Peter the Marin County, California, retiree.
(How to lower TAXES)
I was Marin’s elected County Clerk and Registrar of voters from 1974 to 1982. Our Marin population was then 208,000, compared to today’s 260,000. My predecessor was George Gnoss who was allowed one assistant and supervised all the clerical support and also advised both the Superior Court and the County Board of Supervisors as County Clerks in most all the 58 California Counties had done for decades before him. Soon after my term ended however, the position of County Clerk was all but eliminated and was given to not one, but two appointed, not elected, administrators. They are called the County Administrator and the County Court Administrator. Their salaries and that of their many assistants is many times higher than what the formerly elected County Clerk ever received. What in decades past was accomplished with a handful of hard-working mostly female clerical helpers is now a multi-million-dollar operation. Maybe George Gnoss, my predecessor, was right when in 1973 he said upon parting: “These new administrators will bankrupt us, we have invited the fox to guard the hen house.” In my memoirs, and especially in my second book, “Pissing on Nazi Boots” you will find on page 80 a chapter entitled, “Corruption, the flaw that plagues.” Here, I detail the transition from elected to appointed officials with questionable benefits to tax payers. Please click here.or contact me at: pcmeyer2@gmail.com
