How long has it been since you’ve thought about the Humboldt County Auditor-Controller’s Office?

If you were an engaged citizen at this time last year, or even the year before that, chances are you would have thought about it a lot more frequently than you do now! The previous regime of Auditor-Controller Karen Paz Dominguez was a seemingly never-ending whirlwind of recrimination and controversy, and there was rarely a day when someone wasn’t accusing her, or she wasn’t accusing someone, of dark, nefarious deeds. While all this was going on, the state began to knock on our door, telling us that paperwork that was required from the office wasn’t actually being filed, putting all sorts of funding sources in jeopardy. 

Former acting auditor-controller Cheryl Dillingham handily defeated Paz Dominguez in the June 2022 election, and took over the office shortly afterward. Since then, the amount of news emanating from the office dropped precipitously to pre-Paz Dominguez levels.

So how’s it going, Cheryl Dillingham? Video above, transcript below.

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JOHN KENNEDY O’CONNOR:

Well, welcome to another Humboldt Conversation. I’m really thrilled to say we’re here today with Cheryl Dillingham, who is the Auditor Controller for the County of Humboldt, a position she’s been in now for just about coming up to a year.

CHERYL DILLINGHAM:

Nine months.

O’CONNOR:

Nine months, I’m sorry. Now, Cheryl, about this time last year, the Auditor-Controller was in the news every single day, which probably shouldn’t have been the case. How have things changed behind the scenes? Because now we’re not really hearing so much about the job, which is probably a good thing.

CHERYL DILLINGHAM:

Well, we’ve been working really hard in the auditor-controller’s office. I was really pleased that the staff are just amazing, and I’ve hired new folks that are really amazing too, and we’ve been working really hard to get everything done and to meet all the deadlines and communicating and working with everybody to serve the residents of Humboldt County the best we can.

O’CONNOR:

Because that was one of the challenges, I think: There was so much controversy around the role. Now although you ran for office and you were elected, you did actually have to step in at very short notice as interim controller. That must have been a very daunting situation for you.

DILLINGHAM:

It took me a little by surprise. And it was much quicker than I had anticipated. I was interim auditor-controller three and a half years previously. And I was surprised by a couple of things. First off, there was only one person still working in the office that was working in the office when I was there three and a half years ago, which is a pretty significant turnover. And it felt like there was a lot more work than there had been, that things had changed a lot more in three and a half years than I think they had in the previous 10, 20 years. And that’s probably good enough. And I’d lost all the people that knew how to do property taxes. So I spent the first few months just dealing with property tax apportionments and getting those done, because they’re very important, because that gets the money to your local special district schools, cities, and all of those people.

O’CONNOR:

Now during your campaign you talked about fiscal controls and the need to actually enhance them. So what processes and changes have you been able to put in place to restore the calm and order to the office?

DILLINGHAM:

So I’m going to start by saying it wasn’t that bad. There are actually really good controls in place. The one area where I felt like there was the biggest deficit was reconciliations. So we’ve implemented daily cash reconciliations, bank reconciliations, outstanding check reconciliations, and a lot of that sort of thing. And we’ve caught up on the backlog, and we’re pretty current on doing that. So that was the biggest change. But overall, staff has really good internal controls, and they’re doing their job really well.

O’CONNOR:

Now, one of the things you’ve already touched on — when you took over there was a backlog of delinquent fiscal reporting. What’s the situation now?

DILLINGHAM:

So we closed, so this is really sort of, this is daunting. We have, we are just getting ready to start the audit for fiscal year 2021. We will then be going straight into doing the audit for 21-22. We’re currently in fiscal year 22-23 and we’re starting the budget process for 23-24. That is a lot of years and sometimes my head just spins around when I’m trying to figure out which year I’m working on and I’m talking to people. But we’re trying to keep staff, like staff, some staff work mostly on current and then so to try to keep the, so you know which year you’re in. But we’re, I anticipate that we will be completely caught up and have our audit for fiscal year 2022-23 completed on schedule.

O’CONNOR:

Now there were a number of funds and grants that were available to the county from the state for things like infrastructure improvements that could not move forward due to the delinquent reporting. Is the county in better shape now in the eyes of the state?

DILLINGHAM:

The state recognizes that we’re making progress. We’re still behind on the deadlines, and I don’t believe we’re losing any funding, but I do think we still have some that is gonna be a little delayed in getting out. When we get the fiscal year 2020-21 audit done, which we think will be the end of June, I think that’ll make things a lot better. 

O’CONNOR:

So have you rebuilt relationships with the state and city bodies that had lost faith in the department under your leadership under your predecessor?

DILLINGHAM:

Communication, communication. So staff has been working really hard to communicate. We’ve had a couple of times where the state has called and said, where’s your such and such report? And we all look around and we’re like, I didn’t know we had to do that. We’re real honest. We’re like, oh, we’re so sorry. We’re just getting caught up to speed. We will get that to you next week. And so they’ve been very accommodating and are always happy just to hear us say, we’ll get it done. And we’ve been pretty quick about turning around anything that we discover. We’ve got a really good calendar going now of all the reports that we have to do. I’ve been working with local finance officers with the cities to get a local group going where we’ll get together and have peer discussions and have some local folks come and give us some presentations and get that group going. And I’ve now got staff that specifically works with special districts and cities so that they have a person they can call and develop a relationship with.

O’CONNOR:

That sounds like a great idea. Now one of the things — you’ve already mentioned it actually, you identified it during your campaign — was the need to recruit staff for your team. So have you now filled all of the available slots?

DILLINGHAM:

So the department has 19 positions. I have hired seven people since I started. Five of those are permanent and two of those are extra help. I still have a recruitment going right now for two positions. I’ve had one person leave since I started. She got a promotion, better job. It was good for her. So I have interviews for that job next week, and then I have another recruitment for the deputy, which is the second in command in the office that will be starting, the recruitment just ended. And so that’s kind of where we’re at with that. So that’s a lot of people, and they’re all getting up to speed. They’re doing a great job.

O’CONNOR:

Good to know. Now you also talked about the need to better harness technology to streamline processes to improve functionality. Have you been able to make any progress in that area?

DILLINGHAM:

This one’s an interesting one. So my first comment is, we’ve only got so many resources and really we’re just trying to get things done. So we’re constantly prioritizing and deciding what we have to work on, and implementing technology, honestly, it’s not easy. So that’s phase two. We figure when we get caught up, we’ll implement new technology.

We’ve got some great ideas. We’ve got requests for projects to do more workflow. Departments are really supportive of that. So we’re working on it, but it’s probably something that we’ll really start getting into about a year from now.

The other thing that’s just been interesting is, there’s just a lot of things that weren’t working. So some of the challenges with getting the audits done and some of those things were simply the reports that you needed to do it didn’t work. So we’ve gotten those fixed. The financial transactions report, which is the report we do for the state that was really delinquent, that was another, the reports didn’t work. We’ve got those fixed. So we’ve got reports now that basically just produce all the information that you need to plug it into the boxes in the report. Then the budget schedules also were another one that just didn’t quite work right and we’ve got those fixed.

So that is implementing technology, but it’s not quite as … I was looking more for things like workflow and reducing duplication of effort and that sort of thing, which we will be doing. I was going to say that.

O’CONNOR:

I was going to say — that’s something for the future.

DILLINGHAM:

Yep.

O’CONNOR:

Well Cheryl, it’s great that the Auditor-Controller is not the daily news story in Humboldt or Eureka every day as it was this time last year. So congratulations on that, you’ve obviously made an enormous amount of progress. Anything else you want to share with our Humboldt Today viewers?

DILLINGHAM:

I just want to thank my auditor-controller team and say that they’re a really amazing group of people and I felt that they had gotten, the last couple of years has been really hard on them and I just want to thank them for their dedication and they do a really good job of supporting. The auditor-controller’s office is like the last inch of service delivery for the citizens of Humboldt County. So, you may have economic development, working really hard to get a loan to make to a local business, and if we don’t cut that check at that point in time when it needs to be done, then the whole thing can just fall apart. And so, you know, our team does a really good job of helping, you know, get services out to the citizens. 

O’CONNOR:

It’s a very important cog in the wheel but it’s one that probably people don’t appreciate and don’t hear about. And of course when they were hearing about it, it was for all the wrong reasons.

DILLINGHAM:

It would be nice to have it be heard about for good reason.

O’CONNOR:

Well, I think we’re hopefully doing that with this message today. Okay. Cheryl, it’s been a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for joining us for a Humboldt Conversation and join us for another Humboldt Conversation very soon.