Hall and Board of Supervisors Given Bad Advice From County Counsel

MADERA - How long does it take to find a home in Madera County? Well if you are the Madera County Auditor/Controller, so far it's about one year.

In January of 2012 Marcia Hall was appointed to complete the term of former Auditor/Controller Janet Kroeger by a unanimous vote from the Madera County Board of Supervisors. However no one advised Ms. Hall at the time that as an (appointed) elected official, she had to live in Madera County in order to hold that position.

Our source within the Government Center told us that the board was advised by Madera County Counsel that they had the option to wave the residency requirement for the position until the 2014 election. Then some time last year county counsel reversed direction when they learned from the Madera County Elections Department they had given wrong advice to the board.  The code is clear on the residency issue.

According to the California Election Code Section 201, "No person is eligible to be elected or appointed to an elected office unless that person is a registered voter and otherwise qualified to vote for that position at the time of that person's appointment."

Obviously this information could have added a larger sense of urgency to Ms. Hall's home search. "You know what you know and you don't know what you don't know", Hall told Big Valley News. She was lead to believe that the residency requirement would not be an issue until she was actually running for the position next year.

Ms Hall says that she and her husband are in the process of looking for a home in the Madera/Chowchilla area but has not been advised by anyone in county government that she had to move here before she ran for election in 2014.  In any case, Ms. Hall says that they would like to find a new home in Madera County and be moved in by summer of 2013.

Hall added, "We are looking around the South Park area of Madera or possibly Pheasant Run in Chowchilla. My husband likes to play golf and we were told of a house near the sixteenth hole." The Hall's are currently located just south of the City of Merced, where they have lived for over twelve years. According to Ms. Hall, if she was informed that she must move to Madera before her house hunting was complete, she would just find an apartment to live in.

The larger problem may end up being how the Madera County Board of Supervisors will resolve the mistake made in appointing Ms. Hall before she had relocated. Technically, this means that despite her strong accounting background, she currently holds a position for which she does not meet the basic requirements.

In investigating this story, Big Valley News has learned that the Board may have in fact cut Madera County voters out of the process unnecessarily. Ms. Hall's selection and appointment was decided on in December 2011. There was an election less than six months later in which Ms. Hall could have participated, provided she had met the residency requirement, eliminating the need to appoint anyone into what is meant to be an elected office.

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Nancy Eland - Staff Writer