MENDOCINO CO., 3/18/25 — Although Mendocino County Auditor-Controller and Treasurer-Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison is back at work, her saga continues, played out as part of a scheduling conference before Mendocino Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman.
Cubbison and former county payroll manager Paula Kennedy have just been relieved of a 17-month criminal prosecution for felony misappropriation of funds arising out of $68,000 in extra pay to Kennedy for work done during the Covid pandemic. As the case dragged on, Cubbison and Kennedy maintained their innocence. When a preliminary hearing to test the merits of the accusations was finally completed in late February, Judge Ann Moorman dismissed the charges, finding that the payments to Kennedy were “completely transparent,” and that the evidence was “vastly insufficient for the Court to find that anybody acted with criminal negligence.”
Cubbison was suspended without pay on October 17, 2023. She went back to work the day after Judge Moorman dismissed the charges against her, but she was not given any compensation for her months’-long suspension. Whether and to what extent she is entitled to backpay and benefits is the subject of a separate civil suit, also before Judge Moorman, that Cubbison filed against the County of Mendocino and the Board of Supervisors (BOS) shortly after she was suspended.
Until recently, the civil case had taken a back seat to the criminal charges, but the civil case was set for a scheduling conference on March 14.
Status reports and court scheduling orders are generally unremarkable but not in this case. On March 12 Judge Moorman ordered that the date be pushed back to June in order to allow more time for depositions and document exchanges. Cubbison’s lawyers responded to that order with a “Status Report” the next day, March 13, asking the judge to hold the scheduling conference on the original March 14 date.
Cubbison’s Status Report led with the observation that the county’s decision to lift her suspension without restoring backpay and benefits was a “slap in Ms. Cubbison’s face.” Cubbison’s filing accused the county and the BOS of withholding material evidence and dragging their feet on getting depositions scheduled.
That wasn’t all. County CEO Darcie Antle, the filing said, was “knee-deep in the coverup of an unlawful scheme to oust Ms. Cubbison from public office” and is “concurrently obstruct[ing] Ms. Cubbison’s access to the staff and information necessary to do her job.” Cubbison’s lawyers requested the court to enter an order requiring the county to take extra steps to preserve evidence and to confirm that Antle will “restore full authority to” Cubbison to do her job.
Not to be outdone, lawyers for the county filed a document late in the day on March 13, responding to what it called Cubbison’s “improper ex parte communications to the court.” County lawyers characterized Cubbison’s filing as “one-sided and argumentative” and “drafted in a way to negatively portray the County in the eyes of this court.” The county asked the court to do nothing at the March 14 status conference except to set dates for arguments on the merits of Cubbison’s claims or delay the case to allow more proceedings over discovery.
After all that, the hearing turned out to be “relatively calm,” according to Therese Cannata, Cubbison’s counsel. “The parties simply stated their position, and the court ordered them to meet and confer about the issues,” Cannata said.
Judge Moorman set a further scheduling conference for April 4, 2025, at 11:00 a.m.