SAN BERNARDINO - San Bernardino County Assessor Bill Postmus today responded to the release of the Final Report of the 2007-08 San Bernardino County Civil Grand Jury. The civil grand jury's membership is mandated to issue an annual report focusing on the functions of county government departments.

Assessor Bill Postmus issued the following statement regarding today's release of the civil grand jury's 2007-08 report:

"First, I would like to acknowledge the hard work of the members serving for this term of the County's Grand Jury. Past Civil Grand Jury reports and recommendations contained therein often serve as a blueprint to improve county government.

"Obviously, the report took issue with some of the practices and policies of the Assessor's Office. I appreciate the Grand Jury's recommendations, which I largely support. These recommendations will further assist us in achieving our goals of providing the public with greater accountability and efficiency. The Grand Jury's recommendations only stand to make our Office and our County government stronger, and I will work with the Board of Supervisors to make these policy changes a reality. 

"I was heartened by the Grand Jury's characterization of the abilities of the heart of the Assessor's Office team - those who directly handle day-to-day operations - as well trained, experienced, and "indispensable."  I could not agree more.

"While I intend to complete a thorough review of the report, I felt it important to offer my initial thoughts on the report and its recommendations as quickly as possible."

Management Practices (Recommendations 1 & 2)

"During my campaign for the Assessor's position, I emphasized the need for the Office to be more accessible to the public and for the Office to modernize and move into the 21st Century.  I created the Executive Support Staff to accomplish the promises I made to the people of San Bernardino County who elected me to office.

"I strongly believe that our Operations staff is one of the best in the state, but that their expertise is simply different than that of Executive Support team, whose function and proficiency is directly tied to fulfilling the promise of modernization and accessibility that clearly resonated with taxpayers.
"The Executive Support team handled innovative new projects. For the first time in our office's history, thousands of taxpayers and businesses are retrieving and filing documents online. Our online traffic increased exponentially as thousands more easily found answers to their questions about property reassessments, tax-saving programs and other subjects.

"From newsletters to our Annual Report, the team vastly increased the public outreach efforts of the Office to ensure transparency and to educate residents about the services and practices of our Office. We reached out to victims of the October 2007 fires, alerted the public to real estate scams and raised awareness of the availability of Proposition 8 reappraisals, which have helped more than 84,000 San Bernardino County taxpayers realize significant property tax savings.  The skill sets required to accomplish these outreach goals simply did not exist prior to the creation of the Executive Support Staff.

"While I appreciate the Grand Jury's opinion about the efficacy of these efforts, I strongly believe that all government agencies must make every effort to inform the taxpayers what they are spending their money on, how they are spending their money, and why they are spending their money. 

"As part of this effort to increase the public accountability of the Office, I also changed a five senior management positions from civil service to "at-will." Every individual appointed to these posts was hired from within the Office, and each of these career employees has decades of experience, which maintains the professionalism and competency of these positions. It should be noted that other countywide departments experienced similar changes.

"While I recognize the merit of the Grand Jury's recommendation, I have a philosophical difference with their approach. The drawback of the recommendation is that government bureaucrats who are ineffective are nonetheless allowed to remain in perpetuity without providing benefit to the public. I choose to err on the side of public accountability."

Competitive Bidding (Recommendation 3)

"The consultant contract referenced in the report met County purchase order requirements and was approved by our Purchasing Department. However, in hindsight, I acknowledge the contract was not carefully drafted and should have included additional details that were discussed verbally but were not committed to paper. To prevent a reoccurrence, our office will demand detailed, written scopes of work and billing statements from any future consultant.
   
"Work completed by this consultancy saved taxpayers thousands of dollars over the cost of its contract. The firm planned and conducted seminars for hundreds of local non-profit groups, informing them of any and all tax exemptions for which they may be eligible, and it worked with the Board of Equalization to secure needed approvals to allow thousands of businesses to conveniently file Business Personal Property Statement (Form 571) online, a savings to taxpayers of several thousand dollars in postage alone."

Education Policy (Recommendation 4)

"I acknowledge the Grand Jury's concerns and recommendation. Support staff requests for tuition reimbursement benefits will now be reviewed for approval by not only myself, but also other county personnel outside the Assessor's Office. I will ask the Board of Supervisors if they will agree to designate the County's Chief Administrative Officer as that person."

Contract Severance (recommendation 5)

"I agree with the Grand Jury in that a simple and clear policy governing such contract severance agreements is needed, and I would suggest the formation of an inter-office task force to create such guidelines, including considerations of payments based on time employed."

E-mail Systems (Recommendation 6)

"I support the Grand Jury's recommendation that the County email system employ firewalls or other safeguards that block the receipt of political emails.

"I commend the Grand Jury for its diligence in reading several thousand of the roughly 17,000 emails received or generated by my office, including 91 unsolicited political emails in just two weeks alone that were received by our Office. Like many computer users, our Office is sometimes inundated with unwanted emails that elude the County's spam-prevention software. 

"I also received multiple unsolicited emails, ranging from typical spam to the occasional politically-tinged note. National campaign offices sent emails to my staff - and I am sure other public agencies around the country - asking for support. 

"As for the political emails the Grand Jury believes were sent from our Office computers, we have exercised our due diligence by conducting a search of the entire 17,000 emails received or generated by our office. To the best of our ability, we were able to identify 34 emails as being political in nature by conducting a query using specified search terms.

"Of the thirty-four, nearly half - or fourteen - were mainstream media news articles reporting on the presidential campaigns or related state and national issues. Six more emails involved political activities of a campaign nature and the person who is responsible for those emails is no longer affiliated with us. This same individual wrote three additional emails involved overt political activities in response to emails received that were generated by a personal email account.

"In a handful of instances, both the county email account and a personal email account were both linked to a privately owned and maintained handheld wireless device which, on occasion, would default to the County email account when an email sent to the personal account was forwarded, resulting the message appearing on the County server.

"Lastly, two emails were sent responding to requests for political proxies that were sent to a County email account.

"While the County email policy allows for some 'incidental' personal email, and 34 out of 17,000 probably fits that criteria, I want that number to be zero. To that end, I will work with my staff to accomplish that goal.

"In conclusion, I would again like to thank the Grand Jury for their report.  Their diligence is to be commended and our staff will pursue the implementation of many of the recommendations offered.  Properly safeguarding public dollars and increasing public trust in government has always been - and will continue to be - the hallmarks of my career in public office."