Spencer
Diaz
This morning, John gives a pass to the county CEO and Board of Supervisors but blames the County Recorder — Gregory Diaz — for a recent Rood Center shutdown during a “snow day” that inconvenienced some title company workers.
The response and explanation from the Recorder seemed sound enough: The county CEO called it a “snow day” and the Recorder publicly apologized. Worker safety always in paramount in government — that’s not the clerk-recorder’s call.
John writes: “You might say ‘what is the reason for this diatribe?’ If no one brings these things to your attention, you won’t hear about it.”
Well, we did hear about it, because the media also was notified by the title-company individual who was put out by the “snow day,” and they all wrote about it.
The individual called all the supervisors and the Rood Center staff as well. In our little town, this became a front-page news story. (The Ingram family once owned The Union newspaper).
I would suggest the reason for this diatribe in the CABPRO newsletter is political activism: Clerk-Recorder Diaz has been the target of much of it since he was elected.
The hard-right campaigned heavily against him — and lost handily. Then they continued to campaign against him after he won. It has been relentless.
The hard right has politicized the clerk-recorder’s office going back to the days of Fran Freedle, who also writes for the CABPRO newsletter and is a longtime supporter.
Former Supervisor Spencer also should have disclosed in the CABPRO article that the person who complained about the “snow day” when title reports were due was none-other-than his wife, Patti Ingram-Spencer. If you’re going to launch into a diatribe, you might as well provide full disclosure to the readers.
Spencer also has been critical of the clerk-recorder for changing the policy for acquiring public information for land surveys — now charging a modest fee for some documents, just like many other counties. Spencer’s profession is a land surveyor.
The article is here.
This is small-town politics at its finest. As a community, we need to get past it.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Under the same circumstances, I wonder if Mr. Spencer would be howling had the other candidate won.
So Mr. Spencer’s overwrought over a little snow day? He should come up to our little slice of heaven. Right now the Attorney General’s office has gone to teensy Modoc County, (a very conservative, deeply red county & typical up here) because it seems said county may have missappropiated funds to the tune of 20 MILLION dollars or so. That’s million. With an M. And the tip of a very large iceberg. So, Mr. Spencer, bummer about the snow day. But it could be worse. A whole, helluva lot worse.
Kate
P.S. I found the Modoc County story on Sierradailynews.com. Haven’t seen it anywhere else.
Kate
I asked Mr. Spencer some questions when he attended a meeting presenting to the public the plans and models of what the widening of Route 49 woulde look like. Since I live close to the Fire Station across from where La Barr Meadows hits 49 and but a bit south, I’m affected greatly by what is done. I had no knowledge at all of Mr. Spencer’s political views other than he was supposedly ‘a friend to veterans.’ I was suspicious that too many trees had unnecessarilly been cut down, separating Braemar Way and 49, some cut, others left standing. My fear being that extra trees were harvested for there timber value. He had no coherent or even semi-reasonable answer to offer and it was then that I immediateately decided to vote for Terry Lamphier, for whom I was already inclined to support.