Opinion
BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor
San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus has been fired and members of the Board of Supervisors are congratulating themselves for removing a corrupt official. But the job isn’t finished. A couple of items remain:
1. MONEY — The county is refusing to say how much it has spent in taxpayer dollars on attorney fees related to the Corpus matter. The county paid for both its own lawyers and also her attorneys. The county has an ordinance, enacted long before the Corpus scandal, that says the county will pay the legal fees of an official who is sued. The county refused to divulge what it had spent, citing attorney-client privilege. An appeals court rejected the county’s bid to keep the costs secret. Still the information hasn’t been released. The Board of Supervisors cannot claim they acted transparently until they reveal this information. It’s not their money, it’s ours. We, the taxpayers, deserve an accounting.
2. REFORM — How did Corpus get away with hiring her alleged boyfriend, firing and arresting critics, and spending money extravagantly on things like a $74,000 conference table? The Board of Supervisors should be establishing guardrails to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
3. NO MORE PARTISANSHIP — Members of the board were big supporters of Corpus when she ran in 2022. Why? She checked the boxes. Hispanic — check. Female — check. Woke — check. Was she competent to do the job? Nobody checked.
The county’s political leaders in the Democratic Party and on the Labor Council got behind her, and everybody got into line. The political machine that was behind her election needs to go. In the next election, we need candidates who oppose the machine and think for themselves. Let’s end the kakistocracy in San Mateo County.
A couple of embarrassing moments in Wednesday’s hearing on selecting a new sheriff:
Questions prepared for supes
The supervisors let it slip that an unnamed county employee provided them with the questions they would ask the finalists publicly. I guess they can’t think for themselves. When it slipped out that the questions were scripted, Supervisor David Canepa quickly tried to repair the situation by saying: “My understanding is that these questions are provided to us as a resource.” The coverup wasn’t convincing.
Then Supervisor Noelia Corzo let it slip that she had been meeting with County Attorney John Nibbling “weekly throughout this process.” If Corzo was accompanied by at least two other members of the five-member Board of Supervisors, those meetings should have been put on an agenda, even if they were behind closed doors. Failure to properly publicize a meeting, even a closed-door session, is a violation of the Brown Act.
Supervisor Canepa’s unwavering support for former San Francisco assistant police chief David Lazar was puzzling. The other four supervisors supported former Santa Clara County undersheriff Ken Binder, who got the job. A knock against Lazar was that he didn’t do the background questionnaire all the candidates were asked to complete. His explanation was that he got busy and forgot about it. Seriously, that was his answer.
Lazar also said he’s “good” with a budget. What is that supposed to mean?
Strange advocacy
It’s strange that Canepa was so insistent in bringing in a San Francisco police veteran to run the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office. Is Canepa moving to San Francisco to continue his political career?
Binder, the choice of the board, had the strongest credentials, especially in the management of the jails. It was interesting how little time the board spent talking about the jails, where seven inmates have died since Corpus became sheriff.
Deaths in the jails
Binder took over the jails in Santa Clara County after the murder of an inmate by three guards, and his job was to bring about reforms. In San Mateo County, he’ll have his hands full. For one thing, the sheriff’s office has a lot of vacancies, so he’ll have to find a way to fill the gaps with competent people and do it quickly. Many of Corpus’ hires were questionable at best — like the trainee who lost her gun at a restaurant, or the newly hired deputy who was bringing inmates to court and looked away while one sexually assaulted another.
The Board of Supervisors’ job isn’t done. Tell us what the legal fees were in the Corpus matter. Put in guardrails to make sure a future sheriff doesn’t repeat Corpus’ behavior. And cut the ties to the powerbrokers in San Mateo County.
Editor Dave Price’s column appears on Mondays.
Boy, this feels like good ol’ fashioned journalism. Questioning authority? Check. Questioning the vaunted Peninsula Democrat Party machine, check check! Bravo Dave Price!
Excellent article and reply, Davi Stahler.
Interesting series of questions in another thought provoking opinion piece by the esteemed Mr. Price. Yet it could be that the more thought provoking questions might include, why would any voters blindly follow the county’s political leaders in the Democratic Party and on the Labor Council; what is a better system? How can voters best review and “vet” a candidate for any office?
Another example, might limits of two successive terms in any office be one effective manner to avoid “political machines”? How do voters best achieve meritocracy, if that is the desired outcome desired by voters? Is the backward-looking eye of history the best measure of political success?
In 2018, Mark Melville got 40% of the vote running agains Bolanos. Melville had never been in any kind of leadership role, and I don’t believe he put on a real campaign. This was a signal that Bolanos could easily be defeated by any qualified candidate.
Corpus was running the Milbrae substation, so she was qualified. More importantly, Corpus was willing to pull papers to run against her boss… which means she had courage and was willing to end her career if the election didn’t go her way. She got 57% of the vote in 2022 as people were apparently looking for any qualified candidate without the Bolanos well documented baggage.
Carry on Victina. You’re irrelevant now.
And everybody wonders why we don’t like the police and the politicians corruption at his fullest the fox watching the henhouse
Why are we still going back and forth with this issue let her be leave her be you people are doing too much you don’t know anything about her I do that’s why I’m speaking for her you people are ugly everything that you’re doing is ugly you guys voted her in and then you did this to her you ought to be ashamed of yourselves find something else to do she was a very good sheriff and she worked long and hard to get there nobody knows about that Christina corpus worked her way up the ladder but the good old boys everybody knows what that means come on everybody knows what that is just knock it off she’s out of the office so leave her alone
Your stupidity knows no bounds!
Apparently you don’t know and aren‘t open to seeing and hearing just what that women did at WORK. The very place she was elected to snd handed the keys literally over to her special friend Aenlle.
Corpus DID THIS TO HERSELF! End of story. Take responsibility for your actions. Don’t LIE.
There are INDEPENDENT investigations that PROVED wrongdoing on multiple levels. She caused so much drama, corruption and wasted so much tax payer money doing this. She had a personel mission to get back at people and was not mentally qualified to do her. We heard on repeat her gender anx race and about the batmobile. What we didn’t ever hear is “I am part of this problem” I made some bad choice, inwant to fix this- let’s sit down and fix this. I arrested someone over $950 there was nothing more than a clerical error- not $50,000 not $1 – FALSE AREEST to send a message of fear for resistance.
She retaliated against people publicly and then said she had some sort of modern reform people were pushing back on – what was that reform? The Meloria report was the only thing she started using as an example- however we all know Monaghan spearheaded that whole project and Hsiung left because Corpus ignore it. Corpus brought nothing absolutely nothing and her TWO modern law enforcement executives in my opinion she stabbed in the back by pushing them out and then brining in corruption.
Corruption all around her. Locked office, closed door policies. She wrote memos and created policies by listening to a REALTOR unqualified UNFIT for law enforcement.
Corpus let Aenlle have power and sent a CLEAR message that if you push back on illegal rules being implemented you should be afraid and will get demoted or fired.
Thank God the voters helped with Measure A and thank God 4 investigations proved wrong doing. Thank God a judge sat through 10 days of court to rule Corpus was in violation.
Thank God people believed the victims.
Looking back, Corpus could have and should have left on her own and admitted to doing wrong things. She could have peacefully retired kept her CA POST and moved on. She didn’t do anything peaceful -she threw her race and gender around playing legal lawyer games wasting time and money and she was sooooo in the wrong it cost her job. Corpus lost her CA POST and she embarrassed her family. Corpus lied to her friends – someday when you don’t agree with her you will see the evil side too. Everyone has a good side and good things that are in their make up. Unfortunately, Corpus let her bad side take over and evil prevailed around her and 800+ employees.
Last but not least Corpus publicly lied and humiliated good people that she retaliated against. To those people we stand by you. Noone believes this was about race, gender or pushing back on modern reform or POLITICS. What good old boys club? What gangs in the sheriff office? Why would all of these people do this if there weren’t good reasons to say hey Corpus what you doing is illegal and WRONG!
Just stop. Take accountability for actions and go to counseling to stop with the public gaslighting. Corpus you tried to ruin the careers of many many good solid people men and women -it didn’t work! Good before evil. Justice will prevail and now we will heal together.
Time to move on. The cycle of corruption stops now. Now Corpus and her tainted past is gone. She was unfit, lesson learned. Learn more about who you vote for beforehand.
How about we just choose a day in the month when most the public can attend and stone the corrupt officials who were elected to represent the people but instead decided to join the MOB. I’ve never been more embarrassed to call myself American in my entire life. We the people are literally oblivious that we have all become P.O.W. and collateral damage while these political gangsters lay waste to our livelihoods and face zero consequences. It’s embezzlement and Fraud but to be in an elected position makes it treason. They should lose citizenship and be sent away. Scary part is they are just the face that we see but there were squads of people assisting and conspiring right along with them every step of the way knowing laws were being broken. Impossible that any of them acted alone. The entire process of checks and balances has been infiltrated with crooks. We don’t have the slightest idea.
When Corpos ran for sheriff remember her opponent was alleged to have been involved in a prostitution incident in Las Vegas. You’re way too harsh on the voters that voted for her and people that supported her. They hoped for something better and/or thought they were voting for the less bad of two bad options.
This is just another example of how damaging DEI hires are. Clarence Thomas?
What about the $54,000 that the board of supervisors just now allowed to abscond with those monies. No repercussions whatsoever for the deputy sheriff who startred this witch hunt . Corrupt board of supervisors. Taxpayers money just simply swept under the rug
Good journalism.
Once again, Dave is 110% on the money!
Sadly, the politicians are so scared of “offending” some group, they overlook competence for ensuring that they check all the boxes. Although they should have learned their lesson from the Corpus fiasco, they won’t and the same problem will happen again.
In terms of attorneys’ fees for Corpus, I’m guessing it’s north of $750K. The settlements of the pending lawsuits will cost the County another $10 Million.
It makes sense to me that the Board would want staff to compile a set of questions for applicants in advance of interviews. If individual supervisors did this themselves, there might be repetition and they might not get around to some questions. The staff member would either be the county chief or his designee for this task.
It’s true that failure to give notice of a meeting of three or more supervisors would violate the Brown Act, but to extrapolate from one supervisor meeting one staff member on a weekly basis is somewhat baseless. Supervisors can talk to staff, but individual supervisors don’t direct staff and county counsels in particular are supposed to know not to be conduits between supervisors.
Quintessential journalism! Thank you for setting a quality, public oriented standard of reporting and opinion.
We, the public, struggle to complete our own quality, public-oriented research because we (mostly) don’t show up to watch the meetings, or catch tips about Pre-Prepared questions and potential Act-violating actions by the very people who composite our government.
7 humans killed without due process is an atrocity, unless there were more than 7Billion people going thru the jail. Laws, even when broken, must still be arbitrated, and we fail justice completely, and poison the faith of our community with each unanswered death
Finally, improving the standards of work within the office must underpin recruiting quality talent into the Sheriff’s office. Without public display of changed procedure and results, how can we attract any talent other than more or worse of the same?
Hey, JUST THE FACTS, good to know that Christy still has one or two people (two and a half if you count Dr. Vicky) in her corner…now that he’s been officially ousted from the S/O too, y’all can sit around the campfire on his red-tagged ranch, making s’mores and telling spooky stories about what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives! Cause it certainly won’t be working in law enforcement…THANK GOD.
Absolutely! San Mateo County will have the privilege of paying both its legal fees and Corpus’s legal fees. So why wouldn’t she try to drive up the costs as high as possible, inflicting the greatest pain, not only for the county, and also presumably for all SMC taxpayers. This set-up sounds like a huge structural flaw.
BUT, absent the numbers, which SMC will not want to reveal, Daily Post should solicit some expert opinions, so start to educate DP readers.