Community Library Meetings

5 - 7 pm Tuesday, Jan 17

Cedarville Library

5 - 7 pm Wednesday, Jan 18

Lookout Library

5 - 7 pm Tuesday, Jan 24

Adin Library

5 - 7 pm Thursday, Jan 26

Alturas Library

Agenda for Community Library Meetings

Meeting called by: Modoc County Library Advisory Board (LAB), Friends of the Modoc County Library (FOL),
and Modoc County Librarian

Facilitator: Elizabeth Cavasso, Jeff Bullock or Mark Steffek

Notetaker: Carol Sharp

Attendees: Interested public, Modoc County Board of Supervisor Representatives (BOS)

5 pm - 5:10 pm  Welcome  - Facilitator
                        Introductions (Librarian, LAB, FOL, BOS)
                        Meeting purpose, ground rules

5:10 pm - 5:30 pm  Overviews - Cheryl Baker, Librarian, Mark Steffek, LAB
                            Modoc County Library System           

5:30 pm - 5:50 pm  Questions and Answers Panel -Cheryl Baker, Mark Steffek, Glenn Lantz
                                                                                      
5:50 pm - 6:10 pm  Brainstorming Breakouts

6:10 pm - 6:30 pm   Group Report Outs
               
6:30 pm - 6:45 pm   Next Steps
                
6:55 pm                 Closing Comments and Adjourn       

Balancing the County’s Budget Deficits

on the Backs of Children
A Critical Study of the Children and Families Commission
and the Misappropriation of the Modoc County Treasury

By Ray A. March


Editor’s Note -- The following is a multi-part series exposing the gradual process --beginning in 1999 and continuing to this day -- in which the Modoc County Children and Families First Commission (now First 5) purposefully ignored warnings from its Executive Director Donna Michelson that state mandated Prop. 10 Trust Funds may be victim to misappropriation and they should be kept out of the hands of the county treasury and auditor’s office.
    In fact, Michelson’s suspicions of misappropriation were substantiated in early 2002 in documents that reveal Modoc County Treasurer Cheryl Knoch openly informed the commission that the treasury helps pay the balance of funds that run in the negative such as the hospital.
    And, even with the advice that retaining the funds in the treasury was illegal, Supervisor Patricia Cantrall, a member of the commission, pointedly ordained that the Prop. 10 Trust Funds should remain there.
    Equally damaging are further indications that then-county auditor Judi Stevens was apparently using Prop. 10 funds for uses other than they were intended -- still another implication that they were being misappropriated by the county.
    And, another member of the commission, Phillip Smith, actually instructed Michelson to find a way to subvert state law requiring that Prop. 10 Trust Funds be kept in an account separate from the county’s control.
    Not only did the commission of 1999 and for the next decade fail to follow Michelson’s advice, it also ignored the warnings of its outside auditors who to this day strongly suggest that Prop. 10 funds are in jeopardy if they remain in the county’s control and not in a separate outside bank account.
    The series is based on public records for the most part obtained by the Modoc Independent News under the California Public Records Act. They include minutes of various commission meetings, e-mail exchanges between Michelson and commission members, letters to top-ranking state officials and outside audit reports.
    There are written statements by Treasurer Cheryl Knoch,  Auditor Judi Stevens, County Superintendent of Schools Carol Harbaugh, Supervisors Patricia Cantrall and Mike Dunn and Commission Chair Phillip J. Smith, who at the time was director of the Modoc County Department of Health Services.
    The original commission members were Smith, Cantrall, Harbaugh, Dr. Edward P. Richert, Modoc Medical Center;  Kate Crosby, manager of CalWorks; Donna Geldreich, director of Resource and Referral, a division of TEACH, Inc.; and Alice Lybarger, director, Early Head Start.
    As the commission expanded its board membership others to join were Supervisor Mike Dunn, eventual chair; Tracey Cochran, paralegal in the county counsel’s office also eventual chair; Rusty DuVall, a private business owner whose name also appears on commission agendas as Rusty Cantrall; Carol Callahan of TEACH and Harbaugh‘s alternate; and Rosemary Nelson, a business consultant and apparently Michelson’s lone supporter on the commission.
    During the course of researching and investigating this story the Modoc Independent News was informed by First 5 that “Rusty Cantrall” was a secretarial typing error.
    Combined, the records are a startling history of officials who not only ignored repeated warning signs that it was illegal to leave Prop. 10 funds in the treasury, but  were also unwilling to deal with an on-going treasury misappropriation that finally came to public light in 2009.
    Eventually, an orchestrated effort to discredit Michelson ended in her being fired during a 19-minute kangaroo court hearing at the Alturas City Hall on Jan. 30, 2002 -- just three years after the Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted the all-important Ordinance 321-A.
    
Next: Part 1
    Setting the Scene, Adoption of Ordinance 321-A

"Balancing the County’s Budget Deficits
on the Backs of Children"
 
A Critical Study of the Children and Families Commission
and the Misappropriation of the
Modoc County Treasury

To our readers

On Wednesday, Jan. 11 we will begin a multi-part series titled "Balancing the County’s Budget Deficits on the Backs of Children," A Critical Study of the Children and Families Commission and the Misappropriation of the Modoc County Treasury.

Using documents obtained under the California Public Records Act, this series will expose the $20 million treasury misappropriation and those knowingly involved.

The series will run each Monday and Wednesday of the week to its conclusion.

Please pass the word to anyone you think may be interested in the on-going financial scandal of Modoc County.

Thanks, Ray

Editorial

The Library Is The First, Who’s Next?

    Could the library debacle be the proverbial final straw?
    Or, is it just the first of a landslide of county departments and innumerable employees that will go under because directly or indirectly our elected and appointed leaders illegally took from Peter to illegally pay Paul?
    After the library comes the waste management department, which will run out of money next month, according the county‘s chief administrative officer Chester Robertson.
    And then what?
    After the waste management department comes the possibility that more full time employees from other departments will have to be laid off. That’s a dramatic move in itself, but consider this: laid off county employees have to be paid compensatory time.
    Where is this “comp” money going to come from?
    If the money is not on the county’s books and compensatory time cannot be paid, that is the same as not being able to make payroll. And, if the county can’t make payroll, it automatically goes into bankruptcy, or at the least insolvency.
    How soon will this happen?
    More than likely the plug will have to be pulled sooner than later. Right now, no one is willing to say when.
    We understand Robertson is creating a fund pool to cover the county’s posterior when it has to fire employees.  The existence of this pool and how much it amounts to is something of a mystery.
    All we can ask is, “Couldn’t this all have been avoided?” The answer, of course, is yes.
    But about ten years ago our chosen officials took it upon themselves to pay debts with money that legally they did not have -- meaning they misappropriated millions of dollars from the treasury to cover bills that were piling up elsewhere.
    In effect, the library, along with other departments, was an early victim of its money being spent for purposes other than library costs. The library fell victim not only to the misappropriation scam but to the use of its reserve fund, as well.
    We are still waiting for someone to come forward and honestly say, “It’s my fault.”



Hoping for a Happy New Year?


    Then remember these dates:

    June 5 -- state and presidential primary
    Nov. 6 -- general election

    And, remember these names:

    Supervisor Patricia Cantrall
    Supervisor Loren “Shorty” Crabtree
    Supervisor Jeff Bullock

    If you truly want a happy new year and future (and let’s add to that a prosperous one for Modoc County), we suggest you seriously consider voting Cantrall, Crabtree and Bullock out of office -- that is if they decide to run for re-election.

                        -- Ray A. March