Director Christy Coleman agrees to outside consultant as Shasta HHSA’s financial woes persist
After top Health and Human Services Agency staffers asked the board this week for continued financial help in the millions, Supervisors Matt Plummer and Allen Long pushed to bring in a third-party financial consultant. The motion passed unanimously despite verbal challenges from Supervisor Kevin Crye and Board Chair Chris Kelstrom.
Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency Director Christy Coleman and Administrative Branch Director Erin Watts asked county supervisors on Tuesday to retroactively approve $6 million the agency overspent during the last fiscal year. They also asked for an extension of a $10.5 million general fund loan originally granted in March 2025.
The move is the latest in a series of financial struggles for HHSA, which is the county’s largest department and has a budget of over $300 million. Shasta Scout has reported on money troubles at the agency stretching back to at least 2024, when then newly appointed Director Laura Burch created the role of chief financial officer.
The first person to hold that position, Rahsaan Dean, was fired after only two months — a day after he suggested bringing in the County Administrative Office to look at HHSA’s books. A second CFO lasted just over a year.
At Tuesday’s county board meeting, Watts attributed the agency’s current budget shortfall to inaccurate revenue projections, which she said were off by nearly $8 million for the current fiscal year. She cited the agency’s focus on cost cutting but said the lack of 2026 revenue cancelled out any gains HHSA made from those cuts. That’s in part because of a hiring freeze, Coleman added, which left state revenue that could have been gained from billing for client services on the table.
While the board ultimately approved both the loan extension and the retroactive spending along with other HHSA budget requests, Supervisor Matt Plummer took the opportunity to suggest bringing in an outside financial consultant to respond to the agency’s ongoing struggles.
“Where we are today, compared to a year ago, we’re pretty much in the same spot,” he said.
“If we look back to 2024 … a similar thing happened in terms of, we thought revenues were going to materialize, they didn’t, and then we had to make a big adjustment after the fact. And so I think at this point it would be helpful to hire an outside agency to come in,” he said.
Since stepping up to run the department in 2025, Coleman has repeatedly blamed the agency’s problems on structural issues at the state level. She initially continued those assertions at Tuesday’s meeting.
“We are not the only county that this is happening to,” Coleman said. “HHSAs up and down the state are having this problem, including Napa, and so it’s happening everywhere. This is something that is not going to be solved by hiring another consultant.”
But after Plummer and Supervisor Allen Long, along with County CEO David Rickert, supported the idea of hiring outside financial help during Tuesday’s meeting, she seemed to accept the proposition.
“We work with consultants right now, and we have no problems working with consultants,” she said, referring to her team.
Even with Coleman’s support, the decision to issue an RFP, or request for proposal, for an outside financial analyst seemed to split the board. While all five supervisors ultimately voted for the motion, Supervisor Kevin Crye expressed adamant opposition to the idea. He said hiring a consultant would be an admission that Coleman and Watts weren’t the right people for the job, before emphasizing his belief that they were.
“I think it’s a complete abomination,” he said of hiring an analyst.
“I think you guys are leading this and going in a good direction,” he continued, addressing Coleman and Watts before voting for the motion.
Board Chair Chris Kelstrom also pushed back before ultimately voting to bring in a consultant.
“I have a hard time with the RFP. … I don’t like taking money out of the general fund,” he said to explain why he opposed the idea of outside help.
While board members agreed to put out an RFP, they didn’t set a clear scope of work or a minimum or maximum consulting price. During discussions of how much the board might be willing to spend to contract expert guidance, Plummer emphasized the importance of considering the return on investment.
If HHSA drains its funds, he said, “that ultimately comes out of the general fund, and we’re talking to the tune of, you know, 15 to 30 million a year. … So if we could spend 50,000 or whatever the number on a consultant and save 30 million a year, that’s a huge difference.”
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Of course Crye-Baby and Lurch don’t want an outside examination. It will expose yet another failure in management and leadership by them. They put the current administrators in place and it is yet another disaster.
Selah
The consultant will find the same thing as the previous CFO, that they fired and then the second that left found, money has been grossly mismanaged and Christy and Erinn are incompetent. They force people out of their jobs if they know more than they should in fear that someone will speak out against them. They have cronnies just as they are Kevin Cryes cronnies. If you dont fall in line keep your mouth shut, it dont matter if you are new or have been there 20 years, they will make your life miserable till you leave, making it your fault. Make no mistake HHSA is not the only corrupt area in Shasta County. When you have multiple department heads being ran by either a family member or a BFF, you’re bound to have issues. Nobody is going to be held accountable and there will always be someone to cover things up. And it doesn’t matter if you vote blue or red.
Thank you, Matt and Allen, for pushing the need for a consultant through the MAGA fence! MAGA tried to push back because they don’ t want to admit that their leader is a court- validated rapist, a convicted 34- count felon, and that his white nationalist, Nazi- invested, corporatist administration and the Republican Party basically raped working- class families, school kids, and senior citizens with their HR 1.
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And we aren’ t even talking about the fact that all Shasta County households have paid out over $2000.00. 00 this year alone for their Operation Epic Epstein File Cover- Up Iran war! But the adjudicated rapist and his crime family have made BILLIONS off the Epic Epstein File Cover- Up, and a new report published today by The New York Times reports that American oil and gas companies earned over $130 billion in profits between April and September 2026. You see, the Epstein Class needs your money more than kids, working families, seniors, vets, and the disabled, and they intend to keep it that way.
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The Epstein Class, about 10%, owns 68.9. 9% of all American wealth; half, around 50% of the American population, us here in Shasta County, owns 2. 2.3%. (These are official Federal Reserve estimates, not estimates from a political organization or advocacy group…) And thanks to the adjudicated rapist and the Republican Party, they got it, leaving Shasta County trying to figure out how to keep the doors open.
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Meanwhile, because of HR 1, right now around THIRTY THOUSAND Shasta County citizens are at risk of losing Medi- Cal coverage and CalFresh food benefits, and the cuts get deeper after the first (when the adjudicated rapist’s plans to ramp up his war), after the midterms, and after 01- 01- 27. It’ s going to get worse; just how bad we will have to see. The total possible economic cost and loss of H. R. 1 for Shasta County citizens could be viewed like this:
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$ 27. 3 million a year in additional health- care and safety- net financial pressure associated with Shasta County, equivalent to roughly $383 per household annually. Shasta County’ s own Health and Human Services Agency estimates its more immediate local budget exposure at approximately $6 million annually, or about $84 per household. These figures are not additional household taxes. Residents could also face reduced food assistance, loss of health coverage, higher medical expenses, and reductions in other county services. The broader $42.6. 6 million estimate includes public- hospital losses.
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Trick Or Treat…
If you think the HHSA budget is in bad shape now, wait until all the cuts in the BBB kick in. They were intentionally phased in to take full effect after the midterms. And since Crye, Jones, Kelstrom and Harmon have bankrupted the county by shoving the MAGA agenda down our throats over the past 10 years, the money will not be there to bail them out.
It’s easy to be kind and patient with gross financial management when spending other people’s money isn’t it? You think the consultants will straight up address the fiscal incompetence of the existing managers, or do you suppose they’ll boiler plate a 300 page report with lots of timelines, budget shuffling and trivial cost savings? How about we don’t spend other people’s money on fancy consultants who won’t bite the hand that feeds them, and use the cash to replace the incompetent management?
It’s also easy to indiscriminately cut spending without any thought or sound financial reasoning behind it.
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Because it is other people’s money, a whole lot of thought should be put into where we spend money and where we cut spending.
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It’s always easy to just cut spending on a sound investment when it’s not your money and just because you want to spend it on something else.
Btw, I do agree with you that the management at HHSA is incompetent.
And who put these incompetent managers in place? The same bozos who are resisting any outside evaluation. Funny you never mention that in any of you screeds here.
Selah
So, Erinn has been in her position for at least three years and she still doesn’t have a handle on the revenue and expenditures of the agency? Why is she still in a leadership position if she can’t even handle one of the most important pieces of that position. She’s had three years to get up to speed and she still doesn’t get it- not sure why she’s in the role if the agency has to hire an outside consultant to tell her how to do her job.
Pretty sure you are mixing up County work with the City Council. Erin doesn’t have any say-so for County business (yet).
Erin Watts is the admin director that oversees budget and finance for HHSA. She’s paid more than $100,000 a year (significantly more…), and she’s held the position for more than three years-she should be up to speed on the revenues and expenditures of the agency by now (unless Laura Burch and Christy Coleman promoted someone that can’t do the job).
Matt Plummer believes a consultant can be hired for $50,000 and they will find $30,000,000 in waste at HHSA. Lets see if that pans out. Frankly, I highly doubt that.
Forgive me if I don’t put much (none) stock in Kevin Crye and/or Chris Kelstrom’s ability to recognize qualified employees for any county position.
It would be interesting to see where that money went besides raises and increased staff. It seems to me we could have housed every last homeless person willing to leave the streets county wide for that kind of money and fed them to boot. Good Ole Bouy bureaucracy XX.
“… So if we could spend 50,000 or whatever the number on a consultant and save 30 million a year, that’s a huge difference.”
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Exactly. Plummer has it right.
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Sometimes in order to save money, you have to spend money. You need to look at the return on your investment before you decide to just cut spending out of something.
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It’s funny (and frustrating) how many other so-called fiscal conservatives in our county don’t seem to grasp this idea. All they want to do is cut, cut, cut.
Yes, dropping 50k to save 30mil would be fantastic. If that plays out, I’ll be infinitely more outraged that the existing administrators are so incompetent that they chose to overspend rather than ask for help. BTW: the private sector values bang for buck. That “cut,cut,cut” call you hear is simply the private sector telling government that they don’t see any bang for lots of buck (think high speed rail).
I think you’re trying hard to misrepresent me. I think most intelligent people can figure out that Plummer was exaggerating about those numbers.
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Besides that, I am going to repeat my main point again: “Sometimes in order to save money, you have to spend money. You need to look at the return on your investment before you decide to just cut spending out of something.”
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I never said that we shouldn’t cut spending. I said that we should CAREFULLY decide where to cut spending, and not cut those things that are actually giving us a good return on our investment.
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Cutting spending should be based on sound financial decision making and facts. Period.
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My gripe is against the “fiscal conservatives” locally who just want to cut spending indiscriminately, and without any thought put into it.
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To me being fiscally conservative means making wise financial decisions about how to spend money, then you can’t do that without data and facts.
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Cutting spending indiscriminately just to make cuts in spending is not being fiscally conservative with money.