A move by four of the members of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and their political support network to boost the electoral prospects of the Rancho Cucamonga councilman challenging County Treasurer Ensen Mason in this year’s election has resulted in charges and counter-charges of conflicts-of interest together with suggestions that the county’s elected officials are exhibiting inadequate diligence, dedication and focus on their duty to those who elected them.
After two unsuccessful attempts at running for the position of San Bernardino County treasurer/tax collector/auditor/controller in 2010 and 2014, Ensen Mason was elected in 2018 and reelected in 2022. This year, he is being challenged by Ryan Hutchison, who in 2018 was elected to the position of Rancho Cucamonga Third District councilman and in 2022 was returned to office by proclamation when no one ran against him.
Hutchison is a member of a coalition of San Bernardino County politicians affiliated with the current leadership of the county Republican Party and supported by the building industry, developers, the real estate profession and public employee unions representing both line and public safety workers. That coalition, which has evolved to dominate San Bernardino County politics and become what is the most widely-perceived embodiment of the leadership of the county establishment, includes San Bernardino County First District Supervisor Paul Cook, San Bernardino County Second District Supervisor Jesse Armendarez, San Bernardino County Second Third District Supervisor Dawn Rowe and Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman as four of its primary members.
For a multiplicity of reasons, Cook, Armendarez, Rowe and Hagman want Mason out as treasurer/tax collector/auditor/controller, and the circumstance has grown propitious to move Hutchison in as his replacement. Hutchison has aspirations for higher office, the most immediately logical of which is Second District Supervisor, a position from which he could in future years launch what could likely prove to be a successful campaign for the state legislature – the California Assembly or the State Senate. However, because the Second District supervisorial post is currently held by Armendarez, who will not be precluded by San Bernardino County’s term limits from running for supervisor until 2034, having Hutchison glide into an elective post other than Second District supervisor is more in keeping with the coalition’s interests and long-term goals. Hutchison’s unbridled support of development proposals as a member of the Rancho Cucamonga City Council, which has [antagonized] a cross section of the electorate in Rancho Cucamonga, has raised questions about his prospects for retaining his council seat in the upcoming November election.
This combination of factors resulted in Cook, Armendarez, Rowe and Hagman quietly coming to a consensus that one of the coalition’s next measure moves forward should consist of Hutchison knocking Mason out of office in the 2026 election cycle.
For more than six months, that Hutchison was going to challenge Mason in the upcoming June election, which corresponds with California’s gubernatorial primary, has been a poorly-kept secret. The coalition’s loosely-knit set of political advisors began casting about in December to find some issue that Mason or the treasurer/tax collector’s office was involved in that might be hung around Mason’s neck as some order of millstone. At some point, those strategists came up the idea of utilizing Mason’s decision, extending back to after his 2018 election, against closing out a company he had established in 2014, Mason Financial Services, as a means of bringing his service as treasurer/tax collector/auditor/controller into question.
A certified public accountant, Mason had gradually, beginning in the 1990s, built his business keeping books for companies and individuals into a successful operation. In 2014, the same year he ran for county treasurer for the second time, he branched into providing clients advice with regard to money/wealth management, offering guidance on the best may to structure and diversify investments to ensure those investing in various money markets or assets extending to stocks, bonds, mutual funds, traded funds, real estate, certificates of deposit, option, derivatives, annuities commodities or hybrids get a substantial return on their money while minimizing risk by protecting themselves through adequate diversification and caution.
Upon being elected, Mason did not shutter Mason Financial Services, but withdrew from its day-to-day operations, turning it over to a manager and his other employees, who continued to run the business out of an office on the fifth floor of the Citrus Center/Citibank building at 300 East State Street in Redlands, which has since been purchased by the City of Redlands and is set for being converted into the next Redlands City Hall. The coalition’s political operatives formulated a plan of attack.
It was Mason’s retention of his private sector financial services operation while he is serving the capacity of an elected government official that the political alliance seized upon in arriving at its plan to remove him from office and replace him with Hutchison.
The tightly-knit circle that constitutes the alliance consists of Phil Cothran, Sr, since 2021 the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee; Heather Obernolte, the wife of Jay Obernolte, one of two Republican congressman representing San Bernardino County; Ross Sevy, a Republican Party functionary who has been active in dozens of electoral campaigns since 2014; Jim Previti, a developer and major donor to political campaigns in San Bernardino County; Benjamin Lopez, a Montclair City Councilman and the parliamentarian for San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee; Cook; Hagman, Rowe and Armendarez.
Individuals from the private sector with ties to the alliance were recruited and began making allusions, in public, to Mason’s dual private and public sector functions, implying or directly stating that they were either incompatible, in conflict or that the time Mason devoted to his financial services company detracted from, or divided, his attention to overseeing the county’s finances.
In a precisely choreographed exhibition scripted by Hutchison’s campaign team, which included Sevy, Heather Obernolte and a political consultant, four county residents/businessmen – Mark Lee, Samuel Powers, Corey Torello and Jerry Bazra – at the Tuesday February 24, 2026 San Bernardino Board of Supervisors meeting during that portion of the meeting reserved for public comments read prepared statements which variously questioned the propriety of Mason’s dual status, outright alleged he was involved in a conflict of interest or called for his removal from the elective office he holds.
Lee began the onslaught, noting that in addition to the $456,000 Mason was paid by the county in his elective capacity, he also owned Mason Financial Services, which Lee said is “valued at over a million dollars. That firm paid him over $100,000 in a year. I believe that’s double dipping. This is one of the worst cases I’ve ever heard of. I ask all of you as my representatives here this morning to do something about this as soon as possible.”
Lee opined, “This is fraud.”
Samuel Powers, who said he is “a small business owner, said “I was very bothered to learn that there’s someone at this county taking advantage of an elected position. Is it true that the owner of a private firm – Mason Financial Services – who sells investment advice to a private client is also an elected official, and not just any elected official but the treasurer of San Bernardino County? Please tell me this is not true. If it is, I consider this an abuse of power and it needs to be investigated immediately,” he said.
Corey Torello, who said he manages a large business in San Bernardino County, alluded to having earlier expressed concern with regard to Mason.
“I return today to issue a call to action to investigate potential conflicts of interest for the auditor/controller and tax collector Ensen Mason, Torello said. “Even though Mr. Mason earns over $450,000 in salary and benefits in his role at the county, he also works full time at his business, Mason Financial Services, worth more than a million dollars.”
Asserting that Mason was using his public position as “auditor, controller and tax collector to gain personal clients,” Torello said, “Mr. Mason oversees the management of the county investment pool valued at roughly $12 billion. At the same time, he profits from a business he owns giving investment advice for his personal clients. I just don’t see how this is not a conflict of interest. How can a county official conduct the same kind of work for the public and for the private sector at the same time? How do you know he’s not profiting from his public position by investing billions of dollars on behalf of the county to increase the value of the investments of his personal clients?”
Torello said, “What I want to know is how the board is safeguarding against this type of activity. He is clearly leveraging his county position when advertising for his private business. I call on you to investigate how Mr. Mason’s private business and public position may be in conflict with one another. Without an investigation into Mr. Mason’s office and the county’s financial policies how can constituents have confidence in county leadership.”
Jerry Baja said, “We have a big problem in the office of auditor/controller. It seems like the person in charge of this office has been running a financial services company at the same time they (sic) have a job in the county. I don’t believe he can properly dedicate yourself to two full-time jobs at once. More importantly it’s the fact that you should not. My question is: What are the steps that are in place to remove someone?”
Elements contained in the statements, including repetition of precisely similar wording relating to the value of Mason Financial Services and Powers, Torello and Baja omitting treasurer from Mason’s title and instead referring to him as the “auditor/controller/tax collector” gave strong indication that the statements were written by the same individual.
Moreover, Rowe, as the board chairwoman arranged to have all four – Lee, Powers, Torello and Baja – address the board as the final speakers during the public comment period, whereupon she addressed the substance of their statements by reading a written statement of her own into the record.
Under standard protocol for elected government board meetings under the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open public meeting law, public agency or district boards, city councils or county boards of supervisors are permitted to hear comments from members of the public relating to topics those speakers bring up extemporaneously, the board members or council members cannot dialogue with the public regarding those topics and cannot discuss matters or issues that have not been agendized. There was no item on the agenda relating to Mason’s dual private sector and public sector roles. Thus, Rowe’s statement with regard to the topic, which was clearly written ahead of time given that she read from it in her reaction to Lee’s, Powers’, Tirello’s and Baja’s statements, was an indication she was prepared to speak on the issue in advance of the meeting. Moreover, that her prepared remarks corresponded so uniformly with what was read by Lee, Powers, Tirello and Baja strongly suggests that the statements were coordinated in advance and quite possibly or probably written by the same individual, believed by many observers to be Hutichson’s campaign consultant.
Reading from the prepared text contained in a document on the table before her, Rowe said, “We’ve heard some new comments. I’ve had a lot of outreach both this morning and via email from folks regarding the conflict of interest associated with the auditor controller tax collector and the concerns that are being raised. Ensen Mason, despite being the highest paid elected official in the county is not in his elected office full time because he operates a full-time business, Mason Financial Services. So, Ensen’s a CPA and a registered investment advisor, and in that role, he frequently provides advice to his clients on investments that they should make. At the same time, Ensen serves as the elected auditor controller tax collector for our county and in his role as the treasurer, he directly manages $12 billion in the county investment pool So, this creates an opportunity for significant conflict of interest.”
Changing her posture and angling herself accordingly to address County Chief Executive Officer Luther Snoke, who was seated to her left at the far end of the board dais next to County Counsel Laura Feingold, Rowe continued to read from the prepared statement, asking, “Is there any way you can investigate to see if this is a real conflict of interest or just a perceived conflict of interest? Because I agree with the speakers and the outreach that I’ve had that if nothing else, it’s a bad look. [As a] board, we delegate our investment authority each year through the budgeting process. I’m concerned that until we have a better understanding of the allegations, that we may want to explore what other options that we have for delegation. So, would you be able to look into that and report back?”
Snoke’s response came across as pre-rehearsed if not scripted as well, as he appeared to be glancing at the screen of an open laptop computer in front of him.
“Yes,” Snoke said, “and to echo your point, I’ve heard the complaints, too. Yes, I can work with county counsel. We’ll look into how we would investigate the concerns raised regarding the potential conflict of interest. From the standpoint of investment authority, annually an item is brought where we recommend to the board delegated investment authority to the ATC [auditor treasurer controller]. I think that is around budget time. June or July each year is when we traditionally bring that.”
In a remark that ominously seemed to foretell that the county board of supervisors and top county administrators were looking to bring Mason down a peg or two before the upcoming election by attenuating the scope of his financial authority, Snoke said, “I can explore what it would mean if a recommendation was to delegate the investment authority differently and what the implications that would have on the county.”
Armendarez, the individual on the board of supervisors most closely aligned with Hutchison jumped in at that point, ruminating out loud, in the strongest of terms, about publicly rebuking Mason.
“Madam chair, we do hear you,” Armendarez said. “We hear everything you’re saying. When it comes to this particular subject that we’re talking right now, where I see there could be a huge issue that I would love to see if we could look into is when you’re managing $12 billion, that gives you a lot of influence in what you can do with your own personal business. And I would hate to see that these monies are being leveraged in any way from the county side to benefit someone’s personal business. If that’s the case, we need to get the bottom of it. I don’t know if there’s a way to audit that in itself, because if he’s – I don’t know it it’s called insider trading or something, but if there’s something like that that’s happening – that could be not just devastating to the county but it could be devastating to our reputation as a county.”
Rowe then really rubbed it in, analogizing the situation in stark terms, saying, “One of the comments I received was its the equivalent of having the sheriff’s department, the actual sheriff, the elected sheriff have his own private towing company where he hooks up and hauls vehicles and makes a profit off that or DA [District Attorney Jason] Anderson having a private practice on the side at the same time.”
She addressed Snoke and Feingold, “So, I think anything you can do to shed some light on it would be helpful.”
The events at the February 24 board meeting came in the midst of the February 9 to March 6 filing period for candidates, serving as a well-timed springboard for Hutchison’s candidacy and campaign kick-off. Headlines heralding that Mason was being investigated by the county appeared the next day in both of the county’s largest circulating daily newspapers, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin and the San Bernardino Sun.
Mason responded, pointing out that he had been assailed by a mixture inaccuracies, quarter-truths-half-truths and three-quarter-truths held together with what were at best misinterpretations and worse outright and intentional misrepresentations.
There is no restriction whatsoever on elected officials owning businesses in the private sector, he pointed out. This is currently the case, with other elected officials in San Bernardino County, including those who called upon the chief executive officer and county counsel to investigate him. Larry Walker, who was the incumbent county treasurer/tax collector/auditor/controller against whom he ran in 2010 and 2014, was a member of the California Bar and a practicing attorney.
Both Torello and Baja described Mason as a full-time employee at Mason Financial Services, which was repeated by Rowe. That is inaccurate, Mason said. “I employ a manager and employees,” he said of Mason Financial Services. I do not work out of that [the Redlands Mason Financial Services] office during normal business hours. If the question is how much time am I spending in my role as county treasurer, as the tax collector and as the auditor-controller, the taxpayers are getting better than a 40-hour work week out of me. There is no dispute about that. It can be verified in all the ways that exist these days, on video, electronically, through global positioning network data and probably in some ways I don’t know about.”
Mason dismissed entirely the suggestion that the investment advice provided to Mason Financial Services’ clients involved any type of conflict of interest.
The county’s portfolio is loaded with extremely low-risk instruments which offer safe and reliable, steady growth, the lion’s share of which are U.S. Treasury bonds. Private investors, such as those who employ Mason Financial Services, are heavily involved in stock trading. “The county holds no stock,” he said. “There is no conflict of interest. The investment the county is engaged in does not touch on any of the activity of Mason Financial Services’ clients.”
Where the conflict comes in, Mason said, is on the other side of the equation. It is actually the board of supervisors’ conflict that has led to this circumstance, he said. That conflict arises out of an effort begun in 2021by the union representing the county’s sheriff’s deputies, the Safety Employees Benefit Association, known by its acronym SEBA, to create a medical care trust for retired deputies. The county’s deputies and higher ranking officers already receive a pension – calculated at 3 percent of each retired deputy’s/officer’s highest annual salary times the number of years the deputy/officer was employed by the department. Those pensions are paid through the county’s retirement system, SBCERA – the San Bernardino County Employees’ Retirement System. What the Safety Employees Benefit Association was attempting to do was to create what is known as an other postemployment benefit, referred to by the acronym OPEB, which would pay for health plans for those retired sheriff’s department employees in addition to their pensions.
The board of supervisors, all of whom have received substantial political contributions from SEBA and who were also endorsed by the deputies’ union in their run for office, were in favor of simply approving the creation of the OPEB. In gearing up to approve the other postemployment benefit for the Safety Employees Benefit Association, the board of supervisors made no arrangement for funding the program, deferring into the future the provision of money that would be used to pay for the health insurance the retired sheriff’s deputies/officers were to receive. This meant that ultimately the money to pay for the medical care trust program, instead of being defrayed by contributions from deputies/officers who were still working, would come out of the county’s general operating budget or the county’s financial reserves.
Mason, in looking to what the proposal would entail, the projections of what it would cost and what funding at that time was available and what future funding was projected to become available, calculated the creation of the program would create what would amount to a liability, i.e., debt of over $1 billion that the county would be saddled with in the future. Mason informed then-County Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez and Assistant County Executive Officer Diane Rundles, who oversaw the county’s human resources division, that he believed the requirements of his job as county treasurer/tax collector/auditor/controller required, at the very least, that he make a report, entailing a full public disclosure of that future debt/liability prior to the board of supervisors consideration of the approval of the creation of the medical trust program for retired deputies/officers. This greatly complicated the proposal to approve the program, making it impossible for the board of supervisors to simply rubberstamp it.
His insistence on making a report of the liabilities of the program and its financial consequences prevented the creation of the OPEB and resulted in SEBA and its members perceiving the board of supervisors as having double-crossed them by not rewarding the deputies with the creation of the medical care trust program to benefit them in return for the hefty political contributions the deputies’ union had made to the supervisors to assist in their election campaigns. In fact, Mason said, what the board of supervisors was attempting to do with the postretirement medical care trust program for the county’s sheriff’s employees involved the supervisors in a classic quid-pro-quo – a kickback, a payoff, bribery, corruption – a conflict of interest of the first order. It is for that reason, Mason maintains, that the board of supervisors is orchestrating the false charges of a conflict of interest against him and is moving forward with an investigation, which will create, the supervisors hope, enough negative publicity regarding him that it will boost Hutchison’s electoral chances and result in Mason’s defeat in this year’s election.
“That is the real conflict of interest at the root of all of this,” Mason said. “The county supervisors want to get their own treasurer into office who will allow them to make a billion dollar gift to the sheriff’s deputies union, which is one their biggest political donors across the board. They want a treasurer who will keep his mouth shut about the corruption their up to their necks in.”
Mason says he does not see the outside employment that three of the members of the board of supervisors who coming after him are themselves engaged in as being an issue.
“An elected official owning a business is not against the law,” he said.
Nevertheless, there are others that now see some kind of political paydirt in the fact that at least forur members of the board of supervisors are suggesting that there is something either illegal or unethical in elected officials having their own interests in the private sector.
The question has now become, insofar as the board of supervisors is calling for an investigation into and potential action with regard to Ensen Mason’s outside employment/business, which some such as Lee, Powers, Torello and Baja apparently believe is overdue, whether the board will turn its scrutiny upon its own members, who own enterprises which appear in some cases to be lucrative, time-consuming and potentially conflict-ridden.
In the case of Second District Supervisor Jesse Armendarez, he is a principal in JA & JB Investment, Inc., from which, according to financial disclosure documents filed with the State of California, he realizes income of between $100,000 and $1 million per year. Armendarez is also the owner of Sierra Realty, from which he obtains, on an annual basis, according to documents filed with the State of California, between $100,000 and $1 million in income. In addition, according documentation, Armendarez has investments in or interest in at least six separate pieces of property, each of which is worth between $100,000 and $1 million.
The scope of Armendarez’s business activity is such that it would likely intrude upon the time he can devote, during any given week, to looking after the interests of his constituents.
At the same time, Armendarez’s interests in real estate would, at least potentially, involve him in conflicts of interest vis-à-vis his function as county supervisor. A fair number of issues that come before the board of supervisors involve land use decisions, including the development of property, sometimes making zone changes, granting conditional use permits and sometimes approving changes to the county’s general plan. In addition, as a member of the board of supervisors, Armendarez has a hand in setting the standards in and approving overall the county’s general plan on those occasions when it is updated or revamped. All of these activities and decisions, falling within the rubric of their various impacts on real estate in circumscribed, limited, larger and regional contexts would directly or indirectly relate to the decrease, sustainment or increase in the value of his own real estate creating a de facto conflict of interest. On Tuesday, February 24 Armendarez said of Mason that his control or decisions with regard to investing county money gave him “a lot of influence in what [he] can do with [his] own personal business” and that he would “hate to see that these monies are being leveraged in any way from the county side to benefit someone’s personal business.” Armendarez referenced “insider trading… that could be not just devastating to the county but it could be devastating to our reputation as a county.”
It was not lost on at least some observers, that as a supervisor Armendarez’s influence over land use decisions has an impact on what he might be able to do with his own personal property and that his authority puts him into a position where is able to engage in a type of insider trading.
State disclosure documents indicated that Third District Supervisor Dawn Rowe is involved in an undertaking in Temecula, which is in adjoining Riverside County known as Hammerking Productions in which se serves as the “King of the Hammers” and as a liaison representative to the Bureau of Land Management. According to those documents, Hammerking Production is not generating any money at present.
Rowe is also involved with or owns D Webb, Inc. in Yucca Valley, which se reported as being engaged in “development.” She reported she derives somewhere between $10,000 and $100,000 in income annually from D. Webb.
Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman is employed as the “territory sales representative for Snap One, LLC., a company based in Charlotte, North Carolina, which is a “designer, manufacturer, and distributor of smart home and business solutions. He makes roughly $10,000 year working for Snap One. He is also an owner of Genuine Technologies, a venture in which he makes roughly $150,000 per year. He is also the owner/president of Apex Bail Bonds, from which he derives roughly $350,000 in income. Apex involves itself, at least occasionally, in seeing to it that those arrested, in some cases by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, on suspicion of violating the law in San Bernardino County, are set free pending their trials. As a member of the board of supervisors, Hagman is one of five individuals who control the purse strings of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. Some might consider that a conflict of interest.
The members of the board of supervisors are somewhat secretive about the business entities they own. Generally, they offer as little information as possible with regard to those companies and their activities, rarely going beyond the minimum disclosure required for the completion of registering filings.
Some members of the San Bernardino County Republican establishment unaffiliated with the Cook/Hagman/Rowe/Armendarez/Hutchison/Cothran/Obernolte/Previti/Lopez alliance beyond GOP registration and involvement in the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee expressed dismay at the manner in which the Mason, himself a Republican, was being undercut by members of his own party. Among those skeptical of the motivation in seeking to end Mason’s tenure as county treasurer are current and former members of the California legislature, mayors and city/town council members. A common refrain was discontent with the manner in which the current crop of Republican officeholders within the county are kowtowing to public employee union demands without regard to the fiscal impact on government operations, both in terms of expense to the taxpayers and the diminishing services to the public increases in government employee salary and benefit costs.
Early this morning, the Sentinel emailed county spokesman David Wert, asking him if Mason was wrong when he stated that elected county officials are at liberty to own businesses outside the scope of their county offices and, if Mason is wrong, whether that principle applies to the members of the board of supervisors, as well. The Sentinel further asked Wert if the board of supervisors should open up an investigation of any of its members involved in employment outside the county and if the board of supervisors is going to open up an investigation of its members who have some form of employment outside of the county or own a business.
The Sentinel asked Wert if the board of supervisors is pursuing the investigation of Mason to punish him for attempting to block the SEBA post-retirement medical coverage program.
The Sentinel asked Wert if the board of supervisors is pursuing the investigation of Mr. Mason to diminish his chances of being reelected this year.
The Sentinel asked Wert if SEBA’s political donations to the members of the board of supervisors created a conflict of interest that should have resulted in the board members recusing themselves when the decisions with regard to the SEBA post-retirement medical coverage program were made.
Wert had not responded by press time.
