David Eyster's Defiant 27-Page Response to State Audit

D.A. questions whether auditors "have gone rogue"

Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster for two years has refused to publicly address his controversial practice of using public criminal asset forfeiture funds to pay for a series of annual year-end staff dinners under the guise of ‘training.”

However, a defiant Eyster privately offered up a detailed 27-page written response to the California State Auditor. Dated Dec. 5, the document was obtained from the state agency via the California Public Records Act.

DA Eyster wrote his response before the state officially released its report, contending that it was unclear to him whether “state auditors have gone rogue” and seek to limit “the discretionary authority and/or the constitutional independence of the Office of the District Attorney.”

State Auditor Grant Parker’s audit team replied that “To provide clarity and perspective, we are commenting on the excerpt of the District Attorney’s Office response to our audit report.”

The state office believes Eyster’s use of asset forfeiture funding has violated state and federal prohibitions, that his office “has not accurately summarized our findings regarding the presence of waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement with respect to the office’s expenditures,” and that its recommendations for corrective measures was made not to him but to the Board of Supervisors and county executives.

Eyster’s combative response is aimed at state auditors’ conclusions that his string of annual steakhouse dinners, launched after he took office in 2011, is a “gift of public funds.” The annual dinners, attended by 75 or more people, fail to meet the standard for legitimate training expenses because staff guests, including spouses and friends, are not public employees, state auditors determined at the end of a year-long probe of county fiscal practices that cost taxpayers statewide $800,000 under terms of special legislation.

The state findings specifically cite $3,600 that Eyster spent earlier this year to cover the cost of his latest “End of the Year Debriefing and Training” at a local steakhouse. Similar amounts have been spent since 2011, when Eyster launched his annual events.

The findings support the questioning of the annual dinners in recent years by elected County Auditor Chamise Cubbison, whose challenge of the DA’s internal spending practices ended in a bitter political brouhaha. In October 2023, Eyster attempted to criminally prosecute Cubbison on a felony charge of misuse of public funds relating to an unrelated pay issue in her office. The case was tossed before going to trial, and Cubbison returned to her elected position as the Auditor-Controller.

Eyster’s failed prosecution has cost county taxpayers at least $400,000 in outside legal fees for an outside special prosecutor, and for a San Francisco law firm hired to defend the county in a subsequent civil lawsuit Cubbison filed for damages and compensation for the 18 months she was suspended by the Board of Supervisors before the criminal case was dropped.

Eyster has repeatedly refused to publicly comment on his dinner practices or his failed bid to criminally prosecute the county auditor. The high-profile battle between the two elected officials ensnared key county executives and members of the Board of Supervisors. It also led to the forced merger of the county’s two key fiscal offices, which is now being undone.

Eyster lectured state auditors in his Dec. 5 objection to their draft report.

The DA reminded them that he, as the county’s “chief law enforcement officer,” serves as “the de facto head of the executive branch” of county government. Eyster contended that he relies on a “highly qualified” in-house financial team, which had to “interact with the time-consuming information requests and remote conferencing discussions with the state Auditor.”

Eyster said his internal financial team handles, on average, more than 1,200 financial transactions annually and that “no secret payroll codes were found to have been used in DA transactions, no DA financial hanky-panky was uncovered, and, most importantly, neither the District Attorney nor any DA employee was found by the state auditors to have been personally enriched through misappropriation or hidden financial manipulation.”

The DA complained that state auditors did not have a qualified representative “with prosecutorial experience that would allow the Sacramento team to understand the long-standing public safety mission — and discretion — afforded all elected California district attorneys.” He alleged that state auditors created “unnecessary stress on the local team by creating unrealistic and arbitrary deadlines.”

Eyster argued that his office is following guidelines assuring financial safeguards in relation to asset forfeiture spending. No corroborating data was provided in the 2024 state report on the amount of asset forfeiture funds managed in Mendocino County, according to state records.

The DA went on at length defending use of asset forfeiture funds to spend $572 for personal water bottles for DA employees because of questionable water supplies in the downtown county courthouse. He also defended the $70 purchase of an antique Lake County evidence collection kit from a Sonoma County store and its eventual return to the DA’s office in Lakeport, citing “mutual aid to a neighboring and allied law enforcement agency.”

Eyster defended his $5,000 contribution from his state asset forfeiture account to the church-operated St. Mary of the Angels School in Ukiah. “Apparently relying on discriminatory misinterpretations of the U.S. Constitution and California state law, the state auditor wrongly opined that a donation of $5,000 … was constitutionally defective and constitutes a prohibited gift of public funds to, in their pointed description, a local ‘religiously affiliated school.’”

Eyster concluded that his asset forfeiture spending complies with state guidelines.

The state auditing team, in response, took exception to Eyster’s allegations. “The District Attorney’s Office assures that its use of asset forfeiture funding has been lawful. However, as our report notes on pages 30 and 31, the office’s use of asset forfeiture funding has violated state and federal constitutional prohibitions on direct funding for religiously affiliated schools, as well as the California Constitution’s prohibitions on gifts of public funds.”

Also, “The District Attorney’s Office has not accurately summarized our findings regarding the presence of waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement with respect to the office’s expenditures.”