EDC leader has history of costing taxpayers
By Kathryn Reed
Pamela Knorr is proving to be a financial liability for her employers — aka the taxpayers. First it was Alpine County, now it is El Dorado County.
On July 3, 2012, Knorr signed a five-year contract to be CAO of Alpine County at a rate of pay of $11,757 per month. She also received a $400 a month car allowance and access to the county credit card presumably for county business. The contract said Knorr would be entitled to 18 months severance pay if she were terminated.
Pamela Knorr
She and the board agreed to this even though months earlier she believed the sheriff and county auditor were harassing her.
Knorr on April 11, 2013, filed a claim against the county alleging harassment that dated to April 2012 – three months prior to signing the long-term contract.
Knorr’s claim states the Alpine County sheriff initiated a criminal investigation of Knorr in an effort to harass, retaliate and intimidate her. The claim also states that the auditor harassed and retaliated against her and that Knorr “was subjected to unwanted harassing conduct by men who harassed, attempted to coerce, threatened, intimidated, and discriminated against (her) for being a women in a leadership position.”
The claim says county counsel and the Board of Supervisors in April 2012 were notified of the alleged harassment.
Alpine County and Knorr settled that dispute for $10,000.
Her last day with Alpine was Aug. 2, 2013. She was paid $80,145.50 on Aug. 7, 2013, and another $80,145.50, on July 1, 2014, as severance per the contract.
Janet Dutcher, Alpine County assistant CAO, told Lake Tahoe News that Knorr agreed to take less than what the contract called for and to have it split in two payments.
Knorr did not return Lake Tahoe News’ phone call.
Knorr is not done with Alpine County. A former Alpine County employee who worked for her when she was CAO has sued her. Robert Levy, former undersheriff of Alpine County, in the 19-page lawsuit alleges Knorr along with three supervisors at the time and a private citizen violated his civil rights, conspired to do so, discriminated against him based on age, failed to prevent discrimination and retaliation, violated the Public Safety Officers’ Procedural Bill of Rights Act, and defamed him.
“Her theory was a younger, cheaper workforce was better,” Jeanette Viduay, investigator with the Watts Law Office, told Lake Tahoe News.
Knorr is 44 years old.
She was not unemployed for long. El Dorado County hired her in September 2013 as Human Resources director.
El Dorado County’s recruitment for Knorr’s position was for the shortest amount of time allowed by county policy, which is unusual for such an important job. Terri Daly was CAO at the time. Daly and Knorr share a close friend and mentor, Yolo County CAO Patrick Blacklock. Blacklock is the former CAO of Amador County. Daly and Knorr are former Amador County employees.
Daly’s employment as El Dorado County CAO was terminated in November 2014. She received a $150,000 settlement. Knorr replaced Daly as CAO at that time.
As the top official in El Dorado County, Knorr as chief administrative officer is not taking actions to remedy the budget debacle her predecessor, Daly, created. Daly went on a hiring spree, which is the same as a spending spree. Each month the county is spending $1.3 million more than it is taking in. A $10 million surplus has been exhausted.
The five members of the Board of Supervisors, who are Knorr’s bosses and who earlier this year gave her the one-year contract, have not mandated the spending be stopped. While it is the board’s responsibility to set policy and then for Knorr and other staff to carry out the policy, there is a bit of tug-of-war over who has responsibility over the budget. Ultimately, though, it will be the electeds who vote on the budget, so it is their responsibility to OK how much is spent on what.
Brian Veerkamp, chair of the Board of Supervisors, did not return a call.
While Knorr’s contract for CAO is for one year, she is also still head of the Human Resources Department. This means that anyone who has an issue with Knorr or others in her department have no recourse. This is the same HR Department that was lambasted this spring by the county grand jury.
Nice reporting Kae.
As Grand Jury indicated, Pam Knorr wasn’t qualified for Human Resources Director, much less so for CAO. It does appear Pam was made to order by and for former CAO Terri Daly and her plans. The County BOS were very negligent to hire rather than fire her in February. Even the 2/2/15 press release on County website is ludicrous – 28 years plus experience with government, which means Pam started at 16 years old and has worked full time since. This simply can’t be correct and is misleading. What kind of organization and/or person does that?
Eldorado County taxpayers brace yourself. Eldorado is 20 times bigger than Alpine County. If Knorr got a $170,000 settlement from Alpine, her goal is probably 20 times higher for Eldorado. $3,400,000.
Why can’t the county board of supervisors do something to fix this budget problem? The county is running headlong into a huge budget crash. And when the money runs out, what then? I’m guessing that when the crash comes, the BOS will tell us that they have to raise taxes or else they will close all the libraries and layoff all the firefighters and police. It’s like they’re planning for the county to have this huge budget crises, and when it comes they’ll tell us we have to raise taxes or suffer the consequences of having no fire protection, police or libraries. Our county board of supervisors is asleep at the wheel and they need to wake up and fix this before they run out of money!
It is incompetence, negligence, personal greed, and waste like this that give many government bureaucrats such a poor reputation.
Where is/was the oversight? Clueless politicians on the way to their banks with their last huge raises.
This appears to be needless incompetence and the hiring of people in trouble from elsewhere and this was made to order for the looting and misspending of public funds and a really messed up budget and the people responsible for appointing these former out of county malcontents should be investigated by the Grand Jury for charges and censure. This was apparently a network of cronies who jumped from one crony position after another and when they were exposed in one place they apparently made money on leaving and found another crony position. This was allowed here by the complete incompetence on the Board in important hiring and appointments made without proper hiring background checks and no known competition. It should be remembered the county was warned about Daly and Kerr and there was an Amador Grand Jury Report about them for evidence. The Board obviously needed to remove Knorr when Daly was terminated and Kerr left and the reality is they should never have been hired in the first place. Now it is damage control and a wrecked budget, lost surplus, and continued over-spending of millions this county doesn’t have.
It is simply a problem of the lack of the involvement of the public in their own government. The only people that want to hold the offices are simple minded people with enormous egos. We elect these morons and this sort of crap is what we get. Incompetence breeds incompetence and it breeds like rats. Why do we allow our officials to continue with this sort of behavior. How can a CAO job in Alpine County pay $150k? Why do these jobs always have to have a contract? The people would be better served hiring an accounting major fresh out of college with no baggage. They would do a better job and cost a lot less.
agree with atomic: nice reporting. coherent description of a topic that
needed to come out
Actually this is old news, brought up in several letters posted here by a guy who pays attention to County affairs. I forget his name, but he has warned of Knorr and Daly and their spending habits and incompetence for about a year. He was warning of Knorr’s incompetence before the BOS appointed her CAO to replace her friend, and the person who hired her, Daly. Our BOS is totally ignoring the situation and along with Alpine county have allowed these two women, Knorr and Daly, to rob the counties blind.
Wake up BOS !
Great synopsis, Ms. Reed. My first reaction is there’s gotta be more to the story. There’s gotta be … But, regrettably, it’s likely all true at face value, which makes it a staggering and sobering look into just how far incompetence and disinterest can take a governmental body.
It is inconceivable to imagine that the BOS and the county auditor have allowed this drive to the bottom to continue. But, there it is.
This is a continuing saga of ineptitude at the County. I perdict the BOS will allow the County to get into a financial crisis of epic proportions before they act to reduce the additional hires in the CAO office. They haven’t even begun to address the damage done by these (totally predictable) County employees. I agree with the notion that All heads of depts should come straight from college. Experience IS the problem behind this problem! Experience in how to get rewarded for not dong your job.
It figures, a corrupt EDC hires a corrupt HR manager. Bad fish tend to school together.
And the FBI or someone still can’t step in and do something about the corruption in this county?? Its insane that anyone has a pay scale like this, especially when all they have done is screw up. This is such a toxic and corrupt group of people running our little county. This corruption trickles down through EVERY department.
‘bad fish tend to school together’-the gomers in ElDo Co. have voted for the Doofus Briggs-Nutting-Gaines phony rancher teabaggers for decades-you get what you dolts deserve
Some points here. O’Rourke was paid $14,600 per month plus expenses as SLT City Manager.
The El Dorado County budget is about $25 billion annually while the City of SLT is about $65 million.
City is still out $400k per year on the “airport.”
And if you want a laugh, read the Alpine County Grand Jury report on Daly. It basically says we blame Daly for our ignorance of financial statements. Perhaps that is why no charges were pursed by Alpine County.
Point of clarification for rock4tahoe et al, Terri Daly was an employee of Amador County, not Alpine County.
This is El Dorado County at it’s finest. Morons
The letters I was referring to earlier were written by Larry Weitzman. He has been sounding the alarm about the budget and Knorr and Daly for at least a year .
Rock, not sure what the county budget is but I am sure that it is not 25 BILLION. The city general fund budget is only around 30 million. The other money is mostly grants to do construction for lake clarity.