Documents reveal claims of blackmail and retaliation at top of Fresno County government
Internal Fresno County documents obtained by The Fresno Bee reveal claims of blackmail, retaliation and discrimination at the highest level of local government.
Fresno County Assessor-Recorder Paul Dictos, who was re-elected to a four-year term in 2022, is at the center of it all. Dictos says he can’t comment, but in the memos and other documents — such as a timeline of events and notes kept by Dictos — he says he was blackmailed and retaliated against by the county’s top bureaucrat and a county supervisor.
Chief Administrative Officer Paul Nerland, in an interview with The Bee, said the claims were “absurd.”
County Counsel Daniel Cederborg, Supervisor Steve Brandau and the District Attorney’s Office also have parts in the drama.
According to an April letter from Cederborg obtained by The Bee, a personnel investigation is being carried out for the county by a Clovis-based independent investigative and consulting firm.
The county’s probe is separate from any potential investigation by the DA’s Office public integrity unit.
“On advice of outside counsel I cannot talk or make any comments,” Dictos told The Bee.
Among the contentious topics at the center of the back-and-forth, months-long arguments include salary increases for appraisers Dictos had been advocating for; a reorganization of Dictos’ department; a promotion of Nerland’s and Brandau’s “choosing” that Dictos says he was asked to implement in his executive team; and a press release about unlawful discriminatory covenants that Dictos sent to local media that the Board of Supervisors disliked.
Plus, inappropriate comments were allegedly made by Brandau to Dictos that the assessor described as age discrimination, according to Dictos’ notes on the timeline of events. Dictos’ involvement in the county’s ongoing investigation, however, is for inappropriate comments he allegedly made about his second-in-command, JoAnn Ebisuda, whom he decided to retain as assistant assessor-recorder.
Dictos, according to notes and correspondence between him and Nerland, says Nerland and Brandau had pressured him to remove Ebidusa from her current duties and make Peter Filippi an assistant assessor-recorder.
“The bottom line is, I am being retaliated,” Dictos says in the documented timeline of events.
The entire scope of the county investigation is not clear. Cederborg, the county counsel, didn’t answer specific questions by The Bee, and only provided a broad statement.
The county, he said, frequently uses outside investigators for various types of personnel probes. Leist and Associates, a Clovis-based firm, conducts investigations for the county several times a year.
“As you can imagine,” he told The Bee, “in a county of approximately 8,000 employees, investigations on various personnel matters, whether disciplinary or concerning allegations of harassment or discrimination, are likely to be ongoing at any time.”
The allegations of inappropriate comments by Dictos about Ebisuda, his assistant assessor-recorder, didn’t come from her, according to Cederborg’s letter. In one of several letters and memos obtained by The Bee, Nerland accuses Dictos of having complained about Ebisuda during a lunch meeting between the two men. That memo was sent after Dictos had decided to not add Filippi to his executive team.
In the same memo, Nerland told Dictos he had previously shared with him that Filippi had a “good reputation in the County” and could help Dictos gain credibility with the Board of Supervisors on issues Dictos had advocated for. Filippi was with the county since 2007 and retired March 31 as a supervising appraiser.
“That’s absurd,” Nerland told The Bee about the allegations of retaliation against Dictos. “Every investigation is based on facts.... Politics will not trump doing the right thing at any time, including an investigation.”
During the interview, Nerland said the county has received complaints related to the work environment in Dictos’ department.
But Fresno County spokeswoman Sonja Dosti said, “those matters are personnel-related and may not be disclosed due to privacy reasons.”
Dictos appears to have submitted his timeline of events, along with notes and correspondence between himself and Nerland, to the DA’s office.
Taylor P. Long, a spokeswoman for the Fresno County DA’s office, said the office does “not confirm whether or not an investigation is pending” in order to “protect the integrity of any potential investigations, should they exist.”
Back-and-forth arguments began in February
The series of correspondence reviewed by The Bee — along with a timeline of events and notes kept by Dictos — provide a glimpse of what has happened behind the scenes since February.
It started on Feb. 17 during a meeting involving Dictos, Nerland, Brandau and Bernice Seidel, who is the county’s board clerk. Dictos, according to several pages of notes that he kept, says he was made to believe the meeting would be to discuss salary raises for appraisers in his department.
Dictos had been advocating to bring the appraisers’ compensation up to the same level as those in nearby counties. He had been asking for a 13% increase.
According to the notes, Dictos says it has become clear to him that Nerland and Brandau wanted something in “return” for endorsing a 10% raise. Seidel pushed a proposed reorganizational chart of Dictos’ department toward him during the meeting.
“I am appalled at the way that you guys are going about because I am not used to being blackmailed,” Dictos responded to the others after pushing the reorganizational chart back to Seidel. “This is a pure and straight blackmail.”
The Bee contacted Seidel to ask her to discuss the meeting, and she deferred comment to the county’s public information officer before hanging up on the reporter.
Brandau, in an interview, said he didn’t know who produced the reorganizational chart for Dictos’ department. At one point, he said, maybe it was just there available on the table. But he later said one of the roles of the CAO is to help county departments if they’re reorganizing themselves.
“That’s the role of the CAO, to help with that,” he told The Bee. “I’m not going to fault anybody for having that discussion.”
On March 3, Dictos met with Nerland, who told him if he promoted Filippi as an assistant assessor-recorder to manage the Assessor’s side of the office, and moved Ebisuda to be assistant assessor in charge of the Recorder’s side of the office, Nerland would help get him at least a 10% salary increase for appraisers.
During the interview, Nerland said Filippi’s name was first advanced by Dictos.
“Basically, after that (Feb. 17) meeting, Paul Dictos requested a meeting with me, and at that meeting, suggested himself that he would like to consider that alternative,” Nerland said, “and that very same day, he sent that person to come meet with me.”
During the March 3 meeting or right before, according to Dictos’ notes, he handed Nerland a final proposed organizational chart of his department that showed he had retained Ebisuda as the assistant assessor-recorder and proposed making Filippi a deputy who would report to Ebisuda.
Nerland told Dictos to reconsider his decision by March 14. That same day, the Board of Supervisors unanimously rejected a request from Dictos to authorize a new $2 fee on recorded documents to cover the costs of finding and redacting illegal unenforceable racist clauses from property records to comply with Assembly Bill 1466.
Before shutting down Dictos’ request, supervisors during the meeting expressed discontent with a press release related to AB 1466 that Dictos had sent to the media the previous month.
Nerland, during the same board meeting and before the fee program’s rejection, told supervisors the board could direct him to further review Dictos’ proposed fee plans, and only approve a recommendation for Dictos’ office to implement its plan to identify the records.
Dictos says county leaders wanted a person of their choosing to be promoted
In a March 10 letter to Nerland, Dictos summarizes what he believes transpired on Feb. 17 and on March 3.
“In both settings, it was made clear to me that unless I move... Ebisuda to the Recorder’s site and replace her with... Filippi, a person of your choosing, you would not help the Assessor’s Department with its long-standing request to increase the appraiser salaries, to be on par with the surrounding counties.”
Dictos says he doesn’t understand why anyone would want to humiliate the first minority woman to serve as assistant assessor-recorder in Fresno County’s history. Ebisuda, he said the letter, is recognized across the state by her peers as a leader.
On March 16, Nerland shot back at Dictos with a lengthy memo where he says Dictos’ recount of what transpired at the meetings is inaccurate.
Nerland says during the Feb. 17 meeting, a possible restructure in Dictos’ department was discussed as an option to address problems. He says the reorganization would add a person to the department’s executive team, and Filippi’s name was thrown out as a potential candidate.
Nerland says that during a subsequent lunch meeting with Dictos on Feb. 24, the assessor complained about Ebisuda: He couldn’t reach Ebisuda, who was teleworking, on an urgent inquiry.
“You further stated that you felt that Ms. Ebisuda was ‘not aggressive enough’ and that you told her that she needed to be your ‘hatchet-man’ and clean up the department,” Nerland wrote to Dictos.
In the same March 16 memo, Nerland says he told Dictos on March 3 that abandoning his prior proposal to add an assistant assessor-recorder could be problematic.
“I did share that this would make your other proposals, including compensation increases for Appraisers, more difficult. I offered to meet with you again along with a trusted friend of yours if that helped. You committed to think about it and get back to me.”
On March 28, Dictos spoke with Filippi and read to him a section of his March 10 letter to Nerland where he wrote that taking Ebisuda from her current duties was not in the best interest of the department, according to notes on the timeline of events.
Nerland says Dictos’ behavior harms his credibility with Board of Supervisors
Nerland says in the March 16 memo that Dictos’ behavior, constant changes and poor leadership harmed his credibility with the Board of Supervisors.
As an example, Nerland cites the Feb. 20 press release Dictos sent to local media about AB 1466 related to the unlawful discriminatory covenants — the same news release that irritated some of the county supervisors.
“I shared with you,” Nerland wrote to Dictos, “that your own behavior and release of inaccurate information only further harmed your credibility with the Board.”
In the interview with The Bee, Nerland was asked to point out what specifically was inaccurate in the press release. He read aloud the last sentence: “Today, a year and a half after the law went into effect, I want to encourage the Board of Supervisors to adopt the will of the legislation.”
Nerland said that sentence “made it sound like the Board of Supervisors were holding up the implementation of AB 1466.”
Credibility was the topic again in an April 6 memo from Dictos to Nerland.
“My credibility with this board, and previous boards, has been harmed,” Dictos writes, “because as a newly elected Assessor-Recorder, I had the audacity to fix the decades long short comings and correctly address farm properties under the Williamson Act (WA) law.”
Dictos continues by saying the board majority can’t get over the fact that the tax hikes received the validation of a grand jury and the California State Board of Equalization.
According to a 2014 Fresno Bee Editorial, “valuations of Williamson Act properties hadn’t been updated in more than two decades” until Dictos was elected and made the changes.
Growers and ranchers, according to the editorial, weren’t happy when they saw the increases in their property taxes.
Toward the end of this lengthy memo, Dictos tells Nerland he can only hope the situation will improve. But he says, as an elected official, “the credibility that really matters is that of the voters.”
“In any event, Paul,” he says, “my credibility should not derail your plan to increase the salaries of the appraisers and bring them on par with surrounding counties. That is the only way to hire and keep qualified people working for the county.”
Nerland said he remains committed.
Confrontations prompt internal investigation
The situation escalated quickly after the back-and-forth correspondence between the county’s top administrator and the county’s assessor.
On April 10, a letter marked personal and confidential was sent to Dictos from Cederborg, the county’s counsel, informing Dictos of an internal investigation that had been opened.
“The basic allegation concerning your involvement is that you made derogatory comments concerning Ms. Ebisuda’s performance,” Cederborg writes, “and related that performance to her ethnic heritage.”
Cerdeborg warns Dictos not to take any action against Ebisuda that is or could be perceived as retaliation as a result of the investigation. He further says the county became aware of the issue without allegations coming from Ebisuda herself.
Cederborg also tells Dictos he shouldn’t inform Ebisuda of the investigation and he should keep the probe’s existence confidential.
Dictos, according to his notes, says he has never treated Ebisuda differently because of her gender or ethnicity. He says she has been an “exemplary employee,” who has been graded with “Exceeds Satisfactory” on her evaluations.
But he says the agenda of Nerland, Brandau and Seidel was: “Remove this person. ‘She is not good.’ That was their mantra.”
Cederborg wouldn’t discuss specifics of the investigation with The Bee.
According to a county procurement agreement for independent workplace investigations that Cederborg shared with The Bee, the maximum amount a vendor is able to charge the county for such service is $200,000.
According to Cederborg’s letter, independent investigator Bill Leist is conducting the investigation for the county. When reached for comment, Leist wouldn’t confirm or deny the probe. Leist is with Leist and Associates, which is an investigative and consulting firm with a focus on workplace investigations, misconduct, sexual harassment, and equal employment opportunity and civil rights investigations, among others.
According to Leist and Associates’ documents submitted to the county and shared with The Bee by Cederborg, the firm charges $125 per hour, plus actual expenses, and 65 cents per mile.
Age discrimination?
In the timeline of events that appear to have been submitted to the DA’s office, Dictos says he ran into Brandau at a parking basement soon after the Feb. 17 meeting.
Dictos says Brandau asked him if he had a “succession plan.”
“I responded why are you asking? Is it because I am 80 years old?...” the timeline shows. “I said to him: ‘supervisor Brandau this is called age discrimination. Elected officials’ succession is determined by the voters.”
In the timeline of events, Dictos also questions whether there would be a personnel investigation if he had “succumbed to the inordinate pressure.”
During the interview, Brandau told The Bee those comments may have come up, but he didn’t remember.
“But I think every department head should develop a succession plan, if they can,” he said. “Two years ago, we had our head of behavioral health decide to retire. She had a succession plan. I mean, that’s smart.”
This story was originally published June 11, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
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