By Larry Weitzman

Like Capt. Edwin Smith of the Titanic, our Board of Supervisors didn’t heed the warnings of an impending debacle (in EDC’s case, huge deficits). Smith was advised several times of icebergs and he neither chose to slow down the speeding Titanic nor change to a more southerly course. As with the Titanic, the warning signs of impending disaster were ever present.

Let’s examine the Kelly Webb-Terri Daly debacle. Daly became EDC’s chief administrative officer Dec. 18, 2010. In less than four months, EDC terminated the information technology director and the CAO immediately appoints an extremely unqualified (not even one full semester of college) Webb, an overpaid analyst in her office, to the job as interim IT director (now super overpaid). With Webb at the head of IT, Daly now has access to the emails of all employees. Sounds a little like having an NSA spy in our midst, but highly placed sources confirm that was the primary reason. But wait, it gets better.

Larry Weitzman

Webb’s interim appointment was at step 2 of the salary scale. By a BOS unanimous vote on Sept. 4, 2012, and a satisfactory performance review and at Daly’s recommendation, Webb gets a raise from step 2 to step 3 (5-0 vote).

But Webb’s failure as interim IT director is looming in a scathing report from the State Controller’s Office that was to be received by the CAO on July 25, 2013. Daly, instead of seeking Webb’s immediate removal, places at the next BOS meeting (July 23, 2015) an unagendized item in violation of the Brown Act (improper notice) and in violation of the county Charter (no recruitment process) to have Webb appointed as full IT director and another pay raise to step 4. Our completely blind BOS approves this illegal item 5-0.

To add insult to injury, Daly’s evil isn’t finished. Knowing the report from the State Controller’s office isn’t public yet, Daly seeks a retroactive pay raise for Kelly Webb of about $10,000 for the past period from March 10, 2012, to Aug. 7, 2013, which is also illegal and a violation of state law. It causes the county counsel’s office to issue a lengthy legal opinion that Daly’s attempted retroactive pay raise is illegal. Daly doesn’t care about the taxpayers of EDC as she hires an outside law firm to prove her correct and the county counsel wrong. The outside law firm also said Daly was acting outside the law. The county, not Daly, paid that legal bill.

What’s the big deal about the State Controller’s Office report? The following excerpt from the report says most of it: “… it was found that the functional costs in the cost plan cannot be substantiated…. Network and Mainframe costs have been estimated then allocated based on methodologies that are not sufficiently documented, supported or understood by current IT management … I/T Department Management does not understand the purpose of the Countywide Cost Allocation Plan.”

This state controller’s report, which as a direct result of failure of Daly as CAO and Webb as interim IT director, costs El Dorado County $3 million of state reimbursable costs.

After our own county auditor pointed out to the BOS and other county employees of Daly’s attempted illegal actions, does the BOS (on Aug. 6, 2013) place Webb back to the position of interim IT director? No, they gave her yet another pay raise to step 5 by a vote of 5-0.

And I called them three blind mice in my last column. It should have been five.

It took another full year before the BOS to finally removed Webb from being the interim IT director. This whole episode demonstrates the evilness of Daly and the ineptitude of the then BOS. I have all the county documents supporting the above information.

Edwin Smith went down with the ship. Terri Daly is still attacking the county auditor who said the county under Daly was going to deficit spend $150 million over the next five years.

Larry Weitzman is a resident of Rescue.