us that we have to negotiate Rudometkin’s duties even though his contract doesn’t currently specify what his duties are. I envision him handling day-to-day human resources and attending board meetings. And he would continue as director of transportation.

Q - What about Assistant CAO Pam Randall? Would there be a duplication of duties?


Byrne - Financially it will be less expensive to bring Robertson in part-time, retain Rudometkin as part-time CAO and  keep Randall as assistant CAO than it would be to hire a full-time CAO who we would pay $138,000. I’d like to stress that these are issues to be negotiated, which we now have permission to do.

Q - What is your response to your detractors who say you are going behind people’s backs?

Byrne - As to doing it behind the other supervisors' backs, I could not talk to them about it as that would be a Brown Act violation. It was my attempt to do this in public that has gotten me accused of being non-transparent, of doing things behind closed doors. That’s a bit ironic.

Q - Finally, are you concerned about public opinion? 

Byrne - Of course I am, but I know that no matter what you do there’s going to be conflicts, especially in such a small county. If my plan goes through there will be people who like or don’t like Robertson, and who do or don’t like Rudometkin. In other words, we can’t please all the people. If detractors have better solutions, I’d like to hear them.

Overheard On The Way To The Cleaners
An Analysis


As the Modoc County Board of Supervisors gradually slogs its way to hiring a new chief administrative officer, the question publicly unasked is, what does the board do with Rick Rudometkin?

This question is hidden in a smoky effort to discredit and ultimately smear the untarnished reputation of the only qualified candidate apparently still standing, Chester Robertson, the City of Alturas’ director of public works.

Complicating the matter is the fact that Rudometkin reportedly now considers himself a candidate for the job he is supposedly vacating.

“They have been flying the job for months and now Rudometkin says he wants to be a candidate,” a knowledgeable source told the Modoc County Daily News, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the CAO search.

The anti-Robertson tactics are implied in heated arguments from Supervisors Patricia Cantrall and Jeff Bullock, who in their new-found wisdom are suddenly semantic experts when it comes to the touchy verb “to hire.”

Witness Cantrall's melodramatic walk out at the board’s Tuesday, April 12, meeting and Bullock’s convoluted and ultimately unsuccessful effort to obstruct the appointment of a subcommittee to draft an employment contract -- ostensibly because of their objections to the “H“ word.

More accurately it is the verb “to contract” that holds the clues to the chaos this board finds itself in -- a chaos stemming from previous decisions, such as hiring Rudometkin as CAO, that were made when Dan Macsay and Cantrall were consecutive board chairs. It is not Roberston’s contract at issue here or his hiring, although Cantrall and Bullock would like us all to think so. It is the sweetheart contract Rudometkin was successful in getting under the Macsay-Cantrall leadership that the new Board of Supervisors must now negotiate -- period.

The clue to this can be found in the advice County Counsel John Kenny gave the board on Tuesday when he told the supervisors: Make a motion to form a committee to negotiate with the CAO candidates and Rudometkin to make their contracts consistent. The italics are added for emphasis.

In other words, the Board of Supervisors, which decided it had all the expertise in the world to do its own hiring and firing -- is now faced not only with bringing in a new chief administrative officer, but it has to bite the Rudometkin contract bullet -- a lucrative deal that contains binding conditions that add up to significant dollars.

“They have a nasty contract with Rudometkin,” the source said. “They either pay the poison or find another way to work it out.”

Just what does Rudometkin’s contract contain that’s so venomous?

The contract agrees to an annual salary of $150,000 for the combined positions of chief administrative officer and director of transportation. If Rudometkin goes back to director of transportation his salary will be $112,000 a year. The county pays 100 percent of his contribution to PERS retirement

If Rudometkin goes back to his transportation position he is entitled to “compensation, including salary and benefits (excluding accrual of vacation and sick leave) for a period of five months or for the remainder of the unexpired term of this agreement, whichever is less.”

At $12,500 a month the termination clause means Rudometkin will be paid a minimum of $62,500 if there are at least five months remaining on his contract. The contract does not expire until Feb. 1, 2012.

Factor into this a line item in Rudometkin’s transportation budget that provides for nearly another $62,000, plus benefits, to reportedly train his replacement. The “training” use of that money has been disputed by his assistant Pam Randall, but what has not been argued is that the expenditure of the $62,000 is at the discretion of the Board of Supervisors, meaning it can pay Rudometkin to train his replacement if it wants, according to a source knowledgeable of Rudometkin’s budget.

Of course, the easiest way to handle Rudometkin’s contract is not to deal with it at all, which appears to be the route Cantrall and Bullock prefer. It was Cantrall who was chair when Rudometkin was first named interim CAO and it is Bullock who is now an admitted Rudometkin convert.

“The Board of Supervisors should have worked this out before they advertised for a chief administrative officer,” the source said. “If they had created a committee ahead of time this could have been avoided.”

The stinging truth now is that the only person who stands to benefit from the contrived confusion over the “to hire” debate is Rudometkin himself -- not the taxpayer, not even the Board of Supervisors which loses more credibility with its constituents as time passes.

-- Ray A. March

For related articles see “Following the Rudometkin Trail-BOS Trail,” April 5, 2010, and “Rudometkin’s Last Hurrah?” Dec. 13, 2010.

Supervisor Crabtree:
“Rags Around Their Heads” Not Meant As Slur

Loren “Shorty” Crabtree, chair of the Modoc County Board of Supervisors, said he did not intend to make a racial slur yesterday when he referred to people at a recent auction in Woodland as wearing “rags around their heads.”

During a routine item at the end of the board’s meeting in Alturas, Crabtree, a retired brand inspector, reported on attending an auction of county equipment where “there was people from all over the world and some of them had rags around their heads.”

The comment drew considerable laughter and Crabtree went on to say “they were from another world,” but “I didn’t ask them to show their home base or anything.”

Asked by the Modoc County Daily News what he meant by the comment, Crabtree said he did not mean it as a racial slur.

“There’s a lot of those Hindus, a lot of them around that country down there,” Crabtree said. “Rick Rudometkin (Modoc County CAO) told me there would be people there from all over the world. I didn’t mean it that way. I didn’t mean it was a racial slur.”

Crabtree defended his “rags” reference to the custom among various Middle East cultures where the turban or pagri is commonly worn because he didn’t know the name for the headdress.

“I don’t know what else you’d call it,” he said. “I never thought about offending any body or a racial slur. I didn’t mean to do that. If I did, I hope somebody didn’t take it that way. I’m not used to that stuff.”

-- Ray A. March

The Rest of the World continued

 Editor's Note: Each day a new story about a city, county or state in financial crisis hits the news.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/12/detroit-state-takeover-spending_n_848230.html

The Rest of the World continued

Editor's Note: Here is another article about the new trend of consolidation of services, this time in Redwood City and San Carlos.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/04/12/state/n074900D78.DTL&tsp=1

Legislation Aimed At Modoc

Proposed legislation prompted by financial scandals hitting Modoc County and the City of Bell cleared the Senate government and finance committee April 6 on a 6-3 partisan vote and is now headed for the committee on appropriations.

Senate Bill 449, introduced by Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Santa Monica), is intended to require the State Controller’s Office (SCO) to form a “local agency financial review committee” capable of recommending financial recovery plans for cities and counties -- if they request state assistance.

Opposition to the bill came from the three Republican members of the government and finance committee.

Known as the “poison pill” bill in its early, more restrictive language SB 449 is the brainchild of the SCO and comes in reaction to financial mismanagement of counties and cities such as Bell in southern California and Modoc County in northeastern California.

Locally, it was disclosed in mid-2009 by then-CAO Mark Charlton that Modoc County had misappropriated an estimated $20 million from its treasury ostensibly to cover debts in other departments. The treasury funds included both state and federal monies restricted to specific programs such as roads, public health and social services.

As a result of the misappropriation the SCO conducted a preliminary investigative audit, ordered the county to repay the money, which it has failed to do, and to have its financial records audited again going back to 2007-08.

“We were looking at a number of local governments with problems including Modoc and the City of Bell,” said a SCO spokesman. “It’s definitely an effort to get ahead of the problems, and work with local governments to find solutions before they escalate. We’ve also received over a 100 complaints from taxpayers asking for audits of local agencies, but currently the SCO’s authority to audit local governments is very limited.”

To what extent the SCO’s authority over cities and counties will be expanded is unclear and probably subject to any further amendments to the bill.

SB449 originally “required” cities and counties to practice prudent fiscal management but that wording was amended in committee to “supporting” prudent fiscal management.

In effect, the watering-down of the language in the bill means counties such as Modoc do not have to expose their need for the state’s help in devising a financial plan if it chooses not to, according to a Sacramento source familiar with the bill.

“The legislature and SCO appear to be willing to let these situations drift, regardless of the indicators, until a crisis occurs,” the source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss the bill. “If the legislature and staff would at least attempt to prevent the crisis, there would be less damage, particularly to the indirectly affected people.”

SB 449 is supported by California Professional Firefighters and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, according to the SCO spokesman.

-- Ray A. March

 The Rest of the World (continued)

Editor's Note: As a continuing service to our readers here is an article about Orange County, the first county in California to declare bankruptcy and how it is consolidating services to save money.

http://publicceo.com/index.php/local-governments/151-local-governments-publicceo-exclusive/2779-orange-county-to-collaborate-with-local-governments-for-cheaper-services