After outcry, SLO County board won’t add more clerk-recorder finalists
Following a heated debate, San Luis Obispo County supervisors will not add more clerk-recorder finalists to the slate of three they’re set to interview — ending an attempt to insert candidates a screening committee found unqualified.
The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted 3-2 against a motion by Supervisor Debbie Arnold to add four more candidates to the list of finalists they’ll meet next week.
Supervisor Lynn Compton joined Supervisors Bruce Gibson and Dawn Ortiz-Legg to vote down the motion.
Last week, Arnold sparked the debate over intervening in the process to pick an interim clerk-recorder to replace Tommy Gong, who resigned from his position in July to accept a new job in the Bay Area.
Gong had a year left in his term, and the person finishing it out will serve only until voters elect a new clerk-recorder in 2022.
At the board’s meeting on Sept. 28, Arnold was frustrated that the five-person clerk-recorder selection committee the board appointed put forward only three finalists after supervisors asked for seven. Supervisor John Peschong and Compton joined her in voting to discuss whether to add more candidates.
A handful of people commented on the motion, including a representative from the League of Women Voters, two members of the selection committee, and a commenter who read a statement from Julie Rodewald, a former county clerk-recorder who couldn’t attend the meeting.
Nearly all of them were against interviewing candidates the selection committee didn’t recommend, and many expressed concerns about the implications of entertaining unqualified applicants.
“I’m here today because I believe the majority of the Board of Supervisors is discussing potentially partisan actions which will only increase the problem (of political division) here in the county,” said Jim Gardiner, former longtime San Luis Obispo police chief. “If you followed the current motion to put seven names on, you’re going against subject matter experts, your staff and the will of the people you represent. The letters to the editor and the messages you’ve received — none of them have been in favor of putting more people on that (list of finalists).”
Clerk-recorder selection committee process
The committee included Ken Hampian, a former San Luis Obispo city manager tapped by Ortiz-Legg; Lee Price, a former San Luis Obispo city clerk representing Gibson; and Marcia Torgerson, a former Atascadero city clerk picked by Arnold.
Compton’s former attorney, Chuck Bell, and Peschong’s legislative assistant Vicki Janssen rounded out the five-person committee.
The committee in September considered 44 candidates, most of whom had no election or government clerking experience.
The supervisors asked for seven candidates, and they laid out only minimal qualifications. Applicants must be at least 18, they must be California residents and they must live in San Luis Obispo County and be registered to vote in the area at the time of the appointment.
However, the clerk-recorder selection committee — along with county administrative officer Wade Horton, county counsel Rita Neal and county human resources director Tami Douglas-Schatz — viewed the direction asking for seven candidates as a goal, not an absolute.
During their meetings, they discussed the need to add qualifications, like experience running elections, to help them narrow the list of applicants. Ultimately, the committee voted 5-0 to advance acting San Luis Obispo County clerk-recorder Helen Nolan, former Yolo County chief deputy clerk-recorder Jeffrey Barry and Santa Barbara County elections division manager Elaina Cano.
Following the Sept. 28 meeting, three members of the committee wrote a letter to the supervisors saying they had picked only three finalists because they felt those were the only qualified candidates. They said they could not “in good conscience,” recommend more applicants for the board to interview.
Arnold urges board to consider more clerk-recorder candidates
On Tuesday, Arnold said her directions to the committee had been clear, and the board now needed to carry them out. She proposed adding names put forward during an exercise at one committee meeting, when members wrote down their proposed finalists on large sheets of paper as a way to see which candidates they had in common before voting.
Hampian, Price and Torgerson had written down only the three candidates the committee ultimately picked as finalists. Bell added attorney Stewart Jenkins and David Evans, a former auto mall VP/CFO.
Janssen added Evans, Bakersfield assistant city clerk Lena Legge and Barbara Schmitz, a former California health care department staff services manager.
Arnold’s motion called for the board to also interview Evans, Legge, Jenkins and Schmitz, along with Barry, Cano and Nolan.
“This has nothing to do for me with anything except for I was really shocked,” Arnold said. “And that’s the scary part of this whole situation — that this Board of Supervisors, five elected people of this county, can discuss and debate and hold a hearing and come away with clear directive that isn’t adhered to, and then that’s supposed to be OK.”
“Is it OK just this time?” she added. “Is it OK every time we deliberate and come to a conclusion, make a motion? I’m not sure about that. But the scary part to me is that we’re up here creating policy, doing the best we can, and when our bona fide past motion is not adhered to, that is what I think has the potential to become very scary.”
Supervisors debate additional finalists
Peschong, who seconded Arnold’s motion, said he wanted to interview all seven candidates.
“I want to hear them, I want to see them, I want to talk to them,” he said. “I want to actually do my job as a supervisor in an open and transparent way in front of this group of people.”
In the wake of the conflict, Compton said she would no longer be in favor of delegating selection processes to a committee, as the supervisors should be the ones making the decisions.
She said she reviewed all the applications and she had “more than three candidates” because there are no laws stipulating clerk-recorders must have specific qualifications.
“I don’t remember exactly how many I had, but I had more than three candidates that I thought had interesting backgrounds,” Compton said. “Now granted, there were three specific candidates that had specific clerk-recorder experience. But I had more candidates than that because I thought that’s statutorily what the law says — whether you like it or not, that’s what the law says.”
Compton said she told Bell, her appointee, that she would need to recuse herself from any interview process that could involve Jenkins. Bell and Jenkins represented Compton in a 2018 lawsuit against Gong when she was in a tight re-election race against current Arroyo Grande Councilman Jimmy Paulding.
Compton also asked Neal what would happen if the supervisors didn’t agree on any of the three candidates during next week’s interviews. Neal told supervisors they could then go back to the drawing board and seek additional candidates.
Gibson, Ortiz-Legg push back against adding more finalists
Ortiz-Legg said her interpretation of the instructions supervisors gave to the committee was different than the version Arnold presented. She believed the seven-finalist direction was not a mandate, but a number that would be manageable for supervisors to consider, should there have been more qualified candidates.
She teared up while emphasizing county staff wasn’t to blame for the situation and saying they shouldn’t be disparaged.
“In some ways, changing the narrative of all this is almost self-fulfilling prophecy of distrust and destroy and creating chaos,” Ortiz-Legg said. “And that’s what we don’t need.”
Gibson pointed out the messages the board had received from constituents regarding adding more clerk-recorder finalists had been 20-1 against the idea.
“The microscopic examination of the motion and events of July 13 and the microscopic examination of state statute, which sets a low bar, and the indignation of the result that came back from the review committee are really misplaced,” Gibson said. “They really miss a much more important point. The motion in front of us is outrageous in that it invites unqualified candidates into our consideration. And I think that’s a particular shame.”
“Should this motion pass, it’s a shame that this board would accept the minimum that you be 18, a citizen and breathing, basically, in order to take on a job that is fundamental to our democracy,” he added.
When the vote was called, Compton provided the tie-breaking vote to kill the motion, a surprise given her initial support for the discussion and her typical inclination to side with Peschong and Arnold.
The Board of Supervisors will interview the clerk-recorder finalists at their next meeting on Oct. 12.
This story was originally published October 5, 2021 at 3:25 PM.
