On July 22, 2025, the Nevada County Board of Supervisors quietly pulled Agenda Item SR 25-1940 from its meeting agenda without explanation. The ordinance—drafted to align key countywide elected offices with the presidential primary—would have extended the terms of multiple appointed officials, bypassed the 2026 election, and denied voters a timely say in who controls some of the most powerful fiscal and administrative positions in county government.

But this story doesn’t begin with its removal. It begins with a far more troubling question: Who requested this ordinance, and why was it written in the first place?

SR 25-1940 didn’t emerge from public demand. No Supervisor brought it forward in a previous public meeting. There was no agenda directive, no community petition, no grand jury recommendation and no workshop. It materialized out of nowhere, embedded in a sweeping code revision—and placed discreetly at the very end of a busy agenda.

---

---

What’s worse, it arrived just two weeks after Sal Alberti, a certified public accountant, formally declared his candidacy for Auditor-Controller on July 7. Had the ordinance passed, the office Alberti seeks would have been removed from the 2026 ballot entirely, allowing the current appointee to remain in power through 2028—without standing before voters in 2026.

The sequence is impossible to ignore:
– June 2022: Rob Tribble wins the Auditor-Controller race by approximately 10 percentage points over Gina Will. Tribble is later disqualified for not meeting minimum statutory qualifications.
– January 2023: Instead of holding a recruitment and selection process, the Board of Supervisors appoints Gina Will—the losing candidate—to a full four-year term.
– Later in 2023: Gina Will requests $50,000 in public reimbursement for campaign expenses. The BOS quietly approves it on its second request. No justification is offered.
– July 7, 2025: Sal Alberti, CPA, files to run against Will in the next scheduled election—June 2026.
– July 22, 2025: The Board of Supervisors places SR 25-1940 on the agenda. The ordinance would remove the Auditor-Controller (and other fiscal offices) from the 2026 ballot and extend appointed terms through 2028.
– Hours before the meeting: The item is pulled. No explanation. No public discussion.

---

---

If that’s not political manipulation, what is?

Let’s be clear: SR 25-1940 was never legal to begin with. California Elections Code § 1300 allows counties to realign election cycles for elected officials only. Appointed officials—like the current Auditor-Controller and Treasurer-Tax Collector—must face election at the next regular cycle under Government Code § 25304.

Assembly Bill 759, which amended § 1300, doesn’t authorize counties to skip elections or extend terms for unelected appointees. It allows alignment moving forward—but only after voters elect someone to the office. Attempting to realign before an election takes place is not only unlawful—it violates the very structure of representative democracy.

Nevada County is a general law county, not a charter county. It cannot override state election rules with local ordinances. Staff or counsel who advised otherwise were either mistaken—or hoping the public wouldn’t notice.

The ethical concerns run deeper than election law. The Treasurer-Tax Collector Oversight Committee was disbanded in 2008. No independent fiscal watchdog exists today. At the same time, the Auditor-Controller—appointed by the Board—audits the very departments that approved her $50,000 campaign reimbursement.

Who authorized that payment? Was it the CEO’s office? The County Counsel? What legal authority did they cite? Why was it approved without Board discussion and transparency? And why is there still no public memo explaining the reimbursement, its legality, or the conflict it created?

If SR 25-1940 had passed, these same unelected fiscal officials would have remained in power for two more years, controlling millions in public funds—without a single vote cast in their name in 2026.

Here is the central question this op-ed raises—one that every voter should be asking:
Who gave staff the directive to write SR 25-1940?

Did any Supervisor make a formal request for this ordinance? Is there a record of it in the public file? If not, then who ordered it? Was it the County Executive Office, attempting to consolidate control? Was it County Counsel, interpreting alignment law in a way that strips voters of their rights?

And why did it include appointed offices, when the law is so clear that only elected officials can have their terms realigned?

Who reviewed it for legality? Who reviewed it for ethics?

The Board owes the public a full explanation and immediate release of all internal communications surrounding SR 25-1940, including:
– Drafts and revision history
– Email directives or discussions
– Legal memos produced internally or by outside counsel
– Meeting notes or records involving staff direction

Until that happens, SR 25-1940 will remain a black box of bureaucratic manipulation—a ghost ordinance designed to erode public accountability under the cover of administrative “efficiency”, improving voter turnout for presidential primaries?

Election timing is not a procedural technicality. It affects real people, real turnout, and real control.

Research from the Chicago Law Review and others shows that removing prominent local offices from the ballot—such as Auditor, DA, or Sheriff—depresses voter participation in every race below them. This phenomenon, called “voter rolloff,” disproportionately hurts local engagement and favors entrenched incumbents.

By pushing key races off the 2026 ballot, SR 25-1940 could have reshaped the outcome of District 3 and District 4 Supervisor elections, undermining the very principle of democratic competition.

That’s not just a policy failure. That’s political engineering.

Pulling SR 25-1940 from the agenda doesn’t mean the ordinance is dead. It means it was quietly shelved—possibly to reappear with a new item number, new title, or minor revisions.

That’s why voters must demand the following, now:
1. Immediate publication of all communications, authorship, and legal review records related to SR 25-1940.
2. A Board resolution guaranteeing that any future alignment ordinances will exclude appointed officials and be subject to full public hearings.
3. A public explanation for why the item was pulled and who initiated it.

Because the core truth remains: No ordinance—no matter how cleverly written—can substitute for an election.

Nevada County residents deserve more than quiet backroom governance. We deserve transparency, lawful elections, and full accountability—especially from those controlling our money and our votes.

Let this pulled agenda item be a turning point. Not just a procedural hiccup, but a warning—and a wake-up call.

Who wrote SR 25-1940?
Until we get the answer, every voter in Nevada County should keep asking the question.

Michael James Taylor, Nevada County Resident, District 1