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San Bernardino County's top administrator asked the registrar of voters and
his assistant to step down early because of a number of problems ranging
from personality clashes with supervisors to delayed election results in the
March primary.
"I was not prepared to have any more issues embarrass the county and
embarrass the credibility of our management team," Mark Uffer, the county
administrative officer, said Tuesday. "I felt that I had reached a
saturation point with those issues."
Registrar of Voters Scott Konopasek and his assistant, Steve Trout, had
planned to leave in mid-January to start work on their own consulting
business, but Uffer asked them to leave Friday.
They remain on the county payroll, with Konopasek getting paid through Dec.
24 and Trout getting paid through Jan. 15, but likely will perform no county
work during that time, officials said. Konopasek will receive $13,000 for
his remaining time, and Trout will receive $15,000, said David Wert, county
spokesman.
Konopasek did not return phone messages left at his home and his new office
Tuesday. Trout did not return a phone message to his office Tuesday.
Uffer called continuing to pay the two good insurance.
If Konopasek's interim successor, Donna Manning, the chief deputy registrar
of voters, has questions, she will be able to get the answers she needs from
Konopasek or Trout, Uffer said.
"I know the public has discomfort paying anybody for not working," he said
in a telephone interview Tuesday. "I think it's certainly worthy of the
small dollars that's at stake here. ... It basically gives the county
leverage over Scott Konopasek that he will cooperate."
County officials still are completing the final count from the Nov. 2
election, Uffer said.
Robert Stern, president of the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies
in Los Angeles, said paying Konopasek and Trout their full salaries to
remain available is akin to corporate executives drawing a lucrative "golden
parachute."
Paying officials not to work, Stern said, "reduces public confidence in the
process, especially in the election process."
Konopasek's difficulties with county officials began early in his two-year
tenure, but the number of problems this year were cumulatively too much for
officials to tolerate, Uffer said.
In the March primary, results were delayed by hours when officials made
mistakes in using a new electronic-voting system for the first time
countywide. For the November election, party affiliations were left off some
races on absentee ballots, and Uffer said he chastised Konopasek for not
getting competitive bids before buying paper for sample ballots.
The registrar of voters' office also sent out absentee ballots for the
November election that required more than one standard postage stamp,
although officials said at the time that the U.S. Postal Service should
deliver them regardless.
Conny McCormack, president of the California Association of Clerks and
Election Officials, said Konopasek and Trout are the latest casualties in a
volatile profession.
"In California and around the country, people are leaving because the stress
is so incredible and the expectations are perfection, which we can't
deliver," said McCormack, Los Angeles County's registrar-recorder/county
clerk.
"Scott has done nothing but deliver, and the difficulty of that escapes most
people. Steve Trout has a stellar reputation as well."
Konopasek came to San Bernardino County in January 2003 from Snohomish
County, Wash., where he had introduced touch-screen voting.
Bob Terwilliger, auditor for Snohomish County, said Konopasek often
mentioned his personality clashes with San Bernardino County officials, so a
parting of the ways seemed inevitable.
"He brought some major improvements and upgrades to the process (in San
Bernardino County) that should bode them well," Terwilliger said.
Supervisor Bill Postmus said Konopasek was not up to the job from the
beginning, and the accumulated problems took a toll on county officials.
"A lot of people have been frustrated, and a lot of candidates have been
frustrated," Postmus said. |
