LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved placing a County Administrative Office staffer in the role of deputy registrar of voters on an interim basis.
Marcy Harrison, an administrative analyst who has been assigned to working with the Registrar of Voters Office since last month, will fill the role.
Harrison’s appointment originally was placed on the consent agenda, where it was to have been accepted without discussion with a slate of other items. At Supervisor Rob Brown’s request, the item was pulled so it could be discussed.
County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson said that after the initial unsuccessful recruitment for a permanent registrar last month, Harrison was assigned effective March 6 to work in the Registrar of Voters Office. Her interim appointment is retroactive to that date.
Huchingson said Harrison has had more than two years of experience in her office. “One of her specialties is special, complex projects.”
Harrison also has experience relevant to the deputy registrar’s assignment, Huchingson said. She worked for six years for Special Districts, where she was involved in processes related to Proposition 218, which requires an election process when new taxes or assessments are levied.
Before that, Harrison worked for the Auditor-Controller’s office and staffed some of the county clerk’s functions. “And as you know, in many counties, the elections office is handled by the county clerk, which is an elected position,” Huchingson said.
“So she has stepped up. She has been a quick study,” said Huchingson.
Huchingson said Harrison’s interim appointment was taken to the board based on past practice. “Typically when an employee is moved from a nonmanagement class to a management class on a temporary basis, we come to your board for approval of that,” she said, giving examples of previous such appointments.
“It’s temporary in nature, and we would expect that the next registrar of voters hired by your board will make decisions about staffing on a permanent basis,” Huchingson said.
In response to followup questions from Lake County News at the meeting, Huchingson said there has been no formal recruitment held for the deputy registrar position so far. “It’s assumed that if the board has success with appointment of a registrar, though, that we would move quickly on that.”
She said Harrison also has the required supervisorial experience for the deputy registrar – which the job description says is five years of previous work experience performing a variety of election administrative and support functions comparable to an elections assistant position – having been a lead worker.
The board then voted to approve the interim appointment 5-0.
The future leadership of the Registrar of Voters Office has been in question for months.
Diane Fridley, the county’s longtime registrar, retired in December, with the board appointing Maria Valadez, her deputy registrar, as interim on an extended basis.
That followed Huchingson’s unsuccessful request to the board in October to require a bachelor’s degree for the registrar’s job, which would have excluded Valadez from being considered.
Valadez then got a new permanent job opportunity in Mendocino County, leaving in February. Together, she and Fridley had nearly seven decades of experience in elections, and when they left, there were only part-time elections office staffers without the necessary experience to succeed them.
The board appointed Huchingson interim registrar in February, upon Valadez’s departure.
An initial recruitment for the registrar’s job didn’t lead to a hire, so the board directed that the job be reopened in March.
The second recruitment closed on Sunday. When asked at Tuesday’s board meeting for the number of applicants, Huchingson said she didn’t have the number off the top of her head.
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Supervisors approve appointment of interim deputy registrar of voters
- Elizabeth Larson
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