County Releases Confidential Investigative Report Into Missing Attorney General Letter
The investigation, conducted by an outside law firm, says Supervisor Patrick Jones did not behave improperly when he failed to disclose a letter sent to him by the state’s chief attorney in response to an official board action.
On Tuesday, August 20, in closed session, Shasta County Supervisors voted unanimously to release a county document detailing the results of an investigation into Supervisor Patrick Jones’ actions regarding correspondence from the California Attorney General’s office.
Written by the Sacramento-based law firm Ellis Investigations, the report exonerates Jones, saying his decision to throw away an official letter from Attorney General (AG) Rob Bonta was not improper.
Jones received the letter in January in response to an official letter from the Shasta County Board that was sent to the AG in August 2023, while Jones was Board Chair. The letter asked Attorney General Rob Bonta to review the actions of Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett regarding the Zogg Fire settlement.
The Board’s letter to Bonta was signed by “Patrick H. Jones, Chairman.” Bonta’s response, which exonerated Bridgett, was addressed using the same wording. But unlike the original letter which was discussed by the Board as a whole, Bonta’s response was not brought forward to the rest of the Board or to the public. Instead, Jones threw it away.
Bonta’s letter only came to the public’s attention when the Shasta County DA’s Office shared it via social media three months later, after reaching out to the AG’s Office for information.
On the left, the header on the letter from the AG’ Office to Patrick Jones. On the right, Jones signature on the Board’s letter to the AG.
The Ellis Investigations report, which was commissioned by the Board for a cost of up to $30,000, details Jones’ habit of keeping “a clean office without clutter”, along with his thoughts that the response received from the AG “was not a big deal.”
County Policy 1-115 requires all mail addressed to the Board chair, as this letter was, to be opened by county mail staff, stamped, dated and placed in public record. The report says that staff likely delivered the mail directly to Jones instead of documenting it as Board mail.
According to the report, Jones opened the letter and then called current Board Chair Kevin Crye to discuss the findings. After that call, the report says, Jones threw the letter away. He did not mention it in his weekly supervisor report and Chair Crye did not place it on the agenda for a future Board meeting.
County Policy 1-500, which outlines records retention schedules says under its “reports-official” section that any official county report, including communication, should be retained for five years. The Ellis Investigations report explains Jones apparent lack of compliance by saying the policy “lacked clarity in its application.”
Jones didn’t receive training in records retention, the report says, and “plausibly relied on mail staff” to follow records retention policy rather than doing so himself.
The investigation into the missing letter focused on Jones and did not address whether Crye had a responsibility as current board chair to make the letter public.
Last August Crye told others on the Board that he wrote the letter, which was never approved by County Counsel, with the help of outside attorneys.
At the time, Crye said “time would tell” that the letter to the AG “had teeth and “all the homework” had been done to back it’s contents. If the Attorney General did not respond to the Board’s letter, Crye told the public, there were “other avenues.”
But this spring, after learning about the letter, the report says Crye “did not consider sharing it with the public.”
According to Ellis Investigations, the letter came to Crye’s attention via a phone call from Jones in late January or early February, only about a month before the public voted on whether Jones would retain his seat in office and whether Crye would be recalled.
Jones was voted out during the March primary. Crye survived his recall attempt by only fifty votes.
Have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.
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Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane
Ain’t got time to take a fast train
Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home
My baby, just a wrote me a letter.🎼
Happy citizens ! It’s just a letter ! Tossed in the garbage can !Who is the victim?
Since when was ignorance of the law a valid excuse to allow someone to escape being held accountable?
And I do not buy for a second that the mail wasn’t opened and stamped properly – unless Jones was a sneak and pulled it out of an unprocessed stack.
Sounds like all the Ellis firm did was work really hard to create plausible deniability. Did they take into account how Jones has lied before when responding to the Public Records Act request from a Bay Area Journalist who had an email exchange with him? The article I read indicated Jones told the employee requesting responsive records he didn’t have anything. He does not care what policy or law he breaks. He threw that letter away for political gain, pride, control, or all of the above. Not a mistake. All the report says is we can’t prove it. It does not say Jones has a shred of ethics, good character, or trustworthiness. I guess nobody trained him in those areas either.
I wonder how much business that firm does with the County every year. How “unbiased” was that outrageously expensive report that did nothing more than defend Jones?
What I don’t understand is that County Policy 1-115 specifically states “The Clerk of the Board or Deputy Clerk of the Board of Supervisors opens all mail addressed to the Board of Supervisors or Chairman of the Board of Supervisors as it arrives in the Clerk of the Board’s Office. Each piece of official communication will be stamped with the date, communication, and distribution stamps. The communications will then be placed in the Board’s communication file.”
Therefore, how is it possible that the investigation found that is was legal for Jones to open the mail himself, and literally toss away the evidence, in violation of County Policy 1-500. I personally don’t care if Jones wasn’t “trained” in records retention – he has been a “public” servant for over 10 years and obviously knows better. He was just trying to save his butt from being ousted in the election, which backfired, however, if this news had come out before the election, the recall of Crye might have been more effective. This is another instance that causes outrage of those of us residing in Shasta County watching our county burn to the ground. I can’t believe how slippery these guys are…
So, Jones spent money consulting with outside attorneys to draft his goat-rope letter about DA Bridgett. Then, they set $30,000 on fire to buy a report saying Jones did nothing wrong? Sounds like Ellis is a crony of Patrick’s, killed two birds with one stone: line his crony’s pockets with $30k (and probably get himself a kickback) while giving him a bogus pass on violating county policy and every ethical standard followed by every ethical supervisor of every board in the country. I’m disgusted and I don’t buy for a minute that ANY of this was above board. It walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck.
It’s so crazy that jones and crye are like ducks, everything just rolls right off their backs, no trouble, no accountability, no honesty or integrity from what I see during these crazy meetings. And, to be honest, I think they love putting on a show. I reside in a different county and very rarely do our meetings last 4 hours. Our yearly budget agenda didn’t take three whole days. Nor do we have a department head who accidently spent 6 million dollars more than her budget allowed, and not report it for months. Seems sketchy from an outsiders point of view. but that is just me…….
Thank you Shasta Scout. Although I have not read the findings in detail, I seriously Wonder if this cake was half baked, for the behalf of Jones and Crye. That said, yesterday I sent a request to the Shasta County Grand Jury to take a look. That was before that weird event happened yesterday and before the report was released to the public. The sooner Jones is gone and Mary is reelected, with the help of Mr. Plumber, perhaps all this weird chaos that skirts legality, and county policies will quiet down, and safe and sane Shasta County Board of Supervisors meetings can resume.
Sounds like the investigators did 1/2 the job. Sad that our money was spent for that.
Thank you, Annelise, for getting this information out so quickly.
It’s sad we lack transparency and open, honest communication from our elected officials. It’s grossly irresponsible that we spend so much on outside counsel.