Alameda County voters in the June 5 election will pick a new auditor-controller/clerk-recorder. If that sounds like a big title, that’s because the job has wide-ranging, disparate and sometimes conflicting responsibilities. Too many responsibilities.
This is the person whose duties include keeping the official county property records, issuing marriage licenses, calculating the apportionment of property tax revenues to government agencies, paying the county’s bills, meeting the payroll, balancing the books, auditing to ensure the accuracy of those finances and auditing to make sure public dollars are spent properly and efficiently.
That critical last part, what are known as performance audits, have been given short-shrift in the department of about 190 employees. Candidate Irella Blackwood proposes to change that and provide greater transparency. Many candidates for public office give lip service to the idea of ferreting out waste and inefficiency; Blackwood has actually done it.
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The Castro Valley resident and chief auditor for the city and county of San Francisco would bring a fresh, outsider perspective to the Alameda County office that has had only two leaders in the past 32 years.
She brings excellent experience as an auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers and regulatory analyst for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. before going to work for San Francisco eight years ago.
There, she exposed inappropriate spending by the city’s Arts Commission, doling out of water and sewer bill subsidies to residents ineligible for the low-income benefits, and questionable pay and vacation practices in the fire department that led to excessive payouts at retirement.
That’s the sort of tenacious watchdog that Alameda County residents should seek in their auditor — or in this case, auditor-controller/clerk-recorder. Not surprisingly, Blackwood has the endorsement of Berkeley City Auditor Ann-Marie Hogan and former Oakland City Auditor Courtney Ruby, two similarly aggressive protectors of the public purse.
Blackwood is running against Melissa Wilk, the chief deputy in the Alameda County office. There’s no reason to doubt that Wilk, if elected, would run the office professionally. She knows the operation well.
But there’s little reason to suspect there would be significant change considering Wilk has worked there for nearly 15 years, including four as the second in command.
Wilk is the internal handpicked successor for the job, which is how it has been previously handed down. Four years ago, Patrick O’Connell, who ran the office for 28 years, waited until the last moment to announce he was going to retire rather than seek re-election.
The only one who received advance notice was his then-deputy and chosen successor, Steve Manning. One other candidate, Kathleen Knox, filed to run but lied about living in the county, for which she eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanor violations of state election law.
Now, four years later, Manning is retiring, but again the incumbent kept his plans under wraps. The difference from 2014 is that Blackwood had long planned to run anyway.
And, unlike the last challenger, she brings a fresh approach to the job that can only help the office better protect taxpayer dollars.
