A series of recent scandals have cast an unflattering light on local officials in Madera County: Both the county's auditor-controller and public guardian resigned after prosecutors began investigating them. Two other key county employees have come under scrutiny, and one faces possible criminal charges.
But leaders of this rural county of 150,000 aren't alarmed. They say coincidence, not a culture of corruption, is to blame."There are bad apples in every barrel," Madera County Supervisor Frank Bigelow said. "You pluck them out before it spoils the entire barrel."Stell Manfredi, who recently retired as the county's top administrator, described the spate of investigations and resignations in the last year as an "anomaly.""In any organization -- I don't care if it's L.A. County or Madera County -- you're going to have people who do things that aren't appropriate," he said.And Chuck Doud, editor and publisher of the local newspaper, The Madera Tribune, said he doesn't see anything especially troubling about the county's recent events."There is no underlying tolerance of corruption or anything like that in the county at all," Doud said. "This is a pretty clean place."Madera County District Attorney Michael Keitz, who was appointed to the job last year, has been busy overseeing many of the investigations along with the help of the Madera County Grand Jury. But he said the recent investigations aren't due to a more aggressive District Attorney's Office or a more diligent grand jury."From time to time, things just happen in government," he said. "Government is run by people, and people make mistakes."Others see a more troubling pattern.Dale Drozen, a retired firefighter and self-described county government watchdog, has been keeping track of county officials for the last three years. He watches most Board of Supervisors meetings and regularly e-mails a newsletter to a few hundred people that is often critical of the county's leaders.At times, Drozen said, he has been tempted to seek a recall vote on all five county supervisors because of what he says is their inability to follow the law and their lack of leadership."If you want a dirty story, you can pretty much look anywhere and find it," he said.But Drozen said he is especially frustrated by what he perceives as apathy among county residents. His readers often tell him that they will attend the next Board of Supervisors meeting to protest policies they dislike -- but then fail to show up."At the very top of the pile of blame is the people themselves," he said.Drozen isn't the only one concerned about county government.The Madera Oversight Coalition, a relatively new group of more than 70 people in the county's foothills, has become increasingly engaged in the county decision-making process -- especially on issues involving new development."We try to direct the county to follow the law," William Whitehead, one of the coalition's board members, said of the county supervisors. "It's small-town politics, but you try to at least get them to think about the future."And Sharon Diaz, president of the Madera County Professional Employees union, which represents about 250 white-collar employees, blamed the county's leaders for its recent troubles."What I believe is that the Board of Supervisors is supposed to supervise department heads, but they didn't and the department heads did wrong," she said. "All that cost the county."'Good-old-boy' attitudeWhitehead said his group has had to battle what he described as a "good-old-boy" attitude in the county that makes its elected leaders reluctant to challenge each other.Some supervisors say they prefer not to publicly address concerns about other elected officials. At a public meeting earlier this year, Supervisor Tom Wheeler explained that he would never criticize another elected official because it could be politically risky.In an interview after the meeting, Supervisor Max Rodriguez agreed, noting that he would rather not be critical of someone "who was elected by the same people who elected you."Jessica Levinson, director of political reform at the Center for Governmental Studies, a nonprofit think tank in Los Angeles, said such attitudes among county leaders are "very detrimental to having any real debate about the issues.""If the general philosophy is 'We don't criticize each other,' then yes, this county is much more ripe for bad circumstances to crop up because nobody wants to disagree," Levinson said.Even though Supervisor Bigelow says he doesn't believe there are systemic problems with Madera County, he still sometimes questions whether his fellow elected leaders are looking out for their constituents' best interests.For example, Bigelow said, he believes that the same person should not be both the county's elected auditor and the chief financial officer -- as is the case now -- because of potential conflict. But his idea has gained little traction among fellow supervisors."It seems some are more concerned with their own re-election than correcting a serious flaw in the system," Bigelow wrote in an e-mail interview last week.As has been the case in recent months, the other four county supervisors -- Rodriguez, Wheeler, Vern Moss and Ronn Dominici -- did not return e-mails or calls seeking comment for this story.'... the Madera way'There are several theories why Madera County has suffered so many black eyes lately.Some blame the county's former auditor-controller, Robert DeWall, who resigned under pressure in December after 22 years in his elected post.DeWall was in charge of auditing the county's departments, but for as long as anyone can remember that rarely happened.Also, for his last three years on the job, DeWall didn't submit a budget. When county supervisors refused to fund his department, DeWall -- who had control of the county's money -- simply funded it himself.Perhaps most damaging, however, was DeWall's failure to turn in financial reports on time, costing the county millions of dollars in lost grants."Mr. DeWall's attitude toward financial statements has always been that -- and this goes back 20 years -- that they're the least important thing in the office," Jim Boyajian, then the county's assistant auditor, told the grand jury last November, according to a transcript.Boyajian is now the interim auditor.There could be another explanation for the county's issues: its rapid-fire growth. The county's population has boomed 71% since 1990, but some wonder whether its agencies have been able to keep up.In the rush to build new homes, county supervisors may be ignoring important questions such as whether there will be enough water for the new developments, environmentalists and others contend."My impression always was that they wanted more growth, whether it was good or bad," said Jim Haze, who served as the Madera County Grand Jury foreman earlier this year.Drozen, the self-appointed watchdog, has an even harsher critique. He believes county leaders often fail to follow the rules and will give preference to those with clout, such as developers."Madera County is kind of known as: There's the right way, the wrong way, and the Madera way," he said.That sentiment was reflected in a grand jury report more than a decade ago that said the county has a "reputation of being a place that you can do about anything and generally get away with it."In March, a few months after DeWall resigned, the county's elected clerk, recorder and registrar of voters, Becky Martinez, suggested at a public meeting that the supervisors should have done more to bring attention to the problems in the Auditor's Office.Wheeler disagreed."Becky ... said that if a person's doing a bad job then as supervisors we could go out and educate the people about how bad they were doing," he said. But, Wheeler added, "as an elected [official], I would never go against anybody. ... I mean, that's just a politician's deathbed."