MENDOCINO CO., 6/17/26 —It has been months since Mendocino County agreed to pay out $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit stemming from the Board of Supervisors’ premature decision to suspend Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison.
And it has been weeks since news of the settlement first came to light as a result of a journalist filing a public records request.
Now, Mendocino County residents have been left to question why the Board of Supervisors did not announce the settlement immediately and of its own volition.
Soon after news broke of Cubbison’s settlement, comments started rolling in across multiple news sites and Mendocino Facebook groups expressing disappointment with the taxpayer money spent on the litigation, congratulations for Cubbison, and mistrust generated by the county’s decision to stay silent about the case’s conclusion.
“I think most county people want to see the answer as to why this was delayed,” said Chris Skyhawk, referring to the settlement’s announcement. Skyhawk is a Fort Bragg resident and former candidate for 5th District Supervisor, who had commented on a Facebook post about the settlement.
“It seems like until the county comes clean as to why there was a delay, there is going to be a lot of suspicion. Did somebody extract political benefit with the timing? Again I don’t know…you have to wonder, anybody’s going to wonder… That’s all we have right now,” he added.
Cubbison filed the civil suit in December 2023 after she was suspended without pay from her role as Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector, just four days after being accused by District Attorney David Eyster of misappropriating public funds. Her lawyers argued that the decision was made in excess of the Board of Supervisor’s authority and without due process.
According to the settlement agreement, $143,573.44 of the sum is meant to cover Cubbison’s missed retirement contributions during her suspension, while the remaining $1,356,426.56 went towards legal fees and personal damages.
Cubbison came under scrutiny in October 2023, when District Attorney Eyster filed a criminal complaint against her, accusing her of unlawfully paying $68,106 to former county payroll manager Paula June Kennedy.
Cubbison was formally charged on October 13, 2023 for the felony of misappropriation of public funds. The next week, she was suspended from her job without pay after a unanimous vote by the Board of Supervisors. The board’s hasty decision led Cubbison to file a civil suit in December of 2023.
The civil case claimed that the Board of Supervisors “acted arbitrarily, capriciously, or without due regard for Petitioner’s rights, and that the action prejudiced her by depriving her of significant property interest in employment, pay, and livelihood without due process. Respondents have also acted in excess of their authority as conferred by Government.”
It was also pointed out that Cubbison was not acting auditor at the time of the supposed felony, which allegedly stretched from 2019-2022. Cubbison did not take on her position until her predecessor Lloyd Weer abruptly retired in September 2021.
The charges against Cubbison were made more questionable when it was brought up by Cubbison’s defense that Cubbison and her accuser Eyster had a history of conflict. They had butted heads in the past over the legitimacy of Eyster’s requests for reimbursements, at least 13 times according to a Mendocino Voice investigation. These reimbursements, which Cubbison disapproved of, included dinners with non-county guests and personal travel expenses.
Eyster was also a major opponent of Cubbison’s candidacy as Auditor-Controller after Lloyd Weer recommended her as his successor following his 2021 retirement.
At a public Board of Supervisors meeting soon after Cubbison’s suspension, Cubbison’s lawyer at the time, Chris Andrian, pointed out the potential conflict of interest between her and Eyster.
“There’s also the fact that Ms. Cubbison has had an ongoing dispute with the District Attorney who has filed this case. So there are personal issues between him and her for doing her job…I think this just feels more political than it feels law,” he said.
Cubbison’s prosecution and suspension continued for 17 months, until Judge Ann Moorman dismissed the charges against her on February 25, 2025, ruling 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.” A day later, Cubbison was reinstated as Mendocino County Auditor-Controller.
But Cubbison’s civil suit was still ongoing, and Mendocino County was doing what it could to fight it. This included authorizing $400,000 in legal fees to the law firm Liebert, Cassidy, Whitmore.
The county also requested to move the case to Marin County, arguing that local media’s coverage of the lawsuit had made reaching an unbiased ruling impossible. The request was unusual for a decision that would not involve a jury, and was denied.
In February of 2026, a settlement was finally reached. According to the released document, Chamise Cubbison signed the $1.5 million settlement agreement on February 9. On February 12, Bernie Norvell, chair of the Board of Supervisors, signed the agreement as well.
The settlement would still be undisclosed if journalist Mike Geniella had not submitted a public records request for the information. Geniella made the request on May 26, 2026, after noticing an April 17 entry in the settlement’s court records stated that the case had been dismissed. The county provided the requested documents on June 4.
Third District Supervisor John Haschak told the Mendocino Voice that the board decided in a closed session on a settlement a few weeks before the agreement was signed.
“We agreed to it, then we were waiting for it to be signed off, and then after it got signed off on, we didn’t make a public statement about it,” said Haschak.
When asked why the board chose not to make a public statement, Haschak said that he probably should not reveal what the County Counsel, the legal counselor to the board, advised the board on the matter.
According to Ted Williams, 5th District Supervisor, the choice of whether to announce the settlement was the responsibility of the board chair, Bernie Norvell.
“As to the timing and process surrounding public disclosure, that would be a better question for the Board Chair. I’m simply not privy to the discussions or considerations that may have gone into those decisions,” he wrote in a message to the Mendocino Voice.
Bernie Norvell has yet to respond to the Mendocino Voice’s request for comment.
Katherine Elliot, interim County Counsel, told the Mendocino Voice that once the county reaches a settlement, it is not standard to announce the agreement.
“I mean, I worked in Mendocino before this, and I was in Nevada County for six years and now I’m back. I really never announced any settlement out,” said Elliot.
Elliot reasoned that announcing settlements may inspire other actors with pending litigation to demand more money from the county.
“If we announced all our settlements, it makes some other party think they should get that amount,” she said. “It’s not about not being transparent, it’s still trying to do the best in the interest of the public in terms of taxpayer money,” she continued.
While those following the case might be outraged that the county did not make the settlement public, the county did not violate any laws by keeping mum. The Brown Act, a California state law intended to provide public access to meetings of local government agencies, lays out settlement announcement requirements. It states that if a settlement is reached and signed in a meeting, the board must immediately report the settlement in that same session.
In this case, however, the county was not legally obligated to announce the agreement because the settlement was reached outside of session. Katherine Elliot, interim County Counsel, explained that the Board of Supervisors had only authorized the county counsel to settle during a closed session. The settlement was thus contingent on Cubbison’s acceptance, and therefore did not occur within that closed session and did not have to be announced.
David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, confirmed that the counsel — and the Board of Supervisors — did not violate the Brown Act. “If it is the county that makes the offer and it’s contingent on acceptance from the other side, then they do not have to report out in the same meeting,” he said.
“If final approval rests with the other side, then the county is obligated to disclose the settlement on request, but they are not obligated to proactively announce it,” he continued.
True to the Brown Act, the settlement was only announced after Geniella’s public records request. “As soon as somebody asked, we turned it over,” said Elliot of the settlement’s information. Part of the reason it was not news before, she said, is because no one had inquired about the settlement until last month.
When asked why she did not ensure a public statement was made regarding the settlement based on the heightened interest in the case rather than the legal standard, Elliot said, “How would I announce it?”
I call bull s?!&!!!! Best interest of tax payer money blah blah blah!! Bull s?!&!!!