The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors initiated the process to abolish the Office of the Treasurer-Tax Collector-Public Administrator and merge its parts with other elected county officials at their scheduled meeting today.
Today’s initial action by county supervisors, which will be final on January 26, and take effect thirty days later, creates the following offices.
Sheriff-Coroner to Sheriff-Coroner-Public Administrator Auditor-Controller-Recorder to Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector Assessor to Assessor-Recorder .
*The Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector will also assume the duties of Director of Central Collections.
*The Assessor will also assume the duties of County Clerk and have control over County Archives.
Interestingly, former Treasurer-Tax Collector Dick Larsen, who railed the proposal in local newspapers last week by labeling it as corruption and a theft from taxpayers didn’t even bother to show up for the meeting.
Hmm, guess it’s not that corrupt after all, especially when it saves millions of dollars over time.
On another note, from a political standpoint today’s action kills Assistant Treasurer-Tax Collector Annette Kerber’s hopes of running for office. Kerber had been raising money to run this June to permanently replace former Larsen, who retired last July.
The question is, what will happen to everyone’s favorite Chief Deputy Recorder? ACR Management seems to be keeping all of the employees in the dark. Does anyone know what’s going on??
It’s called “Reorganization”, that’s where your new CAO does a hatchet -job on the rank-and-file, to leave the multiple layers of bureaucratic management b.s. in place. So now the same person, who by the way is currently an appointed rather than elected official, is responsible for recording, taxing and being the custodian for all records regarding real property? Isn’t this the same department headed by a meth junkie who was running a political shop for the rest of the county gop up for reelection (including numerous employees incl. Kirk and Anderson)? It’s way too obvious that the intent of this consolidation is to try and distance the organization from the structure as was being abused by Postmus, and at the same time eliminate the checks and balances previously in place to allow for greater flexibility to facilitate future abuses by the politicians and politicos.
There is a certain poetic justice that Dick “The Worm” Larsen wont be able to pick his heir apparent. Apparently it’s true, what goes around comes around.